Adventure/Buried Gods

by Charles Beadle

Buried Gods

A Complete Novelette
^by By Charles Beadle

Author of “The Alabaster Goddess,” “The Christman,” etc.

THE Mombasa-Kisumu express sneezed and coughed up the steep gradient near the summit of El Bergon. On each of the small platforms of the five coaches were whites, the men in terai hats and shirt sleeves, and the women in lawn.

On the edge of the roof of the second car was seated a young man in a solar helmet and khaki whose clear-cut lips in the clean-shaven face were set aggressively as if he were determined to register in his mind every sight of the trip through a country in which apparently the Bronx Zoo had cut loose. Passing through the dense forest around the Highlands, little was to be seen; yet any moment a glimpse might likely be caught of elephant, a fleeing koodoo or possibly a rhino prepared to dispute the passage of the other armor-clad monster,

As they snorted through a cutting and began to gather way on a short straightaway, there appeared in a clearing in the forest a blue glint in the sun, and a rhythmic panting was heard.

“I say, Beffert,” called out a young English official on the platform beneath, “this is Macnamara's place. You'd better get your traps ready. They'll pull up for a moment, and you can hop off.”

Dorsay Beffert slung himself down and yanked a Wolsey valise and a grip from the interior. They approached a small siding stacked with timber and slowed up before a sawmill worked by an oil engine beneath a corrugated-iron roof some forty yards away. On higher ground were three shacks nestling against the deep blue of the forest edge.

After hurried good-bys Dorsay clambered down the car-step clutching his guns as the train slowed down, dropped his baggage and jumped off.

The equatorial sun was more than hot. A Wolsey valise packed with blankets is heavy. But the white men working at the mill showed not the slightest interest in the stranger, whom they must have seen alight.

“Well, I guess Macnamara will send a boy along,” muttered Dorsay, and set out.

Beneath the iron roof, three white men and several natives manipulated the whirring circular saws in an atmosphere of heat and oil. They looked up at him as he approached. A young man said cheerily—

“Good morning!”

“Good morning,” returned Dorsay a little bewilderedly, looking first at a tallish man with drooping mustaches in khaki slacks, and then at the other, a small man in soiled corduroys with a short pipe stuck in the nest of a scrubby beard who looked like a bad-tempered Scotch terrier. Dorsay turned to the most respectable man and said tentatively, “Dr. Macnamara?”

The man jerked his head toward the disreputable little man with the pipe. Dorsay repeated the inquiry. The sharp eyes looked up at him, and he nodded. Slightly annoyed, Dorsay tendered a letter. The doctor glanced at it and thrust it in his pocket with a gesture which did not conceal irritation.

“All right. Look, around. Tiffin ten minutes,” he growled, and went on pushing a log into the teeth of a saw.

Dorsay hesitated, annoyed and puzzled by the abrupt manner of a man from whom as a doctor and a friend of an uncle he had expected at least common courtesy if not a welcome. He caught the eye of the young man, who winked. Dorsay went over to him, intending to ask for some one to fetch his baggage; but:

“If the fellow's so darned sore about it I'll go back,” he thought; but the knowledge that there was not a down train for two days complicated matters.

He glanced again at the doctor, who was working and smoking as if he had never seen or heard of him. The man in the khaki slacks smiled dourly and said—

“Jolly hot work, what?”

Dorsay agreed and began to ask conversational questions. He heard the little doctor suddenly bawl at some one in the native lingo, and, looking around, saw two natives carrying his baggage. Immediately afterward a steam whistle blew; and the doctor, walking across, stopped the engine, put on his coat, and said, “Come along.”

“Crazy,” Dorsay muttered to himself.

The little man led him in silence across the clearing to the center shack, which was evidently the mess-hut. In the corner was a basin and towels.

“Wash,” said the doctor, and stood aside.

While obeying this mandate Dorsay politely tried to break this extraordinary taciturnity, but the replies elicited were a grunted, “yes” or “no.”

Two Australians who had been working in the forest—a short, dark fellow and a medium-sized, fair man—came in, and they—Dorsay, the doctor and the two whites whom Dorsay had met at the mill—all sat down to lunch. Beyond a few curt sentences to the newcomers about tree-felling the little doctor spoke scarcely a word throughout the meal.

The man with the drooping mustaches—who, Dorsay learned, was the doctor's brother—seemed faintly amused at everything. The meal ended, the doctor strode back to the mill after a curt, “See you at dinner.”

TO FILL up time and to avoid the doctor until he apparently felt fit to receive a guest, Dorsay accepted an invitation to go into the forest to watch the Australians' operations.

“Been here long?” remarked Dorsay conversationally as they walked.

“About two years,” said Simpson, the fair man; “but Dorky here, he's an old-timer. Ten years, ain't it?”

“Yes, and a ruddy 'ole it is,” grumbled his partner, Dorkin, who had never lost his Sydney accent. “If I could only lie me bloomin' 'ands on a pile me for 'ome and booty.”

Dorsay looked at him.

“Queer kind of a man, the doctor, isn't he?” he continued.

“Bit off his nut,” said Simpson. “Been here too long. But he's all right to everybody 'cept himself.”

“Might make a mint of money outer this outfit, but he won't. Won't answer letters. If anybody wants any timber they have to come or send personally.

“He's known from Uganda to the Coast. Came out here about twenty years ago with Lord Wintercomb as his private doctor and wouldn't go back. He's been right up in the interior. Had a —— of a time. Got a touch of the sun, I reckon; but he's all right.”

Up a narrow track in the dense forest they came upon a bunch of natives who hauled the logs down to the mill. Stark naked they were, and as dark as sepia.

“Kavirondo from the Lake,” said Simpson. “Black fellows around here—that is, out in the open—won't do a stroke of work. Never would. Masai, y'know. Scrap like ——; them and the Wakikuyu played old Harry for years in the early days.”

“Oh, yes; guess I saw some of 'em coming up the line,” said Dorsay. “Tall fellows, stark, with yellow ocher and white painted on 'em. Is that one?” he added, indicating a tall native who had suddenly emerged from a wall of undergrowth.

“No; that's Wondorobo, a hunting tribe. They don't seem to have any proper village. Just wander about through the forest.”

Dorsay eyed the man interestedly. He seemed a finer specimen than usual of the African; slender, tall, graceful in his carriage and with what appeared a wild, amused smile on his lips which were not very negroid. He stopped to speak to the Australian lumberman.

“Says he's got some good news for the doctor,” said Simpson. “Probably spotted some elephant. Not supposed to shoot without a license, but about fifty square miles of this stuff——” he waved a hand at the almost impenetrable jungle—“belongs to him; and he don't care a ——!”

“Oh, Lordy, what luck!” exclaimed Dorsay. “Wonder if he'll take me along?”

“Mebbe—if he happens to feel good and cottons to you. But take my tip; don't ask him. If you do he'll refuse.”

As the native talked, Dorsay noticed an oblong tiny packet swinging from the man's neck by a small chain made of steel links.

“Is that a trade chain?” he asked.

“No. A tribe subject to the Masai make 'em and their spears. Beauties, aren't they? I've heard that they are descendants of people who used to make chain mail for the Abyssinians.”

“Ask him if he wants to sell it,” urged Dorsay. “It's the first like it I've seen.”

“He says no,” replied Simpson, “'cos the charm is very powerful.”

“What! That dirty, filthy packet thing on the end? Rot. Tell him I'll give him a dollar—I mean five rupees—for it.”

“That's no good. He doesn't know what money is. Have to offer trade goods.”

“Well— Say, I'm crazy to have that chain. Look here, I'll give him the wrist watch. Will he know what that is?”

“But it's far too much, man.”

“Oh, it isn't up to much. Steel, but she goes well; and she's got a phosphorescent face. That'll amuse him.”

While Simpson talked the native eyed the proffered watch, bent and listened to the ticking, grinned, and took off the chain.

“Ask him where he got it.”

“Says he took it off an enemy he killed,” reported Simpson. “But you mustn't believe everything they tell you.”

Amusedly Dorsay left him futilely trying to buckle the watch on his wrist.

“Pouf! It stinks like a skunk!” Dorsay exclaimed as he examined the charm.

“What do they make these charms of?” he inquired, putting it in his pocket.

“Darned if I know,” said Simpson,

Dorsay spent the afternoon with the two lumbermen who worked on contract for the doctor so that they did not mind his eccentric methods of doing business. The heat in the jungle was not so intense as Dorsay had imagined it would be, for there was very little moisture; and, being some six thousand feet up in the air, the climate was rare and cool; only the direct rays of the equatorial sun were no less fierce.

Here right on the line of the equator the sun drops almost as suddenly as a shooting star and night comes like a cold hand, making a warm jacket appreciated. At dinner the little doctor was still morosely silent.

After the coffee, when it seemed the custom for everybody to disperse to his quarters and Dorsay was wondering where he was to sleep, the little man said—

“Come and have a grog, young man.”

HE LED him across to the other shack, which was divided into two compartments, the first a kind of office, and the inner a bedroom in which was roaring a great fire of logs. An extra camp-bed had been made up, on which was Dorsay's valise already opened out.

As silently as before, the doctor produced a bottle and glasses, and, thrusting some Indian cigars before his guest, lounged before the fire and appeared to fall into a reverie. Dorsay sipped his liquor and began to grow uncomfortable in the presence of this mute image.

Not knowing what to do, he began to fidget with the chain and essayed a question regarding native charms. To his surprize the doctor blinked at him in the light of the fire like a terrier on a rug, and, without preamble, launched into a most discursive mood, describing East Africa and his adventures.

Interested in the story, Dorsay forgot the charm until some hours later the doctor, noticing it in his hand, asked him where he had gotten it.

“Yours is probably merely some leaves from a sacred tree—if it's Wondorobo—giving keen sight to the hunter.”

The expert's opinion somehow depreciated the value of the purchase in Dorsay's mind; and, prompted by an idea, he tore off the wrapping. The doctor, reading the reaction in his guest's mind, watched him amusedly. Inside the outer filthy rag was a skin covering, and within that was wrapped what appeared to be another piece of rag, fairly clean.

“Good Lord, what is it?” he ejaculated as he smoothed out in the palm of his hand what was evidently a piece of cloth torn from a shirt with dark stains upon it.

“Oh,” said the doctor casually, “probably some part of the clothes of some murdered white which they think will give the wearer the power of a white. They think, you know, that whatever belongs to you is part of the soul, and consequently——”

“But there's writing on it—in blood!” exclaimed Dorsay. “Look!”

He spread out the remnant closer to the light of the fire.

“Look! 'Mount Elgon—help—buried—' What's that word? And this?”

“Let me see,” said the doctor quietly.

He gazed at the message anew.

“Can't see. Get a light.”

He rose, lighted a lamp, and flattened out the rag on the table.

“Thats 'Mount Elgon—help—buried' right enough. Now, what's buried? The others are indecipherable.”

“What d'you think's buried?” demanded Dorsay.

“Ivory probably. There's much buried ivory all over the country.”

“But why should any one——”

“Blood. Nothing else to write with. Possibly dying.”

“Can't make it out,” persisted Dorsay. “'Mount Elgon,'” he repeated slowly, “'help—buried;' something about 'live' and 'gods'—and written in blood. What on earth can it mean? Where is 'Mount Elgon?'”

“To the northwest about a hundred miles.”

“By ——, doctor,” Dorsay exclaimed, looking up, “I'm going to find out what it does mean!”

“I shouldn't, young man. It's a dangerous country there. It's not opened up. Several have gone up there, but few ever come back. Probably this fellow was one.”

“All the more reason to find out,” persisted Dorsay. “Perhaps the ivory, or whatever it is, is still there.”

“Possibly, and possibly not,” returned the doctor, yawning. “I'm going to turn in. D'you want anything? Another drink? No? Well, good night then.”

But half the night Dorsay stared into the flickering fire, clutching the mysterious message in his hand.

II

DORSAY was awakened by a boy with the coffee. The chain he found wound about his wrist as if symbolical of his determination not to relinquish the idea evoked by the message in the charm. Through the window the hard stars were paling.

Resentfully he eyed the stocky outline of the doctor pulling on his pants. The doctor grunted some unintelligible greeting and went out. By the time Dorsay had hastily dragged on his clothes and followed into the other room the day had come.

“Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “Snow!”

For the clearing and the shack roofs were gleaming white beneath them as the sun shot above the trees as if hauled rapidly by stage mechanism.

“Hoar-frost every night,” snapped the doctor, slopping in a basin. “Let me look at your charm,” he added as he threw the water out of the door.

The rays of the mounting sun confirmed the previous night's discovery. The rag was undoubtedly a portion torn from a shirt of striped cotton such as was sold in whites' stores. Evidently the message had been written with some blunt instrument, possibly a piece of stick, and the blood had soaked into the material like ink upon blotting-paper, but the words “Mount Elgon—help—buried—” were readable.

The rest was utterly indecipherable—a mere blob of stains and chunks of congealed blood except for one word which appeared to be “goods” or “gods.”

“H'm,” grunted the doctor, “some poor fool who doesn't know Africa's greed.”

Vaguely startled by such words from the little man, Dorsay stared at him. The bright eyes twinkled like a terrier's at the sight of a bone.

“Come 'long; breakfast.”

“But this?” said Dorsay, indicating the bloody message in his hand.

The doctor's black muzzle seemed to grin.

“Make a nice curio for you to take home.”

“But, say, d'you really mean you're not going to do anything about it?”

“Pff! snorted the doctor. “I've got my mill to look after. No time for wildcat schemes. Show you elephant tomorrow.”

Dorsay looked at him, conscious of rising anger at what he considered the lack of sporting instinct in Doctor Macnamara.

“Thanks,” he said a trifle stiffly, “but I sha'n't have time. I'll take the down train tomorrow, for I'm going after this.”

“You don't realize what you're taking on,” snapped the doctor.

“Probably,” replied Dorsay. “That's what will make it more interesting.”

“Probably make another who won't come back, young man.”

“Still more interesting,” retorted Dorsay.

At breakfast he could not resist showing the message to the others, hoping that some one would volunteer to go along. But the doctor's brother merely smiled amusedly, and the other deprecated the possibility of ever locating the site of the supposed buried ivory.

“Nothing to work on,” said Simpson. “My ——, Elgon's as big as Tasmania, and the Turkana won't stand monkeying with. 'Sides Government won't let you go in.”

Dorsay spent the whole day mooning about the shacks and wandering on the verge of the forest. Sometimes he sat in the shade staring at the blood-stained rag as if trying to extract more information, at other times day-dreaming of the tragedy or adventure that lay behind.

He couldn't undertand how any man with red blood could refuse such an opportunity. True, he didn't know all the difficulties ahead, but that's where the fun lay, to his thinking. The chief trouble as he saw it was the lack of the native speech. He would have to hire an interpreter. Anyway he would return to the Travelers' Club at Nairobi to see if he couldn't hunt up some one sporting enough to go in with him.

At dinner he might have been accused of sulking. Within, excitement was burning so intensely that he could not discuss the matter in cold blood; resentment, too, paralyzed his tongue. In the evening the doctor, after preparing his guns for the morrow, launched again into his discursive mood—which developed apparently only after sundown—but he did not mention elephant.

Next morning the doctor aroused Dorsay.

“Come on, young man; time to start.”

“But there isn't any train until nine-thirty, is there, doctor?” inquired Dorsay.

“H'm. So you're going down then, eh?”

“Sure I am. Haven't I said so? I'm very much obliged for your hospitality, doctor,” continued Dorsay stiffly. “And I'm sorry I can't stay on, but— Well, when I've made up my mind I kinder got to go through with it.”

“H'm, I see. Obstinate young cub, eh? Same stock as your uncle.”

“Sure, I hope I am.”

“Good-by and good luck, my boy. If you get through alive come and tell me what you found. Good-by.”

AFTER a tight grip of the hand the little doctor was gone. Conscious of a renewed sense of disappointment that the doctor hadn't changed his mind at the last moment, Dorsay lay staring at the embers of the fire, dreaming. Pity too, he thought; for apparently there wasn't another man as good as the little doctor in the whole country who knew as much about natives.

At breakfast Dorkin asked to have a look at the blood message again, and this time evinced more interest than before, poring over it for some time in the full rays of the sun together with his partner, with whom he had evidently been discussing the affair.

“—— queer, that's wot it is,” said Dorkin. “But it ain't worth tiking up, Jack. Good luck to yer, mister.”

