"Dear old thing," said Bones, "you can paddle downstream in the canoe, or you can risk the fearfully hazardous dangers of war. I realize, dear old Massachuter, that you're a friendly nation, but if you like to come in you'll be fearfully welcome. If there's any last message you'd like to send to jolly old Jane, now's your chance."

Donald elected for war. An hour later the Wiggle pushed her sharp nose against the black waters of the river and began her laborious 'climb' against the six-knot current to the river city of the N'gombi.

Power is a potent wine that is liable to turn the heads of the strongest. N'kema, the eldest son, did many foolish things. The breath was scarcely out of the body of his father — who died with suspicious suddenness — than he sat himself on the stool of chieftainship and summoned all headmen and petty chiefs to a great palaver of the land. Worse than this, he conveyed to the Little Leopards his desire for their support, and no king in his senses would invoke the aid of that secret society.

It was the time when the Little Leopards flourished; no longer were their mutilated victims found, but they had their strange rites, their dances, and, if the truth be told, their secret killings.

When one of the brothers expostulated, the new king cut him short.

"Must I not bring all magic and power to keep me where I am?" he asked. "Does not Sandi hate me? Now, if he sees my strength, and knows that all men are for me, he will let me sit quietly, and one day will come and put on my neck the medal which my father wore."

"What of B'lala?" asked one, and the king made a significant sign.

That night two of his brothers led the ghost walker into the deepest part of the forest, where slinking cat shapes move by night and round green moons of eyes look hungrily through the cover of the scrub; and there they left him. He did not complain, except to say, just before they went away:

"You would not have done this, but my ghost is gone from me tonight."

"Where is your ghost?" mocked one.

"In all the stars," was the answer. "Go quickly before he returns."

And in terror they fled.

The new king sat in his big hut, an eager listener to all the stories which came to him. Some said that the Ochori were arming against the N'gombi, and that Bosambo the king was gathering his regiments for a great slaughter. Another whispered of Sandi and his soldiers. Yet another spoke of plots made by his own brothers to put him down. So it came about that the maimers of B'lala had scarcely returned to the city before they were seized and hurried away and no man saw them again.

The new king sat and listened, and with every fresh tale his fear grew.

His city was an armed camp. Spearmen answered the frantic summons of the lokali and came flocking through the forests and the swamps to join the army that was assembling.

"Lord, with whom do we war?" asked an old counsellor.

"All the world," said the shivering king.

Some sycophant whispered that the counsellor was an enemy or why should he ask this question, and that night the old man was killed in his hut.

Just before the dawn the king was awakened, and came out of his but to find a sweating messenger. The king listened, his teeth chattering; and a frightened man is a terribly dangerous man. He sent for his familiars and gave them brief instructions.