"There's trouble in the Isisi," he said, "I can smell it. I don't know what it is—but there's devilry of sorts."
"Secret societies?" suggested the Houssa.
"Secret grandmothers," snarled Sanders. "How many men have you got?"
"Sixty, including the lame 'uns," said the Houssa officer, and swallowed a paperful of quinine with a grimace.
Sanders tapped the toe of his boot with his thin ebony stick, and was thoughtful.
"I may want 'em," he said. "I'm going to find out what's wrong with these Isisi people."
By the little river that turns abruptly from the River of Spirits, Imgani, the Lonely One, built a house. He built it in proper fashion, stealing the wood from a village five miles away. In this village there had been many deaths, owing to The Sickness; and it is the custom on the Upper River that whenever a person dies, the house wherein he died shall die also.
No man takes shelter under the accursed roof whereunder the Spirit sits brooding; the arms of the dead man are broken and scattered on his shallow grave, and the cooking-pots of his wives are there likewise.
By and by, under the combined influences of wind and rain, the reed roof sags and sinks, the doorposts rot; elephant-grass, coarse and strong, shoots up between crevices in wall and roof; then come a heavier rain and a heavier wind, and the forest has wiped the foul spot clean.