So it was when, in all the freshness of his new idea, Mr. Trimblerigg set out to play the god--the god of peace, mercy, and reconciliation to the expropriated natives of Puto-Congo; not because he regarded it as specially true to his character, or as the better hole to fall into--for to fall he did not intend; but because the coming of Davidina had made him realize that a sporting alternative to reprisals did actually exist; and being a sportsman by instinct, where matters of principle were concerned, he saw it adventurously as the obvious game to play. Having made up his mind to it, he played it with a swift hand, and three days later set off unattended for the upper wilds of Ray River Territory (into which the elusive natives had gradually retired) with nothing to protect him but the safe conduct of one of their chiefs whom he had made captive, and whom he now released handsomely on parole to be his fore-runner and messenger. And who, seeing him thus set forth, his feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, his loins girt with truth, and having on the shield of faith, and the sword of the spirit, who, seeing him so arrayed, could ever have supposed that at the same time he had planned, swiftly and covertly, a forced march of armed missionaries by night to secure at dawn the ratification of an imposed treaty; and that the signal of their presence was to be--not indeed the dropping of bombs and the rattle of machine-guns (though the bombs and machine-guns were to be all there, primed and ready to let go), but a strain of holy voices setting forth the alternative thus presented, threat and persuasion combined, to the tune of the Puto-Congo love-chant, which from time immemorial the young warriors had sung in spring outside the wigwams of their beloved ones. It was possible to suppose one or other of two such courses of action: but to imagine them inextricably combined as the single homogeneous plan of a sane mind was altogether beyond reckoning; only Mr. Trimblerigg could have thought of it, only Mr. Trimblerigg could have asked a blessing for it--as he confidently did, in his prayers, and have gone forth to the experiment assured that he had not only the bombs and the machine-guns with him, but the favour of Heaven as well. And though a word from Davidina had prompted it, he was quite right in saying that the idea was entirely his own.