He stood over them, day after day, directing and encouraging them, and the same men were invariably his pupils because Sanders did not like new faces.

He was going up river in some haste when he tied to a wooding to replenish his stock.

At the end of six years’ tuition he left them to pile wood whilst he slept, and they did all the things which they should not have done.

This he discovered when he returned to the boat.

“Master,” said the headman of the wooders, and he spoke with justifiable pride, “we have cut and stored the wood for the puc-a-puc in one morning, whereas other and slower folk would have worked till sundown, but because we love your lordship we have worked till the sweat fell from our bodies.”

Sanders looked at the wood piled all wrong, and looked at the headman.

“It is not wise,” he said, “to store the wood in the bow, for thus the ship will sink, as I have often told you.”

“Lord, we did it because it was easiest,” said the man simply.

“That I can well believe,” said Sanders, and ordered the restacking, without temper.

You must remember that he was in a desperate hurry: that every hour counted. He had been steaming all night–a dangerous business, for the river was low and there were new sandbanks which did not appear on his home-made chart. Men fret their hearts out, dealing with such little problems as ill-stacked wood, but Sanders neither fretted nor worried. If he had, he would have died, for things like this were part of his working day. Yet the headman’s remissness worried him a little, for he knew the man was no fool.

In an hour the wood was more evenly distributed and Sanders rang the engines ahead. He put the nose of the boat to the centre of the stream and held on his course till at sunset he came to a place where the river widened abruptly, and where little islands were each a great green tangle of vegetation.

Here he slowed the steamer, carefully circumnavigating each island, till darkness fell, then he picked a cautious way to shore, through much shoal water. The Zaire bumped and shivered as she struck or grazed the hidden sandbanks.

Once she stopped dead, and her crew of forty slipped over the side of the boat, and wading, breast high, pushed her along with a deep-chested song.

At last he came to a shelving beach, and here, fastened by her steel hawsers to two trees, the boat waited for dawn.

Sanders had a bath, dressed, and came into his little deck-house to find his dinner waiting.

He ate the tiny chicken, took a stiff peg of whiskey, and lit his cigar. Then he sent for Abiboo.

“Abiboo,” he said, “once you were a man in these parts.”

“Lord, it is so,” said Abiboo. “I was a spy here for six months.”

“What do you know of these islands?”

“Lord, I only know that in one of them the Isisi bury their dead, and of another it is said that magic herbs grow; also that witch-doctors come thither to practise certain rites.”

Sanders nodded.

“To-morrow we seek for the Island of Herbs,” he said, “for I have information that evil things will be done at the full of the moon.”

“I am your man,” said Abiboo.

It happened two nights following this that a chief of the N’Gombi, a simple old man who had elementary ideas about justice and a considerable faith in devils, stole down the river with twelve men and with labour they fastened two pieces of wood shaped like a St. Andrew’s Cross between two trees.

They bent a young sapling, trimming the branches from the top, till it reached the head of the cross, and this they made fast with a fishing line. Whatever other preparations they may have contemplated making were indefinitely postponed because Sanders, who had been watching them from behind a convenient copal-tree, stepped from his place of concealment, and the further proceedings failed to yield any satisfaction to the chief.

He eyed Sanders with a mild reproach.

“Lord, we set a trap for a leopard,” he explained, “who is very terrible.”

“In other days,” mused Sanders aloud, “a man seeing this cross would think of torture, O chief–and, moreover, leopards do not come to the middle island–tell me the truth.”

“Master,” said the old chief in agitation, “this leopard swims, therefore he fills our hearts with fear.”

Sanders sighed wearily.

“Now you will tell me the truth, or I shall be more than any leopard.”

The chief folded his arms so that the flat of his hands touched his back, he being a lean man, and his hands fidgeted nervously.

“I cannot tell you a lie,” he said, “because you are as a very bat, seeing into dark places readily and moving at night. Also you are like a sudden storm that comes up from trees without warning, and you are most terrible in your anger.”

“Get along,” said Sanders, passively irritable.

“Now this is the truth,” said the chief huskily.

“There is a man who comes to my village at sunset, and he is an evil one, for he has the protection of the Christ-man and yet he does abominable things–so we are for chopping him.”

Sanders peered at the chief keenly.

“If you chop him, chief, you will surely die,” he said softly, “even if he be as evil as the devil–whichever type of devil you mostly fear. This is evidently a bad palaver indeed, and I will sit down with you for some days.”

He carried the chief and his party back to the village and held a palaver.

Now Sanders of the River in moments such as these was a man of inexhaustible patience; and of that patience he had considerable need when two hours after his arrival there came stalking grandly into the village a man whose name was Ofalikari, a man of the N’Gombi by a Congolaise father.

His other name was Joseph, and he was an evangelist.

This much Sanders discovered quickly enough.

“Fetch this man to me,” he said to Sergeant Abiboo, for the preacher made his palaver at the other end of the village.

Soon Abiboo returned.

“Master,” he said, “this man will not come, being only agreeable to the demands of certain gods with which your honour is acquainted.”

Sanders showed his teeth.

“Go to him,” he said softly, “and bring him; if he will come for no other cause, hit him with the flat of your bayonet.”

