Hamilton of the Houssas rose up from his camp chair and stretched himself to his full six feet. His laughing eyes—terribly blue they looked in the mahogany setting of his lean face—quizzed the chief, and his clean-shaven lips twitched ever so slightly.
Chief Idigi looked at him curiously. Idigi was squat and fat, but wise. None the less he gossiped, for, as they say on the river, "Even the wise oochiri is a chatterer."
"O, laughing Lord," said Idigi, almost humble in his awe—for blue eyes in a brown face are a great sign of devilry, "this is no smiling palaver, for they say——"
"Idigi," interrupted Hamilton, "I smile when you speak of the N'bosini, because there is no such land. Even Sandi, who has wisdom greater than ju-ju, he says that there is no N'bosini, but that it is the foolish talk of men who cannot see whence come their troubles and must find a land and a people and a king out of their mad heads. Go back to your village, Idigi, telling all men that I sit here for a spell in the place of my lord Sandi, and if there be, not one king of N'bosini, but a score, and if he lead, not one army, but three and three and three, I will meet him with my soldiers and he shall go the way of the bad king."
Idigi, unconvinced, shaking his head, said a doubtful "Wa!" and would continue upon his agreeable subject—for he was a lover of ghosts.
"Now," said he, impressively, "it is said that on the night before the moon came, there was seen, on the edge of the lake-forest, ten warriors of the N'bosini, with spears of fire and arrows tipped with stars, also——"
"Go to the devil!" said Hamilton, cheerfully. "The palaver is finished."
Later, he watched Idigi—so humble a man that he never travelled with more than four paddlers—winding his slow way up stream—and Hamilton was not laughing.
He went back to his canvas chair before the Residency, and sat for half an hour, alternately pinching and rubbing his bare arms—he was in his shirt sleeves—in a reverie which was not pleasant.
Here Lieutenant Augustus Tibbetts, returning from an afternoon's fishing, with a couple of weird-looking fish as his sole catch, found him and would have gone on with a little salute.