stances into being,
trumpeting the tenets of an obscure sect with something very near to
inspiration.

He preached and preached on till the tropical day burned itself out, and
the velvety night came down, and with it the mists from the river. The
negroes of the village, with their heads wrapped up to keep off the
ghosts, shivered as they listened to "dem small whiteman make ju-ju"
across the clearing. Clay listened because he could not get away. He
knew the man well, yes, intimately; he was constantly dealing him out
unpalatable flippancies; but in this new, this exalted mood, he did not
care to do less than give attention.

The man seemed to have changed; his eyes were bright and feverish; his
face was drawn; his voice had lost its shipmaster's brusqueness, and had
acquired the drone of the seaman's shore conventicle. There was no doubt
about his earnestness; in Clay's mind, there was no doubt about the
complications which would ensue from it.

When Dr. Clay lay down on his bed that night, his mind was big with
foreboding. Ever since that entanglement with the woman occurred, which
ruined forever his chance of practicing in England, he had gone his way
with a fine recklessness as to consequences. He had lived for the day,
and the day only; he had got to the lowest peg on the medical scale;
and any change would be an improvement. He carried with him an
incomplete case of instruments, a wire-strung banjo, and a fine taste in
liquor and merriment as stock-in-trade, and if any of the many shapes
which Death assumes in the Congo region came his way, why there he was
ready to journey on.

But during these last weeks a chance had appeared of returning to
England with a decent competency, and he jumped at it with an eagerness
which only those who have at one time or other "gone under" themselves
can appreciate. In effect he had entered into a partnership with Captain
Owen Kettle over a filibustering expedition--although they gave the
thing different names--and from the first their ivory raiding had been
extraordinarily successful. If only they could collect on undisturbed
for another six months at the same rate, and then get their spoils down
to the coast and shipped, the pair of them stepped into a snug
competence at once. But this latest vagary of his partner's seemed to
promise disruption of the whole enterprise. He did not see how Kettle
could possibly carry out this evangelizing scheme, on which he had so
suddenly go