were seven of us white men and a party of blacks. One of the black boys, however, I really grew to like and trust. He knew the country, the desert and the jungle; and he knew mules. He was in charge of the string we had with us. Kali was this remarkable fellow's name, and I suppose I am the only one who now remembers it.
Can you imagine seeing a beautiful English girl in a filthy native town in the depths of Africa? I couldn't either, until I saw her. Gad! She was white, and young! When I met her in that market place, with a basket on her arm and dressed like a nun, I got the biggest thrill of m life. She was about eighteen, and though I didn't see the beauty of her at the time, I was shocked beyond words. I learned afterward that I was the first Englishman she had ever seen, with the exception of her father—but more of that later. Just that glimpse was all I had, that day, but it was enough to set me thinking.
The chief only laughed when I reached the camp with the news, but the chief was a steady old blighter with grandchildren in South-sea, so I didn't wonder. It was the same when I told the other men—they thought I had been drinking. But it was true, and of course I asked Kali.
"Why, that is the daughter of the dread father, the mad white man." he winked over the cigarette I had given him. "But no—all white men are mad."
"And who," I asked, "is this white man?"
"A learned man," grinned Kali, "but mad, all the same. He was here when my father was as I am, and even then he was mad. If he was not mad, would he creep in the swamps and in the sand, even as the insects?"
"But how does he live?"
"Ah, he has gold—English gold. Two times, sometimes three times a year, he goes to the coast and brings back all manner of strange things. Wanaki, one of his blacks, once told me that he brought back devils in tiny bottles, from the English ships. To uncork the bottles means death—a terrible swelling death. Wanaki told of his devils and how a black boy died even as cattle die from the cobra. But there was no snake—there was only a white powder."
"Does the girl go with him on his trips to Port Said?"
"If she had, Wanaki would have told me. The girl child is made to stay with the black women. The white man is mad, and if you take the advice of Kali you will forget the white child woman in the long black dress."
Kali looked very wise indeed, and I believe he wanted another cigarette. I cursed him sourly and left him to his mules.
The sight of the woman had set something loose within me. You know well how it is in the wilderness, and it had been long weeks since we had left Port Said. To be sure, there were women there—of a kind. I wanted to know this girl, at least to learn something of her history. Kali's gossip had aroused my curiosity, though I did not believe him. Kali's great sin was his love for talk and his hatred for bare facts. But I vowed to see the girl again.
I'll pass over briefly the days that followed. The very afternoon following my talk with Kali I saw her again, but only a glimpse and she was gone. Then several days passed, and during them I learned more about the girl and her father. His name was Denham, a doctor, it appeared, with several letters tacked after his name—a scientist. Those were all the facts I could gather, and what he was doing the past twenty years was a mystery. Collecting bugs? Possibly. But Kali and the blacks swore that it was more than that—by the burial pits of their fathers it was more than that. He was a devil—devil doctor, and made the
