Sanders took his steamboat, his Maxim gun, and his Houssa police, and went up the river, as far as the little stern-wheeler would carry him. At the end of every day's journey he would come to a place where the forest had been cleared, and where, stacked on the beach, was an orderly pile of wood. Somewhere in the forest was a village whose contribution to the State this ever-replenished wood-pile was. Night and day two sounding men with long rods, sitting at the steamer's bow, "stubbed" the water monotonously. Shoal, sandbank, channel, shoal. Sometimes, with a shuddering jar, the boat would slide along the flat surface of a hidden bank, and go flop into the deep water on the other side; sometimes, in the night, the boat would jump a bank to find itself in a little "lake" from which impassable ridges of hidden sand barred all egress. Then the men would slip over the sides of the vessel and walk the sandy floor of the river, pushing the steamer into deep water. When sixty miles from the Baptist Mission, Sanders got news from a friendly native: "Lord, the Lulungo came at early morning, taking away the missionary, his wife, and his daughter, to their city." Sanders, yellow with fever, heavy-eyed from want of sleep, unshaven and grimy, wiped the perspiration from his head with the back of his hand. "Take the steamer up the river," he said to Abiboo. "I must sleep." He was awakened at four o'clock in the afternoon by the smashing of a water-bottle, which stood on a shelf by his bunk. It smashed for no apparent reason, and he was sprinkled with bits of glass and gouts of water. Then he heard a rifle go "pang!" close at hand, and as he sprang up and opened the wire-woven door of his cabin, Abiboo came to report. "There were two men firing from the bank," he said. "One I have shot." They were nearing the village now, and turning a sharp bend of the river they came in sight of it, and the little _Zaire's_ siren yelled and squealed defiantly. Sanders saw a crowd of men come down to the beach, saw the glitter of spears, and through his glasses the paint on the bodies of the men. Then six canoes came racing out to meet the steamer. A corporal of Houssas sat down nonchalantly on a little saddle-seat behind the brass Maxim, and gripped its handles. "Five hundred yards," said Sanders, and the corporal adjusted the sight without perceptible hurry. The canoes came on at a hurricane speed, for the current was with them. The man behind the gun polished a dull place on the brass water-jacket with the blue sleeves of his coat, and looked up. Sanders nodded. The canoes came nearer, one leading the rest in that race where hate nerved effort, and death was the prize. Suddenly-- "Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!" laughed the little gun sardonically, and the leading canoe swung round broadside to the stream, because the men who steered it were dead, and half of the oarsmen also. "Ha-ha-ha-h-a-a!"