"You no be fit to dash him somet'ing," said the interpreter. "Dash him?" "Give 'um present--bottle gin." "Certainly not," said George. "He may be satisfied with the knowledge that he is rendering a service to humanity; that he is helping the cause of a down-trodden people." The witch-doctor said something in reply, which the interpreter very wisely refrained from putting into English. * * * * * "How go the investigations?" asked the captain of Houssas three weeks later. "As far as I can gather," said Sanders, "our friend is collecting a death-roll by the side of which the records of the Great Plague will read like an advertisement of a health resort." "Where is he now?" "He has got to Lukati--and I am worried"; and Sanders looked it. The Houssa captain nodded, for all manner of reports had come down from Lukati country. There had been good crops, and good crops mean idleness, and idleness means mischief. Also there had been devil dances, and the mild people of the Bokari district, which lies contiguous to Lukati, had lost women. "I've got a free hand to nip rebellion in the bud," Sanders reflected moodily; "and the chances point to rebellion----What do you say? Shall we make a report and wait for reinforcements, or shall we chance our luck?" "It's your funeral," said the Houssa captain, "and I hate to advise you. If things go wrong you'll get the kicks; but if it were mine I'd go, like a shot--naturally." "A hundred and forty men," mused Sanders. "And two Maxims," suggested the other. "We'll go," said Sanders; and half an hour later a bugle blared through the Houssas' lines, and Sanders was writing a report to his chief in far-away Lagos. The Hon. George, it may be said, had no idea that he was anything but welcome in the village of Lukati. Olari the chief had greeted him pleasantly, and told him stories of Sanders' brutality--stories which, as George wrote, "if true, must of necessity sound the death-knell of British integrity in our native possessions." Exactly what that meant, I am not disposed to guess. George stayed a month as the guest of Lukati. He had intended to stay at the most three days, but there was always a reason for postponing his departure. Once the carriers deserted, once the roads were not safe, once Olari asked him to remain that he might see his young men dance. George did not know that his escort of four Houssas were feeling uneasy, because his interpreter--as big a fool as himself--could not interpret omens. George knew nothing of the significance of a dance in which no less than six witch-doctors took part, or the history of the tumble-down hut that stood in solitude at one end of the village. Had he taken the trouble to search that hut, he would have found a table, a chair, and a truckle bed, and on the table a report, soiled with dust and rain, which began: "I have the honour to inform your Excellency that the natives maintain their industrious and peaceable attitude."