and they floated peacefully in a group.

"We had better scuttle them," said Leonard.

"No, Baas," answered Otter, "if we escape we may want them again. Yonder
is the place where we must land," and he pointed to a distant tongue of
marsh. "Let us go with the boats there and make them fast. Perhaps we
may find food in them, and we need food."

The advice was good, and they followed it. Keeping alongside of the
punts and directing them, when necessary, with a push of the paddles,
they reached the point just as the dawn was breaking. Here in a
sheltered bay they found a mooring-place to which they fastened all the
boats with ropes that hung ready. Then they searched the lockers and
to their joy discovered food in plenty, including cooked meat, spirits,
biscuits, bread, and some oranges and bananas. Only those who have been
forced to do without farinaceous food for days or weeks will know what
this abundance meant to them. Leonard thought that he had never eaten a
more delicious meal, or drunk anything so good as the rum and water with
which they washed it down.

They found other things also: rifles, cutlasses and ammunition, and,
better than all, a chest of clothes which had evidently belonged to
the officer or officers of the party. One suit was a kind of uniform
plentifully adorned with gold lace, having tall boots and a broad felt
hat with a white ostrich feather in it to match. Also there were some
long Arab gowns and turbans, the gala clothes of the slave-dealers,
which they took with them in order to appear smart on their return.

But the most valuable find of all was a leather bag in the breeches of
the uniform, containing the sum of the honest gains of the leader of
the party, which he had preferred to keep in his own company even on
his travels. On examination this bag was found to hold something over a
hundred English sovereigns and a dozen or fifteen pieces of Portuguese
gold.

"Now, Baas," said Otter, "this is my word, that we put on these
clothes."

"What for?" asked Leonard.

"For this reason: that should we be seen by the slave-traders they will
think us of their brethren."

The advantages of this step were so obvious that they immediately
adopted it. Thus disguised, with a silk sash round his middle and a
pistol stuck in it, Leonard might well have been mistaken for the most
ferocious of slave-traders.

Otter too looked sufficiently strange, robed as an Arab and wearing a
turban. Being a dwarf,