It was many days before he discovered amongst his cash ten separate and distinct dollar pieces that were unmistakably bad and of the type which unscrupulous Coast houses sell at a dollar a dozen to the traders who deal with the unsophisticated heathen.
Wooling got back to the Coast with a profit which was fairly elusive unless it was possible to include experience on the credit side of the ledger. Six months later, he made another trip into the interior, carrying a special line of talking-machines, which were chiefly remarkable for the fact that the sample machine which he exhibited was a more effective instrument than the one he sold. Here again he found himself in Ochori city. He had, in his big trading canoe, one phonograph and twenty-four things that looked like phonographs, and were in point of fact phonographs with this difference, that they had no workable interiors, and phonographs without mechanism are a drug upon the African market.
Nevertheless, Bosambo purchased one at the ridiculously low price offered, and the chief viewed with a pained and reproachful mien the exhaustive tests which Mr. Wooling applied to the purchase money.
"Lord," said Bosambo, gently, "this money is good money, for it was sent to me by my half-brother Sandi."
"Blow your half-brother Sandi," said Wooling, in energetic English, and to his amazement the chief replied in the same language:
"You make um swear—you lib for hell one time—you say damn words you not fit for make angel."
Wooling, arriving at the next city—which was N'gombi—was certainly no angel, for he had discovered that in some mysterious fashion he had sold Bosambo the genuine phonograph, and had none wherewith to beguile his new client.
He made a forced journey back to Ochori city and discovered Bosambo entertaining a large audience with a throaty presentment of the "Holy City."
As the enraged trader stamped his way through the long, straggling street, there floated to him on the evening breeze the voice of the far-away tenor:
Jer-u-salem! Jer-u-salem!
Sing for the night is o'er!