"Also in the forest are two ants--one who lives in tree nests, and one who has a home deep in the ground. They are of a kind, and have the same business. Yet God put it into the little heads of one to climb trees, and of the other to burrow deeply. Both are right and neither are wrong, save when the tree ant meets the ground ant and fights him. Then both are wrong." The squatting Bucongo rose sullenly. "Master," he said, "these mysteries are too much for a poor man. I think I know a better ju-ju, and to him I go." "You have no long journey, Chief," said the father sternly, "for they tell me stories of ghost dances in the forest and a certain Bucongo who is the leader of these--and of a human sacrifice. Also of converts who are branded with a cross of hot iron." The chief looked at his sometime tutor with face twisted and puckered with rage, and turning without a word, walked back to his canoe. The next morning Father Carpentier sent a messenger to Sanders bearing an urgent letter, and Sanders read the closely written lines with a troubled frown. He put down the letter and came out on to the deck, to find Hamilton fishing over the side of the steamer. Hamilton looked round. "Anything wrong?" he asked quickly. "Bucongo of the Lesser Isisi is wrong," said Sanders. "I have heard of his religious meetings and have been a little worried--there will be a big ju-ju palaver or I'm very much mistaken. Where is Bones?" "He has taken my sister up the creek--Bones says there are any number of egrets' nests there, and I believe he is right." Sanders frowned again. "Send a canoe to fetch him back," he said. "That is Bucongo's territory, and I don't trust the devil." "Which one--Bones or Bucongo?" asked Hamilton innocently. But Sanders was not feeling humorous. * * * * * At that precise moment Bones was sitting before the most fantastic religious assembly that ecclesiastic or layman had ever attended. Fate and Bones had led the girl through a very pleasant forest glade--they left the light-draught _Wiggle_ half a mile down stream owing to the shoals which barred their progress, and had come upon Bucongo in an exalted moment. With the assurance that he was doing no more than intrude upon one of those meetings which the missionizing Chief of the Lesser Isisi so frequently held, Bones stood on the outer fringe of the circle which sat in silence to watch an unwilling novitiate getting acquainted with Bucongo's god. The novice was a girl, and she lay before an altar of stones surmounted by a misshapen _beti_ who glared with his one eye upon the devout gathering. The novice lay rigid, for the excellent reason that she was roped foot and hands to two pegs in the ground. Before the altar itself was a fire of wood in which two irons were heating.