aden
skies hanging low. One of these days the three white friends, in
company with Muata, paid a visit to the underground world to obtain
a supply of sulphur to serve as a disinfectant and purifier--another
idea of Venning's. They found the dark passages thundering to the
fall of the water, but they found no signs whatever of living
creatures. With their loads of sulphur they very soon left the
forbidding place, and for some days after the unhappy people of the
village had to submit to the terrors of fumigation. As the
"medicine" was undoubtedly strong, and as it certainly stopped the
progress of sickness that had broken out, the "Spider" rose in the
estimation of the people as a great wizard.

At last the curtains were drawn, the blue of the sky appeared, and
the valley glittered in the brilliant sunlight.

Then the women went singing to their gardens, the men prepared for
the hunt, and the white chiefs got out their shining canoe from its
wrappings, rubbed it with fat, and polished it with wood-ashes till
it shone like a looking-glass.

"Ton will go, then?" said Muata.

"If your men will carry the pieces down to the larger river below
the gates, we will thank you."

The men went off singing, six men to each section, and in the
afternoon the Okapi was once more in her proper element.

"And which way will you go, Ngonyama?"

"We have thought it over during the rains, chief. We will go back
through the open water, back past the place where we landed in the
forest, back into the great river, and then south, even to the
farthest reaches of the Congo, when we shall be among people I know.
There we will get carriers to take the boat to the waters of another
great river, the Zambesi."

"Towards the setting sun," said Muata. "And you will want a man?"

"Two men, we would ask; and one of them, the Angoni warrior, who did
so well in the fight, for his country is to the south."

"Only one man you can have," said the chief, shortly.

They had said their good-bye to the people in the valley, who had
wept at their departure, for the white men had done much for them,
and never before had they borne the visitation of the rains with so
little discomfort.

Now they said good-bye to the chief, the man who had shared so much
of danger with them, whose shield had been their shield, whose spear
had been theirs to command.

It was difficult to say good-bye, for he seemed moody, answered them
in monosyllables, and at last, a