stering his force, came gaily through the sun-splashed aisles
of the forest, his face streaked hideously with camwood, his big
elephant spear twirled between his fingers, and behind him straggled his
cosmopolitan force.

There were men from the Congo and the French Congo; men from German
lands; from Angola; wanderers from far-off Barotseland, who had drifted
on to the Congo by the swift and yellow Kasai. There were hunters from
the forests of far-off Bongindanga where the _okapi_ roams. For each
man's presence in that force there was good and sinister reason, for
these were no mere tax-evaders, poor, starved wretches fleeing from the
rule which _Bula Matadi_[4] imposed. There was a blood price on almost
every head, and in a dozen prisons at Boma, at Brazaville, and
Equatorville, and as far south as St. Paul de Loduda, there were
leg-irons which had at some time or other fitted their scarred ankles.

[Footnote 4: The stone breaker, the native name for the Congo
Government.]

Now there are four distinct physical features which mark the border line
between the border land and the foreign territory. Mainly the line is a
purely imaginary one, not traceable save by the most delicate
instruments--a line which runs through a tangle of forest.

But the most noticeable crossing place is N'glili.[5]

[Footnote 5: Probably a corruption of the word "English."]

Here a little river, easily fordable, and not more than a dozen spear
lengths across flows from one wood into another. Between the two woods
is a clear space of thick grass and shrub. In the spring of the year the
banks of the stream are white with arum-lilies, and the field beyond,
at a later period, is red with wild anemone.

The dour fugitives on the other side of the stream have a legend that
those who safely cross the "Field of Blood"--so they call the
anemone-sprinkled land beyond--without so much as crushing a flower may
claim sanctuary under the British flag.

So that when Bizaro sighted the stream, and the two tall trees that
flanked the ford, from afar off and said: "To-day we will walk between
the flowers," he was signifying the definite character of his plans.

"Master," said one of the more timid of his muster, when they had halted
for a rest in sight of the promised land, "what shall we do when we come
to these strange places?"

"We shall defeat all manner of men," said Bizaro optimistically.
"Afterwards they shall come and sue for peace, and they sha