They stripped the white men as naked as they were on the day they were born, pegged them at equal distance on the ground spread-eagle fashion. Heads to the white man's feet they laid Bosambo and his headman.
When all was finished Ofesi walked over to them.
"When the sun comes up," he said, "you will all be dead—but there is half the night to go."
"Nigger!" said Bosambo in English, "yo' mother done be washerwomans!"
It was the most insulting expression in his vocabulary, and he reserved it for the last.
* * * * *
Sanders saw the glow of the great fire long before he reached the Akasava, his own lokali sounding forth the news of his premature decease—Sanders with the red weal of a bullet across his cheek, and a feeling of unfriendliness toward Ofesi in his heart. All the way up the river through the night his lokali sent forth the joyless tidings. Villagers heard it and shivered—but sent it on. A half-naked man crouching in the bushes near Akasava city heard it and sobbed himself sick, for Ahmed Ali saw in himself a murderer. He who had sworn by the prophet to end the life of Ofesi had left the matter until it was too late.
In a cold rage he crept nearer to the crowd which was gathered about the king's hut—a neck-craning, tip-toeing crowd of vicious men-children. The moment of torment had come. At Ofesi's feet crouched two half-witted Akasava youths giggling at one another in pleasurable excitement, and whetting the razor-keen edges of their skinning knives on their palms.
"Listen, now," said Ofesi in exultation. "I am he, the predestined, the ruler of all men from the black waters to the white mountains. Thus you see me, all people, your master, and master of white men. The skins of these men shall be drums to call all other nations to the service of the Akasava—begin Ginin and M'quasa."
The youths rose and eyed the silent victims critically—and Mr. Bannister Fish stepped out of the hut into the light of the fire, a pistol in each hand.