grown barren from
intermarriage. Probably, too, they were at first only cannibals
occasionally and from religious reasons. Then in some time of dearth
they became very religious in that respect, and the habit overpowered
them. Among cannibals, at any rate in Africa, as I knew, this dreadful
food is much preferred to any other meat. I had not the slightest doubt
that although the Kalubi himself had brought us here in the wild
hope that we might save him from a terrible death at the hands of the
Beelzebub he served, Komba and the councillors, inspired thereto by the
prophet called Motombo, designed that we should be murdered and eaten as
an offering to the gods. How we were to escape this fate, being unarmed,
I could not imagine, unless some special protection were vouchsafed to
us. Meanwhile, we must go on to the end, whatever it might be.

Brother John, or to give him his right name, the Reverend John Eversley,
was convinced that the white woman imprisoned in the mountain was none
other than the lost wife for whom he had searched for twenty weary
years, and that the second white woman of whom we had heard that night
was, strange as it might seem, her daughter and his own. Perhaps he
was right and perhaps he was wrong. But even in the latter case, if two
white persons were really languishing in this dreadful land, our path
was clear. We must go on in faith until we saved them or until we died.

"Our life is granted, not in Pleasure's round,
Or even Love's sweet dream, to lapse, content;
Duty and Faith are words of solemn sound,
And to their echoes must the soul be bent,"

as some one or other once wrote, very nobly I think. Well, there was but
little of "Pleasure's round" about the present entertainment, and any
hope of "Love's sweet dream" seemed to be limited to Brother John (here
I was quite mistaken, as I so often am). Probably the "echoes" would be
my share; indeed, already I seemed to hear their ominous thunder.

At last I did go to sleep and dreamed a very curious dream. It seemed to
me that I was disembodied, although I retained all my powers of thought
and observation; in fact, dead and yet alive. In this state I hovered
over the people of the Pongo who were gathered together on a great plain
under an inky sky. They were going about their business as usual, and
very unpleasant business it often was. Some of them were worshipping a
dim form that I knew was the devil; some were committing murders; so