He had breakfasted, and an orderly was clearing away the silver coffee-pot and the fruit-plates. Overhead the sky was a burning blue, but the glass was falling with alarming rapidity, and he desired the safe harbourage of a deep bank and the shelter of high trees which a little bay south of Chimbiri would give to him.

“Lo’ba, ko’lo ka! A fathom of water by the mercy of God!”

The sleepy-eyed boy sitting in the bow of the boat drew up his wet sounding-rod.

Sanders’s hand shot out to the handle of the telegraph and pulled, and Yoka the engineer sent a clanging acknowledgment.

“Half a fathom.”

Thump!

The boat slowed of itself, its wheel threshing astern, but the nose was in sand and a side-swinging current drove the stern round until it was broadside to the sand-reef. Then, as the wheel reversed, the Zaire began to move towards the right bank of the river, skirting the shoal until the nose found deep water again.

“Lord,” said the steersman, virtuously annoyed, “this bank has come up from hell, for it has never been here since I was without clothing.”

“Think only of the river, man,” said Sanders, not inclined for gossip.

And now, above the tree-tops ahead, Sanders saw the roiling smoke of clouds–yellow clouds that tumbled and tossed and threw out tawny banners before the wind.

And the still surface of the river was ripped into little white shreds that leapt and scattered in spray. Sanders moved his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, took it out, looked at it regretfully and threw it over the side. His servant was behind him with an oilskin invitingly held; he struggled into the coat, passed his helmet back and took in exchange the sou’wester, which he fastened under his chin. The heat was intolerable. The storm was driving a furnace blast of hot air to herald its fury. He was wet to the skin, his clothes sticking to him.

A ribbon of blinding light leapt across the sky, and split into a tracery of branches. The explosion of the thunder was deafening; it seemed as if a heavy weight was pressing down on his head; again the flash, and again and again. Now it showed bluely on either bank, vivid blue shrieks of light that ran jaggedly from sky to earth. The yellow clouds had become black; the darkness of night was on the world, a darkness intensified by the ghastly sideways light that came from a distant horizon where the clouds were broken.

“Port,” said Sanders curtly; “now starboard again–now port!”

They had reached the shelter of the bank as the first rain fell. Sanders sent a dozen men overboard with the fore and aft hawser and made fast to the big gums that grew down to the river-side.

In a second the deck was running with water and the Commissioner’s white shoes had turned first to dove-grey and then to slate. He sent for Yoka the engineer, who was also his headman.

“Put out another hawser and keep a full head of steam.” He spoke in coast Arabic, which is a language allowing of nice distinctions.

“Lord, shall I sound the oopa-oopa*” he asked. “For I see that these thieving Akasava people are afraid to come out into the rain to welcome your lordship.”

[*Siren. On the river most words describing novel things are onomatopoeic.]

Sanders shook his head.

“They will come in their time–the village is a mile away, and they would not hear your oopa-oopa!” he said, and went to his cabin to recover his breath. A ninety-knot wind had been blowing into his teeth for ten minutes, and ten minutes is a long time when you are trying to breathe.

The cabin had two long windows, one at each side. That to the left above the settee on which he dropped gave him a view of the forest path along which, sooner or later, a villager would come and inevitably carry a message to the chief.

The lightning was still incessant; the rain came down in such a volume that he might well think he had anchored beneath a small waterfall, but the light had changed, and ahead the black of clouds had become a grey opacity.

Sanders pulled open the doors he had closed behind him; the wind was gusty but weaker. He reached out for a cheroot and lit it, patient to wait. The river was running eight knots; he would need hand-towing to the beach of the village. He hoped they had stacked wood for him. The Chimbiri folk were lazy, and the last time he had tied they showed him a wood stack–green logs, and few of them.

Yoka and his crew loved to hear the devil whoop of the oopa-oopa–Sanders knew just how much steam a siren wasted.

His eyes sought the river-side path–and at the critical moment. For he saw eight men walking two and two, and they carried on their shoulders a trussed figure.

An electric chrysanthemum burst into blinding bloom as he leapt to the bank–its dazzling petals, twisting every way through the dark clouds, made light enough to see the burden very clearly, long before he reached the path to stand squarely in the way of eight sullen men and the riff-raff which had defied the storm to follow at a distance.

“O men,” said Sanders softly–he showed his teeth when he talked that way–“who are you that you put the ghost mark on this woman’s face?”

For the face of their passenger was daubed white with clay. None spoke: he saw their toes wriggling, all save those of one man, and him he addressed.

“M’suru, son of N’kema, what woman is this?”

M’suru cleared his throat.

“Lord, this woman is the daughter of my own mother; she killed Aliki, also she killed first my wife Loka.”

“Who saw this?”

“Master, my first wife, who is a true woman to me since her lover was drowned, she saw the head of Aliki fall. Also she heard Agasaka say ‘Go, man, where I sent Loka, as you know best, who saw me slay her.’”

Sanders was not impressed.

“Let loose this woman that she may stand in my eyes,” he said, and they untied the girl and by his order wiped the joke of death from her face.

“Tell me,” said Sanders.

She spoke very simply and her story was good. Yet–

“Bring me the woman who heard her say these evil things.”

The wife was found in the tail of the procession and came forward important–frightened–for the cold eyes of Sanders were unnerving. But she was voluble when she had discovered her voice.

The man in the streaming oilskins listened, his head bent. Agasaka, the slim woman, stood grave, unconscious of shame–the grass girdle had gone and she was as her mother had first seen her. Presently the first wife came to the end of her story.

“Sandi, this is the truth, and if I speak a lie may the ‘long ones’ take me to the bottom of the river and feed me to the snakes!”

Sanders, watching her, saw the brown skin go dull and grey; saw the mouth open in shocking fear.

What he did not see was the “long one”–the yellow crocodile that was creeping through the grass towards the perjurer, his little eyes gleaming, his wet mouth open to show the cruel white spikes of teeth.

Only the first wife of M’suru saw this, and fell screaming and writhing at her husband’s feet, clasping his knees.

Sanders said nothing, but heard much that was in contradiction of the earlier story.

“Come with me, Agasaka, to my fine ship,” he said, for he knew that trouble might follow if the girl stayed with her people. Wars have started for less cause.

He took her to the Zaire; she followed meekly at his heels, though meekness was not in her.

That night came a tired pigeon from Headquarters, and Sanders, reading the message, was neither pleased nor sorry.

High officials, especially the armchair men, worried him a little, but those he had met were such charming and understanding gentlemen that he had lost some of his fear of them. What worried him more were the reports which reached him from reliable sources of Agasaka’s strange powers.