h the black heart of this black continent may have been
paralleled by that of other obscure heroes who voyaged from grim
necessity and not for advertisement, but the history of it, as it was
told me in his simple log-book style, far surpasses the wonder of any of
those travels which find a place in published volumes. He had started, a
completely destitute man, from a spot far up on the Haut Congo, amidst
treacherous hostile population. He had not a friend in Africa, black or
white. He had no resources save his tongue, his thews, an empty
revolver, and his mother wit, and yet he had won a slow way down to the
western seaboard through a hundred hostile tribes, where an army would
have been eaten up, and a Marco Polo might well have failed.

It would suit my pleasure finely to write of this terrific journey, with
its dangers, its finesses, and its infinite escapes; it would gratify me
to the quick if I might belaud to the full of my appreciation the
endurance, and the grand resourcefulness, of this little sailor cast so
desperately out of his more native element; but the account of the
travel is reserved for the pen of Captain Kettle himself, and so the
more professional scribe may not poach upon his territory.

I had it from his own lips that the perils of the way made him see the
poetry of it all, and he said to himself that here was the theme for
that great epic, which would be the _chef d'oeuvre_ of his literary
life. It is to be written in blank verse, with the hymns and secular
songs he sang at each stop given in an appendix, and he confidently
hopes that it will stand out as something conspicuous and distinct
against the sombre background of prosaic travel books.

His arrival at the coast was an achievement that made him almost faint
with joy. Xenophon and his ten thousand Greeks hailed the sea, we are
told, with a mighty shout. But to them Thalassa was merely a way-mark, a
sign that they were nearing home. To Kettle it was more, far more,
although he could not define the relationship. He had dwelt upon the sea
the greater part of his days; he had got his meagre living from her; and
although at all times she had been infinitely hard and cruel to him, and
he had cursed her day in and day out with all a seaman's point and
fluency, she had wrapped herself into his being in a way he little
guessed, till separation showed him the truth.

He had seen the glint of her through the trees as he entered this last
village of