Part 40 (1/2)

Lataki ood cook, and was a model citizen for exactly threeunexpectedly fro trip, found Lataki asleep in his in bottles by the bedside testifying mutely to his discredit Sanders called his police, and Lataki was thrown into the lock-up to sober dohich he did in twenty-four hours

”I would have you understand,” said Sanders to the culprit the next day, ”that I cannot allow et drunk; more especially I cannot allow my drunken servants to sleep off their potations on my bed”

”Lord, I as happen to a man who has seen much of the world”

”Youyou are about to receive,” said Sanders, and gave an order to the sergeant of police

Lataki was no stoic and when, tied to a tree, ten strokes were laid upon his stout back by a bored Houssa, he cried out very loudly against Sanders, and against that civilisation of which Sanders was the chosen instrument

After it was all over, and he had discovered that he was still alive, albeit sore, he confessed he had received little more than he deserved, and promised tearfully that the lesson should not be without result Sanders, who had nothing more to say in the matter, dismissed him to his duties

It was a week after this that the Co in solitude on palm-oil chop-which is a delicious kind of coast curry-and chicken He had begun his ht in a microscope Then he took a little of the ”chop”-just as o on the end of a pin-slass, and focussed the instrument What he saw interested him He put away the microscope and sent for Lataki; and Lataki, in spotless white, ca the ways of white ht do his servant honour?”

The cook in the doorway hesitated

”There are ht--”

He stopped, not quite sure of his ground

”Because you are a good servant, though possessed of faults,” said Sanders, ”I wish to honour you; therefore I have chosen this way; you, who have slept in my bed unbidden, shall sit at my table with me at my command”

The man hesitated, a little bewildered, then he shuffled forward and sat clumsily in the chair opposite histo the custoe spoonfuls of palm-oil chop upon the plate before the man

”Eat,” he said

But thewith his eyes upon the tablecloth

”Eat,” said Sanders again, but still Lataki sat motionless

Then Sanders rose, and went to the open doorway of his bungalow and blehistle

There was a patter of feet, and Sergeant Abiboo came with four Houssas

”Take this man,” said Sanders, ”and put hione with their prisoner, carefully res and bananas, into neither of which is it possible to introduce ground glass without running the risk of instant detection

Ground glass-glass powdered so fine that it is like precipitated chalk to the touch-is a bad poison, because when it coht down inside a man, it lacerates them and he dies, as the bad men of the coast know, and have known for hundreds of years In the course of ti thatched barn of a courthouse, and Lataki brought three cousins, a brother, and a disinterested friend, to swear that Sanders had put the glass in his own ”chop” with ht In spite of the unanimity of the evidence-the witnesses had no less than four rehearsals in a little hut the night before the trial-the prisoner was sentenced to fifteen years' penal servitude

Here the o people, who live far away in the north, and who chose to regard the imprisonment of their man as a casus belli

They were a suspicious people, a sullen, loveless, cruel people, and they were geographically favoured, for they lived on the edge of a territory which is indisputably French, and, es to all the white people who lived within striking distance of the Lulungo There were six in all, made up of two missions, Jesuit and Baptist They wereletters show:

The first from the Protestant: