was fair-haired, blue-eyed,
and slender, with a rosy, boyish face that might have been molded
more by an environment of luxury, indolence, and ease than the more
strenuous exigencies of life's sterner requirements.

And not only was the young lieutenant outwardly careless of the
immediate future and of his surroundings, but actually so. That
the district might be infested by countless enemies seemed not to
have occurred to him in the remotest degree. He bent assiduously
to the work of correcting the adjustment that had caused his motor
to stall without so much as an upward glance at the surrounding
country. The forest to the east of him, and the more distant jungle
that bordered the winding river, might have harbored an army of
bloodthirsty savages, but neither could elicit even a passing show
of interest on the part of Lieutenant Smith-Oldwick.

And even had he looked, it is doubtful if he would have seen the
score of figures crouching in the concealment of the undergrowth
at the forest's edge. There are those who are reputed to be endowed
with that which is sometimes, for want of a better appellation,
known as the sixth sense--a species of intuition which apprises
them of the presence of an unseen danger. The concentrated gaze of
a hidden observer provokes a warning sensation of nervous unrest in
such as these, but though twenty pairs of savage eyes were gazing
fixedly at Lieutenant Harold Percy Smith-Oldwick, the fact aroused
no responsive sensation of impending danger in his placid breast.
He hummed peacefully and, his adjustment completed, tried out his
motor for a minute or two, then shut it off and descended to the
ground with the intention of stretching his legs and taking a smoke
before continuing his return flight to camp. Now for the first time
he took note of his surroundings, to be immediately impressed by
both the wildness and the beauty of the scene. In some respects the
tree-dotted meadowland reminded him of a park-like English forest,
and that wild beasts and savage men could ever be a part of so
quiet a scene seemed the remotest of contingencies.

Some gorgeous blooms upon a flowering shrub at a little distance
from his machine caught the attention of his aesthetic eye, and as
he puffed upon his cigarette, he walked over to examine the flowers
more closely. As he bent above them he was probably some hundred
yards from his plane and it was at this instant that Numabo, chief
of the Wamabo, chose to