Abiboo saluted stiffly–after the style of native noncommissioned officers–and departed, to return with Ofalikari, whom he drew with him somewhat unceremoniously by the ear.

“Now,” said Sanders to the man, “we will have a little talk, you and I.”

The sun went down, the moon came up, flooding the black river with mellow light, but still the talk went on–for this was a very serious palaver indeed.

A big fire was built in the very middle of the village street and here all the people gathered, whilst Sanders and the man sat face to face.

Occasionally a man or a woman would be sent for from the throng; once Sanders dispatched a messenger to a village five miles away to bring evidence. They came and went, those who testified against Ofalikari.

“Lord, one night we gathered by his command and he sacrificed a white goat,” said one witness.

“We swore by the dried heart of a white goat that we would do certain abominable things,” said another.

“By his order we danced a death dance at one end of the village, and the maidens danced the wedding dance at the other, then a certain slave was killed by him, and …”

Sanders nodded gravely.

“And he said that the sons of the White Goat should not die,” said another.

In the end Sanders rose and stretched himself.

“I have heard enough,” he said, and nodded to the sergeant of Houssas, who came forward with a pair of bright steel handcuffs.

One of these he snapped on the man’s wrist, the other he held and led him to the boat.

The Zaire swung out to midstream, making a difficult way through the night to the mission station.

Ill news travels faster than an eight-knot steamboat can move up stream.

Sanders found the missionary waiting for him at day-break on the strip of white beach, and the missionary, whose name was Haggin, was in one of those cold passions that saintly men permit themselves, for righteousness’ sake.

“All England shall ring with this outrage,” he said, and his voice trembled. “Woe the day when a British official joins the hosts of Satan…”

He said many other disagreeable things.

“Forget it,” said Sanders tersely; “this man of yours has been playing the fool.”

And in his brief way he described the folly.

“It’s a lie!” said the missionary. He was tall and thin, yellow with fever, and his hands shook as he threw them out protestingly. “He has made converts for the faith, he has striven for souls …”

“Now listen to me,” said Sanders and he wagged a solemn forefinger at the other. “I know this country. I know these people–you don’t. I take your man to headquarters, not because he preaches the gospel, but because he holds meetings by night and practises strange rites which are not the rites of any known Church. Because he is a son of the White Goat, and I will have no secret societies in my land.”

If the truth be told, Sanders was in no frame of mind to consider the feelings of missionaries.

There was unrest in his territories–unrest of an elusive kind. There had been a man murdered on the Little River and none knew whose hand it was that struck him down.

His body, curiously carved, came floating down stream one sunny morning, and agents brought the news to Sanders. Then another had been killed and another. A life more or less is nothing in a land where people die by whole villages, but these men with their fantastic slashings worried Sanders terribly.

He had sent for his chief spies.

“Go north to the territory of the killing, which is on the edge of the N’Gombi country and bring me news,” he said.

One such had sent him a tale of a killing palaver–he had rushed north to find by the veriest accident that the threatened life was that of a man he desired most of all to place behind bars.

He carried his prisoner to headquarters. He was anxious to put an end to the growth of a movement which might well get beyond control, for secret societies spread like fire.

At noon he reached a wooding and tied up.

He summoned his headman.

“Lobolo,” he said, “you shall stack the wood whilst I sleep, remembering all the wise counsel I gave you.”

“Lord, I am wise in your wisdom,” said the headman, and Abiboo having strung a hammock between two trees, Sanders tumbled in and fell asleep instantly.

Whilst he slept, one of the wooders detached himself from the working party, and came stealthily towards him.

Sanders’ sleeping place was removed some distance from the shore, that the noise of chopping and sawing and the rattle of heavy billets on the steel deck should not disturb him.

Noiselessly the man moved until he came to within striking distance of the unconscious Commissioner.

He took a firmer grip of the keen steel machette he carried and stepped forward.

Then a long sinewy hand caught him by the throat and pulled him down. He twisted his head and met the passionless gaze of Abiboo.

“We will go from here,” whispered the Houssa, “lest our talk awake my lord.”

He wrenched the machette from the other’s hand and followed him into the woods.

“You came to kill Sandi,” said Abiboo.

“That is true,” said the man, “for I have a secret ju-ju which told me to do this, Sandi having offended. And if you harm me, the White Goat shall surely slay you, brown man.”

“I have eaten Sandi’s salt,” said Abiboo, “and whether I live or die is ordained. As for you, your fate is about your neck …”

Sanders woke from his sleep to find Abiboo squatting on the ground by the side of the hammock.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing, lord,” said the man. “I watched your sleep, for it is written, ‘He is a good servant who sees when his master’s eyes are shut.’”

Sanders heard the serious undertone to the proverb; was on the point of asking a question, then wisely checked himself.

He walked to the shore. The men had finished their work, and the wood was piled in one big, irregular heap in the well of the fore deck. It was piled so that it was impossible (1) for the steersman on the bridge above to see the river; (2) for the stoker to get anywhere near his furnace; (3) for the Zaire to float in anything less than three fathoms of water.

Already the little ship was down by the head, and the floats of her stem wheel merely skimming the surface of the river.

Sanders stood on the bank with folded arms looking at the work of the headman’s hands.