ful and a magic taste."

Bones sent the frightened girl back to the village, and made the old man
sit by a tree.

"O Tibbetti," said Bosambo, in admiration, "that was a good palaver. For
it is better than the letting of blood, and no one will know that Sokala
did not die in his time."

Bones looked at him in horror.

"Goodness gracious heavens, Bosambo," he gasped, "you don't think I've
poisoned him?"

"Master," said Bosambo, nodding his head, "he die one time--he not fit
for lib--you give um plenty no-good stuff. You be fine Christian feller
same like me."

Bones wiped the perspiration from his brow and explained the action of
veronal. Bosambo was sceptical. Even when Sokala fell into a profound
slumber, Bosambo waited expectantly for his death. And when he realized
that Bones had spoken the truth, he was a most amazed man.

"Master," he said, in that fluid Ochori dialect which seems to be made
up of vowels, "this is a great magic. Now I see very surely that you
hold wonderful ju-jus, and I have wronged you, for I thought you were
without wisdom."

"Cheer-oh!" said the gratified Bones.

* * * * *

Near by the city of the Akasava is a small hill on which no vegetation
grows, though it rises from a veritable jungle of undergrowth. The
Akasava call this place the Hill of the Women, because it was here that
M'lama, the King of the Akasava, slew a hundred Akasava maidens to
propitiate M'shimba M'shamba, the god of storms. It was on the topmost
point of the hill that Sanders erected a fine gallows and hung M'lama
for his country's good. It had always been associated with the spiritual
history of the Akasava, for ghosts and devils and strange ju-jus had
their home hereabouts, and every great decision at which the people
arrived was made upon its slopes. At the crest there was a palaver
house--no more than a straw-thatched canopy affording shelter for four
men at the most.

On a certain afternoon all the chiefs, great and minor, the headmen, the
warriors, and the leaders of fishing villages of the Akasava, squatted
in a semicircle and listened to the oration of a bearded man, who spoke
easily in the river dialect of the happy days which were coming to the
people.

By his side were two other white men--a tall, clean-shaven man with
spectacles, and a stouter man with a bristling white moustache.

Had the bearded man's address been in plain English, or even plain
German, and had it