Wooling was a man not easily abashed, yet it is on record that in his agitation he handed over a genuine dollar and was half way back to Akasava city before he realised his folly. Then he laughed to himself, for the phonograph was worth all the trouble, and the money.
That night he assembled the Akasava to hear the "Holy City"—only to discover that he had again brought away from Ochori city the unsatisfactory instrument he had taken.
In the city of the Ochori all the night a wheezy voice acclaimed Jerusalem to the admiration and awe of the Ochori people.
"It is partly your own fault," said Sanders, when the trader complained. "Bosambo was educated in a civilised community, and naturally has a way with his fingers which less gifted people do not possess."
"Mr. Sanders," said the woolgatherer earnestly, "I've traded this coast, man and boy, for sixteen years, and there never was and there never will be," he spoke with painful emphasis, "an eternally condemned native nigger in this inevitably-doomed-by-Providence world who can get the better of Bill Wooling."
All this he said, employing in his pardonable exasperation, certain lurid similes which need not be reproduced.
"I don't like your language," said Sanders, "but I admire your determination."
Such was the determination of Mr. Wooling, in fact, that a month later he returned with a third cargo, this time a particularly fascinating one, for it consisted in the main of golden chains of surprising thickness which were studded at intervals with very rare and precious pieces of coloured glass.
"And this time," he said to the unmoved Commissioner, who for want of something better to do, had come down to the landing-stage to see the trader depart, "this time this Bosambo is going to get it abaft the collar."
"Keep away from the N'gombi people," said Sanders, "they are fidgety—that territory is barred to you."