“Thanks,” said. Dorsay, wondering vaguely why such a decent chap as Simpson seemed should be partners with such a shifty-looking specimen. At 9:45 he boarded the down train, and by the evening he was back in the Travelers' Club.

Macnamara had said the Turkana district, which was nominally British, was not under administration and had scarcely ever been explored, and moreover was forbidden territory to any save Government-organized expeditions. Therefore it behooved him to be careful how he approached any one.

He obtained surveyors' section maps of the country to the south and west of Mount Elgon, which he found to be about ten thousand feet high but with very long slopes. The western side was in the Uganda Protectorate and the eastern and southern in British East Africa, mainly distinguished by the large blank spaces.

He began to hunt about for some old settler from whom he would extract information on which to base the nominal reason for his trip. In the meanwhile he would quietly get together provisions and seek a reliable interpreter. He already had a big-game license, so that there was nothing suspicious in these maneuvers.

Four days after he had been back, a farmer named Ferney, whom he had met before and who had been in the country for some ten years or more, came into town. Dorsay had rather liked him before, and in him he decided to confide. On the veranda after lunch Ferney listened attentively to the little that Dorsay had to relate and interestedly examined the message.

“You say the Wondorobo you bought this from said he took it from an enemy killed in battle? Well, all that sounds pretty plausible. The enemy might have been one of the Turkana or allied tribes. They would make a charm out of this sort of thing.

“But I'm afraid you're on a wild-goose chase, my lad. The fellow who wrote this is probably dead, and what's the use of it? There's no clue at all. Elgon! My —— you might as well say East Africa and finish with it. If you'll take my advice forget all about it. Besides the Turkana country is closed by the Government.”

“Darn the Government” muttered Dorsay to himself. “All these darn Englishmen seem scared to their eye teeth of the government.”

He retired feeling somewhat damped but nevertheless doggedly determined. He had succeeded in securing a cook, a Mohammedan, a reputable shikari, and an interpreter whose villainous face he did not like at all. However there was nothing to be done but to go straight ahead. He had another man in mind whom he determined to try later.

“There must be something to it,” he pondered sleepily.

When the light was pouring in at the window he thought he was still dreaming for a familiar voice was saying:

“I say, wake up young man—Beffert!”

Beside his bed stood the little doctor, grinning at him.

“Hullo, doctor,” said Dorsay drowsily. “You've come down?”

“Yes, I'm coming in with you if you're still game.”

“What! You will! That's great! But why——”

“Oh that ruddy mill bores me,” returned the doctor, “so I decided to come on. Anyway,” he added, “you'd never get through yourself; and I owe your uncle——”

“Cut that out, please!” exclaimed Dorsay, bridling. “If I can't run——”

“That's all right, my boy. Have it any way you like. Get your bath and we'll talk plans over. You haven't been yapping all over the town I hope?”

THE doctor's explanation of why he had changed his mind never was satisfactorily explained—unless it be by his actions before and since; for times out of number had he solemnly declared to the countryside at large that he had given up the trail for good, was now to be depended upon as a practising physician, a farmer, a storekeeper, a lumberman—always with the result that, if some one didn't tempt him back, he took care to tempt himself.

However, under his experienced control the safari was quickly got together.

The quickest approach to the Elgon country was to go up to Kisumu on the lake and start from there, but the doctor, who preferred to travel with donkeys as being easier to control and feed than porters, proposed to visit property he had in the northern Wakikuyu country, which was almost on the trail from Nairobi, where the animals could be obtained. Besides a shooting-party at Nairobi going to Kisumu to start for the Eldama Ravine would be open to suspicion, and the Government officials had quite as much dislike for the eccentric doctor as he had for them. Anyway, he said, there was no particular hurry.

The doctor, as leader of the expedition forbade any elephant-shooting.

However a week out, fate, through the medium of Mahomet, decided that Dorsay's thirst should be slaked. Mahomet, now cook, who had at one time been a syce and seemingly nourished an ambition to be a shikari, expressed in constant appeals to be allowed to accompany them upon their hunt for buck. One afternoon in a district where elephant were exceedingly plentiful the doctor and his Wondorobo hunter and Dorsay and the shikari set out as usual.

About a mile from camp when they were walking through open forest country about a hundred yards apart there came suddenly the report of a rifle followed by the trumpeting of an elephant near to Dorsay.

Wondering from whom the shot could possibly have come, he ran in the direction. As he rounded a great clump of trees he saw in an open glade fifty feet in front of him a slight figure in khaki fleeing madly just ahead of a charging elephant. Vaguely recollecting instructions, he aimed at the base of the uplifted trunk and fired.

As the great beast swerved aside, trumpeting ferociously, Mahomet had the sense to dart away to the right into thick bush. Standing in the middle of the open glade, the elephant winded Dorsay and charged.

As the brute seemed towering above him, Dorsay fired, realizing to his dismay that he had aimed at the mighty chest instead of the brain through the mouth.

He was seized and dashed to the ground. The elephant appeared to be falling upon him. He felt the contracting of the stomach muscle in horror of the coming impact, and wriggled. The wriggle and his slenderness saved his life, for the tusks passed on either side of his body. Then, possibly thinking that he had slain his enemy, the elephant rose, and picking up the body, cast it into a bush.

Stunned by the fall, Dorsay lay on his back, staring at the treetops. Then, the excitement spurring him, he scrambled to his feet and ran through the bush in time to see his quarry, who was leaning against a tree, sink on to the earth.

His second shot had passed through the joint of the foreleg into the lungs.

III

DORSAY had had no bones actually broken. He escaped with only some severe contusions which forced him to forego the hunt and to travel in a hammock for some days.

On the fourth day he had wanted to walk, but the doctor insisted that he had better rest a while longer. However, the doctor was proved wrong by a rhinoceros, which, charging the caravan, put the porters to flight and revealed to Dorsay that his tree-climbing powers had not in the least been impaired nor his injuries so serious as the doctor said they were.

They were now come to where the broken-forested country gives way to rolling plains which eventually run into the waterless tracts of the Nyasso Nyro.

Here, in the midst of a fairly thickly populated district, was the doctor's farm, as he called it, which, like so many East African farms of the period, consisted merely of virgin bush and grazing-land on which were some of the doctor's cattle in charge of a neighboring chief. For the benefit of Dorsay, El Hakkim—as the natives called the doctor—arranged a dance, and an impressive sight it was with the drums going and some thousand warriors, whose naked bodies gleamed with grease and paint, dancing and screaming as they brandished their spears with blades twice as long as bayonets.

They rested there for three days while the doctor paid off the porters, arranged for the donkeys, and selected a dozen warriors whom to their delight he armed with Martini rifles. However, an unexpected delay was occasioned by the chief wizard who, making magic to consult the oracle, reported that the venture was doomed to disaster. Instantly the dozen warriors recanted.

Dorsay, little used to the native, was naturally rather intolerant, particularly when the doctor insisted upon the gravity of the case inasmuch as they might well have to find soldiers elsewhere.

Talking the matter over that night by the camp-fire, the doctor admitted that he was somewhat puzzled; for, as an old hand at the game, he had not forgotten to tickle the palm of the witch-doctor so that he could suitably propitiate the spirits.

There was to be another shauri on the morrow at sunrise. The returning porters were due to leave at the same time, but that did not matter much, as they, at any rate, had the donkeys for transport. Not yet realizing the power of superstition among natives, Dorsay suggested that the doctor use his personal influence with the chief to make the warriors think differently or the wizard alter his interpretation.

“No, my lad,” vetoed the doctor. “Nothing in that. The chief is as scared of the witch-doctor as—well, as kings used to be of black magic. Even if he could persuade 'em to come along they would never be any good.

“First time we struck trouble their hearts would stick to their ribs, as they say, and they'd bolt, believing that the awful things the wizard had said were coming true. No, no, leave it to me. The only way out is to try to hold over for a few days and give the oracle a chance to change its mind—with the assistance of sheep or maybe a calf.”

“You mean some one trying to get at us through the wizard, eh? But who could be doing that here, doc?”

“Dunno, my lad. Maybe just jealousy, or maybe some superstition about the color of your hair for instance. Lesser things than that have slaughtered tribes, as the Bible will tell you if you ever read it. If any one wishes to undersand the Old Testament let him live in Africa.”

IN THE morning Dorsay awoke about the hour of the monkey. Somewhere far away a jackal was yelping dismally; and close by a night bird screeched harshly at regular intervals. He lay still sleepily formulating the fifty-first theory of the origin of the mysterious message which he wore on the aborigine's chain around his neck.

As he glanced through the tent, remarking that the stars were still brilliant, he noticed the canvas flap move. He remarked vaguely that there was no wind. As his eyes grew accustomed to the light he saw his coat, which was hanging on a camp-chair on the other side of the small tent, disappear.

“What the ——” he began and sat up.

He saw something like an enormous snake wriggling across the floor. As it came beneath the light of the stars he caught the gleam of a black body.

He snatched up his revolver, which he kept beneath his pillow, and dived from under the mosquito-bar. Opposite to his was the doctor's tent; to the right their servants' and shikaris'; to the left a zareba of branches and saplings.

He prowled around the encampment but nothing moved. Beginning to doubt whether he had really seen a man or whether he had dreamed it, he returned to the tent. Undoubtedly his coat was gone. Money, he supposed, the thief was after. There had been some thousand rupees in paper, a check-book and some loose cartridges. But the loss of his coat was annoying, in spite of the fact that he, of course, had a spare one. Naturally he related his experience to the doctor at breakfast. The doctor expressed surprize as the Wakikuyu are not very notorious thieves, and concluded that the thief had probably been one of the porters.

After a prolonged indaba the doctor contrived to arrange that they should stop for five days until a new quarter of the moon was due, when the wizard would again consult the oracle.

“BY THE way,” the doctor said that night when, as usual before the camp-fire, he was in a loquacious mood, “I've good news for you, my lad. Talking with Yanganga, I very gently pumped him about the Turkana and tribes around there. Of course these people call 'em shenzi—savages, you know—and he says that they say they have a white god who is, of course, invulnerable and all that. He is, it seems, the spirit of the Elgon Mountain.”

“Oh Lordy!” exclaimed Dorsay delightedly. “Then there is some truth in it, you think?”

“Very weird things are possible in Mother Africa, my son. As a matter of fact, these people here are jealous and think that the Turkana are trying to imitate them, for they too had once a white king. What? Oh, yes, I knew him. As a matter of fact, I made him king. He deserted from a ship in Mombasa and Mahomet! Boy! Whisky—soda! Upesi!”

Older and inured to native ways, the doctor was less impatient than Dorsay. However, they now filled in time with shooting. Dorsay to his delight bagged two elephants and the doctor three; for here they were practically out of touch with the administration, in a district where usually the little man was accustomed to doing as he pleased.

On the fifth day and all night a dance was held in honor of the full moon, and the wizard, after casting his spells, declared that the times were propitious for the start—thanks possibly to the present of a calf. The chosen twelve were in excellent spirits.

Next day the donkeys were loaded up and the caravan started. After twenty-four hours' march the going became uninteresting, for they entered upon a tongue of the stony, waterless desert stretching up from the Nyasso Nyro. The doctor figured on striking the confines of the Turkana country on the sixth day out, traveling fairly hard.

In order to lessen the strain of the passage on man and beast, the doctor decided to make extra marches by night, profiting by the light of the moon; so that, instead of the usual five days to cross the strip of desert, they reached the country where there was sweet water, scrub and a few trees, on the night of the third day. Here they were to halt for twenty-four hours to give the animals time to recuperate and get a square feed.

Toiling for hours every day in the powerful rays of the equatorial sun across an expanse of dazzling white was both tiresome and trying.

The plan proposed by the doctor was that when they reached the first of the Turkana villages where they would have to sue the chief Yamba for permission to enter the country and generally be fumigated in the native way against white men's evil spirits, they would pose as traders wishing to traverse the country peaceably.

As the blood-stained message had failed to give them any hint of the locality, they would work up toward the mountain and judiciously attempt through their own men to discover the whereabouts of the reputed white king who, the doctor thought, would prove to be the writer of the message; or at any rate one who could aid them. Direct question to the natives would seal their lips for good, if it didn't lead to active and instant hostility.

The moon rose that night toward nine o'clock.

The order of march was to leave about nine and march until four or five and camp again for the day, as the animals could make better going in the comparative cool of the night. After that, since they would be getting into an inhabited country, this would be inadvisable lest they provoke an attack by the natives, who might suppose them to be evil spirits of the night.

They had been under way abort two hours. In the lead was the Wondorobo hunter upon whom devolved the duty of selecting the path through the purple and silver of the night.

Following him came Dorsay and the doctor and six of the warriors, their long-bladed spears like white flames in the moonlight. Behind the donkeys, tail to tail, trudged as patiently as only a burro can. In the rear came Mahomet and the personal servants and the remainder of the Wakikuyu men.

As the Wondorobo turned down a shallow donga, or dry watercourse, he suddenly dropped on to his knees with his head to the earth.

“Down! Down! Quick!” whispered the doctor, imitating him.

As he obeyed, Dorsay saw that the Wakikuyu were already flat on the ground.

Doubling back on the trail, the Wondorobo ran like a monkey on all fours. Dorsay heard the doctor swear as the men whispered.

FOR a while Dorsay's untrained ears failed to note anything other than the usual murmuring of the veld. Then, just as the doctor spoke, he caught the faint but unmistakable thud of galloping hoofs.

As the doctor was speaking rapidly in the dialect, Dorsay's momentary bewilderment at the idea of horses in central Africa was solved by the recollection of a story of the doctor's in which it appeared that the Abyssinians and Somalis in mountainous country, who had and could keep horses, were in the habit of raiding south to the confines of the Wakikuyu and Turkana country, for ivory and slaves.

Just as some of the men, in obedience to the doctor's orders, were hustling the donkeys into a herd, came the sound of hoofs striking stones, and the figures of mounted men in what looked like Arab robes broke from a sparse clump of trees silhouetted against the sky.

“Quick!” exclaimed the doctor, throwing himself out flat with his rifle. “Shoot for all you're worth.”

As Dorsay followed his example the doctor's rifle spoke, and there began erratic firing from the Wakikuyu behind them and down the trail, answered by a wild yell.

Dorsay saw three men, one of whom he thought was his bag, tumble off their animals; then a crowd of some twenty were upon them. He was conscious at the same moment of a figure with wild eyes and hair brandishing a spear, looming above him, and of a donkey braying like a Scotch lament over the uproar of shots and yells.

He fired with his revolver and saw the fellow throw up his hands and pitch forward.

The pony swerved violently in full career. A frightened, or wounded, donkey crashed in between them, his loaded panniers knocking him down. As he rose on his knees to get up, slightly stunned, a gun crashed and then a loud yell from the doctor rang in his ears.

Simultaneously arms seized him from behind and he was swung bodily across a saddle-bow. The rifle was wrenched from his grasp.

The concussion had nearly knocked the wind out of him. His long legs were helplessly kicking the air, and he felt the man leaning heavily over his body on to the neck, crushing his stomach on the withers of the horse as it galloped. He gripped a bare leg with his left hand and tried to heave, but he could not get a purchase.

Then, pointing the revolver into the flanks of the horse, he fired.

Instead of dropping the beast bounded convulsively and galloped the faster. The second time the hammer clicked, for it was the last cartridge in the chamber. The plunge of the horse had either startled or nearly unseated the rider, freeing Dorsay's spine for a moment, which gave him opportunity to wriggle round for a hold.

Dropping the useless revolver, he managed to grab an arm and hauled himself up into an embrace of the fellow's neck, preventing the use of either gun or sword by the grip on the shoulders. Both Dorsay's hands were too busily occupied to permit of his reaching for his other revolver.

The Somali was both wiry and powerful. For some two minutes, while the horse raced madly on, Dorsay fought desperately to throw him, but the fellow had either twisted his bare right foot under the stirrup-strap, or cord, or had got a purchase of resistance by sticking a leg in the stirrup.

Suddenly the beast dived on to its nose, throwing both of them. They fell on a patch of long grass. But Dorsay had not relaxed his hold. The fellow wriggled and squirmed like a wildcat. Then, deprived by Dorsay's hug of the use of his arms and the sword—to which he still clung—he bit the other's ear. Maddened by the sharp and excruciating pain, Dorsay let go and crashed his fist into the bronze face. He saw the blood spurt, but at the same time the man wriggled from his left arm's grasp.

For one moment as he got free his back was turned. Dorsay released his hold altogether and leaped on to the shoulders, caught the chin in his cupped hands and jerked with all his might. The snap and collapse were almost simultaneous.

Bloody and hot, Dorsay sat in the moonlight beside a dead horse shot through the lower lobe of the heart and a Somali with a broken neck, listening to the twittering murmur of Central Africa.

IV

DORSAY'S first instinct was to listen for sounds of conflict, but, save for the shrilling of a near-by cricket, all was still. He couldn't be far away, he reckoned—not more than a mile at the most. The country around was lightly timbered but enough to prevent one seeing very far. His ear was lacerated and smarted, but otherwise he was uninjured.

The best way to get back to the scene of the fight and pick up the doctor was to follow the spoor of the horse. He rose and had a look at the Somali, who lay in a crumpled heap on his side with his sword like a streak of quicksilver a few feet away.

He pulled the torn robes over the body and began to hunt for the spoor, wondering what had happened to the doctor. Either, he mused, the Somalis must have been beaten off immediately after that first rush or they had taken the caravan.

Although the soil was soft and sandy the long grass made the hoof-marks difficult to follow, and in the moonlight the sheen of the grass after the passage of a heavy body was almost indistinguishable. Then, on a piece of stony ground, he lost the trail.

He began to cast about in circles, trying to pick it up again, but the fear that if he wandered too far away he might lose it altogether decided him to wait until morning.

He sat down beside a big boulder near a tree. He still had his revolver and a belt full of cartridges and also the Somali's sword. Where he had lost the rifle he could not recollect. He reckoned that, if the caravan had beaten off the raiders, the doctor would surely camp right where he was.

The night was warm. The moon was like a gigantic arc lamp. A bird some way off kept screaming harshly. Presently, as he sat semi-dozing with the loaded revolver on his knees, a slight sound startled him.

In the open glade in front of him appeared the form of a big buck with the twisted horns flat upon his withers; behind him was the herd in full gallop. Again came the noise like a strangled cough which had startled him, and on their heels came swift gray shapes. They looked like wolves but as none are in Africa, Dorsay knew that they must be wild dogs.

The procession passed within a hundred feet of him as if across a film screen.

About an hour later jackals began to yelp not far away. Then above them rose a weird howl ending in a sound like a hoarse scream. The jackals and a hyena had found the two dead bodies.

The air grew fresher as the moon sank. When the foreglare of the sun was crimsoning distant Mount Elgon, Dorsay was up and began to hunt about for the trail, which after some difficulty he found, but only to loose it again a few hundred yards farther on. He adopted the same method of casting in circles, but this time he failed to pick it up. Possibly he had reached the point, he reflected, where he had shot the horse and the beast had darted off at right angles. If that were so he would not be so far away from the scene of the attack as he had reckoned.

He decided to fire three shots in rapid succession, trusting that the doctor would hear and understand—that is, if he were free. The alternative seemed no pleasant situation.

After firing, he climbed a small tree and waited on the lookout. Within twenty minutes he caught the glint of a spear. Presently he saw some. half-dozen natives spread out in hunting fashion, evidently searching.

“Thank the Lord,” he thought, “the doctor's all right. These must have been some of our Wakikuyu friends.”

Then he made out that one was driving a donkey.

“Now, that's mighty thoughtful of the little man,” commented Dorsay. “But what on earth did he send him loaded for?”

He slid down the tree to meet them. As soon as they saw him they promptly dropped into the grass.

“Now, what the—” began Dorsay, and then he realized that they must be strangers who were scared of him. “Now, what am I to do? I suppose if I don't look out they'll skewer me on general principles. Hi!” he shouted, using one of the few Kiswahili words he had already picked up, “Njema! Njema! (Good! Good!)”

Immediately a voice cried back at him from out of the grass. Of course he couldn't understand a word, but taking a chance he yelled:

“Indio! Njema! (Yes! Good!)”

SIX figures rose out of the grass within a spear's throw of him.

“Good Lord,” he thought, “they have had me sure enough. They must have come through the grass like greased snakes.

“Hodi? Njema? Huh?” he inquired, grinning and holding out his left hand.

The six jabbered at him simultaneously. He shook his head.

“No sabee?” Tapping his chest, he added:

“Friend, njema, huh? El Hakkim,”—and pantomimed to represent one looking around for something.

He pointed to the donkey, repeating the doctor's native name, and then touched himself.

“Mine. Sabee?” They stared. He began to imitate a donkey braying and continued tapping his chest. A scared expression flitted across the leader's face, and he tightened his grip on his spear suggestively. Then the donkey lifted up his muzzle and began to bray.

Dorsay stopped the performance, thinking correctly that the natives might suppose he was mad. One pointed toward the distant Elgon and beckoned him to follow. He reflected swiftly. They were too close for him to bring them down before one got home with a spear—that is, unless they bolted at the first shot. But supposing he were rid of them, what could he do? If the doctor had by any mischance been captured or wiped out, he would quickly starve to death in the wilderness unless he could find a village. There did not seem much option, so he grinned pleasantly and gestured, saying—“Lead on, Macduff!”

Macduff, the tallest of the group, each of whom wore six square inches more clothing than the Wakikuyu, led on, and the others, rounding up the donkey, brought up the rear jabbering busily. Once he tried to get them to understand that he was thirsty, but they merely pointed ahead.

As he had no hat he took off his coat and wrapped it around his head as some protection against the equatorial sun. The six hunters—who, Dorsay learned later, while on the trail of some game had been forced to hide from the Somali party and had heard the fight but had not dared approach—led him on for three hours, when they came to an encampment of some fifty men, a small hunting-raiding party of the Turkana of which Dorsay at the time could not know.

It was difficult to determine which created more excitement, the donkey or the white man. They were both conducted inside the zareba. Dorsay was made to sit in the shade of a grass lean-to and given water while some of the leaders gathered about him discussing vociferously, and others began to unload the donkey.

At last one fellow with a tuft of gray wool, who seemed to be a chief, tried to interview him. Dorsay did his best to make the native understand that he was anxious to know the doctor's fate, and, to make it plain that if the doctor had escaped, he wished to rejoin him; but this was too complicated for sign language.

Eventually, as neither could get any of the information he wanted, the chief drew the other men away, and in the middle of the zareba began a lengthy debate regarding the fate, Dorsay supposed, of himself.

Noticing some of them bearing the contents of the donkey's pack, which happened to be one which bore his own clothes and also the terai hat, Dorsay got up and went over. Immediately he approached they formed a circle, jabbering at him excitedly. He pantomimed the lack of a hat, but they had no intention of giving anything up.

“Unless I want to fight the gang for it,” he concluded, “I guess I'd better be good.”

The result of the shauri was evident. Apparently he was of such importance that the hunting-party was to be abandoned, for they began to prepare for the trail.

Two hours after noon they broke camp. Dorsay, to his intense disgust, was compelled to march as before with his coat over his head in lieu of the terai hat, which, save for the six inches of skin, constituted the chief's sole dress, except that, in the lobe of his ear, in the place of the usual copper rings, was stuck Dorsay's safety-razor.

Several others had taken spare shirts and bound the arms round the waist apron fashion. One young man proudly strutted along in a pair of riding-breeches tied around his neck.

Whether they associated these belongings with him personally Dorsay could not guess. He had naturally decided not to give up his remaining gun in any circumstances. But they did not attempt to deprive him of it for a reason unknown to Dorsay, who, of course could have no conception then of a belief that any article actually belonging to a man is impregnated with his being, and therefore that it is mighty dangerous to monkey with a white man's demons—a consistent enough argument if you grant all the premises which the native accepts as indisputable facts.

On the trail he noticed that the very slight baggage, such as food. cooking-gourds, mats, and small tree-cutting adzes, were carried by men who evidently were slaves from another tribe. An hour before sundown they came in fairly thick bush to a water-hole.

The slaves set to work immediately to cut saplings and make a zareba and prepare food; but the hunters merely lolled in the shade, elegantly snuffing and discussing the captive.

Fortunately for Dorsay some of them, less lazy than the others, went out and returned with a couple of buck, and the chief graciously sent the white man a hunk of meat.

The situation which began to try his temper was slightly mitigated by a sense of humor, for when the blankets were divided between the chief and his cronies one man solemnly, rolled himself up in the mosquito net and another in the canvas Wolsey valise.

Dorsay reasoned that the time had not yet come to kick; any attempt to hold them up he was sure—and was right—would have led to a sticky end. He endeavored to recall all that the little doctor had told him regarding the value of patience in dealing with the native. However, the extreme need of sleep soothed him more than anything else; and, stretched out by the communal fire with the revolver tucked inside his shirt for safety, he slumbered until the dawn.

They marched for another two days.

On the morning of the third he saw signs of cultivation, and passed bunches of cattle and several small villages. Mount Elgon now appreciably closer, seemed less imposing because the slopes are very long.

The morning march was longer than usual, It was near to noon when, in the blazing heat in a rolling, lightly timbered country, they came upon native shambas, the size of which suggested a big village. Soon hordes of men, women and children came trooping along the paths from all sides to stare solemnly at a perspiring white man marching with a coat over his head.

The village, Dorsay noticed, was stockaded, whereas the smaller ones had not been; evidently the place of the chief, Tamba.

Inside the barrier were irregular streets of huts with odd chickens, with open beaks, roosting in the shade, and skinny goats dozing. He almost cried out in relief when he saw, seated beside one who was evidently a chief, beneath the shelter which is the village clubhouse, a white man. A wild hope that he would prove to be the doctor died, for the fellow was too big.

Then as he bent beneath the low roof he exclaimed in astonishment.

The man was Dorkin, the Australian lumberman.

V

“GOOD Lord!” ejaculated Dorsay in astonishment. “What on earth are you doing here?”

“Fort it wus yew,” commented Dorkin. “Where's the dotty little doctor?”

“That's what I want to know,” returned Dorsay anxiously. “A Somali party raided us and carried me off, and then these fellows picked me up. Don't they know whether our caravan was wiped out or not?”

“Nope. They come in 'ere and tells the old man they'd captured a white man. I wondered if it was yew, knowing as yew'd be along this wy.”

“Look here,” remarked Dorsay, who was still standing, “can't you get me a chair or something?”

“Ain't no more. But you'd better powwow with this black fella 'ere.”

He indicated the chief in the chair beside him, a fairly big, corpulent man with a big-bore cartridge stuck through an ear.

“But that's it! I can't speak a word.”

Dorsay looked about him, naturally uncomfortable at the idea of sitting on the ground when a native was in a chair, and squatted on the floor.

“If you'll interpret I should like to ask him about sending out to find the doctor.”

Dorkin grinned with his broken teeth.

“Yew gotter ruddy cheek!”

“I have?” demanded Dorsay. “How?”

“Only meant this 'ere black fella thinks e's a big bug,” said Dorkin after a moment's hesitation. “Go on. Wot djer want?”

“Well, tell him that our caravan was attacked and I was carried off. I killed the man, but lost my way and his people found me.

“Tell him I want him to send back to the place near where they found me, and see if the doctor is still there; if not, to find out whether the caravan was wiped out, and if not to follow up the trail and tell the doctor where I am.”

“Want a —— of a lot, doncher?”

“Why, what do you mean?”

“Wotjer going to pay 'im wiv?”

“Oh, we'll pay him as soon as he fetches the caravan here.”

“But if there ain't no caravan?”

“Oh, well, I can buy——”

He hesitated, recollecting the stolen coat with the thousand rupees in the pocket.

“You know me. I suppose you'll sell me some goods?”

Dorkin looked at him and grinned again.

“Orl right, chummie; don't you worry.”

He turned to the chief, who with the crowd of natives had watched every gesture and expression during the conversation.

“O son of Bafala,” began Dorkin, “this white man was the servant of El Hakkim, the doctor, who, he tells me, hath been taken as a slave by the Somalis. At the beginning of the fight he ran away, so that your people found him wandering with his heart still stuck fast to his ribs. As he belongs to an inferior tribe I will keep him unless—” he looked at Dorsay interestedly, watching him, and smiled—“unless the son of Bafala wishes to trade for something for which he knows my belly yearns?”

“O Broken Teeth,” replied the old chief without a vestige of expression on his features, “indeed thy hands are large (generous) but such is not sweet in the eyes of the people who would commune each with his neighbor, saying, 'Is it then that whites are also gods and slaves?'”

“Orl right, old top,” retorted Dorkin, “have it yer own wy. If yer knew as much abart whites as I dew yew wouldn't fink they wus gawds!”

“What does he say?” interrupted Dorsay.

“'Is nibs ses 'e'll send back some men and do wot yer want, but 'e wants a price.”

“Oh, that doesn't matter,” said Dorsay relievedly, “as long as he finds out what's happened to Macnamara. Say, there's another thing. In the fight I lost my helmet, as you see, but these fellows found one of our donkeys which had my kit.

“See the fellow with my safety-razor stuck in his ear? He's wearing my terai hat. He can keep the razor. Guess I'll have to grow a beard anyway.”

Dorkin burst into a guffaw and told the chief that he wished to go to his camp and teach the white slave what he had to do.

“That's orl right, chummie,” he said to Dorsay; “'ell, send it along ter me ternight——”

RATHER annoyed at having to walk with the coat over his head, Dorsay followed Dorkin through the village and to his camp, which was pitched just outside. He suspected, of course, that the blood-stained message had brought Dorkin on the same quest as the doctor and himself. Well,thought Dorsay, he had a perfect right to do so. He hadn't been bound to secrecy.

“It was my own fault for having shown it to him.”

Yet it was annoying, although in his recent plight it didn't seem to matter if there were forty others chasing after the same will-o'-the-wisp.

“By the way,” he remarked as they approached the camp outside the village, “where's your partner, Simpson?”

“Oh, 'im?” replied Dorkin with a note of contempt. “'E's still 'auling lumber. 'E ain't no sport, 'e ain't.”

As Dorsay was wondering what might be Dorkin's definition of a “sport” he continued:

“'Es a regular 'new chum,' that's wot 'e is. I been at the gime too long ter monkey rahnd wiv the like o' 'im.”

“I suppose,” said Dorsay a bit stiffly, “you've come after the same thing as we have—although you said it wasn't worth the game when I showed you the message?”

“Wot d'yew fink! I want ter tawk to yer abaht that. Come in and sit dahn, will yer?”

They had reached his camp, consisting of a green tent and an old military bell tent for his men. As they sat in camp chairs Dorkin remarked suddenly—

“Yew ain't got any guns, 'ave yer?”

“No,” replied Dorsay mendaciously, pulling his coat over the bulge of the revolver beneath his shirt. “Why?”

“Nuffin. I fort p'raps yer wanted one.”

He shouted to one of his men to bring food, lighted a cigar, and turned to Dorsay.

“I s'y, mister, wot d'yew reckon to do?”

“Wait until these people here bring news as to whether the doctor is still alive or not.”

“An' if 'e ain't?”

“I don't know,” said Dorsay slowly. “Go back, I guess, and organize another expedition—to rescue the doctor if he was captured, and to avenge him if he's killed.”

“'Ow yer going ter do that?”

“Why, surely— As I said, you'll surely give me credit enough in goods to get back.”

“Ain't yer got no brass?”

“Well, I haven't on me,” admitted Dorsay. “Naturally I carried some with me; but some son-of-a-gun stole my coat with the cash 'way back at Yananga's.

“Go on!” said Dorkin, and grinned. “When do yer want ter go?”

“As soon as these people bring whatever information they can find. How long do you reckon that ought to be?”

“Ow, I'll 'ave an answer fer yer in four d'ys. 'Ave yer still got that bit o' bloody rag on yer?”

“Why, yes,” said Dorsay, touching the chain about his neck.

“Gaw lumme!” ejaculated Dorkin. “I never fort o' that! I s'y, let me 'ave a look.”

Dorsay detached the chain and unrolled the message. Dorkin snatched and opened.

At that moment one of the village natives approached with a basket of food for sale. Dorkin instantly closed his fist over the rag and swore at him, telling him to go to the other tent where his men were.

“Don't do ter let these swine see too much,” he added to Dorsay, who was wondering at the outburst. “See 'ere,” he continued. “Yew're going after the doctor, ain't yer? Well, yew give me this rag and I'll give yer enough ter get back.”

“But that's no good,” said Dorsay. “I mean it doesn't give any help to find the spot or the man who wrote the message. Why do you want it? You know all there is in it?”

“That's orl right. Let me 'ave it?”

Dorsay looked at him:

“Crafty eyes,” he thought. “Now, what's behind all this? Has he deciphered something which has escaped me or what? No,” he replied aloud. “I'll give you a check—or an order on Nairobi if you like.”

“Fat lot o' good that is to me 'ere.”

“Tell me what you want it for then.”

“Me?” indignantly. “Not much! Jus' sorter want ter 'ave it wiv me—fer luck.”

“So do I,” retorted Dorsay, smiling. “No. I'm sorry, but can't let you have it.”

“Oh, yew won't, won't yer?” said Dorkin with an ugly look. “We'll see abaht that.”

Deliberately he placed the message in his pocket. “Why fer two pins I'll mike them niggers give yer ——”

“Good ——!” interrupted Dorsay, and stared at the boy bearing the food, who was wearing a khaki jacket. “That's my coat!”

He stared for a second at Dorkin, who was grinning at him insolently.

“Why,” he said slowly, “you must have put that man on to steal my coat, to get that message. Is that it? I see.”

“Yew aint getting cross, I 'ope,” demanded Dorkin with a grin.

“I'm liable to,” retorted Dorsay gravely.

“Go on!” decisively.

“As soon as the doctor had left the mill,” continued Dorsay, “you sneaked off and tried to steal a march on us! You're a thief!”

“Look 'ere, yew mind 'oo yer talking to,” blustered Dorkin, who wore his gun in the hip pocket, rising from his chair.

“You put your hands on that gun and——”

DORSAY leaped and struck. Dorkin went backward over the table. As the native servant fled, he came up again like a cat and made a rush, cursing furiously. Dorsay met him with a left, which was partially countered. Dorkin got him with a right on the temple.

A half-hook from Dorsay's right on the jaw jolted him badly, and a left swiftly following brought curses and blood. He ducked, jumped around the fallen table, came again, feinted and succeeded in reaching Dorsay's jaw, which tumbled him on to the bed in back of the tent.

Dorkin drew the gun as Dorsay was on his knees on the bed. Instinctively he jerked the dirty pillow at the man's head. The bullet seared his hip as he sprang from the bed on top of Dorkin.

The two clinched. Dorsay gripped his arm so that he could not aim. Two bullets went into the ground. With a wrench Dorsay managed to twist Dorkin's wrist until he dropped the revolver; then, breaking, Dorsay leaped back and put the whole of his might into one right punch for the jaw. Dorkin went backward over the canvas wash-stand and lay still.

From a distance came cries and shouts, but, without the tent, not a native was to be seen. Dorsay stepped over and recovered the message from the man's pocket. Then picking up the revolver Dorkin had dropped he put Dorkin's terai hat on his own head.

Dorkin took the count and a bit more. As he raised himself on his elbow and saw Dorsay he scrambled to his feet, bent on continuing the fight. He faced the gun and stopped bewilderedly, not realizing that he had been knocked out.

“You sit down and try to behave,” advised Dorsay quietly.

A torrent of language answered him.

“Now quit that. D'you want me to punch you again?”

Dorkin informed him foully that there were several different sorts of white-livered curs. Some of the epithets brought a flush to the young man's face. Dorkin saw it and persevered. Dorsay was well aware of the difficulties of his position and what game Dorkin was playing; but finally a certain reference was insupportable.

“See here Dorkin,” he said with apparent difficulty in speaking, “you've been whipped and you know it, but if you don't understand this I'll surely smash you with my bare hands until you yelp. D'you get me?”

The answer was unprintable.

“Just you walk in front of me to the back of the tent. Your gun's in here on the bed. Now get!”

As Dorsay threw off his coat and Dorkin's terai hat—fortunately the sun was very low—Dorkin obeyed, cursing but game. Dorsay had intended to fight at the rear of the tent, which would shelter them from the village. He noticed two woolly heads peeping out of the bell tent as he walked.

As he turned and threw the revolver on to the bed Dorkin wheeled about like a cat, rushed and planted one blow behind the ear. This treacherous attack maddened Dorsay.

He sprang around, and, seizing the man by the waist, lifted him bodily and threw him.

“Now, you swine, come on!”

Although Dorkin undoubtedly knew how to fight, the contortion of his face reassured Dorsay. This time Dorkin did not rush. He held off for a second or two to recover his breath; but could not, after his kind, avoid wasting more in language. But the hesitation showed that he had at last realized that he was up against no tenderfoot. Dorsay was taller, but his adversary was stockily built and could give him a stone in weight.

Dorkin came prancing up with lowered head and his two fists slightly moving, more like a wrestler than a boxer.

Dorsay leaped, and, using his slightly longer reach, got within Dorkin's guard and smashed him on the nose. Dorkin replied with a nasty kidney punch followed by a whirlwind of body blows, leaped away, and, when Dorsay followed up, clinched.

By an effort Dorsay raised him off his feet again, but failed to throw him. But as he came down he managed to get Dorkin's head into chancery and smashed the face cruelly, intent upon punishing him.

Dorkin retorted with short drives at his kidneys, which made him gasp. As he released him and succeeded in getting clear, Dorkin, covered with blood and spitting teeth, rushed, desperately flailing blows regardless of what further punishment he took.

In the first onslaught Dorsay had received some telling blows on face, head and body, and fought for a chance to put Dorkin out again, knowing well that the man would kill him if he got the chance.

For a few seconds Dorkin's attack was so furious that Dorsay began to doubt how long he could hold him off. Then suddenly Dorkin broke away. Dorsay saw that he was groggy.

“If you've had enough—” he began, dropping his hands.

“I'll kill you, you ——,” spluttered Dorkin, and rushed.

Dorsay had just time to get home with his left and Dorkin dropped and lay still.

THEN Dorsay became aware that around him, forming a large ring, was a crowd of squatting natives, who had watched with curious eyes this strange form of a white man's fight. Dorsay signaled to the boy who was still wearing the stolen jacket to help carry his master.

As Dorsay filled the wash-basin the natives crowded around the door, eager not to miss one action. With the cold water on his face the Australian came to and peered through one eye.

“'Struth,” he spluttered through his bloody mouth, “yer licked me, then?”

“I did,” said Dorsay shortly.

“You ain't no new chum,” Dorkin went on, “for you've licked an ex-welterw'ight of Haustralia. A fair knockaht too, —— me ef it warn't'.”

“Say,” said Dorsay anxiously, “you're not wanting any more, are you?”

The bloody mouth contorted, apparently in a grin. “Crikey, not for me, mite.”

He extended his hand.

“Yew done me fair.”

Dorsay took the hand, and his heart warmed toward him thinking—

“Maybe he is a crook, but he's a darned good sport enough to take a licking.”

VI

AFTER that episode Dorkin appeared to have decided to be reasonable. He called for his servant, and with a grin returned to Dorsay the stolen coat as the delayed meal was brought in.

“All's fair in love and war, y'know,” he said sheepishly, and to Dorsay's surprize produced the thousand rupees from his own wallet. “'Ope yer ain't looking fer a comeback, are yer?”

“We'll cut that out,” retorted Dorsay, “and anyway now you're kind enough to return me my own property, perhaps you'll sell me some goods?”

“Dunno as I mightn't,” admitted Dorkin. “'Ere, I'll tell yer wot I'll do. Yew can 'ave enough for grub and trade-goods and I'll get the bloomin' chief ter tike yer back on the trile ter see if yer can't pick up the dotty little doctor. 'Ow'll that suit? W'ite, I call it.”

Dorsay reflected. What to do without an interpreter he did not know. The suggestion seemed good, for with the protection of the chief's people he might discover from the last camp pretty well what had happened, and at the worst he could continue on to the friendly Wakikuyu people, who were friends of the doctor, and so to Nairobi where he could begin over again.

He regarded Dorkin once more. Although Dorkin certainly was a rough-neck he appeared to bear no malice, and, thought Dorsay, he would be more than pleased to get rid of him, as long as he was not continuing on the search for the supposed ivory cache.

“That's a bet then; but you're goin' to play straight this time, Dorkin?”

A stream of oaths attested to his sincerity.

“Yer know,” he added, “I wus a ruddy fool, I wus. Abaht that there dirty rag, y'know. Sorter got it in me 'ead that it 'ud bring me luck. Course, it ain't no good cep' fer wot it says, and I know that orl right. Then I finks yew're a sorter new chum. But, oh my, I s'y!” he grinned affably. “Yew're a wonder, yew are!”

“Yes,” agreed Dorsay. “I couldn't understand why you seemed to put such a value on it anyway.”

“Oh, I'm like that, I am. Once I gits a hidea in me 'ead, carn't sorter git it aht. Arsk Simpson. E allus says I'm wooden-'eaded. But there, we're chums nah.”

He dived into his “scoff-box” for a bottle of whisky to prove the statement, and afterward began seriously to gather the goods which would be necessary for Dorsay.

“Carn't give yer a tent,” he said; “but, 'ere—” handing out a water-proof sheet—“yer kin mike one o' that till yer git back.”

In the afternoon Dorsay sent up, demanding an interview with the chief, Yamba; but a refusal came back, making an appointment for the following morning.

When twilight came Dorsay began to grow a little uneasy, wondering whether he had better lie awake all night revolver in hand; and later, noticing Dorkin taking some quinin, he wondered whether the Australian had a medicine-case containing opium or any sleeping-powders or poison. But evidently Dorkin had not, for, upon a casual inquiry for some Warburg's tincture, Dorkin swore he had forgotten to bring any.

However, to make sure, Dorsay used his coat as a pillow, although Dorkin, roughly solicitous, made him up a bed on the floor on the other side of the tent.

After dinner Dorkin became garrulous with whisky.

“Rummy, ain't it,” he said once, “me and yew trying ter kill each other off, and 'ere we are a-sittin' as chummy as never was!”

Dorsay agreed dryly that it was, and became astonished when shortly afterward Dorkin relapsed into a semi-maudlin state, insisting upon telling a sentimental story about his old mother who was waiting in Sydney for her darling son to return.

“That's wot mide me do it!” he wailed. “I'm as tender-'earted as a kiddie, I am. Wouldn't 'urt a fly, gorlumme.”

Dorsay grew suspicious. He pretended to doze off, although he had great difficulty in not doing so, for he badly needed a sleep.

For half an hour Dorkin rambled on—

“Yew awike? Ain't sleeping, are yer?”

At last he put out the candle and sank back with a prodigious sigh.

Faintly conscious that a drum up in the village was beating, Dorsay started awake at the creak of the camp-bed. After a slight interval came another creak. But Dorsay noticed that the regular breathing, as of a sleeper, ceased at each creak. As he felt for his gun he caught the faintest gleam from the tent-flap of light on steel.

Holding the gun in one hand, he rose in one motion, dragging the blankets with him, and leaped straight upon the head of the bed, pinioning the man's arm and smothering his head, from which came an oath.

“If you struggle, I'll put a hole through you,” warned Dorsay.

“I ain't doin' nothin',” came the muffled voice. “Wot's the matter wiv yer?”

HAVING heard the light thud of the revolver on the floor, between the bed and the tent-wall, Dorsay released him, and pressing the muzzle against his middle, ordered him to light a match.

“Look 'ere, wot're yer plying at?” began Dorkin indignantly. “'Ad a nightmare or somefing? Ain't we chums nah?”

For answer Dorsay retrieved his revolver.

“This time I keep it until we part,” said he sharply, “and you'll either consent to let me tie you up or you'll sit right there till morning.”

Dorkin swore and blustered, but finally, sneering, said he supposed he might as well. Dorsay tied him well, and with the two revolvers and Dorkin's rifle beneath the blankets went peacefully to sleep.

The difficulty of realizing that the springs of action in other people are not necessarily the same motives as one's own is well known to psychologists, and this fact faintly dawned upon Dorsay as they made their way to the village for the interview with the chief.

He began to doubt whether he had not after all made an error in the night; allowed his jumpy nerves to imagine the creaking of the bed and the thud of the falling revolver. Perhaps the latter had just naturally slid off the bed or from under the pillow.

As men of Dorkin's caliber were new to him, Dorsay found it impossible not to credit him with some sense of fair play; also, he very badly wanted to believe, for his own sake, inasmuch as his position was so very much the worse if that were so. Without even sufficient knowledge of the language to ask his way, and little idea at all of the lay of the country, for Dorkin had not supplied him with a map, he was in pretty bad case.

The more he pondered the matter the more he persuaded himself that Dorkin, at any rate, would play the game in interpreting, for the sake of getting him away.

They found the chief Yamba with his elders under the shade of the council club-house.

After the preliminary greetings of native etiquette had been passed and the usual fencing around the actual subject in hand, Dorkin, pointing to Dorsay, began a long harangue, listened to with great attention by the assembled chiefs. Dorsay, wondering what it was all about, noticed that the chief Yamba—he with the big-bore cartridge stuck through his ear—regarded him with the masked curiosity of the native.

After some crude rhetoric, complimenting the chiefs, and principally himself, Dorkin was saying:

“And as for this white man here who is no true brother of mine but an outcast, one driven from his own tribe, disgraced before his people, I deliver him back into thine hands as thou dost desire, O Black Elephant, son of Bafala. By reason of the water which floweth from my heart (pity) have I bestowed upon him a few inconsiderable trifles, which, at thy will, are thine. Let not his magic stick with five voices cause thy heart to stick to thy ribs, for truly are they so bewitched that they will be like the spittle of a jealous woman.

“And so as it seemeth good unto thee, take him away and make him a slave unto thy gods or take his body to make good medicine. For this do I ask of thee but one thing, O great chief; that I may trade peaceably among thy people as thou hast already granted me, and moreover that I be free to wander where I list, seeking to harm none and friendly with thy people of the mountains.”

“What have you said?” inquired Dorsay anxiously, as the corpulent chief solemnly regarded the man who wore his safety-razor for an ear-piece and a shriveled old man wearing three black feathers.

“Don't yew worry abaht it,” returned Dorkin. “I've been tellin' 'im orf proper. 'E's got to tike yew dahn to where they fahnd yer and find that there bloomin' camp jus' as yew says, see?”

“And then?”

“If yer carn't find yer dotty doctor, they'll set yer over on the Nairobi road.”

“Is that true, Dorkin?”

“See me wet!” exclaimed Dorkin, eloquently, spitting on his fingers and wiping them across his throat. “See me dry! Cut me froat if I tell a lie! Swelp me!”

“H'm! Well, what have I got to do now?”

“Yew go along wif them fellas when I beggar orf, and they'll show yer the road.”

“As Broken Teeth hath said, so shall it be,” returned Yamba, the chief. “He shall be free to trade, as we have sworn, throughout our country, even to the mountains where no ivory is——”

“That's where the bloomin' stuff is!” muttered Dorkin. “Wot-O!”

“And with the inferior white man shall we do that which shall seem good unto us.”

“As long as yer keeps 'im busy for a month or two I don't give a —— if yer cuts his bloomin' liver aht,” mumbled Dorkin.

“What did you say?” asked Dorsay.

“Nuffin'! Jigger bitin' me.”

He rose, holding out his hand.

“Good luck, ole top. 'Ope yer git 'ome orl right. Sorry we didn't seem ter 'it it off.”

“If only,” said Dorsay, accepting the hand diffidently, “if only I could talk the lingo! By ——,” he added suddenly, suspicious of the man's grin, “if you've put me in, I'll come back and get you.”

“Don't lose yer 'air, sonny,” jeered Dorkin; and, turning on his heel, he walked back to his camp, leaving Dorsay with his few trade-goods and blankets.

“Is there truth in the son of Bangala that it was this Golden Teeth here who overthrew Broken Teeth?” inquired Yamba of the shriveled sorcerer.

“Aye, truly. He is the greater man, and in him is more strength. Let him be chosen.”

“Be it so,” assented the chief.

“But,” protested Tanka, he of the safety-razor earring, “three gods be stronger than two, as is well known. Let Broken Teeth also be of the sacred band.”

“Thou hast the truth by the ears,” returned Yamba. “Is that not so, O great Mangu?”

“Thou hast spoken,” said the old man.

“Come and feed as thou wilt,” invited Tanka of Dorsay, “and we will make ready.”

Although Dorsay could not comprehend a word, he understood the gesture of invitation; and obeyed.

VII

AS DORSAY followed the man to a hut allotted to him, where he found the goods Dorkin had “sold” him, he experienced, in spite of the bad character which Dorkin had manifested, a distinct regret at leaving him—even turned on the threshold to watch the retreating figure.

There had always been a hope, if a knock-kneed one, that the fellow was interpreting correctly, and the imperative desire that such should be the case was almost as strengthening as a leg-iron.

