said. "That is Bucongo's territory,
and I don't trust the devil."

"Which one--Bones or Bucongo?" asked Hamilton innocently.

But Sanders was not feeling humorous.

* * * * *

At that precise moment Bones was sitting before the most fantastic
religious assembly that ecclesiastic or layman had ever attended.

Fate and Bones had led the girl through a very pleasant forest
glade--they left the light-draught _Wiggle_ half a mile down stream
owing to the shoals which barred their progress, and had come upon
Bucongo in an exalted moment.

With the assurance that he was doing no more than intrude upon one of
those meetings which the missionizing Chief of the Lesser Isisi so
frequently held, Bones stood on the outer fringe of the circle which sat
in silence to watch an unwilling novitiate getting acquainted with
Bucongo's god.

The novice was a girl, and she lay before an altar of stones surmounted
by a misshapen _beti_ who glared with his one eye upon the devout
gathering. The novice lay rigid, for the excellent reason that she was
roped foot and hands to two pegs in the ground.

Before the altar itself was a fire of wood in which two irons were
heating.

Bones did not take this in for a moment, for he was gazing open-mouthed
at Bucongo. On his head was an indubitable mitre, but around the mitre
was bound a strip of skin from which was suspended a circle of dangling
monkey tails. For cope he wore a leopard's robe. His face was streaked
red with camwood, and around his eyes he had painted two white circles.

He was in the midst of a frenzied address when the two white visitors
came upon the scene, and his hand was outstretched to take the red
branding-iron when the girl at Bones's side, with a little gasp of
horror, broke into the circle, and wrenching the rough iron from the
attendant's hand, flung it towards the circle of spectators, which
widened in consequence.

"How dare you--how dare you!" she demanded breathlessly, "you
horrible-looking man!"

Bucongo glared at her but said nothing; then he turned to meet Bones.

In that second of time Bucongo had to make a great decision, and to
overcome the habits of a lifetime. Training and education to the
dominion of the white man half raised his hand to the salute; something
that boiled and bubbled madly and set his shallow brain afire, something
that was of his ancestry, wild, unreasoning, brutish, urged other
action. Bones had his