Lieutenant Bones by Edgar Wallace — Read

Twice in the year of crops there rose in the undisciplined hearts of men a desire for liberty and freedom. As these two high words convey to the mind of the idealist an altogether mistaken impression of the sentiments which animated the savage souls of the cannibal territories, they may be elaborated to connote liberty to slay and spoil and ravage, and freedom from all those unhappy consequences which civilization, in the shape of an unsympathetic Commissioner, might exact.

Such desires grow in a night and fructify at dawn, for native folk, albeit great talkers and given to interminable rhetoric, do not, as the river saying goes, "carry their passion to palaver. " The mob sense overtakes them and dictates a common aim. They surge forward to their fate without knowing why, save that in every one there is a certain instinct of direction and purpose. Whether there was any preliminary treaty between the Akasava, the Isisi, and the Outer N'gombi, none knew. It is probable that there was. It is certain they rose in a night, some twenty thousand spears, and that Bakuro, the paramount Chief of the Isisi, was the guiding spirit and chief general of the war-fleet that gathered on a moonless night in that reach of the great river which is known as "The Many-Many Branches," for here a score of tributaries run into the great river at right angles, and incidentally form excellent cover for a concentration of war canoes.