As I slowly recovered, the shock of overwhelming horror and grief became mingled with an access of fury that threatened my reason. I stalked up and down before the huts, shaking my fists and cursing aloud like a maniac. If I could have laid my hands at that moment on the murderers, there is no act of ferocious cruelty of which I should not have been capable. To merely tear them limb from limb or hack them into pieces would have seemed too merciful, in the passion of hatred and rage that now possessed me, and I have since been thankful that I did not then encounter them, for I should certainly have disgraced my civilisation with some horrid act of barbaric vengeance. Presently I grew calmer, and setting a cotton wick--torn from my _riga_--to one of the balls of shea butter that lay in her brass cooking-pan near the fire, I made a lamp and carried it into the hut. Poor child! Poor faithful heart! Was it for this that I had brought her through so many perils and hardships, away from the promise of a home in some far away Hausa city, where she might have shared the love of some husband of her own race and seen her children grow up around her? In a passion of sorrow and bitter regret I stooped and kissed the cold cheek of the sweet barbarian, and knew for the first time how dear she had become to me with her simple faith and love, so childlike and yet so womanly. As to the details of the foul deed, they were now obvious and plain. The fishing excursion had been deliberately planned to get me out of the way, and Osman’s devious wanderings to and fro in the forest were doubtless designed to confuse me as to our direction (for probably the river was really close at hand, as he had said). When we arrived at the river, Ali and Osman must have hurried back almost immediately, while Baku remained for a time to occupy my attention. No doubt the two villains had endeavoured to persuade Aminé to accompany them in their flight (for Ali had ever cast a greedy eye on the handsome Fulah girl), and on her refusing and retreating to the hut to protect our valuables, they had followed her and silenced her resistance by stabbing her to the heart. As to which of them was the actual murderer I had little doubt, but any that I had was quickly resolved, for one of the hands of the poor dead maid was closed and seemed to grasp something, and on my gently opening it I took out a wisp of hair and a couple of red glass beads. Now, the three musicians wore, after the Wongára fashion, a plait of hair on each side of the face. Osman’s plaits were plain, Baku’s were ornamented with threads of coloured cotton, while Ali had decorated each of his plaits with a bunch of red glass beads.