"Lord, you may trust no man," said Kambara, "when his woman is the palaver. I shall be glad to die, for I was her dog. And Olandi came and stayed one night in my village, and all that I was to her and all that I have given her was as nothing. And now she weeps all day for him, as does the Ochori woman I took with her. And, lord, if women worship only the dead, make an end, for I am sick of her scorn."
Sanders, with his head sunk, his hands clasped behind, his eyes examining the floor of his cabin—they were on board the Zaire—whistled a tune, a trick of his when he was worried.
"Go back to your village," he said. "You shall pay the family of Olandi thirty goats and ten bags of salt for his blood."
* * * * *
"Master," said Bosambo. "I have great joy in my heart that you did not hang this man, for it seems that Olandi did not die too soon. As for the Ochori girl," he went on, "I would have killed Olandi on her account—only Kambara was there first. This," he added, "I tell you, lord, for your secret hearing, for I knew this girl."
Sanders looked at Bosambo keenly.
"They tell me that you have but one wife, Bosambo," he said.
"I have one," said Bosambo evasively, "but in my lifetime I have many perils, of which the woman my wife knows nothing, for it is written in the Sura of the Djinn, 'Men know best who know most, but a woman's happiness lies in her delusions.'"
CHAPTER VI
THE PEDOMETER