"Back to your land, you monkey man!" he snapped; "this man has offended against the land—yet he shall live, for he is a fool. I know a greater one!"
He sent Ofesi back to his village to build up what his folly had overthrown.
"Remember, Ofesi," he said, "I give you back your life, though you deserve death: and I do this because it comes to me suddenly that you are a child as Bosambo is a child. Now, I will come back to you with the early spring, and if you have deserved well of me you shall be rewarded with your liberty; and if you have done ill to me, you shall go to the Village of Irons or to a worse place."
Back at headquarters Sanders told a sympathetic captain of Houssas the story.
"It was horribly weak of course," he said; "but, somehow, when that ass Bosambo let rip his infernal English I couldn't hang a sparrow."
"Might have brought this Ofesi person down to the village," said the captain thoughtfully. "He's got an extraordinary reputation."
Sanders sat on the edge of the table, his hands thrust into his breeches pockets.
"I thought of that, too, and it affected me. You see, there was just a fear in my mind that I was being influenced on the wrong side by this fellow's talk of destiny—that I was being, in fact, a little malicious."
The Houssa skipper snapped his cigarette case and looked thoughtful.
"I'll get another company down from headquarters," he said.