“I don’t much like the look of things, Doctor,” he said as he helped me to pack my few belongings, “for the fact is I can’t trust that Shadrach man.  His pals call him ‘Cat,’ a good name for him, I think.  Also, he is showing his claws just now, the truth being that he hates the lot of us, and would like to get back into Purr or Mur, or whatever the name of the place is, having lost us on the road.  You should have seen the way he looked at the Professor just now.  Oh!  I wish the Captain had let me punch his head.  I’m sure it would have cleared the air a lot.”

As it chanced, Shadrach was destined to get his head “punched” after all, but by another hand.  It happened thus.  The reeds were fired, as Shadrach had declared it was necessary to do, in order that the Abati watchmen on the distant mountains might see and report the signal, although in the light of subsequent events I am by no means certain that this warning was not meant for other eyes as well.  Then, as arranged, we started out, leaving them burning in a great sheet of flame behind us, and all that night marched by the shine of the stars along some broken-down and undoubtedly ancient road.

At the first sign of dawn we left this road and camped amid the overgrown ruins of a deserted town that had been built almost beneath the precipitous cliffs of Mur, fortunately without having met any one or being challenged.  I took the first watch, while the others turned in to sleep after we had all breakfasted off cold meats, for here we dared not light a fire.  As the sun grew high, dispelling the mists, I saw that we were entering upon a thickly-populated country which was no stranger to civilization of a sort.  Below us, not more than fifteen or sixteen miles away, and clearly visible through my field-glasses, lay the great town of Harmac, which, during my previous visit to this land, I had never seen, as I passed it in the night.

It was a city of the West Central African type, with open market-places and wide streets, containing thousands of white, flat-roofed houses, the most important of which were surrounded by gardens.  Round it ran a high and thick wall, built, apparently, of sun-burnt brick, and in front of the gateways, of which I could see two, stood square towers whence these might be protected.  All about this city the flat and fertile land was under cultivation, for the season being that of early spring, already the maize and other crops showed green upon the ground.

Beyond this belt of plough-lands, with the aid of the field-glasses, I could make out great herds of grazing cattle and horses, mixed with wild game, a fact that assured me of the truth of what I had heard during my brief visit to Mur, that the Fung had few or no firearms, since otherwise the buck and quagga would have kept at a distance.  Far off, too, and even on the horizon, I saw what appeared to be other towns and villages.  Evidently this was a very numerous people, and one which could not justly be described as savage.  No wonder that the little Abati tribe feared them so intensely, notwithstanding the mighty precipices by which they were protected from their hate.