gle."

They made a detour about the hostile village, and resumed their journey
toward the coast. The boy took much pride in his new weapons and
ornaments. He practiced continually with the spear, throwing it at
some object ahead hour by hour as they traveled their loitering way,
until he gained a proficiency such as only youthful muscles may attain
to speedily. All the while his training went on under the guidance of
Akut. No longer was there a single jungle spoor but was an open book
to the keen eyes of the lad, and those other indefinite spoor that
elude the senses of civilized man and are only partially appreciable to
his savage cousin came to be familiar friends of the eager boy. He
could differentiate the innumerable species of the herbivora by scent,
and he could tell, too, whether an animal was approaching or departing
merely by the waxing or waning strength of its effluvium. Nor did he
need the evidence of his eyes to tell him whether there were two lions
or four up wind,--a hundred yards away or half a mile.

Much of this had Akut taught him, but far more was instinctive
knowledge--a species of strange intuition inherited from his father.
He had come to love the jungle life. The constant battle of wits and
senses against the many deadly foes that lurked by day and by night
along the pathway of the wary and the unwary appealed to the spirit of
adventure which breathes strong in the heart of every red-blooded son
of primordial Adam. Yet, though he loved it, he had not let his
selfish desires outweigh the sense of duty that had brought him to a
realization of the moral wrong which lay beneath the adventurous
escapade that had brought him to Africa. His love of father and mother
was strong within him, too strong to permit unalloyed happiness which
was undoubtedly causing them days of sorrow. And so he held tight to
his determination to find a port upon the coast where he might
communicate with them and receive funds for his return to London.
There he felt sure that he could now persuade his parents to let him
spend at least a portion of his time upon those African estates which
from little careless remarks dropped at home he knew his father
possessed. That would be something, better at least than a lifetime of
the cramped and cloying restrictions of civilization.

And so he was rather contented than otherwise as he made his way in the
direction of the coast, for while he enjoyed the liberty and the sav