As he squatted on his haunches with his arms around his knees in the shade of the hut, watching and listening vainly to the chatter of the natives, he became the more depressed, wondering what had really happened to the little doctor, trying to decide whether Dorkin had played him false.

Without any means of communication with the natives, what chance had he? They might, for all he knew to the contrary, be taking him away to massacre, or Heaven knew what. The idea of death suggested the mysterious message written on the charm. Perhaps he, too, was doomed to a similar fate, whatever that was.

He pondered for a long while, trying to discover what motive had caused Dorkin to attempt theft and murder for the sake of the charm. But the more he mused the more puzzled he became. Perhaps after all the man had told the truth when he had confessed, or pretended to confess, that he had got a crazy idea in his head about “the bloody rag.” He had certainly seemed more or less mad, and he was such a liar that one couldn't believe a word he said.

When the sun was about half-way down the western course his former friend, Tanka, who wore the safety-razor, came up and spoke volubly. From his gestures and the presence of some slaves, who proceeded to load themselves with his goods, he gathered they they were about to start.

As they left the village he saw the tail of Dorkin's safari disappearing over a slight rise in the direction of Mount Elgon. The sight gave another tug at his heart.

“Lead on, Gillette,” said he cheerily, and fell in behind the waiting Tanka.

As he had never had any experience of the trail, he had little notion from which direction he had arrived in the village, or what general course he had traveled in company with the doctor. He retained a vague impression that the sun had set more or less ahead of them every evening. Now, it seemed, they were to continue in the same direction, parallel to Mount Elgon.

The more he pondered on the question the less certain he became, after the fashion of one lost in the desert. At length he decided to object and try to draw conclusions from the man's demeanor. Then what he thought was a brilliant idea struck him. Surely they would understand the word hakkim—doctor. He stopped and called—

“Hey, you—Gillette!”

Tanka, the chief with the safety-razor in his ear, turned about as if he really knew his name. Dorsay pointed down the trail they were following, and made a vigorous negative sign, and then, indicating the south, said repeatedly—

“Hakkim, hakkim. Savee? Hakkim.”

Gillette appeared to be very much interested. The slight expression of bewilderment which he permitted on the mask of his face faded, and he smiled amiably as if he understood perfectly. He repeated a statement several times in which Dorsay thought he distinguished the same word, hakkim.

Half-persuaded that the man comprehended, he pointed down the trail again, saying interrogatively—

“Hakkim?” and then, pointing south—“which, eh?”

“Hakkim,” repeated Gillette decidedly, gesturing down the trail to the west.

They marched on through some forest country until half an hour before sundown, when they came upon a small village. As before he was given a hut, and very courteously a mess of native food was sent to him. But he had enough of that to last a lifetime.

Then he discovered that Dorkin had omitted to put a can-opener with the provisions. However, after half an hour's hard work he succeeded in opening a portion and scraping out some beef.

THE following day they were off at dawn, and except for a short rest at noon marched all day through dense forest, winding and turning until Dorsay had lost all sense of direction. For three more days the route was continued, never leaving fairly dense forest save for small glades which did not give the inexperienced Dorsay much chance to orientate.

On the fourth day he began to become fidgety and nervous, for he reckoned that by now they should be approaching the camp where the Somalis had attacked them.

He could not recollect such continuous thick timber on the journey from that spot; yet that, he argued, did not necessarily mean they were not making in that direction. There might very well be many other trails. But the observation made him more uneasy, and he noticed that the undergrowth was growing less dense and the ground more rocky. Several times he expostulated, pointing and saying—

“Hakkim?” But each time Gillette talked amiably and repeated the word as if he quite understood what was meant.

That evening they camped in the open in a zareba which the slaves made. During the night he was very much conscious of cold, and at dawn when he sat up he remarked with a shock that the blanket was stiff and the grass white with hoar-frost.

“My Lordy!” he muttered, rubbing his blue hands: “This is like the climate at the doctor's place, El Bergon.”

He stared blankly at the group of natives squatting around their fire and added—

“Good Heavens, we must be half-way up Mount Elgon!”

The inference startled him. He had been deceived. They had been traveling in the opposite direction from the last camp of the doctor, where Dorkin had promised they should guide him.. Even, instead of traveling west parallel to the mountain, as he had once suspected, evidently they had, under cover of the forest, made straight north for the mountain.

Why, why had he trusted the word of that blackguard? He had known that he was a shameless liar—should have known that he had been lying all the time. Where were his captors leading him?

He started to his feet in momentary panic, his hand upon his revolver. He was determined to be understood and obeyed.

Then he paused. What could he do? He could not communicate one word. Flourishing a gun wouldn't do any good; might scare them into reprisals.

And again, how was he to know where the doctor was? Perhaps he might be around. Perhaps, after all, they were conducting him to the doctor, who would not have stopped in camp forever.

Doubt and the realization of his impotence made him wish to cry or swear with rage; he didn't care which. Soberly he decided that the best thing to do was to wait and see what was going to happen.

With his faculties of observation sharpened by anxiety, he remarked that the sun rose above the forest at twenty past six. Allowing for the fact that they were very nearly on the equator he estimated from the approximate height of the trees that they must be on the northeastern slope of the mountain. As they started on the trail again, he demanded perfunctorily of Gillette—

“Hakkim?”

In the eyes of Tanka seemed to lurk a subtle sense of amusement as he politely repeated the word.

“Good Lord,” reflected Dorsay with misgiving, “I wonder whether he does understand, or whether he thinks the word is some sort of magic or a white man's greeting? Heaven knows the way these minds work.”

For lack of any other feasible plan, he followed docilely. Half an hour farther on they passed an abandoned zareba, by the dead fire of which Dorsay caught the gleam of an empty sardine-can. The sight cheered him. Perhaps the doctor had passed. Anyway a white man had camped there.

The aspect of the country changed.

The forest thinned; granite boulders and outcroppings of rock streaked with quartz peeped above the sparse grass. Soon they were traversing open rolling downs. Ahead of them was a series of ragged escarpments and the blue of the mountain summits beyond.

At this sight Dorsay had another strong instinct to rebel. But the recollection of the sardine-can and the inability to formulate any feasible plan of action suppressed the desire. Instead of resting as usual the safari continued on through the heat.

About four he saw light smoke amid hummocky rocks. Presently they came to a village, a small one, but stockaded. As they conducted him to a hut he looked around vainly for signs of a white man.

Toward sundown a drum began to beat, and after dark he saw the flicker of many fires somewhere in the center of the village and heard the natives chanting. He pondered for a while, and then decided to investigate.

The village about him he found deserted. He made toward the light and sound. He could distinguish dimly in the night the silhouettes of men, forms prancing against the orange of fires.

Within a few more spaces he came up against a heavy palisade of ivory tusks. In spite of the danger and the uncertainty of his fate the thrill of treasure smote him lightly. Dorkin, he reflected, evidently had known what he had been talking about. Then a new idea struck him. Could the writer of the message be imprisoned here? Was this the “buried goods?”

The doctor had said that it would probably turn out to be ivory. Yet these tusks could scarcely be said to be buried. But the man, where was he? And “goods” or “gods,” what had that meant?

In the center of the enclosure he saw a solitary tree with great boughs, having either falling branches like willows or creepers reaching the ground, forming a canopy within which he could discern, dimly seated upon a stool, the form of a man whom he knew to be Tanka by the glint of the fire on his safety-razor earring. Around and about the fires in the front circled and capered three men with three feathers stuck in the wool of each head.

AROUND the three witch-doctors, one of whom he recognized by the peculiar tufts of hair upon his face as the man who had been present at the shauri with the supreme chief, Yamba, were the villagers and the members of the safari grouped upon their haunches, grunting in chorus. Dorsay watched interestedly.

The three performers suddenly dropped flat upon their stomachs, facing the lone tree as simultaneously the drums ceased. A silence of several moments was broken only by the bleat of a kid. As Dorsay was wondering what the interruption portended, he observed that the eldest of the three was squirming forward toward something which had been placed, presumedly by Tanka, within the tree, upon the ground.

Mangu, the head witch-doctor, seized and raised the object in his hands.

Dorsay caught the glint of light on metal, and then with a thrill recognized by the shape of the brass cylinder a compass which had belonged to the little doctor. But his first conclusion that Macnamara must be somewhere around was dissipated by the reflection that perhaps they might have got it from his body or from the Somalis.

Evidently by the movement of the needle upon the disk it was taken by the savages to be alive, for, gingerly placing the compass in the full light of the nearest fire, the three crouched around it, and, pointing fingers, shouted something which inspired the crowd with awe.

During another silence the three men bent over the small cylinder as if consulting an oracle. Then, one, peering close above the glass, suddenly sprang to his feet and pointed in the direction in which Dorsay was standing outside the palisade. Instantly half the squatting natives beyond the fires leaped up and, rushing to the gate, raced around the ivory fence toward him.

As he faced the advancing throng, rather uncertain what he should do, they set up a terrific howl at the sight of him, echoed triumphantly by the three doctors, who immediately began cavorting around the compass, which they evidently believed had revealed the presence of the stranger. With his hand inside his shirt upon the revolver, Dorsay, knowing not what else to do, suffered them to lead him around the palisade and into the enclosure.

As he advanced toward the tree, to his astonishment the three witch-doctors ceased their howling and in unison with Tanka, who had remained seated within the canopy of the tree, threw themselves flat upon their faces before him. Bewildered at this maneuver he half turned to find that he was the only individual within the enclosure who was erect upon his feet.

“Good Lordy,” thought he with a thrill of relief, “they must take the doctor's compass for some kind of an oracle which they think has pointed me out as a god or something. I wonder if the doc is somewhere around. Almost feel as if I could sense him. Perhaps, after all, he's fixed this business to get me free.”

He gazed around, half expecting to see his deliverer walking out of the shadows. Looking down at the prostrate forms about him and buoyed by expectant hope, Dorsay almost laughed at the ridiculous figure that he felt he cut. But save for the persistent bleating of the kid, which had lost its dam, above the low grunting of the natives, nothing happened.

Suddenly Tanka, his quaint earring gleaming in the light, leaped up, screeching.

Instantly the drums began to beat wildly and everybody scrambled up. Darting forward, the three doctors snatched up three blazing brands from the nearest fire. Tanka, moving swiftly to Dorsay's side, shouted wildly: “Hakkim! Hakkim!” And pointed to the three magicians, who stood as if expecting him to do something.

“Hakkim!” repeated Dorsay exultingly.

Mangu led the way toward the entrance of the palisade. Tanka again excitedly shouted after them: “Hakkim! Hakkim!” mixed up with other words which Dorsay did not understand.

“Wants me to follow,” interpreted Dorsay to himself and, excited by hope, obeyed.

The whole gang, whooping and screeching, followed as far as the stockade of the village. Then across the bare, rocky ground beneath the rising half-moon, went the strange procession.

The three witch-doctors pranced in the van, screeching and capering, their torches lighting the fair man's face as he followed, searching the darkness eagerly for signs of some white man's camp. The grave Tanka brought up the rear. Behind them Dorsay could hear the wild chant of the village people and feel the throb of the drums upon his ear-drums.

“Where the mischief can the camp be here?” he demanded of himself, remarking that the ground was growing steeper every yard. Then he noticed that the lower stars were suddenly shut off, and made out the dense gloom of an escarpment in front.

The next moment the torches gleamed upon the light blue of gneiss rock. The three doctors were screaming their chant and dancing with as much gusto as ever. Dorsay hesitated. Tanka, his eyes gleaming with ferocity or excitement, Dorsay did not know which, loomed beside him, whispering ferociously: “Hakkim! Hakkin!” and pointing ahead.

ONCE more Dorsay found comfort in the word.

“I suppose. it's all right,” he muttered, and walked on to find himself before a fairly large natural door of a cave in the blank wall of rock, into which without hesitation the three doctors pranced. Above them, by the light of the brands, Dorsay saw that the cave was enormous, the yellow light gleaming fantastically on great stalactites and stalagmites.

As he entered, the thrum of the village drums and the chanting was cut off. He followed a dozen yards or more, mazed by the profusion of bizarre effects. The three doctors had cavorted on ahead, seemingly too lost in frenzy to recall his presence at all. Leaping high in the air at every step, their screeching voices hit the roof and came back in a dozen different echoes until the place seemed alive with ghostly screams, and their black bodies and feathers in the flickering lights were like gnomes dodging among the pinnacles of rock. It occurred to him that the doctor surely could not live in a cave. Again he halted.

“Say!” exclaimed Dorsay, prompted by a suspicion that all was not right, as his hand clutched at his revolver. “I'm not going any farther.”

He wheeled. But Tanka was not behind him. Simultaneously the three doctors ceased screeching and the torches, were extinguished. For a few seconds he stood, merely conscious of red lights flitting across the retina of his eyes. The silence and darkness seemed like a flashing blow.

“My God, I'm trapped!” he exclaimed aloud, as the truth struck him.

He listened intently. Hearing a stone rattle, he fired in the direction. The flash and the reverberations blinded and stunned him. He rushed forward angrily. A blow nearly felled him. He put out a hand and touched jagged rock, and, placing his fingers on his face, felt sticky warmth. The appalling suddenness of the change mazed him.

He stood stock still with the revolver clutched in one hand. He grabbed his pocket in a panic lest no matches were left. They rattled reassuringly. But there were not many. Cautiously he struck one, and, holding it in his cupped hand, peered around. The tiny flame was nearly swamped by the depth of the darkness; faintly it lighted a portion of the glistening stalagmite upon which he had bumped his head.

Which way was the cave door? In turning he had lost his bearings. He listened. The silence seemed as dense as the rock about him. He lighted another match, moved, and stopped. No use looking for the door with a light.

He stamped out the match and waited until he thought his eyes were focused to the darkness. Sticking the revolver in his pocket, he began to feel his way slowly. Several times, growing panicky, he lighted a match, only to find trunks of stalagmites which appeared like a forest. He had no idea which way he was going, yet he could not bear to stay still long.

At last—after half an hour or so, he reckoned—while pausing to strain his eyes in the blackness and to listen intently, he thought he saw a glimmer that was lighter than the cave darkness. Not daring to light another match for fear of losing the direction, he blundered on slowly.

Within twenty steps he was sure that he was not mistaken, and in ten more he felt the cooler air of the open. The door seemed to be the same, judging by the size and shape, as that by which he had entered. Then he noticed that he could not see the stars.

There seemed to be a wall in front of him. He looked up. There was a circle of stars as at the top of a shaft.

As he fumbled for the match-box he started at the shuffle of a foot. A voice close beside him giggled shrilly. He wheeled, conscious of goose-flesh, as he hurriedly struck a match.

In the circle of dim light the wild eyes of a white man were peering idiotically at him from out of a shaggy mass of white hair.

Dorsay's nervous fingers dropped the match.

“He, he, he, he!” giggled the man in the gloom.

VIII

THE unexpected vision, following upon the experience in the caves of stalactites, paralyzed Dorsay's faculties. He could merely stare without realizing that the dim figure in the dark was in the realm of reality. The giggling ceased.

He was conscious of hard breathing, the call of some bird a long way off, and the distant thrum of drums. Possibly a few seconds later, although it seemed to him many minutes, his mind started to work again; he realized that the man was not a ghost or a figment of the mind, but an indubitable white man, and he was aware that the fellow stank, a sour acrid smell. He said quietly—

“Who are you, sir?”

The answer was an appalling shriek, and as he involuntarily stepped back a pace he felt the wind of the man's arms. The next instant he had disappeared. Dorsay gazed around, wondering how the creature had so quickly vanished; then conscious of the cave-mouth immediately behind him, sidestepped so that he had his back against solid rock.

He was more nervous and shaken by the uncanny apparition than he had been when he had found himself trapped in the cave of stalagmites.

Holding the revolver in his hand, he tried to pierce the intense gloom of what had appeared to be the bottom of a shaft. In one direction he could make out some mass that seemed lighter than the rock, but too large to be human or animal. Of the stranger he could not distinguish any sign.

“Say, are you there?” he called softly, not wishing to startle the man.

At the third call a gentle giggle came from out the darkness, but from which direction he could not determine. The sound made him shudder.

“Good Lord, he must be mad!” he exclaimed aloud; and again as if in wild assent floated the giggle.

He looked up at the sapphire disc seemingly perforated with holes of brilliant light. The throb of the drums was rhythmic and unceasing. He realized that instead of finding the door by which he had entered he had stumbled into some new kind of a trap which seemed to be the bottom of a, shaft or volcanic blow-out—where probably, he reflected, they had intended that he should be.

