"Now I shall also break lives," said N'gori, and sacrificed a goat to his success.
Sixteen hundred fighting men waited for the signal from the hidden lokali player, on the far side of the river bend. At the first hollow rattle of his sticks, N'gori pushed off in his royal canoe.
"Kill!" he roared, and went out in the white light of dawn to greet ten Ochori canoes, riding in fanshape formation, having as their centre a white and speckless Zaire alive with Houssas and overburdened with the slim muzzles of Hotchkiss guns.
"Oh, Ko!" said N'gori dismally, "this is a bad palaver!"
In the centre of his city, before a reproving squad of Houssas, a dumb man, taken in the act of armed aggression, N'gori stood.
"You're a naughty boy," said Bones, reproachfully, "and if jolly old Sanders were here—my word, you'd catch it!"
N'gori listened to the unknown tongue, worried by its mystery. "Lord, what happens to me?" he asked.
Bones looked very profound and scratched his head. He looked at the Chief, at Bosambo, at the river all aglow in the early morning sunlight, at the Zaire, with her sinister guns a-glitter, and then back at the Chief. He was not well versed in the dialect of the Akasava, and Bosambo must be his interpreter.