," he said.

"You never can tell about these niggers," the captain grumbled. "They
may be short on imagination, but once in a while they do figure out
something new. Now Bashti's the smartest old nigger I've ever seen.
What's to prevent his figuring out that very bet and playing it in
reverse? Just because they've never had their women around when trouble
was on the carpet is no reason that they will always keep that practice."

"Not even Bashti's got the savvee to pull a trick like that," Borckman
objected. "He's just feeling good and liberal. Why, he's bought forty
pounds of goods from you already. That's why he wants to sign on a new
batch of boys with us, and I'll bet he's hoping half of them die so's he
can have the spending of their wages."

All of which was most reasonable. Nevertheless, Van Horn shook his head.

"All the same keep your eyes sharp on everything," he cautioned. "And
remember, the two of us mustn't ever be below at the same time. And no
more schnapps, mind, until we're clear of the whole kit and caboodle."

Bashti was incredibly lean and prodigiously old. He did not know how old
he was himself, although he did know that no person in his tribe had been
alive when he was a young boy in the village. He remembered the days
when some of the old men, still alive, had been born; and, unlike him,
they were now decrepit, shaken with palsy, blear-eyed, toothless of
mouth, deaf of ear, or paralysed. All his own faculties remained
unimpaired. He even boasted a dozen worn fangs of teeth, gum-level, on
which he could still chew. Although he no longer had the physical
endurance of youth, his thinking was as original and clear as it had
always been. It was due to his thinking that he found his tribe stronger
than when he had first come to rule it. In his small way he had been a
Melanesian Napoleon. As a warrior, the play of his mind had enabled him
to beat back the bushmen's boundaries. The scars on his withered body
attested that he had fought to the fore. As a Law-giver, he had
encouraged and achieved strength and efficiency within his tribe. As a
statesman, he had always kept one thought ahead of the thoughts of the
neighbouring chiefs in the making of treaties and the granting of
concessions.

And with his mind, still keenly alive, he had but just evolved a scheme
whereby he might outwit Van Horn and get the better of the vast British
Empire about which he guessed little and know less.