He had seen many queer things on the river; the wonder of the lokali, that hollowed tree-trunk by which messages might be relayed across a continent, was still something of a puzzle to him. Magic inexplicable, some times revolting, was an everyday phenomenon. Some of it was crude hypnotism, but there were higher things beyond his understanding Many of these had come down through the ages from Egypt and beyond; Abraham had brought practices from the desert lands about Babylon which were religious rites amongst people who had no written language.

The Zaire was steaming for home the next day when he sent for Abiboo, his orderly.

“Bring me this woman of Chimbiri,” he said, and they brought her from the little store-cabin where she was both guest and prisoner.

“They tell me this and that about you, Agasaka,” he said, giving chapter and verse of his authority.

“Lord, it is true,” said Agasaka when he had finished. “These things my father taught me, as his father taught him. For, lord, he was the son of M’kufusu, the son of Bonfongu–m’lini, the son of N’sambi…”

She recited thirty generations before he stopped her–roughly four hundred years. Even Sanders was staggered, though he had once met an old man of the N’gombi who told him intimate details about a man who had lived in the days of Saladin.

“Show me your magic, woman,” he said, and to his surprise she shook her head.

“Lord, this one magic only comes when I am afraid.”

Sanders dropped his hand to his Browning and half drew it from its leather holster.

He was sitting under an awning spread over the bridge. The steersman was at the wheel, in the bow the kano boy with his long sounding-rod. Purposely he did not look at the woman, fixing his eyes on the steersman’s back.

His hand had scarcely closed on the brown grip when, almost at his feet, he saw the one thing in all the world that he loathed–an English puff-adder, mottled and swollen, its head thrown back to strike.

Twice his pistol banged–the steersman skipped to cover with a yell and left the Zaire yawing in the strong current.

There was nothing–nothing but two little holes in the deck, so close together that they overlapped. Sanders sprang to the wheel and straightened the boat, and then, when the steersman had been called back and the sounding boy retrieved from the cover of the wood pile where he crouched and trembled, Sanders returned to his chair, waving away Abiboo, who had arrived, rifle in hand, to the rescue of his master.

“Woman,” said Sanders quietly, “you may go back to your little house.”

And Agasaka went without the evidence of triumph a lesser woman might have felt. He had not looked at her–there was no mesmerism here.

He stooped down and examined the bullet holes, too troubled to feel foolish.

That afternoon he sent for her again and gave her chocolate to eat, talking of her father. She was sitting on the deck at his feet, and once, when he thought he had gained her confidence, he dropped his hand lightly on her head as he had dropped his hand on so many young heads.

The puff-adder was there–within striking distance, his spade head thrown back, his coils rigid.

Sanders stared at the thing and did not move his hand, and then, through the shining body, he saw the deck planks, and the soft bitumen where plank joined plank, and then the viper vanished.

“You do not fear?” he asked quietly.

“Lord…a little; but now I do not fear, for I know that you would not hurt women.”

The Zaire, with its strange passenger, came alongside the residency wharf two hours before sundown on the third day. Captain Hamilton was waiting, a fuming, angry man, for he had been the unwilling host of one who lacked something in manners.

“He’s pure swine,” said Hamilton. “Nothing is good enough for him; he raised hell when he found you weren’t here to meet him. Bones mollified him a little. The silly ass had a guard of honour drawn up on the beach. I only found this out just before the boat landed, and it was too late to send the men to quarters. But apparently it was the right thing to do; Nickerson Esquire expected it–and more. Flags and things and a red carpet for his hooves and a band to play ‘Here comes the bride!’”

All this between wharf and residency garden. A figure in white stretched languidly in a deep chair turned his head but did not trouble to rise. Still less was he inclined to exchange the cool of the broad veranda for the furnace of space open to a red-hot sun.

Sanders saw a white face that looked oddly dirty in contrast with the spotless purity of a duck jacket. Two deep, suspicious eyes, a long, untidy wisp of hair lying lankly on a high forehead–a pink, almost bloodless mouth.

“You’re Sanders?”

Mr. Haben looked up at the trim figure.

“I am the Commissioner, sir,” said Sanders.

“Why weren’t you here to meet me; you knew that I was due?”

Sanders was more shocked than nettled by the tone. A coarse word in the mouth of a woman would have produced the same effect. Secretaries and Under-Secretaries of State were god-like people who employed a macrology of their own, wrapping their reproofs in the silver tissue of stilted diction which dulled the sting of their rebukes.

“Do you hear me, sir?”

The man on the chair sat up impatiently.

Hamilton, standing by, was near to kicking him off the stoep.

“I heard you. I was on a visit to the Chimbiri country. No notice of your arrival or your pending arrival was received.”

Sanders spoke very carefully; he was staring down at the scowling Nickerson.

Mr. Haben had it on the tip of his tongue to give him the lie. There was, as the late Mrs. Haben had said, a streak of commonness in him; but there was a broader streak of discretion. The gun still hung at the Commissioner’s hip; the grip was shiny with use.

“H’m!” said Mr. Under-Secretary Haben, and allowed himself to relax in his chair.

He was clever enough, Sanders found; knew the inside story of the Territories; was keen for information. He thought the country was not well run. The system was wrong, the taxes fell short of the highest possible index.