“Yes, I shall go, Uncle; and if I don’t find the ’rolling Pillar of Life,’ at any rate I shall get some first-class shooting.”

Here was my opportunity, and I took it.

“Shooting?” I said.  “Ah! yes; I never thought of that.  It must be a very wild stretch of country, and full of big game.  I have always wanted to kill a buffalo before I die.  Do you know, my boy, I don’t believe in the quest, but I do believe in big game, and really on the whole, if, after thinking it over, you make up your mind to go, I will take a holiday, and come with you.”

“Ah,” said Leo, “I thought that you would not lose such a chance.  But how about money?  We shall want a good lot.”

“You need not trouble about that,” I answered.  “There is all your income that has been accumulating for years, and besides that I have saved two-thirds of what your father left to me, as I consider, in trust for you.  There is plenty of cash.”

“Very well, then, we may as well stow these things away and go up to town to see about our guns.  By the way, Job, are you coming too?  It’s time you began to see the world.”

“Well, sir,” answered Job, stolidly, “I don’t hold much with foreign parts, but if both you gentlemen are going you will want somebody to look after you, and I am not the man to stop behind after serving you for twenty years.”

“That’s right, Job,” said I.  “You won’t find out anything wonderful, but you will get some good shooting.  And now look here, both of you.  I won’t have a word said to a living soul about this nonsense,” and I pointed to the potsherd.  “If it got out, and anything happened to me, my next of kin would dispute my will on the ground of insanity, and I should become the laughing stock of Cambridge.”

That day three months we were on the ocean, bound for Zanzibar.

IV

THE SQUALL

How different is the scene that I have now to tell from that which has just been told!  Gone are the quiet college rooms, gone the wind-swayed English elms, the cawing rooks, and the familiar volumes on the shelves, and in their place there rises a vision of the great calm ocean gleaming in shaded silver lights beneath the beams of the full African moon.  A gentle breeze fills the huge sail of our dhow, and draws us through the water that ripples musically against her sides.  Most of the men are sleeping forward, for it is near midnight, but a stout swarthy Arab, Mahomed by name, stands at the tiller, lazily steering by the stars.  Three miles or more to our starboard is a low dim line.  It is the Eastern shore of Central Africa.  We are running to the southward, before the North East Monsoon, between the mainland and the reef that for hundreds of miles fringes this perilous coast.  The night is quiet, so quiet that a whisper can be heard fore and aft the dhow; so quiet that a faint booming sound rolls across the water to us from the distant land.