be no Ochori hunting in the red gum lands,
and that settled the matter and Sanders hoped for good.

But Bosambo set himself to enlarge his borders by a single expedient.
Wherever his hunters came upon a red gum tree they cut it down. B'limi
Saka, the chief of the sullen Lombobo, retaliated by planting red gum
saplings on the country between the forest and the river--a fact of
which Bosambo was not aware until he suddenly discovered a huge wedge of
red gum driven into his lawful territory. A wedge so definite as to cut
off nearly a thousand square miles of his territory, for beyond this
border lay the lower Ochori country.

"How may I reach my proper villages?" he asked Sanders, who had known
something of the comedy which was being enacted.

"You shall have canoes at the place of the young gum trees and shall row
to a place beyond them," Sanders had said. "I have given my word that
the red gum lands are the territory of B'limi Saka, and since you have
only your cunning to thank--Oh, cutter of trees--I cannot help you!"

Bosambo would have made short work of the young saplings, but B'limisaka
established a guard not to be forced without bloodshed, and Bosambo
could do no more in that way of reprisal than instruct his people to
hurl insulting references to B'limisaka's as they passed the forbidden
ground.

For the maddening thing was that the slip of filched territory was less
than a hundred yards wide and men of the Lombobo, who went out by night
to widen it, never came out alive--for Bosambo also had a guard.

Sometimes the minion spies of Government would come to headquarters
with a twist of rice paper stuck in a quill, the quill inserted in the
lobes of the ear in very much the same place as the ladies wore their
earrings in the barbarous mid-Victorian period, and on the rice paper
with the briefest introduction would be inserted, in perfect Arabic,
scraps of domestic news for the information of the Government.

Sometimes news would carry from mouth to mouth and a weary man would
squat before Hamilton and recite his lesson.

"Efobi of the Isisi has stolen goats, and because he is the brother of
the chief's wife goes unpunished; T'mara of the Akasava has put a curse
upon the wife of O'femo the headman, and she has burnt his hut; N'kema
of the Ochori will not pay his tax, saying that he is no Ochori man, but
a true N'gombi; Bosambo's men have beaten a woodman of B'limi Saka,
because he planted trees on Ochori lan