"Lord," said Bosambo, "it is true that your lordship's child is wonderful, but I think that M'sambo is also wonderful. If your lordship will look with kind eyes he will see a certain cunning way which is strange in so young a one. Also he speaks clearly so that I understand him." "Yet," contested Bones, "as it seems to me, Bosambo, mine is very wise, for see how he looks to me when I speak, raising his thumb." Bones made a clucking noise with his mouth, and Henry turned frowningly, regarded his protector with cool indifference, and returned to his scrutiny of the other strange brown animal confronting him. "Now," said Bones that night, "what of the Walker?" "Lord, I know of him," said Bosambo, "yet I cannot speak for we are blood brothers by certain magic rites and speeches; this I know, that he is a good man as I shall testify to Sandi when he comes back to his own people." "You sit here for Government," said Bones, "and if you don't play the game you're a jolly old rotter, Bosambo!" "I know 'um, I no speak 'um, sah," said Bosambo, "I be good fellah, sah, no Yadasi fellah, sah--I be Peter feller, cut 'em ear some like, sah!" "You're a naughty old humbug," said Bones, and went to bed on the _Zaire_ leaving Henry with the chief's wife.... In the dark hours before the dawn he led his Houssas across the beach, revolver in hand, but came a little too late. The surprise party had been well planned. A speared sentry lay twisting before the chief's hut, and Bosambo's face was smothered in blood. Bones took in the situation. "Fire on the men who fly to the forest," he said, but Bosambo laid a shaking hand upon his arm. "Lord," he said, "hold your fire, for they have taken the children, and I fear the woman my wife is stricken." He went into the hut, Bones following. The chief's wife had a larger hut than Bosambo's own, communicating with her lord's through a passage of wicker and clay, and the raiders had clubbed her to silence, but Bones knew enough of surgery to see that she was in no danger. In ten minutes the fighting regiments of the Ochori were sweeping through the forest, trackers going ahead to pick up the trail. "Let all gods hear me," sobbed Bosambo, as he ran, "and send M'gani swiftly to M'sambo my son." IV "Now this is very wonderful," said Lamalana, "and it seems, O my father, no matter for a small killing, but for a sacrifice such as all men may see." It was the hour following the dawn when the world was at its sweetest, when the chattering weaver birds went in and out of their hanging nests gossiping loudly, and faint perfumes from little morning flowers gave the air an unusual delicacy.