The man in the doorway said "Kah!" in a gurgling voice and went down limply, because Sanders had kicked him scientifically in the stomach, which is a native's weak spot. The second man ran out, but fell with a crash over the Commissioner's extended leg, and, falling, received the full weight of a heavy pistol barrel in the neighbourhood of his right ear. "Yoka!" called Sanders sharply, and there was a patter of feet aft, for your native is a light sleeper, "tie these men up. Get steam, for we will go away from here; it is not a nice place." Sanders, as I have tried to explain, was a man who knew the native; he thought like a native, and there were moments when he acted not unlike a barbarian. Clear of the danger, he tied up to a little island in mid-stream just as the dawn spread greyly, and hustled his two prisoners ashore. "My men," said he, "you came to kill me in the dark hours." "Lord, that is true," said one, "I came to kill, and this other man, who is my brother, told me when to come--yet it might have been another whom he called, for I am but one of many." Sanders accepted the fact that a chain of cheerful assassins awaited his advent without any visible demonstration of annoyance. "Now you will tell me," he said, "who gave the word for the killing, and why I must die." The man he addressed, a tall, straight youth of the Amatombo people, wiped the sweat from his forehead with his manacled hands. "Lord, though you chop me," he said, "I will not tell you, for I have a great ju-ju, and there are certain fetishes which would be displeased." Sanders tried the other man with no greater success. This other was a labourer he had taken on at a village four days' journey down stream. "Lord, if I die for my silence I will say nothing," he said. "Very good," said Sanders, and nodded his head to Abiboo. "I shall stake you out," he added, "flat on the ground, your legs and arms outstretched, and I will light a little fire on your chests, and by and by you will tell me all I want to know." Staked out they were, with fluffy little balls of dried creeper on each breast, and Sanders took a lighted stick from the fire his servants had built. The men on the ground watched his every movement. They saw him blow the red stick to a flame and advance toward them, then one said-- "Lord, I will speak." "So I thought," said Sanders; "and speak truth, or I will make you uncomfortable." If you ask me whether Sanders would have employed his lighted stick, I answer truthfully that I think it possible; perhaps Sanders knew his men better than I know Sanders. The two men, released from their unhappy position, talked frankly, and Sanders was a busy man taking notes in English of the conversation which was mainly in Bomongo.