Many moons came out of the sky, were wasted and died before the woman M'lama showed signs of her gifts. It is said that they appeared one night after a great storm wherein lightning played such strange tricks upon the river that even the old man D'wiri could not remember parallel instances. In the night the wife of a hunter named E'sani-Osoni brought a dying child into the hut of the widow. He had been choked by a fish-bone and was _in extremis_ when M'lama put her hand upon his head and straightway the bone flew from his mouth, "and there was a cry terrible to hear--such a cry as a leopard makes when he is pursued by ghosts." A week later a baby girl fell into a terrible fit and M'lama had laid her hand upon it and behold! it slept from that moment. Ahmet, chief of the Government spies, heard of these happenings and came a three days' journey by river to Isongo. "What are these stories of miracles?" he asked. "_Capita_," said the chief, using the term of regard which is employed in the Belgian Congo, "this woman M'lama is a true witch and has great gifts, for she raises the dead by the touch of her hand. This I have seen. Also it is said that when U'gomi, the woodcutter, made a fault, cutting his foot in two, this woman healed him marvellously." "I will see this M'lama," said Ahmet importantly. He found her in her hut tossing four bones idly. These were the shanks of goats, and each time they fell differently. "O Ahmet," she said, when he entered, "you have a wife who is sick, also a first-born boy who does not speak though he is more than six seasons old." Ahmet squatted down by her side. "Woman," said he, "tell me something that is not the talk of river and I will believe your magic." "To-morrow your master, the lord Sandi, will send you a book which will give you happiness," she said. "Every day my lord sends me a book," retorted the sceptical Ahmet, "and each brings me happiness. Also it is common talk that at this time there come messengers carrying bags of silver and salt to pay men according to their services." Undismayed she tried her last shot. "You have a crooked finger which none can straighten--behold!" She took his hand in hers and pressed the injured phlange. A sharp pain shot up his arm and he winced, pulling back his hand--but the year-old dislocation which had defied the effort of the coast doctor was straightened out, and though the movement was exquisitely painful he could bend it. "I see you are a true witch," he said, greatly impressed, for a native has a horror of deformity of any kind, and he sent back word of the phenomenon to Sanders.