But the white man? Was he the man who had written the mysterious message in blood on a piece of torn shirt?

There was no doubt that the fellow was mad now. A renewed slither of a bare foot on rock drew him about swiftly.

“Say, you!” he shouted. “I'm a white man.”

The loud tones flew back at him in echo, mingling with another soft giggle.

“Don't do that!” he said sharply.

The answer was a shriek, which was echoed in a dozen muffled responses, revealing that the man was within the cave.

“My voice seems to irritate him,” reflected Dorsay. “Better keep quiet till dawn.”

He wondered what the time was, but decided not to light a match lest the flame excite the stranger. Holding the gun in his right hand, he began to edge along the wall of rock, feeling with his left. The wall was seemingly circular.

A few yards away he stumbled over something on the floor which rattled.

“He, he, he!” came the giggle from the other side of him.

“Go away or I'll shoot!” exclaimed Dorsay, startled at what he thought for a moment was another maniac.

“I'll shoot!” returned the mocking single echo, followed by a wild screech thrown back in turn.

Came the slither of bare feet on rock, and all was quiet again. Dorsay sank down cautiously on to his haunches, deciding not to move until he could see. Squatting with his back against the rock, he tried to puzzle out where he could be and what was about to happen. If this creature was the man who had written the message he must since have gone mad. Why?

The possibilities suggested were not pleasant. If this man had never succeeded in escaping, how could he expect to? But was there more than one man? What did the natives intend? Why should they imprison a white man in the bottom of a hole until he went mad? What did they gain? Was this the god the little doctor had spoken of, whom the Turkana were reputed to have? But a mad god—in a hole, kept in a pit like a bear?

He recollected the story of the man who had been king or god of the Wakikuyu, but he had been practically free, living like a great chief among them. Macnamara had told him that he could have no idea of the practises of which savages were capable, of the strange rites which their fantastic beliefs caused them to carry out.

The night was chilly, but Dorsay felt colder still within. Imagination began to suggest dreadful manners in which this wreck of a white had become insane.

“Not that,” he muttered, tightening his grip on the haft of his gun.

Yet one couldn't— Perhaps the other fellow——

A soft giggle nearer to him seemed to pinch the valves of his heart.

“All right,” he said soothingly, and stopped to clear his throat. “That's all right.”

The man whined like a dog.

“Oh, ——,” muttered Dorsay, stirring uneasily, “I shall go crazy before dawn if he goes on like that.”

He looked up anxiously at the stars. A faint glow was staining one side; then he saw by the hue that it was caused by the half-moon mounting toward the zenith.

“I've got to hold myself together,” he told himself sternly. “The day will come some time, and then I can see what I'm doing. Anyway things always look more awful in the night.”

He sat on, gripping his nails into his palm occasionally at the frequent terrible sounds murmuring in the darkness.

AS THE horned moon sailed above the tunnel top he gazed eagerly about in the lesser darkness. The dull mass which he had noticed before, as lighter than the surroundings, glimmered brighter until he made out vaguely a stack of elephant tusks. That, he thought, must be the “buried” ivory or “goods” referred to in the message. The whereabouts of the madman he could not discover, and dared not investigate for fear of exciting him.

Slowly the light faded again, and the stars grew brilliant as the moon passed over the far lip.

Throughout the night the distant drums throbbed continuously. His legs and arms grew stiff with cold and the rigid position; for, every time he moved or coughed the other occupant made terrible whines—or giggled, which was worse. Time seemed to have stopped, but at length the pallor of the old moon was warmed by the flush of sunrise.

His eyes strained eagerly to follow the light, slowly percolating like milk poured into rum, but not until the rim was stained crimson by the sunrise could he distinguish objects clearly. There was no sign of the other occupant, whom he had not heard for some time. The prison he saw to be the bottom of a volcanic shaft, about fifty feet across.

The walls were as perpendicular as a lamp glass. The things he had stumbled upon during the night, which had rattled, were, he saw, the bones of a sheep or a goat.

He rose and walked cautiously across to the great stack of ivory, which contained a thousand tusks at least, worth over a quarter of a million dollars. But he was too occupied with his position to be much excited at the moment.

He stopped cautiously at the edge and looked around. Through the cave door, and the only one, by which he had entered, the white stalactites and stalagmites gleamed in the growing light, suggesting the top and bottom jagged teeth of some terrible beast with its mouth open. Besides refuse and many pieces of broken native calabash blackened by fire, there was nothing on the smooth surface of the shaft bottom.

He continued on around the corner of the stack and stopped. Lying asleep on the hard floor within a crude hut made out of some of the tusks, was the white stranger. Dorsay tiptoed toward him and peered down at him.

The body was that of a big man. The shoulder-blades stuck through the remnant of a striped cotton hunting-shirt like the hips of an old cab-horse. The hair and beard were long, matted and snow white. One claw-like hand, protruding beyond the head, revealed long nails.

In the corner of the primitive shelter was a rifle with the barrel yellow with rust. A jack-knife, broken near the haft, was in another corner, peeping from behind a pile of blackened calabash. Asleep, the face of the man looked peaceful and untroubled.

Rather from the fear of witnessing the lunacy leap into the eyes than from any other consideration, Dorsay withdrew silently. For a moment he stood like a caged bird staring upward at the small circle of paling blue sky above him. He placed one hand over his brow for a moment as if the sight were too painful or brilliant.

He glanced again around the empty floor and at the teeth-staring cave. The rechecking, as it were, of the situation seemed like a heavy burden. He sat down and held his head in his hands and concentrated to marshal all the facts he had as yet observed.

Evidently the other prisoner had either been lowered into the trap or had been lured the same way as he had been. That was evident. The walls were quite twenty-five feet high and utterly unscalable.

Through the door into the cave and out by the way he had come in lay the only hope of escape. Yet why hadn't this poor soul, he asked himself, been able to find that way out? That he hadn't arrived crazy was revealed by the fact that he had been intelligent enough to tear off a bit, or several bits for all he knew, of his striped shirt and somehow heave them out of the shaft—probably by tying them to pieces of broken calabash, surmised Dorsay.

He wondered how long ago that had been. He had no means of even guessing, and the principal could not tell him now. Surely he must have been there for a very long time. One didn't go crazy in a few weeks. Yet——

He jumped to his feet muttering:

“It's no use sitting here. I've just got to find a way out.”

He gave another glance to reassure himself that the other was still sleeping, and then made for the cave door.

“Cave can't be very big,” he added to himself. “Ought to be mighty easy to find the glow of daylight through the other door.”

He made straight ahead, keeping the door behind him; went on until the forest of stalactites and stalagmites shut it out. Then he peered in all directions, but no sign of a glow could he distinguish.

He struck a few of his remaining matches and continued on, telling himself that the reason why the other man had failed was because he had not had light to carry him far enough; he would succeed and come back to rescue the poor soul. The sense of desperation in the depth of his mind prevented him from thinking beyond that open door to the wide world.

Every two matches he stopped, peered, waited to focus his eyes, blundered on, and lighted another. He had meant to use only half the matches in case— The half was gone, and more. Seven remained. But there was no sign of a light.

He sat down in the dark, trying to determine to return.

“Good Lord!” he exclaimed aloud, and a dozen whispers came back to him mockingly.

He searched after and found the thought which had been startled away— Why had he decided to seek straight ahead? He must have already gone farther than he had come during the night. Why, perhaps the missing entrance was to the left—within perhaps a few feet of the tunnel mouth! How foolish!

He rose with renewed hope. Or the right? Ah! Or the left front? Or the right front? Or perhaps there was a passage through which he had blundered in the dark? Or possibly the cave mouth was blocked with stone or some sort of door? Possibilities dashed about in his brain like disturbed bats in an old tower.

“Oh, God!”

“'Od! 'Od! 'Od!”

He clenched his teeth and began again. His feet hit something which tinkled familiarly. He struck the last but one match. He saw the skeleton of a man who had evidently died in the dark, crouched against a stalagmite; already the shoulders were partially coated with the preserving calcium carbonate; beside him was an old-fashioned gun rusty and white.

Dorsay blundered on, doggedly feeling his way.... Distinctly he could make out sunlight, blessed sunlight. He shouted, in spite of the weird echoes, and ran.

The sun was right over the tunnel shaft; and, sitting in the warmth was the lunatic gnawing a bone like an animal.

DORSAY sat down in the sun feeling slightly sick and giddy, yet glad of the heat after the damp of the cave. The man continued gnawing his bone, which Dorsay noticed he had taken from an overset calabash near him, which had contained bits of a half-cooked goat.

But where had the food come from? Evidently it had been lowered from the shaft mouth by the fiber cord attached.

The sight stirred natural hunger and thirst. In the bright sun the man seemed just a poor witless soul who, as Dorsay approached, giggled ingratiatingly. Naively unconscious in his plight of any civilized tricks, Dorsay tore off a piece of meat and bone and began to chew hungrily. The other prisoner grinned and wriggled like a friendly dog.

Watching him as he ate, Dorsay realized that the ghastly shrieks and giggles during the night had had no malicious intent, but were the amicable gambols of a pup. Perhaps somewhere in the blighted man's subconscious mind he recognized Dorsay as a fellow white and wished to express his pleasure in primitive fashion. But the idea depressed Dorsay; for dimly he saw what he too might become some day.

As soon as he had finished eating his bone the fellow scrambled over to a fresh spot in the retreating sun-rays, curled up, and went to sleep.

Dorsay, vainly attempting to work out a solution, sat sadly watching the curve of yellow sunshine mount the eastern side of the tunnel. Try as he would he could not find a feasible method of escape; not even the wildest project.

He eyed the cord by which the food-gourd had been lowered, but the plaited fiber was far too fragile to bear a man's weight even if he could succeed in attaching it to something that would catch on the rim of the tunnel. He had five cartridges in his revolver and twelve in his pocket: the rifle-cartridges still in his belt were, of course, useless. He decided to use nine of the former for as many days, at sunset, in the wild hope that the doctor might be near at hand.

He had visions of lying in wait until the savages came to lower the food, and trying to drop one. But what good would that do should he be successful? That wouldn't help him to get out. He seemed doomed either to die of despair or become insane and live the life of a captive bear.

The other prisoner was still sleeping and continued to do so all the afternoon. Dorsay almost felt violently angry with the man because he had lost his reason and could therefore not give him any information or even the companionship which he craved.

He began to pace up and down the pit like one of the bears he had imagined. At last, feeling thirsty, he went inside the ghostly cave to drink from a pool, when an idea that already he was a primitive animal thrusting his snout into the water, sent him back to retain some of his human dignity with the aid of a broken calabash.

In the cooling of the twilight, for in the bottom of the pit the light lingered longer than the tropical dawning on the surface, the lunatic awoke. Dorsay was squatted in a corner by the stack of ivory.

He noticed that the man looked around expectantly. On seeing him, he giggled, and, shambling across, sat down close to him like a lost cat seeking protection. Yet the friendly action in this creature, with only the resemblance of a human being, made Dorsay shudder.

As soon as dark had fallen the fellow became restless, and, prowling about, began those ghastly giggles and shrieks, seemingly engaged in a monstrous game of hide and seek. A vision of himself, mowing and giggling, joining every night in this horrific play, sent Dorsay pacing to and fro in the darkness unable to tear his eyes from regarding the brilliant stars above.

There were no drums. He passed the night in slow pacing to and fro, feeling as if he was an officer of the watch on the Flying Dutchman, knowing he was doomed never to reach port.

Dorsay was rather astonished at the way in which he became accustomed to the giggling and shrieking of his companion, occupied in a world of primitive imagination, the mystery of which only a child could understand. The practical reason for playing at night and sleeping during the day was manifest to his calmer mind: in the chilly air one required exercise, lacking any method of making a fire or preserving natural heat.

About an hour after the rim of the tunnel had been stained crimson by the unseen sun a calabash containing goat-flesh, two chickens, and a gourd with milk warm from the cow was lowered. But the sight of the food cheered him.

Even his useless project of “dropping one” would have been impossible; for they did not reveal as much as a head, pushing the gourd over the rim most cautiously. Evidently the natives did not trust their gods, if such they were, although they fed them well.

The morning he spent anxiously watching for the first ray of sunlight to reach the bottom of the pit. His “pal,” as he termed the lunatic with a faint smile, revealing the heart of the man in adversity, slept as usual, and he followed suit.

Many days and nights passed as like each other as cigars in a box. He refused to count them—on the same principle that any man who spent his time solely counting the number of possible days to his life would probably become insane, or as a philosophic smoker on a desert island would refuse to calculate how many smokes remained in the one box saved from the wreck.

Rather to his astonishment the fate of the little doctor appeared to have become a dematerialized memory, as indeed had many other facts of life—his mother, probably in Bar Harbor at this time of the year; a married sister, whom he had thought he cared for more than any other in the world, at Salem, N. C.; a lawyer brother in New York; and others. In spite of his will to the contrary concrete facts of life loomed as large as a pyramid in a desert: anxiety that the calabash of food would appear on the skyline; when the first ray of yellow heat would reach a tactile distance; when it would vanish too far up the wall to reach.... He was conscious, too, that he had grown older; that if ever he escaped he would be a man, no longer merely a careless boy bent on seeing something of the world.

But usually he dodged these reflections; deliberately he tried to shut his mind to the future, for a good reason. His attitude was summed up or symbolized by a habit of sitting with clenched jaws regarding the amiable imbecilities of the other man while he repeated as if it were an incantation:

“I've got to hold out. Never become like that. I can do it. I will——”

ILLIMITABLE days and nights were broken one afternoon when the curve of the sun was a man's height above the pit bottom. Dorsay was seated against the wall on the spot where the last ray had disappeared, contemplating the charm, the message written in blood by his pal, who was sleeping in the ivory hut, pondering vaguely upon the strange chance that had caused him to buy that insignificant talisman which had led him into such a dismal plight, when a muffled yell, followed by gnome-like echoes, caused him to stare alarmedly at the cave mouth.

From the ghostly gleaming teeth of the fantastic dragon was erupted the form of Dorkin, bloody-faced and streaming oaths like the disheveled victim of some violent encounter.

IX

DORSAY imagined that he was dreaming. The man stood there blinking in the comparative glare with one hand to his brow, his squat shoulders humped, glaring around the pit bottom like a bull emerging into an arena. He did not see Dorsay, and his eyes were fixed greedily on the great stack of tusks.

An oath ripped from his lips, shattering Dorsay's sense of illusion. Dorsay was conscious of resentment at the intrusion of this person. He rose. Dorkin heard him and wheeled about, drawing up his gun. Then he stopped and stared.

“Blimey!” he ejaculated. “Yew!”

“Yes, I'm here,” answered Dorsay, and, rather surprized at the futility of the question, added—

“What do you want?”

Dorkin scowled and looked suspiciously around. He seemed puzzled and uneasy.

“Wot d'jew want?” he demanded truculently. “'Ow did yer git 'ere, heh?”

“How did you get here?” returned Dorsay, more conscious of practical affairs.

“Me? Why, I came 'ere after the splosh,” said Dorkin with a grin, glancing at the ivory. “Wot djer fink?—Thort yew wus 'ome by now.”

Then he suddenly sidestepped to get the solid wall behind him instead of the cave mouth. Dorsay noticed the maneuver and remarked the swift movements of the furtive eyes.

“The cave!” he muttered to himself. “But how did you get in here?” persisted Dorsay. “Don't you know where you are?”

“Course I do! But 'ow in —— did yew git 'ere? Thats wot I want ter know. See?”

They both had remained standing antagonistically. Dorsay glanced apprehensively—he did not know why—at the ivory hut where the lunatic was lying asleep.

“Well,” said Dorsay patiently with a slight laugh, “I was foolish enough to walk here—apparently as you have done.”

“Wot djer mean? 'Ow long yew been 'ere?

“I don't want to know,” returned Dorsay in a low voice.

Dorkin moved a pace sidewise watching stealthily.

“Wot djer mean?”

“Exactly what I said,” said Dorsay with a sigh. “I don't want to know how long I've been here. Neither will you soon.”

Again Dorkin glanced hurriedly about, as if suspicious of some kind of a trap in the words. Then he regarded Dorsay cunningly.

“Balmy,” he rapped out. “That's what yew are!”

“Not yet. Not yet. Thank God!”

The tone of the voice puzzled Dorkin. He wiped the back of his hand across his beard, which was bloody, and took a step forward irritably.

“'Oo 're gittin' at?”

“No one.”

Dorsay sank down in his favorite place by the wall, as if he were both tired and bored.

