“Out with the big pot and the preserved vegetables,” said Compton.  “We’ll have one big feast, even if we go hungry for a week.”

The pot was got out, water from the lagoon was boiled, strained, and boiled again, then, as each bird was cleaned, it was cut up and placed in the pot, the offal falling to the share of the jackal.  It was a great meal, of soup, game, cabbage, potatoes, onions, and carrots, all mixed up, and when it had been eaten down to the last drop, with a dose of quinine for safety, and a cup of coffee for comfort, they were all shiny and happy.  The oily fat from the birds, which formed a layer on the top while the mess was boiling, had been carefully removed, and when it had cooled, Muata and his mother rubbed it over their faces, necks, arms, and hair until they glistened.

“Well, I’m sugared!” said Compton.

“Fat very good for the skin,” said Muata, showing his teeth.  “You try.”

“Better for the guns, chief.’’

“Wow! and for the big knife;” and the chief polished up his Ghoorka blade, while the boys greased the rifles and stared at the chief’s wife, thinking, as they stared, of the adventures which she had been through since she fled from the kraal of her husband, driven out by the slave-hunters.  They had seen old black women at the villages, wrinkled old crones, phenomenally thin; but this woman was not much wrinkled, and she was not thin.  Neither was she ugly as those others had been, for she carried herself straight, and there was a dignity about her actions whenever she moved her long bare arms.  But they came to the conclusion that she was not a person to sew on buttons, for there was a hard look about the eyes, and the whole cast of the face was set and stem.  It did not seem possible that she could smile, and, remembering the careless laughter of native women, who were amused at anything or nothing, she was a mystery to them.  So they very soon gave up trying to make anything out of her, and turned their attention to the lagoon, which stretched away a good ten miles on either hand to the dark fringe of forest.  Evidently the forest had grown where the shallow waters now were, as the dead trees testified.

“The land has sunk about here,” said Venning, “and underneath there must be a coal-bed in process of formation.  Now, if there were hills around, and a nice clean sand-beach, I should like to spend months here.”

“Too many mosquitoes!”

“Besides,” said Mr. Hume, striking in, “there are hills.”

“Where?  Over there?  Why, that’s a cloud!”

“Perhaps so; but the cloud rests on a hill-top.  Isn’t that so, Muata?”

“Those be the gates to the Place of Rest.”

“By Jimminy!  How far?” This was something to be excited about.

Muata held up five fingers.  “So many suns will rise and set.”

“And does the forest lie in between?”

“Between and beyond.”

“And the Place of Rest, is that forest also?”