ood Sandi--not half a dozen paces from him.

A Sandi in strange black clothing with a big white-breasted shirt ...
but Sandi, hard-eyed and threatening.

"Lord, lord!" he stammered, and put up his hands to his eyes.

He looked again--the figure had vanished.

"Magic!" he mumbled, and lurched forward in terror and hate to finish
his work.

Then through the crowd stalked a tall man.

A rope of monkeys' tails covers one broad shoulder; his left arm and
hand were hidden by an oblong shield of hide.

In one hand he held a slim throwing spear and this he balanced
delicately.

"I am Bosambo of the Ochori," he said magnificently and unnecessarily;
"you sent for me and I have come--bringing a thousand spears."

M'fosa blinked, but said nothing.

"On the river," Bosambo went on, "I met many canoes that went to a
killing--behold!"

It was the head of M'fosa's lieutenant, who had charge of the surprise
party.

For a moment M'fosa looked, then turned to leap, and Bosambo's spear
caught him in mid-air.

"Jolly old Bosambo!" muttered Bones, and fainted.

* * * * *

Four thousand miles away Sanders was offering his apologies to a
startled company.

"I could have sworn I saw--something," he said, and he told no more
stories that night.

CHAPTER V

A FRONTIER AND A CODE

To understand this story you must know that at one point of Ochori
borderline, the German, French, and Belgian territories shoot three
narrow tongues that form, roughly, the segments of a half-circle.
Whether the German tongue is split in the middle by N'glili River, so
that it forms a flattened broad arrow, with the central prong the river
is a moot point. We, in Downing Street, claim that the lower angle of
this arrow is wholly ours, and that all the flat basin of the Field of
Blood (as they call it) is entitled to receive the shadow which a
flapping Union Jack may cast.

If Downing Street were to send that frantic code-wire to "Polonius" to
Hamilton in these days he could not obey the instructions, for reasons
which I will give. As a matter of fact the code has now been changed,
Lieutenant Tibbetts being mainly responsible for the alteration.

Hamilton, in his severest mood, wrote a letter to Bones, and it is worth
reproducing.

That Bones was living a dozen yards from Captain Hamilton, and that they
shared a common mess-table, adds rather than distracts from the
seriousness of the correspondence. T