"Master," said Bosambo of Monrovia, "all that you ordered me to do, that I did."
Sanders sat before the chief's hut in his camp chair and nodded.
"When your word came that I should find Elebi—he being an enemy of the Government and disobeying your word—I took fifty of my young men and followed on his tracks. At first the way was easy, because he had tied strips of cloth to the trees to guide him on the backward journey, but afterwards it was hard, for the N'Kema that live in the wood——"
"Monkeys?" Sanders raised his eyebrows.
"Monkeys, master," Bosambo nodded his head, "the little black monkeys of the forest who love bright colours—they had come down from their trees and torn away the cloths and taken them to their houses after the fashion of the monkey people. Thus Elebi lost himself and with him his men, for I found their bones, knowing the way of the forest."
"What else did you find?" asked Sanders.
"Nothing, master," said Bosambo, looking him straight in the eye.
"That is probably a lie!" said Sanders.
Bosambo thought of the ivory buried beneath the floor of his hut and did not contradict him.