ain. The chair on which he sat was
overturned. Captain Ward paused in the act of pouring himself a drink,
and called encouragement. Worth pleaded with his assistants to hang
on, and hung on himself, twisting the tooth till it crackled and then
attempting a straightaway pull.

Nor did any of them notice the little black man who limped up the steps
and stood looking on. Koho was a conservative. His fathers before him
had worn no clothes, and neither did he, not even a gee-string. The many
empty perforations in nose and lips and ears told of decorative passions
long since dead. The holes on both ear-lobes had been torn out, but
their size was attested by the strips of withered flesh that hung down
and swept his shoulders. He cared now only for utility, and in one of
the half dozen minor holes in his right ear he carried a short clay
pipe. Around his waist was buckled a cheap trade-belt, and between the
imitation leather and the naked skin was thrust the naked blade of a
long knife. Suspended from the belt was his bamboo betel-nut and lime
box. In his hand was a short-barrelled, large-bore Snider rifle. He
was indescribably filthy, and here and there marred by scars, the worst
being the one left by the Lee-Enfield bullet, which had withered the
calf to half the size of its mate. His shrunken mouth showed that few
teeth were left to serve him. Face and body were shrunken and withered,
but his black, bead-like eyes, small and close together, were very
bright, withal they were restless and querulous, and more like a
monkey's than a man's.

He looked on, grinning like a shrewd little ape. His joy in the torment
of the patient was natural, for the world he lived in was a world of
pain. He had endured his share of it, and inflicted far more than his
share on others. When the tooth parted from its locked hold in the jaw
and the forceps raked across the other teeth and out of the mouth with a
nerve-rasping sound, old Koho's eyes fairly sparkled, and he looked
with glee at the poor black, collapsed on the veranda floor and groaning
terribly as he held his head in both his hands.

"I think he's going to faint," Grief said, bending over the victim.
"Captain Ward, give him a drink, please. You'd better take one yourself,
Worth; you're shaking like a leaf."

"And I think I'll take one," said Wallenstein, wiping the sweat from his
face. His eye caught the shadow of Koho on the floor and followed it up
to the old chief himself. "Hello