“You're a liar and a thief, Dorkin, and a would-be murderer—if you're not already, for all I know—but I wouldn't wish this fate on you even if you did——”

“Wot the —— djer mean?”

Dorkin glanced swiftly at the mouth of the cave as if fearful of something behind him, and, dragging the gun, strode across and bent over Dorsay menacingly.

“Look 'ere, none o' yer lip! Wot djer mean?”

“I mean,” said Dorsay, slowly and tiredly, watching the mounting curve of sunlight on the circular wall, “that you've fallen into a trap, and that you'll never get out. As far as I understand from what the doctor told me these natives think we're kind of gods. Anyway we're fed and kept here like bears in a pit, and here you'll stop until—until— Oh, I don't want to think about that.”

The information percolated slowly into Dorkin's mind. He straightened up. The small eyes blinked. Some knowledge of native ways and legends corroborated Dorsay's statement of the position.

“Garn!” he exploded suddenly. “Scared, that's wot yew are! 'Ow djer get 'ere? From that there cave?”

Dorsay nodded.

“Well, wot's ter stop yer gittin' aht the sime wy, heh? Garn, ye're orf yer crumpet!”

“If you mean I'm crazy already,” returned Dorsay, “you're wrong. Nor do I intend to be, but you will very soon, Dorkin, just the same as that other poor soul.”

Dorkin started, and glanced around.

“Wot!” he exclaimed, “'Nother feller? W'ere? Black feller?... Oh, my——”

At that moment, like a lazy cat, the white-haired lunatic emerged from his hut, and, seeing the stranger, stood and giggled.

At the motion of Dorkin's gun the maniac leaped swiftly and disappeared through the cave mouth, from which echoed a dozen muffled echoes of a derisive shriek.

“Gor,” muttered Dorkin, “'e's orf 'is nut.”

“I told you he was,” reminded Dorsay.

Dorkin looked at Dorsay and back at the cave mouth swiftly. The half-raised rifle quivered slightly.

“Leave that gun alone,” continued Dorsay equably. “He's perfectly harmless.”

“But 'e's balmy,” spluttered Dorkin.

“Am I to shoot you as soon as you go crazy?” demanded Dorsay tetchily.

“Me? Crazy! Wot djer gittin' at? I ain't crazy. I——”

He stopped, glanced suspiciously at the cave mouth and then at the stack of ivory. He looked at Dorsay slowly.

“Gor!” he said, pawed his eyes with the back of his hand and fell to staring at the tusks.

DORSAY watched his pose and the tense strain of the eyes:

“He's had an awful fright and he's trying to bluff,” he observed to himself without interest. “Got lost in the cave, I guess.”

Slowly Dorkin tore his eyes away from the half a million dollars, gazed at Dorsay as if unable to believe that he were really there, and sat down suddenly with the rifle across his knees. He opened his lips to speak and then, glancing nervously at the cave mouth, snapped—

“W'ere's 'e gawn?”

“Don't know.”

“Carnt 'e git aht?”

“I've told you.”

A broken snicker was followed by a shriek and muffled echoes.

“Oh, gor!” exclaimed Dorkin, starting. “Wot's 'e do that fer?”

“He's mad, I told you.”

“Lumme.”

A scared expression came into Dorkin's eyes.

“'Re yew mad, too?”

“Not yet.”

“Crikey, can't stand this.”

Dorkin scrambled to his feet hurriedly, looked toward the cave mouth, hesitated, and then, bending over Dorsay, whispered—

“D'yer fink 'e saw somefing?”

“What did you see?” queried Dorsay with some interest.

“Me? I—I— Is it true wot yer tole me abaht not gittin' aw'y?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Gawd's truf?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“But they tole me the stuff wus in 'ere.”

“Well, it is, isn't it?”

“They tole me I could 'ave it.”

There was a resentful whimper in the voice like a deceived child's.

“Well, there it is.”

“I got bloomin' eyes, ain't I?” retorted Dorkin savagely.

“H'm. Who brought you here, anyway?”

“Some of me own men.”

Dorkin scowled at the recollection and burst out:

“Darned scuts, never can trust a ruddy nigger. That Yamakala—me head man—'e told me 'e got the tip stright from Mangu, the witch-doctor bloke, that the stuff was 'ere. Brought me las' night afore the moon rose. Then when I wus 'arf wy 'e turned and bolted, the mangy swine. Afore I cud let 'im 'ave one, too. In wiv that there streak o' guts ter get me safari.”

“Why didn't you go back after him?”

“Arter 'im?”

Dorkin seemed about to choke with indignation.

“'Ow cud I w'en there wasn't no more light than in the backyard o' ——?”

He paused to shoot a glance at the cave mouth.

“Never see a plice like that afore. Ruddy hawful. But I come on. Tikes somefin' ter stop mé.”

“So you've been in there since last night?”

“Yus, the ruddy 'ole. But I'll git 'im, mark me.”

“Why don't you?”

“Heh?”

He bent lower over Dorsay, as if he had suddenly recollected something he had forgotten.

“But yew s'y as we carn't git aht?”

“That's right,” answered Dorsay, noticing the “we.”

“Garn,” exploded Dorkin with sudden energy. “It ain't true. Oh, haw, there 'e is agine!”

The lunatic had come out of the cave silently and was watching them. Dorsay beckoned to him. He came trotting across with the cringing eyes of a cur fixed on the stranger, and, sidling beside Dorsay, cuddled to him.

This time Dorkin watched him with the awe of the ignorant for the insane. He straightened up, glanced at Dorsay, and bellowed, as if wild with rage:

“Yew're a bloomin' pair of balmies, that's wot yew are. I'm orf.”

He strode toward the cave mouth. On the threshold he stopped to stare at the ivory, walked across and around it, evidently measuring the quantity. Then he turned and shouted:

“Comin' back for this lot, I am, and don't yer ferget it, yer pair of balmies! So long!”

And, turning, he plunged resolutely into the fangs of the ghostly cave.

“I wonder what he's angry with us for?” commented Dorsay aloud, and looked at his pal, who began to snicker softly.

The curve of sunlight shrank up the gorge, blazed upon the eastern rim and disappeared. In the cool the madman awoke and began his nightly game with the shadows and the people of his disordered mind.

Dorsay, who had dozed too, resumed his usual promenade. Although he wondered what had happened to Dorkin the incident seemed very unreal. If there was any definite emotion it was a hope that he wouldn't come back, would escape, anything rather than insist upon dragging him back to terrible reality.

He looked up at the disk of perforated sky. There was no moon now, and the stars were frostily brilliant. The giggles and yells of the madman had become normal to him. When he was fairly warm he would crouch in the hut of ivory and doze for a while until the chill awoke him and then recommence the perpetual promenade. Sometimes the lunatic would fall in beside him and follow like a dog, until, tiring, he would scamper off upon his own mysterious errands.

During one of these moments Dorkin reappeared, Dorsay heard a groaning curse as he stumbled out of the cave. He didn't see his two fellow prisoners, and cried out—

“Oh, my ——, they've gawn!”

“No they haven't,” answered Dorsay, and wanted to laugh; yet he dared not because the madman giggled; but he heard Dorkin's words—

“Oh, thank Gawd!”

Dorkin came toward him eagerly. The lunatic turned a giggle into a shriek, and, darting past him, disappeared into the cave. Dorkin made a gulping noise and collided with Dorsay, who noticed that he was trembling as with an ague. He clutched him by the arm.

“Is it truf?” he whispered hoarsely. “We carn't git aht?”

“I told you so.”

“Yus; but—but——”

He seized Dorsay's arm again.

“I fort I'd never git aht o' that ruddy cave. Never git aht. Oh, ——, it's hawful.”

“Yes; it's worse than this, isn't it?”

“Oh, ——, I—I Look 'ere, I ain't been right wiv yew. I know it. But yew won't leave me, will yer? Swear yer won't? I carn't stand it.”

“I'm not likely to—unfortunately. Say, you'll have to pull yourself together, Dorkin else you'll——”

“Wot's the good? Wot's the ——'s the good?”

He flung himself away and subsided into a corner growling—

“If I git 'old of 'im, ——!”

DORSAY continued pacing, trying not to give way to the thoughts which Dorkin's entry excited in teeming clouds. Dorkin remained crouched against the rock, alternately swearing and groaning. The lunatic, for some reason, kept quiet, gibbering occasionally just within the cave mouth. At last the stars paled. Dorsay noticed that Dorkin had not got his rifle.

“Probably lost it in the cave. So much the better,” he thought, “for he'll get ugly sooner or later.”

When the madman came scampering past him to reach the ivory hut, Dorkin scowled.

“Better have a sleep, Dorkin,” advised Dorsay on his way to the hut. “We're fed about eight.”

Dorkin mumbled unintelligently. Later Dorsay was awakened by revolver-shots. He started up with his mind in a blaze of hope. He saw Dorkin standing in the middle of the pit bottom, jumping with rage and firing wildly above the gourd of food as it was being lowered.

“Its no use doing that,” he called out as the lunatic in a frenzy of fear dashed past him into the cave.

Dorkin wheeled about, and with an oath threatened to “put one” in him if he didn't “hold bis jaw.” At that moment the madman shrieked. Dorkin fired into the cave mouth.

The act infuriated Dorsay. He shouted and rushed at Dorkin. The small eyes were gleaming with mad rage. As Dorkin fired, Dorsay leaped.

The bullet clipped his ear.

This excuse for action seemed to release something in him that had long been tugging for freedom—something which was already loosed in the other man. He grabbed at Dorkin's wrist with one hand and smashed into his face with the other. Dorkin jabbed him in the ribs and brought up his knee at the same time. Dorsay, hurt, gripped the other's neck and, savagely winding a leg around Dorkin's, threw him. The revolver clattered on the rocky floor.

Maddened by pain and disgust and the tearing of the man's teeth, Dorsay exerted every ounce of strength and skill, knowing, more than he had in the previous fight, that the man had become a more dangerous killer through sheer terror.

Once as Dorkin in a heave managed to get atop of him and had his hand upon his windpipe, Dorsay saw, as through a cloud, the form of the lunatic, dancing and giggling about them.

Vainly Dorsay. tried to twist the wrist of the hand whose fingers were around his throat. Abandoning the attempt, he managed to seize Dorkin's other wrist, and, twining his leg between his adversary's, contrived to half-throw him on to his side. Then, swiftly grasping one ankle, by a desperate effort of his spine and body he secured the right leg in a lock. At the first jerk the knee-cap cracked with the strain. Dorkin released his strangling grip.

For several moments, to get his breath, Dorsay held him. Then, changing to an arm-lock, he climbed on top of him.

“See here, Dorkin,” he said thickly, “you've got to do what you're told. Understand that?”

“I wasn't doin' nuffin,” pretended Dorkin sulkily, “till that there ruddy idjit larfed at me, and then you——”

“That'll do!”

Dorsay slid off his opponent's body and seized the revolver.

“Now get up!”

Dorkin obeyed, glancing malevolently at the lunatic, who was standing by the cave mouth ready to seek refuge. Dorsay, ashamed and half-frightened by the animal fury that had possessed him, and partially conscious that he should have killed the killer, stalked over to the food-basket and curtly handed a share to Dorkin. Then, taking the rest, he walked to the cave mouth and called softly to the lunatic. Sitting together, with the revolvers in Dorsay's pockets, Dorsay and the witless one ate their food, while Dorkin sulkily chewed by the edge of the stack of ivory tusks.

THROUGHOUT the day Dorkin refused to speak and remained squatting sullenly by himself, growling and scowling at the lunatic. Realizing that Dorkin would probably try to recover his revolver and that he could not keep awake, always, Dorsay, when going into the cave to drink, hid both Dorkin's weapon and his own.

In the warmth of the middle day and afternoon he slept as usual with the lunatic huddled beside him. When he awakened he knew that Dorkin had tried his pockets for the guns. Dorkin grinned spitefully, said he would “do for” the “gigglin' idjit” and began a systematic search, first among the tusks. When he failed to find the guns he grew vicious, swore continually, and threatened. Once he bawled out with a hysterical note—

“If it wasn't fer yew, yer ——, I wouldn't be in this 'ole; —— yew and yer dotty doctor.”

But watching Dorkin and protecting the lunatic began to tell on Dorsay. He became more nervous, and the continual strain wore down his morale. He grew to hope that some end would come. Then Dorkin developed other symptoms. He would awake screaming and make sudden savage rushes after the witless one. When Dorsay interfered he would retreat, muttering and gibbering unintelligibly.

Every day he would persist in sitting and dozing in the short sun-rays without a hat or covering. Dorsay warned him, but received snarling curses.

“He won't last long,” Dorsay commented that night, “and then he'll try to kill us both. I ought to shoot him,” he added, as a statement of cold fact.

A few days afterward Dorsay—sticking to his first resolution had not counted—was awakened by a scream, felt a heavy body fall upon him and savage hands about his throttle. He knew what was happening and fought desperately. He had scarcely any chance; for Dorkin, taking him when he was asleep had secured a strangle-hold. He writhed and kicked, but Dorkin had pinioned one arm with a thigh and rendered his legs useless by straddling his stomach. Dorkin's thumbs and fingers sank deeper. Dorsay felt his tongue swelling, his lungs bursting, and the pain was like scorching iron pincers in his throat.

Then suddenly came a feeling of concussion. The fingers relaxed, and his aggressor rolled over helplessly. Dorsay sat up, choking and pawing up at his lacerated throat. Through bloodshot eyes he saw mistily that Dorkin was lying still with blood flowing from his skull, and beside him was the lunatic, staring bewilderedly at him. He grew vaguely aware that the dreadful light had gone out of those eyes, as the man placed his hand to his white hair and whispered slowly—

“Who—are—you?”

X

“WHO am I?”

Dorsay repeated the words mechanically.

“Why—”

“And who did that?”

The man pointed to the corpse of Dorkin, the head of which was almost split in two from a blow from a small tusk lying weltering in blood.

“Who did——”

Dorsay stared, still holding his throat. Then he realized the fact that a blow, or the excitement, had restored the man's reason.

“Why you must— But don't you recollect anything? Don't you remember me?”

“You?”

The man passed his hand across his eyes bewilderedly.

“Never saw you before, my dear chap. Er—who are you, and how did you come here—and this?”

“Well, my name is Dorsay Beffert. I'm an American. Those savages brought me here where I found you. This fellow came some days ago. He was a trader after this ivory. I knew him. He tried to shoot you——”

“Shoot me?”

“Yes; but that's days ago. A while ago he tried to strangle me, and you must have felled him with that small tusk there. But don't you recollect anything at all?”

“Nothing,” responded the man incredulously. “The last I remember was— Oh, my God, I got lost in the cave, I think, and—and—I can't remember.”

He held his head with both hands as if trying to recall the past.”

“Who are you?” interposed Dorsay.

“I? I'm Geoffrey Constable. These natives tricked me in here— Oh, I don't know. Last year, I suppose. I don't know. What month is it?”

“Probably July—as far as I know. When did you come here?

“March, nineteen three.”

“Nineteen three! Good Lord, this is nineteen six!”

Geoffrey Constable stared at Dorsay.

“Three years!” he repeated dully. “Three years! My——”

His eyes wandered around the circular wall of their prison and rested at length on the corpse of Dorkin.

“Did I kill this man? Why?”

“Because he tried to kill me in my sleep. You saved my life.”

“I did? Why did he want to kill you? I mean,” he added, “what's the use of killing—anything—here?”

“Quite so,” assented Dorsay soothingly. “But he did. He was going a little crazy. Couldn't stand it, I guess. He was a rough-neck anyway.”

“Rough-neck?”

“Yes; bad-man.”

“Oh.”

Constable gazed at Dorsay musingly.

“Of course you haven't been long here yet, have you? H'm. I suppose I must have become—er—unbalanced. Was I?”

“Yes—slightly. I mean you didn't—didn't seem to recognize me—I mean as a white man,” added Dorsay embarrassedly.

“Oh, really?”

Constable pointed suddenly to the curve of sunlight about seven feet up the wall.

“I remember that. See that ridge? Well, it's twenty-four minutes past three o'clock. I had a watch—at first. By Jove!”

He turned with interest, clutched his wrist, and then began feeling the remnants of his pants where his pockets had been. “I wonder what I've done with it?”

He twiddled meditatively with his long white beard.

“By gad,” he remarked, “rather nice of you to turn up.”

He laughed—sanely.

“Although rough luck, I must say. Haven't any scissors, have you? My hair seems rather long, what? And my beard——”

Pulling the ragged ends, he glanced down, and started violently.

