of heaven, far above the
surrounding country--the summit of an unnamed mountain--a land lying in
the heart of a tropic country which was neither tropic, temperate, nor
arctic. Fauna had it none, for it produced nothing that could sustain
life. Flora it knew not, for the little trees, with their perennial
fortune of brilliant brown-tinted leaves, monopolised vegetable life,
and slew all comers. It seemed like some stray tract of another planet,
where the condition of living things was different. There was a strange
sense of having been thrown up--thrown up, as it were, into mid-heaven,
there to hang for ever--neither this world nor the world to come. The
silence of it all was such as would drive men mad if they came to think
of it. It was the silence of the stars.

The men who had lived up here for three months did not look quite
natural. There was a singular heaviness of the eyelids which all had
noticed, though none had spoken of it. A craving for animal food, which
could only be stayed by the consumption of abnormal quantities of meat,
kept the hunters ever at work on the lower slopes of the mountain. Sleep
was broken, and uncanny things happened in the night. Men said that they
saw other men like trees, walking abroad with sightless eyes; and Joseph
said, "Gammon, my festive darky--gammon!" but he, nevertheless, glanced
somewhat uneasily towards his master whenever the natives said such
things.

A clearing had been made on that part of the Plateau which was most
accessible from below. The Simiacine trees had been ruthlessly cut
away--even the roots were grubbed up and burnt--far away on the leeward
side of the little kingdom. This was done because there arose at sunset
a soft and pleasant odour from the bushes which seemed to affect the
nerves, and even made the teeth chatter. It was, therefore, deemed wise
that the camp should stand on bare ground.

It was on this ground, in front of the tents, that Guy Oscard drew up
his quick-marching column before the sun had sprung up in its fantastic
tropical way from the distant line of virgin forest. As he walked along
the line, making a suggestion here, pulling on a shoulder-rope there,
he looked staunch and strong as any man might wish to be. His face was
burnt so brown that eyebrows and moustache stood out almost blonde,
though in reality they were only brown. His eyes did not seem to be
suffering from the heaviness noticeable in others; altogether, the
climate and the