g in their
absence. The white man's words they could not understand, but his
gestures were intelligible, and before they parted, he to hurry back
towards the river and they towards the Montese country, they had
cut the cords which bound the soldier's hands and hobbled his feet,
and thus had left him free to make such haste as he could.

Even then the afternoon was well nigh gone when the messenger
reached the river at the place where he had been dragged from it;
and practically all his journey was yet before him, wearied as he was.

For once, though, fortune favored him. His dug-out had grounded on a
sandy island hardly a dozen rods below where it had been overturned,
and swimming out to it, he soon had righted it and was on his way
again.

At first the forest on each side was a tropic swamp. Then the river
grew more swift, with here and there rapids in which it took all his
skill with his clumsy paddle to keep his boat from being upset. The
ground had begun to grow higher here, and back from the banks there
were rank growths of hemp and palm trees.

A few miles farther, and he was in the mountains, the river
winding about like a lane of water between walls which were almost
perpendicular, and covered with the densest, bright green foliage,
in which parrots croaked hoarsely and monkeys chattered sleepily as
they settled themselves for the night. The walls of the living canon
grew narrower and steeper. The river here was as still as a lake, and
the current so sluggish that only his labour with the paddle sent the
"banca" forward. It grew dark quickly and fast, down in the bottom
of this mountain gorge, and by and by the twilight glow on the tops
of the banks, when he would peer up at them, grew fainter.

The soldier strained his eyes to look ahead. Would the living green
canons of that river never end? It was dark now, except that the stars
in the narrow line of sky above the gorge sent down light enough to
make the surface of the water gleam faintly and mark out his course.

He drew his paddle from the water, and holding it so that the drops
which trickled from it would make no noise, listened breathlessly for
the sound of the falls which marked the site of the village he was
to find, and at it leave his boat for the land again. A night bird
screamed in the forest, and then there was utter silence, until a
soft splash in the water beside him revealed the ugly head of a huge
black crocodile following the dug-out.