the man-eaters marked them for their own. In the night they fell on
the village, killed the men, and rested here while they feasted--
rested till the last was eaten; then with the women and the children
they went back. That much the signs tell me."

"Does he mean," asked Venning, in horror, "that they were
cannibals?"

Mr. Hume nodded his head.

"The brutes," muttered Compton, turning white.

"I don't wonder," said Venning, in a whisper. "This place is enough
to breed any horror."

"It will be safe to land," said the chief, quietly.

"But what of the arrow?"

"That was not shot by a man-eater. It was the arrow of a river-man;
maybe the same man loosened it as tied the fetish cloth to the pole,
for one has been here since the man-eaters left."

He put two fingers in his mouth and produced a shrill whistle.

There was no answer; and after a time they all landed to stretch
their legs, but the associations of the place, with those grim
remains of the cannibal feast, were too terrible, and they did not
stay long. As the Okapi resumed her voyage up the sombre defile, a
faint whistle sounded on the opposite bank. Muata replied in the
same fashion, and called out.

Back from the shadows came a quavering answer. Muata called again,
and out from under the roof of leaves, formed by the overhanging
branches, shot a tiny craft, with two men in her. The Okapi slowed
down, and the little canoe, with many a halt, timidly drew near till
the occupants could be clearly seen. One--he who wielded the paddle
--was a young man, black as soot, with a shaggy head of frizzled
wool, and wild, suspicious eyes. The other, who appeared to be
urging the other to more speed, was an old man, whose head was
covered by an Arab fez.

"Peace be with you," said Mr. Hume, in Arab.

"And with you, also," replied the old man, in a thin voice. "Haste,
my son!"--this to the paddler. "They are white men, such as I have
spoken of."

The canoe gradually drew near, and the old man held out a shaking
hand to be helped on board the larger boat; but the wild man
remained in his dug-out. The old man told his story slowly in a
strange dialect understood by Muata, and the purport of it was that
the cannibals had surprised the village at dawn, killed all the men
with the exception of themselves, and had gone off with the women.

It was a familiar story to Muata, and he related it coldly; but his
indifference did not last very long. It was plain that th