"Lord," said the flustered Ko-boru, "such things happen even in love."
"All things happen in love," said Sanders, with a little smile, "and, if it is to be, Yoka will return. Also, if it is to be, he will not go back to the woman, and she will be free. This palaver is finished."
"Lord," pleaded Ko-boru, "the woman will do no more angry things. Let him come back from sunrise to moonset——"
"This palaver is finished," repeated Sanders.
On their way back to Bingini the relatives of Ko-boru made a plot. It was the first plot that had been hatched in the shadow of headquarters for twenty years.
"Would it be indiscreet to ask what your visitors wanted?" asked the girl, as the crestfallen deputation was crossing the square to their canoe.
"It was a marriage palaver," replied Sanders, with a little grimace, "and I was being requested to restore a husband to a temperamental lady who has a passion for shying cook-pots at her husband when she is annoyed."
The girl's laughing eyes were fixed upon his.
"Poor Mr. Sanders!" she said, with mock seriousness.
"Don't be sorry for me," smiled Sanders. "I'm rather domestic, really, and I'm interested in this case because the man concerned is my steersman—the best on the river, and a capital all-round man. Besides that," he went on seriously, "I regard them all as children of mine. It is right that a man who shirks his individual responsibilities to the race should find a family to 'father.'"