"Yoka!" called Sanders sharply, and there was a patter of feet aft, for your native is a light sleeper, "tie these men up. Get steam, for we will go away from here; it is not a nice place."
Sanders, as I have tried to explain, was a man who knew the native; he thought like a native, and there were moments when he acted not unlike a barbarian.
Clear of the danger, he tied up to a little island in mid-stream just as the dawn spread greyly, and hustled his two prisoners ashore.
"My men," said he, "you came to kill me in the dark hours."
"Lord, that is true," said one, "I came to kill, and this other man, who is my brother, told me when to come—yet it might have been another whom he called, for I am but one of many."
Sanders accepted the fact that a chain of cheerful assassins awaited his advent without any visible demonstration of annoyance.
"Now you will tell me," he said, "who gave the word for the killing, and why I must die."
The man he addressed, a tall, straight youth of the Amatombo people, wiped the sweat from his forehead with his manacled hands.
"Lord, though you chop me," he said, "I will not tell you, for I have a great ju-ju, and there are certain fetishes which would be displeased."
Sanders tried the other man with no greater success. This other was a labourer he had taken on at a village four days' journey down stream.