Pragmatic, paternalistic, a tough eccentric, on occasion ruthless, Mr Commissioner Sanders is the archetypical British Colonial official on whom the administration of the Empire depended With a handful of native troops, a tiny steamboat, a pair of Maxim guns, a good supply of quinine, sardonic wit and 'true British phlegm' he dispenses justice and keeps the peace among warlike peoples 'three hundred miles beyond the fringe of civilisation' in British West Africa of the early 1900s