Sanders had argued with them and threatened them, but all to no purpose. He was successful in a more reprehensible practice, as old as the other. The Lulangas were the last tribe on the river to forgo with some reluctance the practice of slaying their stupid and their old. When a man or woman fell ill or met with some accident which permanently maimed them, or went mad as people do in a land where sleeping sickness is as common as a cold in England, then was S'boro called to their aid. S'boro was a mystic devil who only became potent if you boiled together three varieties of poison flowers and made from them, with a little manioc, a thin red paste. This was laid on the lips of the sick, the old, the mad and the feeble, usually whilst they were asleep, and in the morning they were dead enou
