The chief was filled with gloom and foreboding. As the weeks passed and his brother showed no signs of departing, Bosambo took his swiftest canoe and ten paddlers and made his way to the I'kan where Sanders was collecting taxes.
"Master," said Bosambo, squatting on the deck before the weary Commissioner, "I have a tale to tell you."
"Let it be such a tale," said Sanders, "as may be told between the settling of a mosquito and the sting of her."
"Lord, this is a short tale," said Bosambo sadly, "but it is a very bad tale—for me."
And he told the story of the unwelcome brother.
"Lord," he went on, "I have done all that a man can do, for I have given him food that was not quite good; and one night my young men played a game, pretending, in their love of me, that they were certain fierce men of the Isisi, though your lordship knows that they are not fierce, but——"
"Get on! Get on!" snarled Sanders, for the day had been hot, and the tax-payers more than a little trying.
"Now I come to you, my master and lord," said Bosambo, "knowing that you are very wise and cunning, and also that you have the powers of gods. Send my brother away from me, for I love him so much that I fear I will do him an injury."
Sanders was a man who counted nothing too small for his consideration—always excepting the quarrels of women. For he had seen the beginnings of wars in pin-point differences, and had watched an expedition of eight thousand men march into the bush to settle a palaver concerning a cooking-pot.
He thought deeply for a while, then: