age of others, whereas this savage, reared in the
maternal arms of Nature (that gives and takes, produces and causes
without either deceit or change) was in himself so satisfied with what
she provided and ordered that there would have been no need to make him
learn with his lips a precept that sprang spontaneously from his heart.

* * * * *

My kind reader will perhaps give a shrug of the shoulders at the mere
idea of my having the will to philosophize so soon after such a terrible
adventure. Well, I confess I did not feel inclined to do so after
another which was even more frightful still.

I had left my cabin in the afternoon to go and inspect the works of a
road which I was having made near a little Sakai village, situated at
the foot of a mountain. When I reached the spot I called out loudly, as
was my habit, to give the necessary orders; but nobody answered.
Wondering what it meant I descended to the group of huts which I found
empty and half destroyed. I supposed that Death had stricken one of the
inhabitants and that the others, according to their custom, had
abandoned their dwellings here to erect new ones far from the place
visited by the Evil Spirit.

The discovery vexed me and made me feel rather uneasy, for the sun would
soon be setting and no good could be expected of a several miles march
through the forest, alone, and without a light.

[Illustration: A meeting in celebration of king Edward VII's Coronation.

_p._ 104.]

I ascended with all haste to my previous position in order to find the
path I had come by. The sky was rapidly darkening with the frenzied
dance of heavy black clouds and it was not long before they opened their
flood gates and the rain fell in perfect torrents, accompanied by
dazzling flashes of lightning.

I pushed on as best I was able but under my feet rivers of water were
quickly formed, which cancelled all traces and made me lose my bearings,
whilst the fear of being again lost began to trouble me.

Only too soon I became aware that my inquietude was justified because,
in the meantime, night had fallen and neither the lightning nor my
matches were of any avail in showing me the way I ought to follow.

Then I was seized with that awful anguish I had experienced on the other
occasion and which has so direful an effect upon the spirit as to render
one incapable of even thinking.

I turned this way and that without any notion hardly of what I wa