It was always restless, always on the look-out for a Messiah.
"Messiahs are most unsettling," said Luttrell, "especially when they don't come.

The tribe began sharpening its spear-heads a few weeks ago.
Then two of them got excited and killed.

That's the consequence," and he jerked his head towards the compound, from which the two friends were walking away.
Hillyard was to hear more of the matter an hour later, as they all sat at dinner in the mess-room.

There were thousands of the tribe, all in a ferment, and just half a battalion of Sudanese soldiers under Luttrell's command to keep them in order.
"Blacker thinks we ought to have temporised, and that we shall get scuppered," said Luttrell.

He was the one light-hearted man at that table, though he was staking his career, his life, and the life of the colony on the correctness of his judgment.