"Who are you to teach me my business?"

For the first time Kingozi's careless, candid stare narrowed to a focus.

"You have not told me what your business is," he replied with an edge of
intention in his tones. Their glances crossed like rapiers for the flash
of an instant.

She turned to the hammock bearers.

"Lie down!" she commanded. Then to the impassive Nubian, "The _kiboko!_ I
suppose," she observed politely to Kingozi, "that you will admit these men
should be punished, and that you will permit me to do so?"

"Surely they should be punished; that goes without saying."

"Give them thirty apiece," she ordered the Nubian.

"That is too many," interposed Kingozi. "Six is a great plenty for such
people. It is their nature to run away."

"Thirty," she repeated to the Nubian, without a glance in the white man's
direction.

The huge negro produced the rhinoceros-hide whip, and went to his task. To
lay thirty lashes on sixteen backs and to do justice to the occasion is a
great task. The Nubian's face streamed sweat when he had finished. The
bearers, who had taken the punishment in silence, arose, saluted, and
begun to skylark among themselves, which was their way of working off