Sanders held his court in the thatched palaver house between the Houssa guard-room and the little stockade prison at the river's edge--a prison hidden amidst the flowering shrubs and acacia trees. Wafa was the first to be examined. "Lord," he said, without embarrassment, "I tell you this--that I will not speak of the great wonders which lay in my heart unless you give me a book[6] that I shall go free." [Footnote 6: A written promise.] Sanders smiled unpleasantly. "By the Prophet, I say what is true," he began confidentially; and Wafa winced at the oath, for he knew that truth was coming, and truth of a disturbing character. "In this land I govern millions of men," said Sanders, speaking deliberately, "I and two white lords. I govern by fear, Wafa, because there is no love in simple native men, save a love for their own and their bellies." "Lord, you speak truth," said Wafa, the superior Arab of him responding to the confidence. "Now, if you make to kill the lord Tibbetti," Sanders went on, "and do your wickedness for secret reasons, must I not discover what is that secret, lest it mean that I lose my hold upon the lands I govern?" "Lord, that is also true," said Wafa. "For what is one life more or less," asked Sanders, "a suffering smaller or greater by the side of my millions and their good?" "Lord, you are Suliman," said Wafa eagerly. "Therefore, if you let me go, who shall be the worse for it?" Again Sanders smiled, that grim parting of lip to show his white teeth. "Yet you may lie, and, if I let you go, I have neither the truth nor your body. No, Wafa, you shall speak." He rose up from his chair. "To-day you shall go to the Village of Irons," he said; "to-morrow I will come to you, and you shall answer my questions. And, if you will not speak, I shall light a little fire on your chest, and that fire shall not go out except when the breath goes from your body. This palaver is finished." So they took Wafa away to the Village of Irons, where the evil men of the Territories worked with chains about their ankles for their many sins, and in the morning came Sanders. "Speak, man," he said. Wafa stared with an effort of defiance, but his face was twitching, for he saw the soldiers driving pegs into the ground, preparatory to staking him out. "I will speak the truth," he said. So they took him into a hut, and there Sanders sat with him alone for half an hour; and when the Commissioner came out, his face was drawn and grey. He beckoned to Hamilton, who came forward and saluted. "We will get back to headquarters," he said shortly, and they arrived two hours later. Sanders sat in the little telegraph office, and the Morse sounder rattled and clacked for half an hour. Other sounders were at work elsewhere, delicate needles vacillated in cable offices, and an Under-Secretary was brought from the House of Commons to the bureau of the Prime Minister to answer a question.