"It's an old friend of yours," said Carter. "My people tell me that this old god-box contains the stone of the Ochori."
"Oh!" said Sanders, with sudden interest.
He breakfasted with his subordinate, inspected his little garrison of thirty, visited his farm, admired his sweet potatoes, and patronised his tomatoes.
Then he went back to the boat and wrote a short dispatch in the tiniest of handwriting on the flimsiest of paper slips. "In case!" said Sanders.
"Bring me 14," he said to his servant, and Abiboo came back to him soon with a pigeon in his hand.
"Now, little bird," said Sanders, carefully rolling his letter round the red leg of the tiny courier and fastening it with a rubber band, "you've got two hundred miles to fly before sunrise to-morrow—and 'ware hawks!"
Then he gathered the pigeon in his hand, walked with it to the stern of the boat, and threw it into the air.
His crew of twelve men were sitting about their cooking-pot—that pot which everlastingly boils.
"Yoka!" he called, and his half-naked engineer came bounding down the slope.
"Steam," said Sanders; "get your wood aboard; I am for Isisi."