s this, though they heard the shriek of
despair, for at the moment the negro they were tending was breathing his
last. When his eyes had closed and the spirit had been set free, they
rose, and, purposely refraining from looking back, hurried away from the
dreadful scene, intending to plunge into the swamp at some distance from
the place, and push on until they should regain the head of the column.

"Better if we'd never fallen behind, sir," said Disco, in a deep,
tremulous voice.

"True," replied Harold. "We should have been spared these sights, and
the pain of knowing that we cannot prevent this appalling misery and
cruelty."

"But surely it is to be prevented _somehow_," cried Disco, almost
fiercely. "Many a war that has cost mints o' money has been carried on
for causes that ain't worth mentionin' in the same breath with _this_!"

As Harold knew not what to say, and was toiling knee-deep in the swamp
at the moment he made no reply.

After marching about half an hour he stopped abruptly and said, with a
heavy sigh,--"I hope we haven't missed our way?"

"Hope not sir, but it looks like as if we had."

"I've bin so took up thinkin' o' that accursed traffic in human bein's
that I've lost my reckonin'. Howsever, we can't be far out, an', with
the sun to guide us, we'll--"

He was stopped by a loud halloo in the woods, on the belt of the swamp.

It was repeated in a few seconds, and Antonio, who, with Jumbo, had
followed his master, cried in an excited tone--

"Me knows dat sound!"

"Wot may it be, Tony?" asked Disco.

There was neither time nor need for an answer, for at that moment a
ringing cry, something like a bad imitation of a British cheer, was
heard, and a band of men sprang out of the woods and ran at full speed
towards our Englishmen.

"Why, Zombo!" exclaimed Disco, wildly.

"Oliveira!" cried Harold.

"Masiko! Songolo!" shouted Antonio and Jumbo.

"An' Jose, Nakoda, Chimbolo, Mabruki!--the whole bun' of 'em," cried
Disco, as one after another these worthies emerged from the wood and
rushed in a state of frantic excitement towards their friends--"Hooray!"

"Hooroo-hay!" replied the runners.

In another minute our adventurous party of travellers was re-united, and
for some time nothing but wild excitement, congratulations, queries that
got no replies, and replies that ran tilt at irrelevant queries, with
confusion worse confounded by explosions of unbounded and irrepressible
laughter no