s' orderly mind, seemed inconsistent with the
dignity of the Government boat, he asked the reason.

"Lord," said the steersman, one Ebibi, "there are many banks hereabout,
large sands, which silt up in a night, therefore we must make a passage
for the _puc-a-puc_, by going from shore to shore."

"You're a silly ass," said Bones, "and let it go at that."

Yet, for all his irresponsibility, for all his wild and unknowledgeable
conspectus of the land and its people, there was instilled in the heart
of Lieutenant Tibbetts something of the spirit of dark romance and
adventure-loving, which association with the Coast alone can bring.

In the big house at Dorking where he had spent his childhood, the
ten-acre estate, where his father had lorded (himself a one-time
Commissioner), he had watered the seed of desire which heredity had
irradicably sown in his bosom; a desire not to be shaped by words, or
confirmed in phrase, but best described as the discovery-lust, which
send men into dark, unknown places of the world to joyously sacrifice
life and health that their names might be associated with some scrap of
sure fact for the better guidance of unborn generations.

Bones was a dreamer of dreams.

On the bridge of the _Zaire_ he was a Nelson taking the _Victory_ into
action, a Stanley, a Columbus, a Sir Garnet Wolseley forcing the
passages of the Nile.

Small wonder that he turned from time to time to the steersman with a
sharp "Put her to starboard," or "Port your helm a little."

Less wonder that the wholly uncomprehending steersman went on with his
work as though Bones had no separate or tangible existence.

On the fourth evening after leaving headquarters, Bones summoned to his
cabin Mahomet Ali, the sergeant in charge of his soldiers.

"O, Mahomet," said he, "tell me of this N'bosini of which men speak, and
in which all native people believe, for my lord M'ilitani has said that
there is no such place and that it is the dream of mad people."

"Master, that I also believe," said Mahomet Ali; "these people of the
river are barbarians, having no God and being foredoomed for all time to
hell, and it is my belief that his idea of N'bosini is no more than the
Paradise of the faithful, of which the barbarians have heard and
converted in their wild way."

"Tell me, who talks of N'bosini," said Bones, crossing his legs and
leaning back in his chair, his hands behind his head; "for, remember
that I am a stranger amongst yo