No trace of Sir George was found, and in the course of time Sanders collected the dead man's belongings and forwarded them to England.
There were two remarkable facts about this tragedy, the first being that Sanders found no evidence either in papers or diaries, of the results of any scientific research work performed by the professor other than a small note-book. The second was, that in his little book the scientist had carefully recorded the stories Sanders had told him of witch doctors.
(Sanders recognised at least one story which he had himself invented on the spur of the moment for the professor's entertainment.)
Six more or less peaceful months passed, and then began the series of events which make up the story of the Devil Man.
It began on the Little River.
There was a woman of the Isisi people who hated her husband, though he was very good to her, building her a hut and placing an older wife to wait upon her. He gave her many presents, including a great neck-ring of brass, weighing pounds, that made her the most envied woman on the Isisi River. But her hatred for her husband was unquenched; and one morning she came out from her hut, looking dazed and frightened, and began in a quavering voice to sing the Song of the Dead, mechanically pouring little handfuls of dust on her head, and the villagers went in, to find the man stark and staring, with a twisted grin on his dead face and the pains of hell in his eyes.
In the course of two days they burned the husband in the Middle River; and as the canoe bearing the body swept out of sight round a bend of the river, the woman stepped into the water and laved the dust from her grimy body and stripped the green leaves of mourning from her waist.
Then she walked back to the village with a light step, for the man she hated best was dead and there was an end to it.
Four days later came Sanders, a grim little man, with a thin, brown face and hair inclined to redness.
"M'Fasa," he said, standing at the door of her hut and looking down at her, as with a dogged simulation of indifference she pounded her grain, "they tell me your man has died."