“You have been a time!” shouted Compton, as the two, hot, red-faced, and tattered, stepped out and straightened themselves up with hands to the small of the back.

“I’m as hungry as three, and have been under a terrific strain to keep from eating the finest and fattest baked ’possum you ever saw.  Come on.”

“’Possum?” said Venning, hurrying forward.  “There are no ’possums in Africa.”

“Well, it’s something.”

“Smells nice.”

“Sit down—­sit down, and we’ll find out what it is afterwards.”

They sat down with sighs of relief, and the “’possum” disappeared without a word being spoken.

“Beggar was eating earth-nuts over there, and I bowled him over with a stick.  See, there’s his skin—­long tail and sharp face.”

“Monkey,” said Mr. Hume.

“Prehensile tail,” muttered Venning, examining that appendage.  “Anyway, it was good.  See anything more?”

“Lots.  One crocodile, and about one million ants and insect things.  Finished your job?”

“We buried the boat on the bank, and you youngsters had better be at great pains to take your bearings, in case anything happens; and for a sign we’ll lash that pole and its bit of rag to the top of a tree.  Up you go, Venning, and make it fast.”

The pole with its dirty flag was lashed to a tall tree, and then they waited for Muata.  The jackal was the first to make its appearance, but the chief was not long after, and the river-man, a few minutes later, looking quite exhausted.  The chief first ate, then he washed, then at last he condescended to take notice of things, and then to give particulars.  He had followed the trail of the cannibals.  It led straight into the forest.  They could follow in the morning.

With the morning came a heavy white mist that made travelling impossible, and all they could do was to wait in the mugginess until, through a window in the sluggish clouds which hung low overhead, the sun shot its rays and sucked up the moisture.  Then they started, and a minute later they were in the silence and the gloom of the most tremendous extent of unbroken wood on the face of the earth—­a Sahara of leaves, stretching away to the east for five hundred miles, and reaching over the same extent north and south.  Trackless, the forest was, to any one not acquainted with its secrets; but there were paths through it, and the villagers had made their own approaches to the main system of thoroughfares, so that the going was not difficult, especially as the direction up to a certain distance had been decided upon by the previous day’s tracking.

They had, however, to walk in single file, with much care to their steps, for the obstacles were ceaseless in the way of trailing vines, saplings, and fallen trees.  The narrow and tortuous avenue they threaded was gloomy in the extreme, affording scarcely any glimpse of the sky, and opening out no vistas between the serried ranks of steins, each clothed in a covering of velvet moss, and all looped together by the parasitical vines, whose boles were often as thick as cables.