tire very for. The stealthy patter of their footfalls seems ever to
increase--to be drawing nearer and nearer.

Hitherto he has shrunk from entering any of the huts; now, however, the
instinct of sheer self-preservation prescribes that course. Selecting
one, a large oblong structure, whose wide low-pitched roof forms a kind
of verandah all round it, he crawls within. But it has no door, and his
strength is not equal to questing about for a substitute for one--
indeed, hardly is he within when he stumbles forward, and sinks to the
ground. The pain of his wounds has become intolerable, a deadly
faintness seizes him--and before his final unconsciousness his hand
closes with convulsive grip upon the skull belonging to a fleshless
skeleton lying there within.

Huge spiders--hairy monsters, the size of a man's hand--crawl over the
prostrate form, then, startled by the instinct that here is life, scurry
back to the shelter of the thatch again. A wicked-looking centipede
draws its shining rings in disgusting length along the ground in the
stripe of moonlight, and flying beetles whirr and buzz in and out of the
doorway; and there, among such surroundings, lies the dying explorer--
his sands of life run out--every object which might meet his failing
gaze, that of loathing and horror and repulsion.

But, outside, the whole place is alive with stealing, skulking shapes.
Here and there a subdued snarl, or some snapping, is audible, but they
are all converging on one point--the structure which as their scent
informs them contains fresh blood; and the pointed ears and bared fangs
of the hideous, blunt-snouted brutes, show plain in the moonlight. And
now the foremost is standing snuffing within the open doorway, while
others are stealing up, by dozens, behind the first.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

THE SCREAM IN THE FOREST.

"How much further to this village of yours, Somala?"

"We are there now, Sidi. What you call one hour's march."

"Always that `one hour' story!"

And the speaker turns away somewhat shortly. The question, put in a
kind of mongrel Swahili dialect, was put shortly and with a touch of
impatience, for the torrid equatorial heat makes men irritable--white
men, at any rate--and the first speaker is a white man. The second is a
negroid Arab, hailing from the island of Pemba.

Through the moonlit forest the long file of men is wending, like a line
of dark ghosts. There are perhaps three score of them, and