“My ——, it's white!”

Dorsay did not reply.

“Is that true?” he demanded. “Or am I[——?”

“No. It's true—and your hair.”

“And it used to be black!”

His eyes filled with tears. Dorsay looked away. Constable rose to his feet, and began examining his clothes.

“Good ——! Good ——! I remember,” he muttered. “I tore up bits of my shirt and threw them over the crater in a piece of calabash. Oh my ——, how long was that ago!”

“Yes, I know,” responded Dorsay. “I found one. That's what brought me here.”

“Brought you here? What, to rescue me? That was sporting!”

He smiled and held out his hand.

“Thanks, Mr.—er——?”

“Beffert.”

“Mr. Beffert. But where? How?”

“I found it on a native as a charm, and then I came along with a doctor friend of mine, Macnamara——”

“Mac! What! Mac?”

“Yes; do you know him?”

“Where is he?”

“I wish I knew.”

Oblivious, in this excitement, of the weltering corpse of him who had been the unconscious cause of restoring Constable's reason, they talked on for some half an hour or more. Constable, it appeared, had come down from the Sudan, and among the Turkana had been trapped as Dorsay and Dorkin had been.

When he had arrived there had been another white, a Scotchman, McCullough, a dour soul, said Constable, who would never talk and had one day disappeared. Constable had never known whether he had died or had escaped. Dorsay thought of the skeleton he had stumbled upon in the cave.

THEY buried the remains of Dorkin, or rather carried them as far into the cave as they could. They could do no more.

In the society of this man who had endured so much until his brain had given way, Dorsay's desire to live, and courage to think, revived. He would watch Constable sometimes with a kind of awe, recollecting the giggling “thing” which had cringed and cowered for protection. The more he saw of Constable the better he realized how the man had withstood two or three years of solitary confinement in such environment; for as an experienced hunter and exploror he had a fund of mental life and a courage that nothing appeared to be able to daunt.

Days melted into each other Constable so drew Dorsay's attention from the concrete present by stories of exploration and a philosophic presentation of life, founded on his experiences in many lands, that he almost forgot their sorry plight and began to draw, as many a prisoner has done before, a queer pleasure from the effortless life of a caged animal, relieved of the daily struggle for existence.

At length, while pacing in the dark of a moonless night, there came to them a sound that quickened the action of their hearts, yet which was stoppered by a clutching fear of illusion.

“Did you hear that?” whispered Constable as the two stood stockstill in the well of their prison, staring incredulously at the perforated disk of the sky.

“Beff-ert! Are you there?” came a familiar voice from above before Dorsay could reply.

“Yes, yes! Oh, my ——!” shouted Dorsay, hoarsely, almost stifled with emotion and clutching at Constable's arm. “Is that you, doctor?”

“Sssh!” came back warningly, and the faint outline of an arm waved broke the rim of the crater against the frosty stars. “Are you all right?”

“Yes, thank God. But——”

“Alone?”

“No, no. There's a friend of yours here. Geoffrey Constable——”

“What!”

“Hullo, Mac!” chimed in Constable quietly. “How are you? Jolly glad to see you—or rather—” he laughed softly—“jolly glad to hear you!”

“Well, I'm——!” floated gently the voice of the little doctor. “Where the deuce did you pop up from? But, ssh! No time now. Listen. I'll throw you a rope and you'll have to swarm up.”

“Right-o! But half a moment. Anybody with you?”

“A couple of my men and a donkey,” returned Macnamara. “We'll have to break round the mountain for Uganda. Look out!”

Again an arm broke the rim line and a fiber rope wriggled against the stars, the end of which hit the perpendicular sides of the shaft with a smack.

“You go first,” said Dorsay.

“No. But wait,” returned Constable. “I say, Mac, better cover our tracks, hadn't we? We'll rig up a body here to look like one of us asleep so that they won't smell a rat tomorrow morning, what?”

“Good idea, old man,” assented the doctor. “Give us a longer start. But all the same they won't follow farther than the lower slopes for fear of the mountain devil.”

“Right-o! Come on, young-feller-me-lad,” added Constable to Dorsay. “We'll have to lug your dead friend out. It's a nasty job, but he'll sleep just as well here as inside the cave, poor soul.”

XI

BY DAWN the little expedition had gained the northern elbow of the mountain and was hidden by the mist which often dwells around the summit of Mount Elgon.

The going was rough and cold in their slight tropical clothes, particularly for Constable, but they plugged on steadily, warming up in the heat of the rising sun, until about noon, when, reasonably safe from any pursuit, if the natives had discovered their flight, they halted in sight of the plain of Busoga, covered in swamp and forest, beneath them.

“No,” replied the doctor as they sat around the camp-fire, in answer to a long-deferred question regarding the upshot of the Somalis attack. “They wiped out about half my men and got away with three of them and two donkeys.”

“And one perfectly good American,” interrupted Dorsay, smiling. “Don't forget that.”

“I didn't,” asserted the little doctor, grinning like a Scotch terrier. “At first I thought the darned American had kicked the bucket. Anyway I followed up your trail and found your dead friend and the horse. Horse spoor easy enough; but your trail was difficult.

“However, we eventually found the spot where you had met several natives and my donkey. I arrived at Yamba's only a few hours after you and Dorkin had left. Of course, I hadn't the remotest notion who he was. The old man swore you had left together, but I knew he was lying.

“They tried to put me off for some time, and then suddenly came round and offered to lead me straight to you. I smelt a rat. I came to a village not far from the sacred one where they led you out into the trap, and then refused to budge. I suspected something was in the wind, but couldn't make out exactly what.

“Through my men and overhearing one of their shauris I knew that you were near, and that some witch-doctor business was on. I tried to buy the local man, but he tried to double-cross me. By the way, did you see anything of a compass?”

“Surely I did,” assented Dorsay, and related the circumstances.

“Well, I managed to get Mangu,” continued the doctor, “the old fellow and chief of the witch-doctors, to come to see me, and kidded him that this was an extra special piece of magic which would reveal the man whom the gods had appointed and all that sort of thing. Sheer bluff, of course, because I had only a ghost of a notion what I was talking about—guesswork; but I wasn't far wrong.

“You had rotten luck. About four to one against the needle hitting right on you. If it hadn't, it might not have saved you altogether, but at any rate it would have delayed matters.

“Well, that night I heard the caterwauling and guessed that something had gone wrong. I darn't barge in, but had to sit quiet and watch.”

“Then things began to get uncomfortable. A lot of monkey work was going on around. Mangu came later and wanted to lead me straight to my white friend, you or Dorkin. I refused. They would have simply trapped me as well.

“I tried to find out where you were from the local man. Not a bad sort. Wanted like the deuce to have the cattle I offered, but the spirits of his ancestors, and you people in the hole there, scared him stiff.

“However, I learned by piecing together scraps and what not, something of the system, and guessed pretty accurately what had happened. As you probably know, Connie, they mess up the concrete with the abstract; kings same thing as gods in their eyes, you know. But from the little they had seen and heard in those days and since, they knew that the whites were more powerful with their guns and what not than the blacks.

“Then some enterprising witch-doctor must have said, 'Let's have white gods, and so we'll be stronger than any other tribe.' Logical enough; but premises somewhat rocky, what?”

“Yes, I had heard of the system up north and came along to find out all about it. I did,” said Constable dryly.

The two ex-gods laughed, feeling that now they could afford to do so.

“Well, to get along with the yarn,” continued the little doctor, “I started working on that basis. While I was thinking things out Mangu and company began to get ugly. Evidently they wanted to get me safely planted.

“Well, matters got to such a pitch that I saw I eouldn't get out to make up a relief expedition as I had half thought of, and that it was up to me to save my own skin to get yours out, young man.”

“Very nice of you, doctor.”

“H'M,” GRINNED the doctor. “I tell you frankly there was a time when I thought that it was about time to check up accounts for Gabriel and cussed myself for a fool for ever allowing you to kid me into such a mess at my age. Well, they got so jolly nasty generally that Thad to think up something or chuck up the sponge.

“Then my local pal began to get scared of Mangu, and I saw that I couldn't trust him any longer. I saw too that I had to do something to settle matters, and above all to get Mangu and the head witch-doctors out of the light before I would stand a sporting chance of getting near you or of saving myself. Then one, night I heard the drums going and thought that it was for my funeral—it must have been about the time of Dorkin's introduction to the cave from what you say.

“Suddenly I recalled the message written on the charm that had lured us into the untidy mess. I knew very well that any part of a god is sacred. That's why they had made a charm out of your shirt, Connie. I hadn't got a striped shirt, but I tore up a piece of bafta (trade cloth) and faked the blood writing.

“It worked like magic. They were scared to death of me. Let me do pretty well what I liked. I cussed myself for a prince of fools for not having thought of it before.”

“Good Lordy!” exclaimed Dorsay. “Dorkin must have known something of that. That's why he tried to steal my charm and tried to murder me for it! If I had only known!”

“I don't know so much,” demurred Constable. “Had he known, why didn't he fake it as you did, Mac?”

“Too darned stupid, I guess,” put in Dorsay.

“Probably, from what I know of him,” agreed the doctor.

“Say, doc,” continued Dorsay, “what does 'hakkim' mean?”

“In Kiswahili Arabic it means doctor. Why?”

“Oh, that's what I thought and kept on asking Gillette—the guy with my safety razor in his ear—for you by that name. That's how they got me into the cave. He pointed and kept saying, 'hakkim, hakkim,' and I fell for it, thinking he meant you.”

“Oh, but that's not Turkana lingo. Probably he didn't understand a word. But you must always remember that a native is particularly sensitive to suggestion. He regards a white—usually—as a superior being; is scared; and therefore anxious to please.

“You'll remark the same thing in a peasant. If you say, 'This is so,' he'll possibly reply, 'Oh, yes, sir!' On the other hand if you say, 'This isn't so,' he'll as well say, 'Oh, no, sir!'

“But in your case Gillette, as you call him, was probably kidding you—anything to get you into the cave and the trap.”

“That's what I thought—afterward.”

“Evidently that's their game with each one,” commented Constable. “They promised to show me this god—and I bit! Naturally I never suspected that I was intended for part of the menagerie.”

“Yes, they are not such bad psychologists. Roughly speaking, these witch-doctors know human weaknesses and play them for all they're worth. That's their trade after all.”

“Plenty of white witch-doctors, too, who make a good living!” added Constable with a laugh.

“You bet,” assented the doctor, grinning, “otherwise most politicians would be out of a job, what? Well, after I got that magic going they left me alone, gave me permission to go where I liked through the country and all that sort of thing, you know. But I daren't begin any real attempt to rescue you until Mangu et al. had gone home.

“They might be nice to me with what they thought was your shirt-tail in my hands, Connie, but I didn't think they'd stand for monkeying with their gods, what? Well, after that all I could do was to sit tight and wait my chance.

“I think Mangu got jolly wild over the charm business, for it deprived him of an extra god; but he couldn't get over the authenticity, as it were, of the sacred relic. Finally he got peeved and went home cussing. Then my local friend became more friendly and I found out where you were.

“A few days ago most of the village went on a hunting-raiding expedition and I seized my chance. That's all.”

THE three white men sat for a while in silence, staring at the glowing end of a log, occasionally throwing a handful of twigs upon the coals to keep them alight. The air was sharp and cold, and the vastness of the African night seemed to press them closer to the blaze.

The orange glow, lighting up their faces, betrayed three curiously different expressions.

Dorsay, though smug and content with having passed through an experience that would keep the home folks thrilled for years to come, looked like a happy tramp, with his stubby growth of beard, and an old, weather-beaten pipe stuck between his sun-cracked lips.

Constable, with gray patriarchal beard spread over his broad, bony chest, was dreaming terrible dreams. His sunken eyes seemed to look back with increasing horror on the years he had spent in the frightful pit.

Only the little doctor was alert. His small eyes twinkled restlessly, darting frequently at the haggard countenance of his old friend.

“Constable,” he said abruptly, “why didn't you try to get out?”

“Get out?” broke in Dorsay. “It was impossible!

“Impossible,” Constable echoed dully, not having quite grasped the significance of the doctor's words.

“That's rot,” insisted the doctor impatiently. “There were lots of ways—ladder of ivory—make a bit of string to guide you through the tunnel——”

“Oh, oh, I see!” exclaimed Constable sharply as his reawakened brain grasped the query.

Then in a puzzled tone:

“But I did. You must have seen. I was always planning something.”

His face became animated, and his eyes sparkled.

“As soon as I fully realized they had me imprisoned—for life—I set to work to get out. I made tools with my belt-buckle and the nails from my shoes—and I built a ladder of ivory, with the longest, heaviest tusks at the base. It took me over a year; but I did it, and half the time my hands were so raw I could suck the blood from them.

“I spent a full week shifting my ladder into position. When I reached the top—it was shaky and flimsy as straw—my hand came about four feet from the rim of the pit. Of course, I should have gone down again and worked some more. But I'd used up my last scrap of metal. I was desperate. So near the top— I must have gone a bit crazy to be free. I jumped for it.

“The added pressure of that spring snapped the ivory under me. I went crashing all the way down to the bottom. I broke some bones and lost a lot of blood—and must have lain there for two or three days——”

“Didn't the niggers ever know?” exclaimed Dorsay.

“No. They never looked down. Afraid of accidents, I suppose. Afterward I made a shelter of the ivory.”

The Englishman paused, and drew a shaking hand slowly across his forehead.

“Next thing I did,” he continued with a rush, “was to try to explore the cave systematically. I saved the fat from the, goats' meat and made a candle with a wick from the threads of my shirt. Then a cloudburst came and my last few matches were dissolved in mud, leaving only some useless phosphorus.”

“Good Lordy!” exclaimed Dorsay. “I should think you would have gone crazy!”

The Englishman looked fixedly at Dorsay for a moment.

“A couple of times, young fellow, I thought I was——”

“Yes, yes,” said the little doctor impatiently; “get on.”

“Well,” continued Constable, “I preserved the mud and phosphorus in a bit of hollow ivory. Then I raveled my shirt and what remained of my socks and underwear, and spun a long cord with the thread.

“With this I began to trace my way out through the labyrinth. Whenever I came to a doubtful point I'd pick out a bit of stone and smear it with phosphorus; so I left glowing points behind me.

“There's something ruddy awful in groping through a slimy tunnel, black as ——. Not a sound but the infernal drip-drip-drip of the water from the tips of the stalactites. Once in a while I'd barge into a stalactite, and it would collapse with a splash and a sound like the soft wheeze of a river animal.

“There was a little comfort in looking back at the glowing spots of phosphorus; so as I went on I smeared the rocks more and more thickly.

“I had just smudged some on a small round stone like a large volcanic pebble, and had continued on for a few steps, when suddenly I felt absolutely sick. The cord in my hand had parted!

“Water must have soaked through the flimsy thread, and it broke at the first strain. My only hope then was to follow the points of phosphorus immediately, and get back before the glow faded away. By this time I was jumpy and scared—nothing but a bundle of nerves anyway, you know.

“I turned quickly, and began blundering my way back, my heart beating a hundred to the minute.

“And the first thing I saw in the dead blackness in front of me was a skull in a ball of pale flame, with black, empty eyes and gaping mouth grinning at me.

“Of course, it was only the round stone I had smeared with phosphorus. But the shock was too sudden for me to grasp that then. I must have yelled and—and gone a bit—eh—balmy—because I haven't the foggiest notion what happened next until young Beffert here caught me smashing the Australian—the next day—I think it was.”

His voice trailed off, and his eyes remained fixed dully on the coals. His hands stole almost furtively up to the matted beard. Then he scrambled widely to his feet.

“Good ——!” he cried. “It's true, then! It's true!”

His companions looked up, startled and silent. For a moment they could think of nothing to say. Then the tenseness passed from Geoffrey Constable's face.

He faced the darkness with a reckless light blazing in his eyes, and shook his fist in the direction of the Turkana village.

“All right,” he cried. “Six years I've given you! But you'll pay—you'll pay—fifty thousand blinking quid!—a fortune in ivory! Gentlemen, it's ready for us whenever we want to collect. Are you with me?”

And the young American and the grizzled little doctor jumped to their feet with yells of enthusiasm that rang through the night, and stilled—for a moment—the wild, threatening voices of Africa.

“Buried Gods,” copyright, 1921, by Charles Beadle.

Copyright, 1921, by The Ridgway Company, in the United States and Great Britain. All rights reserved.