"Where is your chief?" he asked.
"Lord, he is ill," they said gravely. "This day there came to him a feeling of sickness, and he fell down moaning. We have carried him to his hut."
Sanders nodded.
"I will see him," he said grimly.
They led him to the door of the chief's hut, and Sanders went in. It was very dark, and in the darkest corner lay a prostrate man. Sanders bent over him, touched his pulse lightly, felt gingerly for the swelling on the neck behind the ears for a sign of sleeping sickness. No symptom could he find; but on the bare shoulder, as his fingers passed over the man's flesh, he felt a scar of singular regularity; then he found another, and traced their direction. The convict brand of the Monrovian Government was familiar to him.
"I thought so," said Sanders, and gave the moaning man a vigorous kick.
"Come out into the light, Bosambo of Monrovia," he said; and Bosambo rose obediently and followed the Commissioner into the light.
They stood looking at one another for several minutes; then Sanders, speaking in the dialect of the Pepper Coast, said—
"I have a mind to hang you, Bosambo."
"That is as your Excellency wishes," said Bosambo.