w,
were a number of little bushes, and no other vegetation.

Victor Durnovo stooped over one of these. He buried his face among the
leaves of it, and suddenly he toppled over.

"Yes," he cried as he fell, "it's Simiacine!"

And he turned over with a groan of satisfaction, and lay like a dead
man.

CHAPTER XXI. THE FIRST CONSIGNMENT

Since all that I can ever do for thee
Is to do nothing, may'st thou never see,
Never divine, the all that nothing costeth me.

One morning, three months later, Guy Oscard drew up in line his flying
column. He was going back to England with the first consignment of
Simiacine. During the twelve weeks that lay behind there had been
constant reference made to his little body of picked men, and the leader
had selected with a grave deliberation that promised well.

The lost soldier that was in him was all astir in his veins as he
reviewed his command in the cool air of early morning. The journey from
Msala to the Plateau had occupied a busy two months. Oscard expected to
reach Msala with his men in forty days. Piled up in neat square cases,
such as could be carried in pairs by a man of ordinary strength, was the
crop of Simiacine, roughly valued by Victor Durnovo at forty thousand
pounds. Ten men could carry the whole of it, and the twenty cases
set close together on the ground made a bed for Guy Oscard. Upon this
improvised couch he gravely stretched his bulk every night all through
the journey that followed.

Over the whole face of the sparsely vegetated table-land the dwarf
bushes grew at intervals, each one in a little circle of its own, where
no grass grew: for the dead leaves, falling, poisoned the earth. There
were no leaves on the bushes now, for they had all been denuded, and the
twisted branches stood out naked in the morning mist. Some of the bushes
had been roughly pruned, to foster, if possible, a more bushy growth and
a heavier crop of leaves near to the parent stem.

It was a strange landscape; and any passing traveller, knowing
nothing of the Simiacine, must perforce have seen at once that these
insignificant little trees were something quite apart in the vegetable
kingdom. Each standing with its magic circle, no bird built its nest
within the branches--no insect constructed its filmy home--no spider
weaved its busy web from twig to twig.

Solitary, mournful, lifeless the Plateau which had nearly cost
Victor Durnovo his life lay beneath the face