fully recovered my right
mind. Some people say that I have never recovered it; perhaps you are
one of them, Allan.

"At last the wound in my skull healed, after a clever English naval
surgeon had removed some bits of splintered bone, and my strength came
back to me. I was and still am an American subject, and in those days we
had no consul at Zanzibar, if there is one there now, of which I am not
sure, and of course no warship. The English made what inquiries they
could for me, but could find out little or nothing, since all the
country about Kilwa was in possession of Arab slave-traders who were
supported by a ruffian who called himself the Sultan of Zanzibar."

Again he paused, as though overcome by the sadness of his recollections.

"Did you never hear any more of your wife?" asked Stephen.

"Yes, Mr. Somers; I heard at Zanzibar from a slave whom our mission
bought and freed, that he had seen a white woman who answered to her
description alive and apparently well, at some place I was unable to
identify. He could only tell me that it was fifteen days' journey from
the coast. She was then in charge of some black people, he did not know
of what tribe, who, he believed, had found her wandering in the bush.
He noted that the black people seemed to treat her with the greatest
reverence, although they could not understand what she said. On the
following day, whilst searching for six lost goats, he was captured by
Arabs who, he heard afterwards, were out looking for this white woman.
The day after the man had told me this, he was seized with inflammation
of the lungs, of which, being in a weak state from his sufferings in
the slave gang, he quickly died. Now you will understand why I was not
particularly anxious to revisit Kilwa."

"Yes," I said, "we understand that, and a good deal more of which we
will talk later. But, to change the subject, where do you come from now,
and how did you happen to turn up just in the nick of time?"

"I was journeying here across country by a route I will show you on my
map," he answered, "when I met with an accident to my leg" (here Stephen
and I looked at each other) "which kept me laid up in a Kaffir hut for
six weeks. When I got better, as I could not walk very well I rode upon
oxen that I had trained. That white beast you saw is the last of them;
the others died of the bite of the tsetse fly. A fear which I could
not define caused me to press forward as fast as possible; for the last