Wooling had many shocks, not the least of which was the discovery that gin, even when it was German gin in square bottles, gaudily labelled and enclosed in straw packets, was not regarded as a marketable commodity by Sanders.
"You can take anything you like," said Sanders, waving his fly-whisk lazily, "but the bar is up against alcohol and firearms, both of which, in the hands of an enthusiastic and experimental people, are peculiarly deadly."
"But, Mr. Sanders!" protested the woolgatherer, with the confident little smile which represented seventy-five per cent. of his stock-in-trade. "I am not one of these new chums straight out from home! Damn it! I know the people, I speak all their lingo, from Coast talk to Swaheli."
"You don't speak gin to them, anyway," said Sanders; "and the palaver may be regarded as finished."
And all the persuasive eloquence of Mr. Wooling did not shift the adamantine Commissioner; and the trader left with a polite reference to the weather, and an unspoken condemnation of an officious swine of a British jack-in-office which Sanders would have given money to have heard.
Wooling went up-country and traded to the best of his ability without the alluring stock, which had been the long suit in his campaign, and if the truth be told—and there is no pressing reason why it should not—he did very well till he tied up one morning at Ochori city and interviewed a chief whose name was Bosambo.
Wooling landed at midday, and in an hour he had arrayed his beautiful stores on the beach.
They included Manchester cotton goods from Belgium, genuine Indian junk from Birmingham, salt which contained a sensible proportion of good river sand, and similar attractive bargains.
His visit to the chief was something of an event. He found Bosambo sitting before his tent in a robe of leopard skins.
"Chief," he said in the flowery manner of his kind, "I have come many weary days through the forest and against the current of the river, that I may see the greatness of all kings, and I bring you a present from the King of England, who is my personal friend and is distantly related to me."