Also it was near enough to normal size to be comforting.

He ventured to move the hand of the injured limb, and to his great pleasure found no difficulty to and experienced no pain.

Then Ruth Glandynne came in—a beautiful vision in that dark land.

She smiled, lifted a warning finger, shifted his pillow a little, and sat down by his side.

“What is wrong with the Akasava?” he asked suddenly. It was apropos of nothing; he had not even been thinking of the Akasava, but something impelled the question.

He saw her face go suddenly grave.

“I–I think you had better not bother about the Akasava,” she faltered. “You must keep very quiet.”

“I must know!” he said.

His voice was cracked and weak, but she knew that, whatever might be the result, she must tell him.

He lay quietly with closed eyes while she spoke, and when she had finished he lay silent–so silent that she thought he had relapsed into unconsciousness.

Then he opened his eyes.

“Send a messenger to the Ochori,” he said, “and bid Bosambo the chief come to me.”

Bosambo was immensely unpopular amongst all other chiefs and peoples.

Bosambo was an alien–being a Krooman who had fled from Liberia owing to the persecutions of the government of that model republic. If you should ask how it came about that the majestic machinery of state came to be put into motion against so insignificant a man as Bosambo–a common man, if you might judge him by his place in the state–I enlighten you by offering the explanation that Bosambo had killed a warder at the convict settlement whither he had been sent for theft. The adventurer wandered across Africa till he came to the milk-hearted Ochori, in which he became paramount chief of the tribe on the sudden and inexplicable death of its rightful chief.

It is sufficient to say that this ex-convict made men of a timid people, giving them pride and a sort of spurious courage which was made up as to three-parts of fear–for Bosambo had pliant whips of rhinoceros hide, and was very quick to take offence.

One morning, in the spring of the year, Bosambo came out of his hut to find the world exquisitely beautiful–being covered with the freshest green of growing things, the sky flecked with white clouds, and a gentle breeze wrinkling the surface of the big river.

The city of the Ochori was built on the slope of a hill, and you looked across the N’Gombi Forest to the faint blur of the mountain of trees, which is in the Akasava territory.

Bosambo, who was no poet and admired only those beauties of nature which were edible, glanced disconsolately along the broad street of his city, where women were preparing the morning meals, and where the smoke of a score of little fires drifted lazily. Bosambo’s three common wives were engaged before the next hut in a similar operation; his chief wife was not visible, being of the faith which requires that woman shall have no existence save to her lord.

He turned his face to the western end of the city and walked slowly.

Bosambo was no fool. He had lived amongst civilised people, he spoke English, he was a thief who had made his living in a nation of thieves.

He was aware of the happenings in the Akasava. There had been a rising–a section of the people which had declared against rebellion and had been wiped from the face of the earth. Also the Isisi had joined in the general movement, had destroyed the timid of their number, and forced the folk of the Bolenzi to servitude.

Bosambo had received an invitation to do homage to Toloni, the King, and had sent back a message which was at once comprehensive and coarse. He was safe from reprisals for a week or so. Between him and the Akasava lay the mission station where Sandi was–dying, by all accounts, but certainly there. And tied up to the mission bank was the Zaire and half a company of Houssas, to say nothing of two immense guns.

But if Bosambo was contemptuous of the self-appointed Ring of the World–as Toloni called himself–there were men of the Ochori who, remembering Bosambo’s pliant whip, and his readiness to exercise it, corresponded with Toloni, and Bosambo knew that half the Ochori people were far gone in sedition.

Yet he was not over-distressed–that worried him less than another matter.

“Light of my life and joy of my soul,” he said to the woman who shared the gaudy magnificence of his thatched harem. “If Sandi dies there is no virtue in religion, for I have prayed to all gods, to the Prophets, and to the lords Marki, Luko, and Johanni–also to the Virgin of whom the Marist Brothers told me; and I have prayed to crosses and to ju-jus, and have sacrificed a goat and a chicken before the Ochori fetish.”

“Mahomet,” she said reprovingly, “all this is evil, for there is but one God.”

“He will praise my diligence in seeking Him,” said Bosambo philosophically. “Yet, if Sandi recover, I will thank all gods lest I miss the Him who benefited my master.”

His position was a delicate one, as he knew. Only the previous night he had caught a secret messenger from Toloni, who came to call upon the Ochori to attack Sandi’s men from the north, driving them towards the waiting legions of the rebel king. Bosambo extracted the full message from the courier before he disposed of him.

Two more days of anxious waiting followed. A headman of the Ochori, who had been promised the chiefship of the tribe, decided to rush matters, and crept into Bosambo’s hut one evening to create the necessary vacancy.

Bosambo, who was waiting for him, clubbed him into insensibility with promptitude and dispatch, dragged him in the darkness of the night to the river bank, and slid him into the water with a rope about his neck and a stone attached to the rope.

It brought matters to a head in one sense, for, missing their leader, his faction called upon Bosambo and demanded that the missing man be handed over to them. Their chief’s reply was an emphatic one. The spokesman carried the marks of Bosambo’s eloquence to the grave. How matters might have developed it is difficult to guess, but Sandi’s summons came to Bosambo, and he called his people together.

“I go to Sandi,” he told them, “Sandi who is my master and yours, in addition to being my relative, as you know. And behold I leave behind me a people who are ungrateful and vicious. Now I say to you that in my absence you shall go about your work and do nothing evil–that you shall neither attend to the council of fools nor follow your own wicked fancies–for when I return I shall be swift to punish; and if any man disobey me, I will put out his eyes and leave him in the forest for the beasts to hunt. I will do this by Ewa, who is death.”

After which Bosambo departed for the mission station, taking with him his favourite wife and fifty fighting men.

He came to Sandi’s within forty-eight hours of the Commissioner’s summons, and squatted by his master’s bedside.

“Bosambo,” said Sandi, “I have been very ill, and I am still too weak to stand. And whilst I am lying here, Toloni, King of the Akasava, has risen, and with him the countryside.”

“Lord, it is as you say,” said Bosambo.

“In time there will come many white men,” said Sandi, “and they will eat up this foolish king; but in the meantime there will be much suffering, and many innocent people will be slain. I have sent for you because I trust you.”

“Lord,” said Bosambo, “I am a thief and a low man, and my heart is full of pride that you should stoop toward me.”

Sandi detected the tremor in Bosambo’s voice, and he knew he was sincere.

“Therefore, O chief, I have placed you in my place, for you are skilled in war. And I give over to you the command of my ship and of my fighting men, and you shall do that which is best.”

Bosambo sprang noiselessly to his feet, and stood tense and erect by the bedside. There was a strange light in his eyes.

“Lord Sandi,” he said in a low voice, “do you speak true–that I”–he struck his broad chest with both his clenched fists–“I stand in your place?”

“That is so,” said Sandi.

Bosambo was silent for a minute, then he opened his mouth to speak, checked himself, and, turning without a word, left the room.

Which was unlike Bosambo.

They were prepared for his coming. Abiboo stood at the end of the gangway and raised his hand in salute.

“I am your man, chief,” he said.

“Abiboo,” he said, “I do not lie when I say that I am of your faith; and by Allah and his Prophet I am for doing that which is best for Sandi, our master.”

“So we both desire,” said Abiboo.

Bosambo’s preparations were quietly made.

He sent half of his fighting men to the mission house to guard Sandi, and with them twenty Houssas under a sergeant.

“Now we will call upon Toloni the king,” he said.

The King of the Akasava sat in palaver. His force was camped on the edge of the N’Gombi country, and a smoking village spoke of resistance offered and overcome–for the N’Gombi had at last declined to join the coalition, and the lover, who had undertaken to persuade the queen, and, failing persuasion, to take more effective action, had failed.

The queen notified his failure by sending his head to Toloni.

Not even the news that Sandi was sick to death served to shake them in their opposition. It may have been that the vital young queen cherished ambitions of her own.

The king’s palaver was a serious one.

“It seems that the N’Gombi people must be eaten up village by village,” he said, “for all this country is with me save them only. As to this queen, she shall be sorry.”

He was within striking distance of the N’Gombi queen.