"This," he said, "looks very bad."
He shook hands with the witch-doctor, and that aged villain looked surprised, and asked a question in the native tongue.
"You no be fit to dash him somet'ing," said the interpreter.
"Dash him?"
"Give 'um present—bottle gin."
"Certainly not," said George. "He may be satisfied with the knowledge that he is rendering a service to humanity; that he is helping the cause of a down-trodden people."
The witch-doctor said something in reply, which the interpreter very wisely refrained from putting into English.
"How go the investigations?" asked the captain of Houssas three weeks later.
"As far as I can gather," said Sanders, "our friend is collecting a death-roll by the side of which the records of the Great Plague will read like an advertisement of a health resort."