ved with a flourish and revealed a small yellow box.

It was most certainly no native manufacture, for its angles were clamped
with neat brass corner-pieces set flush in the polished wood.

The squatting councillors watched their lord as with easy familiarity he
opened the lid.

There were twenty tiny compartments, and in each was a slender glass
tube, corked and heavily sealed, whilst about the neck of each tube was
a small white label covered with certain devil marks.

Muchini waited until the sensation he had prepared had had its full
effect.

"By the Great River which runs to the Allamdani,"[1] he said slowly and
impressively, "were white men who had been sent by Bula Matadi to catch
ghosts. For I saw them, I and my wise men, when the moon was calling all
spirits. They were gathered by the river with little nets and little
gourds and they caught the waters. Also they caught little flies and
other foolish things and took them to their tent. Then my young men and
I waited, and when all were gone away we went to their tents and found
his magic box--which is full of devils of great power--Ro!"

[Footnote 1: This was evidently the Sanga River.]

He leapt to his feet, his eye gleaming. Across the starry dome of the
sky there had flicked a quick flare of light.

There came a sudden uneasy stirring of leaves, a hushed whisper of
things as though the forest had been suddenly awakened from sleep.

Then an icy cold breeze smote his cheek, and staring upward, he saw the
western stars disappearing in swathes behind the tumbling clouds.

"M'shimba M'shamba--he lives!" he roared, and the crash of thunder in
the forest answered him.

Bosambo, Chief of the Ochori, was on the furthermost edge of the forest,
for he was following the impulse of his simple nature and was hunting in
a country where he had no right to be. The storm (which he cursed,
having no scruples about river and water, and being wholly sceptical as
to ghosts) broke with all its fury over his camp and passed. Two nights
later, he sat before the rough hut his men had built, discussing the
strange ways of the antelope, when he suddenly stopped and listened,
lowering his head till it almost touched the ground.

Clear to his keen ears came the rattle of the distant lokali--the drum
that sends messages from village to village and from nation to nation.

"O Secundi," said Bosambo, with a note of seriousness in his voice, "I
have not heard that call for many mo