time, no doubt, he was dead.

She sank back as if she, too, had received a bullet. But after a time,
during which that dark throng had not stirred, she rose and entered her
tent. There Hamoud found her standing, swaying slightly, with closed
eyes. An invisible hand had brushed across her countenance, effacing
the last traces of her beauty.

"Do we still go on?" breathed Hamoud.

Without opening her eyes she returned, in a loud voice:

"He shall not die till I get there."

Hamoud's look of sadness gave place to a look of peace.

CHAPTER LXI

At daybreak the safari entered the forest.

Two askaris went first, guarding the albino. Next, since the forest
trail was too narrow for hammock travel, Lilla came afoot with Hamoud,
seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling no physical weariness or pain.
Behind her the rest of the askaris herded along the porters.

The huge tree trunks sprang up toward a firmament of somber green, from
which descended dense festoons of vines. Through this twilight flitted
birds of brilliant plumage and long-haired monkeys. The place had a
morose, nefarious beauty, like the forest in the prophecy of Anna
Zanidov.

Now and then a glade appeared, hung with flowers of mustard yellow or
diaphanous purple. Then again the tunnel-like trail, the green
twilight, the flapping of carmine wings, and a shaft of sunshine
piercing the canopy to rest upon the gnawed bones of a forest deer.
Here and there stood clumps of brown reeds, without twigs or buds, as
though a band of warriors had buried their spear blade down in the
earth before vanishing into the thickets. But one saw no faces except
those of the monkeys.

They camped in a glade beside a spring. The drums filled the night
with their throbbing, which seemed part of the throbbing in Lilla's
feverish head. The askaris kept double guard; but at dawn eleven of
the porters were missing.

Ahead of the marching safari, in a clearing spotted with large,
dirty-white blossoms, six black men sat motionless round the ashes of a
camp fire. They were watchers posted here to see that no strangers
entered their land at the season of the dances.

Although they could not take part in those mysteries they wore the full
dance regalia. They were crowned with towering shakoes of
black-and-white monkey hair, fastened under their chins with beaded
straps, and bristling with egrets. Their bodies were smeared with
indigo and blotched with large dis