e necessity of piercing it by physical movement, of putting
tree to tree and mile to mile.

Berselius had not asked questions because, no doubt, he was under the
dominion of a profound instinct, telling him that the past he had lost
could only be recalled by the actual picture of the things he had seen.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE SENTENCE OF THE DESERT

Berselius had not asked a single question as to the catastrophe. His own
misfortune had banished for him, doubtless, all interest in everything
else.

Adams had said to him nothing of Felix, his horrible deeds or his theft of
the rifle. Felix, though he had vanished from Adams's life completely and
forever, had not vanished from the face of the earth. He was very much
alive and doing, and his deeds and his fate are worth a word, for they
formed a tragedy well fitting the stage of this merciless land.

The Zappo Zap, having secured the gun and its ammunition, revelling in the
joy of possession and power, went skipping on his road, which lay to the
northeast. Six miles from the camp he flung himself down by a bush, and,
with the gun covered by his arm, slept, and hunted in his sleep, like a
hound, till dawn.

Then he rose and pursued his way, still travelling northeast, his
bird-like eyes skimming the land and horizon. He sang as he pursued his
way, and his song fitted his filed teeth to a charm. If a poisoned arrow
could sing or a stabbing spear, it would sing what Felix sang as he went,
his long morning shadow stalking behind him; he as soulless and as
heartless as it.

What motive of attachment had driven him to follow Verhaeren to Yandjali
from the Bena Pianga country heaven knows, for the man was quite beyond
the human pale. The elephants were far, far above him in power of love and
kindness; one had to descend straight to the alligators to match him, and
even then one found oneself at fault.

He was not. Those three words alone describe this figure of india-rubber
that could still walk and talk and live and lust, and to whom slaying and
torture were amongst the aesthetics of life.

An hour before noon, beyond and above a clump of trees, he sighted a
moving object. It was the head of a giraffe.

It was the very same bull giraffe that had fled with the elephant herd and
then wheeled away south from it. It was wandering devious now, feeding by
itself, and the instant Felix saw the tell-tale head, he dropped flat to
the ground as if he had been shot. The gir