He left his wife, and she, poor woman, glad to be relieved of the presence of her loquacious husband, probably went to sleep.
At any rate, Arachi came to headquarters at a propitious moment for him. Headquarters at that moment was an armed camp at the junction of the Isisi and Ikeli rivers.
On the top of all his other troubles, Sanders had the problem of a stranger who had arrived unbidden. His orderly came to him and told him that a man desired speech of him.
"What manner of man?" asked Sanders, wearily.
"Master," said the orderly, "I have not seen a man like him before."
Sanders went out to inspect his visitor. The stranger rose and saluted, raising both hands, and the Commissioner looked him over. He was not of any of the tribes he knew, being without the face-cuts laterally descending either cheek, which mark the Bomongo. Neither was he tattooed on the forehead, like the people of the Little River.
"Where do you come from?" asked Sanders, in Swaheli—which is the lingua franca of the continent—but the man shook his head.
So Sanders tried him again, this time in Bomongo, thinking, from his face-marks, that he must be a man of the Bokeri people. But he answered in a strange tongue.
"Quel nom avez vous?" Sanders asked, and repeated the question in Portuguese. To this latter he responded, saying that he was a small chief of the Congo Angola, and that he had left his land to avoid slavery.
"Take him to the men's camp and feed him," said Sanders, and dismissed him from his mind.