a small Maxim gun. The village was
peaceable, and there was no sign of anything untoward. Save this. The
village was given over to old people and children. M'bisibi was an
hour--two hours--four hours in the forest. He had gone
north--east--south--none knew whither.

The very evasiveness of the replies put Bones into a fret. He scouted
the paths and found indications of people having passed over all three.

He sent his gun back to the _Zaire_, divided his party into three, and
accompanied by half a dozen men, he himself took the middle path.

For an hour he trudged, losing his way, and finding it again. He came
upon a further division of paths and split up his little force again.

In the end he found himself alone, struggling over the rough ground in a
darkness illuminated only by the electric lamp he carried, and making
for a faint gleam of red light which showed through the trees ahead.

M'bisibi held the child on his outstretched hands, a fat little child,
with large, wondering eyes that stared solemnly at the dancing flames,
and sucked a small brown thumb contentedly.

"Behold this child, oh chiefs and people," said M'bisibi, "who was born
as I predicted, and is filled with devils!"

The baby turned his head so that his fat little neck was all rolled and
creased, and said "Ah!" to the pretty fire, and chuckled.

"Even now the devils speak," said M'bisibi, "but presently you shall
hear them screaming through the world because I have scattered them,"
and he made his way to the bowed saplings.

Bones, his face scratched and bleeding, his uniform torn in a dozen
places, came swiftly after him.

"My bird, I think," said Bones, and caught the child unscientifically.

Picture Bones with a baby under his arm--a baby indignant, outraged,
infernally uncomfortable, and grimacing a yell into being.

"Lord," said M'bisibi, breathing quickly, "what do you seek?"

"That which I have," said Bones, waving him off with the black muzzle of
his automatic Colt. "Tomorrow you shall answer for many crimes."

He backed quickly to the cover of the woods, scenting the trouble that
was coming.

He heard the old man's roar.

"O people ... this white man will loose devils upon the land!"

Then a throwing spear snicked the trunk of a tree, and another, for
there were no soldiers, and this congregation of exorcisers were mad
with wrath at the thought of the evil which Tibbetti was preparing for
them.

"Snick!"

A spear stru