"There was a newspaper man who said I treated my people like dogs," said Sanders slowly, for he was speaking in English, a language that was seldom called for. "I believe I do. That is to say, I treat them as if they were real good dogs, not to be petted one minute and kicked the next; not to be encouraged to lie on the drawing-room mat one day, and the next cuffed away from the dining-room hearthrug."
Sir George made no answer. He was a silent man, who had had some experience on the coast, and had lived for years in the solitude of a Central African province, studying the habits of the malarial mosquito.
Sanders was never a great conversationalist, and the three days the professor spent at headquarters were deadly dull ones for the Commissioner.
On one subject alone did the professor grow talkative.
"I want to study the witch-doctor," he said. "I think there is no appointment in the world that would give me a greater sense of power than my appointment by a native people to that post."
Sanders thought the scientist was joking, but the other returned to the subject again and again, gravely, earnestly, and persistently, and for his entertainment Sanders recited all the stories he had ever heard of witch-doctors and their tribe.
"But you don't expect to learn anything from these people?" said Sanders, half in joke.
"On the contrary," said the professor, seriously; "I anticipate making valuable scientific discoveries through my intercourse with them."
"Then you're a silly old ass," said Sanders; but he said it to himself.
The pale professor left him at the end of the fourth day, and beyond an official notification that he had established himself on the border, no further news came of the scientist for six months, until one evening came the news that the pale-faced old man had been drowned by the upsetting of a canoe. He had gone out on a solitary excursion, taking with him some scientific apparatus, and nothing more was heard of him until his birch-bark canoe was discovered, bottom up, floating on the river.