He stood on the deck coatless, signalling with his raised fingers to the man at the wheel.
"Phew!" An arrow was shivering in the wooden deck-house. He pulled it out and examined its hammered steel point carefully, then he threw it overboard.
"Bang!"
A puff of smoke from the veiling foliage—a bullet splintered the back of his deck-chair.
He reached down and took up a rifle, noticed the drift of the smoke and took careful aim.
"Bang!"
There was no sign to show where the bullet struck, and the only sound that came back was the echo and the shrill swish of it as it lashed its way through the green bushes.
There was no more shooting.
"Puck-apuck-puck-apuck-puck," went the stern wheel slowly, and the bows of the Zaire clove the calm waters and left a fan of foam behind. Before the village was in view six war canoes, paddling abreast, came out to meet the Commissioner. He rang the engines to "Stop," and as the noise of them died away he could hear in the still air the beating of drums; through his glasses he saw fantastically-painted bodies, also a head stuck upon a spear.
There had been a trader named Ogilvie in this part of the world, a mild, uncleanly man who sold cloth and bought wild rubber.