“Your ma?  I never heard you had a ma.  Besides she must be dead long ago.”

“No, Major, ’cause she turn up in dream too, very much alive, swear at me ’cause I bag her blanket.  Also she tough old woman, take lot kill her.”

“Perhaps you have a pa too,” suggested Alan.

“Think not, Major, my ma always say she forget him.  What she mean, she not like talk about him, he such a swell.  Why Jeekie so strong, so clever and with such beautiful face?  No doubt because he is son of very great man.  All this true reason why he want to go with you, Major.  Still, p’raps poor old Jeekie make mistake, p’raps he dream ’cause he eat too much supper, p’raps his ma dead, after all.  If so, p’raps better stay at home—­not know.”

“No,” answered Alan, “not know.  What between Little Bonsa and one thing and another my head is swimming—­like Little Bonsa in the water.”

“Big Bonsa swim in water,” interrupted Jeekie.  “Little Bonsa swim in gold tub.”

“Well, Big Bonsa, or Little Bonsa, I don’t care which.  I’m going to bed and you had better clear away these things and do the same.  But, Jeekie, if you say a word of our talk to anyone, I shall be very angry.  Do you understand?”

“Yes, Major, I understand.  I understand that if I tell secrets of Little Bonsa to anyone except you with whom she live in strange land far away from home, Little Bonsa come at me like one lion, and cut my throat.  No fear Jeekie split on Little Bonsa, oh! no fear at all,” and still shaking his head solemnly, for the second time he seized the cold mutton and vanished from the room.

“A farrago of superstitious nonsense,” thought Alan to himself when he had gone.  “But still there may be something to be made out of it.  Evidently there is lots of gold in this Asiki country, if only one can persuade the people to deal.”

Then weary of Jeekie and his tribal gods, Alan lit his pipe and sat a while thinking of Barbara and all the events of that tumultuous day.  Notwithstanding his rebuff at the hands of Mr. Haswell and the difficulties and dangers which threatened, he felt even then that it had been a happy and a fortunate day.  For had he not discovered that Barbara loved him with all her heart and soul as he loved Barbara?  And as this was so, he did not care a—­Little Bonsa about anything else.  The future must look to itself, sufficient to the day was the abiding joy thereof.

So he went to bed and for a while to sleep, but he did not sleep very long, for presently he fell to dreaming, something about Big Bonsa and Little Bonsa which sat, or rather floated on either side of his couch and held an interminable conversation over him, while Jeekie and Sir Robert Aylward, perched respectively at its head and its foot, like the symbols of the good and evil genii on a Mahommedan tomb, acted as a kind of insane chorus.  He struck his repeater, it was only one o’clock, so he tried to go to sleep again, but failed utterly.  Never had he been more painfully awake.