to know this language, and when you are
drunk you talk, and do you think that there are no spies here? That
girl, Saga, is great-niece to Nam, and you are besotted with her. Be
careful lest you bring us all to death."

"Thither we shall come any way, so let us laugh before we weep, Baas,"
Otter replied sullenly. "Must I then sit here and do nothing till I
die?"

Leonard shrugged his shoulders and went. He could not blame the dwarf,
who after all was a savage and looked at things as a savage would,
notwithstanding Francisco's earnest efforts to convert him. He sometimes
wished, so deep was his depression, that he also was a savage and could
do likewise.

But the worst of their trials is still to be told. For the first week
the Settlement men stayed in the palace, their fears and the rumours
that had reached them of the terrible fate of their two lost companions
keeping them quiet. By degrees, however, this dread wore off, and one
afternoon, wearied with the sameness of their life, they yielded to
the solicitations of some men who spoke to them through the bars of
the great gate, and went out in a body without obtaining Leonard's
permission. That night they returned drunk--at least ten of them
dead; the other two were missing. When they were sober again, Leonard
questioned them as to the whereabouts of their companions, but they
could give him no satisfactory information. They had been into various
houses in the city, they said, where the people had plied them with
beer, and they remembered nothing more.

These two men never reappeared, but the rest of them, now thoroughly
frightened, obeyed Leonard's orders and stayed in the palace, although
the decoy men still came frequently to the gates and called them. They
passed the days in wandering about and drinking to drown their fears,
and the nights huddled together for protection from an unseen foe, more
terrible and craftier than the leopard of their native rocks. But these
precautions were all in vain.

One morning, hearing a tumult among them, Leonard went to see what was
the matter. Three more of the Settlement men were missing; they had
vanished in the night, none could say how, vanished though the doors
were barred and guarded. There where they had slept lay their guns and
little possessions, but the men were gone, leaving no trace. When he
was consulted Olfan looked very grave, but could throw no light upon the
mystery beyond suggesting that there were many sec