ves could bar them, and in another
minute the village street was filled with armed men fighting hand to
hand in an inextricable tangle.

For a few moments the blacks held their ground within the entrance to
the street, but the revolvers, rifles and cutlasses of the Frenchmen
crumpled the native spearmen and struck down the black archers with
their bows halfdrawn.

Soon the battle turned to a wild rout, and then to a grim massacre; for
the French sailors had seen bits of D'Arnot's uniform upon several of
the black warriors who opposed them.

They spared the children and those of the women whom they were not
forced to kill in self-defense, but when at length they stopped,
parting, blood covered and sweating, it was because there lived to
oppose them no single warrior of all the savage village of Mbonga.

Carefully they ransacked every hut and corner of the village, but no
sign of D'Arnot could they find. They questioned the prisoners by
signs, and finally one of the sailors who had served in the French
Congo found that he could make them understand the bastard tongue that
passes for language between the whites and the more degraded tribes of
the coast, but even then they could learn nothing definite regarding
the fate of D'Arnot.

Only excited gestures and expressions of fear could they obtain in
response to their inquiries concerning their fellow; and at last they
became convinced that these were but evidences of the guilt of these
demons who had slaughtered and eaten their comrade two nights before.

At length all hope left them, and they prepared to camp for the night
within the village. The prisoners were herded into three huts where
they were heavily guarded. Sentries were posted at the barred gates,
and finally the village was wrapped in the silence of slumber, except
for the wailing of the native women for their dead.

The next morning they set out upon the return march. Their original
intention had been to burn the village, but this idea was abandoned and
the prisoners were left behind, weeping and moaning, but with roofs to
cover them and a palisade for refuge from the beasts of the jungle.

Slowly the expedition retraced its steps of the preceding day. Ten
loaded hammocks retarded its pace. In eight of them lay the more
seriously wounded, while two swung beneath the weight of the dead.

Clayton and Lieutenant Charpentier brought up the rear of the column;
the Englishman silent in respect for th