ittle Bonsa. Get
on, you lazy nigger dog. Who pay you stand there and snivel? Get on or
I blow out your stupid skull," and he brought the muzzle of the
full-cocked, double-barrelled gun into sharp contact with that part of
the terrified porter's anatomy.

Such was the forest. Of their march through it for the first four
days, there is nothing to tell. Its depths seemed to be devoid of
life, although occasionally they heard the screaming of parrots in the
treetops a couple of hundred feet above, or caught sight of the dim
shapes of monkeys swinging themselves from bough to bough. That was in
the daytime, when, although they could not see it, they knew that the
sun was shining somewhere. But at night they heard nothing, since beasts
of prey do not come where there is no food. What puzzled Alan was that
all through these impenetrable recesses there ran a distinct road
which they followed. To the right and left rose a wall of creepers, but
between them ran this road, an ancient road, for nothing grew on it, and
it only turned aside to avoid the biggest of the trees which must have
stood there from time immemorial, such a tree as that which he had seen
fall; indeed it was one of those round which the road ran.

He asked Jeekie who made the road.

"People who come out Noah's Ark," answered Jeekie, "I think they run up
here to get out of way of water, and sent them two elephants ahead to
make path. Or perhaps dwarf people make it. Or perhaps those who go up
to Asiki-land to do sacrifice like old Jews."

"You mean you don't know," said Alan.

"No, of course don't know. Who know about forest path made before
beginning of world. You ask question, Major, I answer. More lively
answer than to shake head and roll eyes like them silly fool porters."

It was on the fourth night that the trouble began. As usual they had lit
a huge fire made of the fallen boughs and rotting tree trunks that lay
about in plenty. There was no reason why the fire should be so large,
since they had little to cook and the air was hot, but they made it
so for the same reason that Jeekie answered questions, for the sake of
cheerfulness. At least it gave light in the darkness, leaping up in red
tongues of flame twenty or thirty feet high, and its roar and crackle
were welcome in the primeval silence.

Alan lay upon the cork mattress in the open, for here there was no need
to pitch the tent; if any rain fell above, the canopy of leaves absorbed
it. He was