The chief went away with a whole thanksgiving service in his heart, for there had been certain secret doings on the river for which he expected reprimand.
"M'Fasa, you will go to my boat," said Sanders, and the woman, putting down her mortar, rose and went obediently to the steamer. Sanders followed slowly, having a great many matters to consider. If he denounced this woman to the elders of the village, she would be stoned to death; if he carried her to headquarters and tried her, there was no evidence on which a conviction might be secured. There was no place to which he could deport her, yet to leave her would be to open the way for further mischief.
She awaited him on the deck of the Zaire, a straight, shapely girl of eighteen, fearless, defiant.
"M'Fasa," said Sanders, "why did you kill your husband?"
"Lord, I did not kill him; he died of the sickness," she said, as doggedly as before.
Sanders paced the narrow deck, his head on his breast, for this was a profound problem. Then he looked up.
"You may go," he said; and the woman, a little puzzled, walked along the plank that connected the boat with the shore, and disappeared into the bush.
Three weeks later his spies brought word that men were dying unaccountably on the Upper River. None knew why they died, for a man would sit down strong and full of cheer to his evening meal, and lo! in the morning, when his people went to wake him, he would be beyond waking, being most unpleasantly dead.
This happened in many villages on the Little River.
"It's getting monotonous," said Sanders to the captain of the Houssas. "There is some wholesale poisoning going on, and I am going up to find the gentleman who dispenses the dope."