By common consent they fought against a strong fit of the blues. Mr.
Hume and Compton held a consultation over Venning, examined him,
doctored him, and put him through the ordeal of a Turkish bath
roughly made with the aid of the oil-sheets. After that he was
rolled up in blankets and left to slumber. Compton was next treated
in the same way, and then Mr. Hume busied himself with his note-
book.

When the boys woke up in the afternoon, much refreshed, Muata had
returned.

"Fall in, lads."

"Has he found them?" and the boys were up and glancing round for the
pigmies.

"Yes; we are to go 'upstairs' at once."

"But where are they?"

"The little people have gone on," said Muata. "They will spy out on
the man-eaters."

"You really did find them?"

"Ow aye; they know Muata. They and I have been on the path before,
else they would have fallen on the young chiefs in the night--for
they saw. The killing of the fierce ones much rejoiced them. It
opened their lips about the upper way."

"We are ready," said Compton, "for the upper way--for the trapeze
and the aerial flight."

Muata struck off into the woods, and the rest crowded on him,
glancing up at every tree for signs of the new track.

"Behold the road," said the chief, showing his white teeth in a rare
smile, as he caught in his hand a trailing vine that swung clear
from the neighbouring growth, and reached up forty feet or so to a
thick branch.

"Are we to swarm up that?"

Muata nodded.

"And what will you do with the jackal?"

The chief turned a look of disgust at his bloated ally. "He will
follow underneath;" and reaching up, tie went hand over hand, using
his toes very much like fingers to help. Then he lowered a rope
which he had coiled round his waist; and Mr. Hume, putting the loop
under his arm, trusted his weight to the swaying vine. Venning and
Compton followed, with the help of the rope, but the river-man
declined. He preferred to travel on the firm ground with the jackal.
From the branch the four passed to the fork of the tree and held on.

"I don't see any path," said Venning.

"Nothing in the shape of a foot-bridge that I can see; and it would
not be quite safe to fall, would it?" replied Compton, as he glanced
down.

Muata went on up into the topmost branches, and, when they followed
him, they found a small platform of saplings lashed to the branches
by vines, and from this vantage they looked out over a wonderful sea
of leaves, re