where he
and the other man had struck, together with the bones of the latter,
which I recognized by the waist-cloth. Either some beast of prey had
carried Gobo off, or the Matuku people had disposed of his remains, and
also of my express rifle which he carried. At any rate, I never saw or
heard any more of him.

"Once in Wambe's country, we adopted a very circumspect method of
proceeding. About fifty men marched ahead in loose order to guard
against surprise, while as many more followed behind. The remaining
hundred were gathered in a bunch between, and in the centre of these men
I marched, together with the girl who was personating Maiwa, and all my
bearers. We were disarmed, and some of my men were tied together to show
that we were prisoners, while the girl had a blanket thrown over her
head, and moved along with an air of great dejection. We headed straight
for Wambe's place, which was at a distance of about twenty-five miles
from the mountain-pass.

"When we had gone some five miles we met a party of about fifty of
Wambe's soldiers, who were evidently on the look-out for us. They
stopped us, and their captain asked where we were going. The head man
of our party answered that he was conveying Maiwa, Wambe's runaway wife,
together with the white hunter and his men, to be given up to Wambe in
accordance with his command. The captain then wanted to know why we
were so many, to which our spokesman replied that I and my men were very
desperate fellows, and that it was feared that if we were sent with a
smaller escort we should escape, and bring disgrace and the wrath of
Wambe upon their tribe. Thereon this gentleman, the Matuku captain,
began to amuse himself at my expense, and mock me, saying that Wambe
would make me pay for the soldiers whom I had killed. He would put me
into the 'Thing that bites,' in other words, the lion trap, and leave me
there to die like a jackal caught by the leg. I made no answer to this,
though my wrath was great, but pretended to look frightened. Indeed
there was not much pretence about it, I was frightened. I could not
conceal from myself that ours was a most hazardous enterprise, and that
it was very possible that I might make acquaintance with that lion trap
before I was many days older. However, it seemed quite impossible to
desert poor Every in his misfortune, so I had to go on, and trust to
Providence, as I have so often been obliged to do before and since.

"And now a fresh difficul