it. They treated us fine, but kept us on
the jump for a week, movin' from place to place through the jungle. For
another week we were stuck in one o' them pigmy villages. Queerly
enough, they hadn't touched a thing belongin' to us except the guns an'
chop-boxes an' general camp stuff.

"'Bout the end o' the second week they routed us out early one mornin',
highly excited. When we got outside we found the whole village squattin'
around ten new chaps, who were armed wi' trade-guns and seemed to boss
things pretty general. But what struck me was that while they were of
the same size as the rest, they were white."

"White!" exclaimed Mr. Wallace again. His thin cheeks were dashed with
color, and his brilliant eyes showed that he no longer doubted the truth
of Montenay's story. The latter nodded quietly.

"Not white like us," he continued, "but as white as an Arab or
thereabouts. Their faces showed more intelligence than those o' the
blacks, an' they seemed to be overlords o' the--"

"Hold on!" Mr. Wallace broke in with a puzzled frown. "Surely you don't
mean that, Mac! There could be no feudal system of that sort here in the
very heart of Africa! The blacks haven't the brains--"

"Aye, but the whites have!" cried Montenay triumphantly. "These white
pigmies ain't fools by any means, as ye'll see later. Now will ye quit
interruptin' me?"

"Go ahead," laughed Mr. Wallace, and the boys saw that Captain Mac was
really so interested in his own story that he was anxious to lay it
before them without more delay.

"I meant to tell ye this yarn," he went on, "a bit later on, as ye'll
see also. The party o' whites were in command of a young chap named
Mbopo, an' we took to each other first crack. Well, they carried us off
through the jungle for a week's trip. We must ha' been on the edge o'
the pigmy country, for we traveled hard. At every pigmy village Mbopo
seemed to get reports or somethin' o' the kind, an' also tribute in the
way o' slaves. By the end o' the week there were six others besides
oursel's.

"Then we spent a day at the village o' the white pigmies. Man alive, ye
should ha' seen 'em! They seemed to live on the blacks, just like the
blacks live on the big tribes around, an' they lived well. Palm huts, o'
course, but there seemed to be a system o' government that beat
ever'thing I ever saw outside the Zulus.

"We passed through two more o' the white villages, then struck a big
stream an' followed that for a da