t with the rising sun, and the silent life of the forest replaced
the chatter and the hum of human kind. Giant beetles came from every
quarter and carried away pieces of offal; small shy beasts stole out to
gnaw the white bones upon which savage teeth had left but little; a
gaunt hyena, with suspicious looks, snatched at a bone and dashed back
into the jungle. Vultures settled down heavily, and with deliberate air
sought out the foulest refuse.

Then Lucy followed Alec upon his march, with his fighting men and his
long string of porters. They went along a narrow track, pushing their
way through bushes and thorns, or tall rank grass, sometimes with
difficulty forcing through elephant reeds which closed over their heads
and showered the cold dew down on their faces. Sometimes they passed
through villages, with rich soil and extensive population; sometimes
they plunged into heavy forests of gigantic trees, festooned with
creepers, where the silence was unbroken even by the footfall of the
traveller on the bottomless carpet of leaves; sometimes they traversed
vast swamps, hurrying to avoid the deadly fever, and sometimes scrub
jungles, in which as far as the eye could reach was a forest of cactus
and thorn bush. Sometimes they made their way through grassy uplands
with trees as splendid as those of an English park, and sometimes they
toiled painfully along a game-track that ran by the bank of a
swift-rushing river.

At midday a halt was called. The caravan had opened out by then; men who
were sick or had stopped to adjust a load, others who were weak or lazy,
had lagged behind; but at last they were all there; and the rear guard,
perhaps with George in charge of it, whose orders were on no account to
allow a single man to remain behind them, reported that no one was
missing. During the heat of noon they made fires and cooked food.
Presently they set off once more and marched till sundown.

When they reached the place which had been fixed on for camping, a
couple of shots were fired as signals; and soon the natives, men and
women, began to stream in with little baskets of grain or flour, with
potatoes and chickens, and perhaps a pot or two of honey. Very quickly
the tents were pitched, the bed gear arranged, the loads counted and
stacked. The party whose duty it was to construct the _zeriba_ cut down
boughs and dragged them in to form a fence. Each little band of men
selected the site for their bivouac; one went off to col