hose sounds before--once at night when I was lost in the
jungle, I heard the hairy men of the trees talking among themselves,
and their words were like the words of this white man. I wish that we
had not found him. He is not a man at all--he is a bad spirit, and we
shall have bad luck if we do not let him go," and the fellow rolled his
eyes fearfully toward the jungle.

His companion laughed nervously, and moved away, to repeat the
conversation, with variations and exaggerations, to others of the black
soldiery, so that it was not long before a frightful tale of black
magic and sudden death was woven about the giant prisoner, and had gone
the rounds of the camp.

And deep in the gloomy jungle amidst the darkening shadows of the
falling night a hairy, manlike creature swung swiftly southward upon
some secret mission of his own.

23

A Night of Terror

To Jane Clayton, waiting in the tree where Werper had placed her, it
seemed that the long night would never end, yet end it did at last, and
within an hour of the coming of dawn her spirits leaped with renewed
hope at sight of a solitary horseman approaching along the trail.

The flowing burnoose, with its loose hood, hid both the face and the
figure of the rider; but that it was M. Frecoult the girl well knew,
since he had been garbed as an Arab, and he alone might be expected to
seek her hiding place.

That which she saw relieved the strain of the long night vigil; but
there was much that she did not see. She did not see the black face
beneath the white hood, nor the file of ebon horsemen beyond the
trail's bend riding slowly in the wake of their leader. These things
she did not see at first, and so she leaned downward toward the
approaching rider, a cry of welcome forming in her throat.

At the first word the man looked up, reining in in surprise, and as she
saw the black face of Abdul Mourak, the Abyssinian, she shrank back in
terror among the branches; but it was too late. The man had seen her,
and now he called to her to descend. At first she refused; but when a
dozen black cavalrymen drew up behind their leader, and at Abdul
Mourak's command one of them started to climb the tree after her she
realized that resistance was futile, and came slowly down to stand upon
the ground before this new captor and plead her cause in the name of
justice and humanity.

Angered by recent defeat, and by the loss of the gold, the jewels, and
his prisoners, Ab