mory had hidden from him and which memory was disclosing bit by
bit. And now the march was interrupted as if by a wall set across his
path.

But Adams was of a type of man to whom despondency may be known, but never
despair.

They had marched all day; they were lost, it is true, but they were not
far, now, from Fort M'Bassa. The immediate necessity was rest and food.

There was a little clearing amidst the trees just here, and with his own
hands he raised the tent. They had no fire, but the moon when she rose,
though in her last quarter, lit up the forest around them with a green
glow-worm glimmer. One could see the lianas and the trees, the broad
leaves shining with dew, some bright, some sketched in dimly, and all
bathed in gauze green light; and they could hear the drip and patter of
dew on leaf and branch.

This is a mournful sound--the most mournful of all the sounds that fill
the great forests of the Congo. It is so casual, so tearful. One might
fancy it the sound of the forest weeping to itself in the silence of the
night.

CHAPTER XXVIII

GOD SENDS A GUIDE

To be lost in the desert or in a land like the elephant country is bad,
but to be lost in the dense parts of the tropical forest is far worse.

You are in a horrible labyrinth, a maze, not of intricate paths but of
blinding curtains. I am speaking now of that arrogant jungle, moist and
hot, where life is in full ferment, and where the rubber vine grows and
thrives; where you go knee-deep in slush and catch at a tree-bole to
prevent yourself going farther, cling, sweating at every pore and
shivering like a dog, feeling for firmer ground and finding it, only to be
led on to another quagmire. The bush pig avoids this place, the leopard
shuns it; it is bad in the dry season when the sun gives some light by
day, and the moon a gauzy green glimmer by night, but in the rains it is
terrific. Night, then, is black as the inside of a trunk, and day is so
feeble that your hand, held before your face at arm's length, is just a
shadow. The westward part of the forest of M'Bonga projects a spur of the
pestiferous rubber-bearing land into the isthmus of healthy woods. It was
just at the tip of this spur that Berselius and his party were entangled
and lost.

The two porters were Yandjali men, they knew nothing of these woods, and
were utterly useless as guides; they sat now amidst the leaves near the
tent eating their food; dark shadows in the glow-worm li