"Lord," he said huskily, "Bosambo and his people put me to shame, for they spied on me and overlooked me. And we are proud people, who must not be overlooked—thus it has been for all time."
Sanders pursed his lips and stared at the man.
"I see here a fine high tree," he said, "so high that he who hangs from its top branch may say that no man overlooks him. There you shall hang, Gulabala, for your proud men to see, before they also go to work for my King, with chains upon their legs as long as they live."
"Lord," said Gulabala philosophically, "I have lived."
Ten minutes later he went the swift way which bad chiefs go, and his people were unresentful spectators.
"This is the tenth time I have had to find a new chief in this belt," said Sanders, pacing the deck of the Zaire, "and who on earth I am to put in his place I do not know."
The lokalis of the Kulumbini were already calling headmen to grand palaver. In the shade of the reed-thatched lokali house, before the hollow length of tree-trunk, the player worked his flat drumsticks of ironwood with amazing rapidity. The call trilled and rumbled, rising and falling, now a patter of light musical sound, now a low grumble.
Bosambo came—by the river route—as Sanders was leaving the Zaire to attend the momentous council.
"How say you, Bosambo—what man of the Kulumbini folk will hold these people in check?"
Bosambo squatted at his lord's feet and set his spear a-spinning.