"Anything wrong?" he asked quickly.
"Bucongo of the Lesser Isisi is wrong," said Sanders. "I have heard of his religious meetings and have been a little worried--there will be a big ju-ju palaver or I'm very much mistaken. Where is Bones?"
"He has taken my sister up the creek--Bones says there are any number of egrets' nests there, and I believe he is right."
Sanders frowned again.
"Send a canoe to fetch him back," he said. "That is Bucongo's territory, and I don't trust the devil."
"Which one--Bones or Bucongo?" asked Hamilton innocently.
But Sanders was not feeling humorous,chanel wallet.
* * * * *
At that precise moment Bones was sitting before the most fantastic religious assembly that ecclesiastic or layman had ever attended.
Fate and Bones had led the girl through a very pleasant forest glade--they left the light-draught _Wiggle_ half a mile down stream owing to the shoals which barred their progress, and had come upon Bucongo in an exalted moment.
With the assurance that he was doing no more than intrude upon one of those meetings which the missionizing Chief of the Lesser Isisi so frequently held, Bones stood on the outer fringe of the circle which sat in silence to watch an unwilling novitiate getting acquainted with Bucongo's god.
The novice was a girl, and she lay before an altar of stones surmounted by a misshapen _beti_ who glared with his one eye upon the devout gathering. The novice lay rigid, for the excellent reason that she was roped foot and hands to two pegs in the ground.
Before the altar itself was a fire of wood in which two irons were heating.
Bones did not take this in for a moment, for he was gazing open-mouthed at Bucongo. On his head was an indubitable mitre, but around the mitre was bound a strip of skin from which was suspended a circle of dangling monkey tails. For cope he wore a leopard's robe. His face was streaked red with camwood, and around his eyes he had painted two white circles.
He was in the midst of a frenzied address when the two white visitors came upon the scene, and his hand was outstretched to take the red branding-iron when the girl at Bones's side, with a little gasp of horror, broke into the circle, and wrenching the rough iron from the attendant's hand,jordans, flung it towards the circle of spectators, which widened in consequence.
"How dare you--how dare you!" she demanded breathlessly, "you horrible-looking man!"
Bucongo glared at her but said nothing; then he turned to meet Bones.
In that second of time Bucongo had to make a great decision, and to overcome the habits of a lifetime. Training and education to the dominion of the white man half raised his hand to the salute; something that boiled and bubbled madly and set his shallow brain afire, something that was of his ancestry, wild, unreasoning, brutish,jordans for sale, urged other action. Bones had his revolver half drawn when the knobbly end of the chief's killing-spear struck him between the eyes, and he went down on his knees.
Thus it came about, that he found himself sitting before Bucongo, his feet and hands tied with native grass, with the girl at his side in no better case.
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