ad belt of desolate
land which took many days to traverse--a land of gloomy forest and
sluggish river, reed-fringed, crocodile-haunted; and night after night
they would build their camp-fire, resting secure in the red circle of
its cheery flame--while the howling of ravening beasts kept up dismal
chorus in the outer darkness beyond. It was a primeval idyll, the
wandering of these two--the man, the product of the highest
_fin-de-siecle_ civilization; the woman, the daughter of a savage race.
Yet in such wandering, savage and civilized were curiously near akin.
They were free as air--untrammelled by any conventionality or artificial
needs. The land furnished ample subsistence, animal and vegetable. The
wild game which supplied them with food could not have been more free.

"Would you rather have been rescued some other way, Nyonyoba?" said the
girl one evening, as they were sitting by the camp-fire.

"No. There is no other way I should have preferred. See now, Lindela.
What if we were to return to your people? Surely they would believe now
in the Sign of the Spider--and that the conqueror is greater than the
conquered?"

"Not so," she answered, and her eyes, which had brightened at the first
words of his reply, became clouded and sad. "They would put us to death
now--both of us. But were it otherwise--would you really desire to
return?"

"One might do worse. I don't know that the blessings of civilization are
such blessings after all, which to you is a riddle."

He relapsed into silence and thought. There were times when, with the
riches upon him, he was consumed with a perfectly feverish longing to
return to civilization. There were other times, again, when he looked
back with more than a lingering regret to the pleasant land of the
Ba-gcatya. Furthermore, Lindela had entwined herself around his heart
more than he knew. Not an atom of the intrepidity of devotion she had
displayed in order to compass his final rescue was thrown away upon
him--any more than her deportment since. Through the toilsomeness and
peril of their journeying no word of complaint or despondency escaped
her. She was always sunny-natured, cheerful, self-sacrificing,
resourceful--in short, a delightful companion. Yet--she was a savage, he
thought, with a curl of the lip, as before his mind's eye arose the
contrast between her and her civilized sisters, with their artificiality
and moods and caprices, and petty spites and fictitious ailments, and