Two days after the crestfallen chief had started on his way home the Zaire passed his canoe in mid-stream, going the same way, and the sight of her white hull and twin smokestacks brought consolation to Komo.
"My lord has considered my words," said he to his headman; "for at his village they said that the puc-a-puc did not leave till the new moon came, and here he comes, though the old moon is still sowing his rind."
"Chief," said the headman, "you are great in council, and even Sandi hearkens and obeys. You are wiser than an owl, swift and terrible as a hawk, and your voice is like the winds of a storm."
"You speak truly," said Komo, who had no false sense of modesty. "I am also very cunning, as you shall see."
Sanders was indeed beating up to the Ochori country. He was perturbed, not by reason of Komo's sinister suggestion, but because his spies had been silent. If there were dances in the Ochori country he should have been told, however innocent those dances were.
Pigeons had gone ahead of him to tell of his journey, and he found the first of his agents awaiting him at the junction of the Ikeli with the Isisi.
"Lord, it is true that the Ochori dance," said the man, "yet, knowing your lordship trusted Bosambo, I did not make report."
"There you did wrong," said Sanders; "for I tell you that if a hawk kills a parrot, or the crocodiles find new breeding-places, I wish to know what there is to know."
He gleaned more of these mysterious revels which Bosambo held in the forest as he grew nearer to the Ochori country, and was more puzzled than ever.
"Master," said the chief of the N'gombi village, "many folk go to the Ochori dance, for Bosambo the chief has a great magic."