"I no hurt 'um," said Bosambo. "I be dam good chap; I be Christian, Marki, Luki, Johni; you savee dem fellers? I be same like."
She fainted, sinking in a heap to the bottom of the canoe. In an instant Bosambo's arm was around her. He lifted her into his canoe as lightly as though she was a child.
Then from the rushes came a third canoe with a full force of paddlers and, remarkable of a savage man's delicacy, two women of the Ochori.
She was in this canoe when she recovered consciousness, a woman bathing her forehead from the river. Bosambo, from another boat, watched the operation with interest.
"Go now," he said to the chief of the paddlers, "taking this woman to Sandi, and if ill comes to her, behold, I will take your wives and your children and burn them alive—go swiftly."
Swiftly enough they went, for the river was high, and at the river head the floods were out.
"As for you," said Bosambo to the king's headman, "you may carry word to your master, saying thus have I done because it was my pleasure."
"Lord," said the head of the paddlers, "we men have spoken together and fear for our lives; yet we will go to our king and tell him, and if he illtreats us we will come back to you."
Which arrangement Bosambo confirmed.
King Tobolaka had made preparations worthy of Independence Day to greet his bride. He had improvised flags at the expense of his people's scanty wardrobe. Strings of tattered garments crossed the streets, but beneath those same strings people stood in little groups, their arms folded, their faces lowering, and they said things behind their hands which Tobolaka did not hear.