in
which men of his own kind bore up a delicate, pale prodigy, an
incredible creature from another aeon or planet.

He was a wizened, old man with shreds of white wool on his chin. His
eyeballs were tinctured with yellow. His right shoulder was a mass of
long-healed scars from the claws and teeth of some beast. Behind him,
against a solid wall of his people, young girls with shaved heads,
awe-stricken, held gourds of beer as pink as coral and as thick as
gruel.

The village headman revealed the news of the wilds, which had been
transmitted from tribe to tribe by native travelers, or by the
far-carrying beat of wooden gongs. A safari, passing to the north, had
penetrated the land of the Mambava. In that safari there were two
white men and many askaris. They had now journeyed through the forests
of the people of Muene-Motapa. They were in the granite gorges of the
waterfalls.

He pointed toward where the floating mountains rose in a peak that was
lightly silvered with snow.

Parr, on the Muscat donkey, looking more haggard than ever in the
sunshine, demanded:

"Is it the white man who is called the Bwana Bangana?"

That was the name that had accompanied the news.

The safari marched faster than before, toward the exalted masses that
trembled behind the heat. They emerged upon rolling plains remotely
dotted with herds of zebras and antelope. In the blinding sky they saw
kites, buzzards, and crows, rising from the carcasses that had been
left half devoured by noctambulant beasts of prey. At nightfall the
lightning flashed above the mountains in yellow sheets or rosy zigzags.
Thunder rolled out across the plain in majestic detonations.

Lilla, watching the storm from the doorway of her tent, told herself
that he, too, must hear these sounds; that she had come near enough to
share with him at any rate this sensation--unless her dread had already
been realized, and he had sunk into a sleep from which even such noises
could not wake him.

Hamoud appeared at her side. He quoted from the _Uncreated Book_:

"He showeth you the lightning, a source of awe and hope."

Her heart swelled; she turned to that fervent, handsome face beneath
the turban a look of peculiar tenderness like a sword thrust, and
responded in liquid tones:

"What should I have done without you?"

CHAPTER LVII

Lawrence Teck was not in the gorges of the waterfalls.

While marching in through the lowlands he had been seized with