e of Jack Meredith, and in doing so had only succeeded in
sending him away from her.

CHAPTER XXXIII. DARK DEALING

Only an honest man doing his duty.

When Jack Meredith said that there was not another man in Africa who
could make his way from Loango to the Simiacine Plateau he spoke no more
than the truth. There were only four men in all the world who knew the
way, and two of them were isolated on the summit of a lost mountain in
the interior. Meredith himself was unfit for the journey. There remained
Joseph.

True, there were several natives who had made the journey, but they were
as dumb and driven animals, fighting as they were told, carrying what
they were given to carry, walking as many miles as they were considered
able to walk. They hired themselves out like animals, and as the beasts
of the field they did their work--patiently, without intelligence. Half
of them did not know where they were going--what they were doing; the
other half did not care. So much work, so much wage, was their terse
creed. They neither noted their surroundings nor measured distance.
At the end of their journey they settled down to a life of ease and
leisure, which was to last until necessity drove them to work again.
Such is the African. Many of them came from distant countries, a few
were Zanzibaris, and went home made men.

If any doubt the inability of such men to steer a course through the
wood, let him remember that three months' growth in an African forest
will obliterate the track left by the passage of an army. If any hold
that men are not created so dense and unambitious as has just been
represented, let him look nearer home in our own merchant service.
The able-bodied seaman goes to sea all his life, but he never gets any
nearer navigating the ship--and he a white man.

In coming down to Loango, Joseph had had the recently-made track of
Oscard's rescuing party to guide him day by day. He knew that this was
now completely overgrown. The Simiacine Plateau was once more lost to
all human knowledge.

And up there--alone amidst the clouds--Guy Oscard was, as he himself
tersely put it, "sticking to it." He had stuck to it to such good effect
that the supply of fresh young Simiacine was daily increasing in bulk.
Again, Victor Durnovo seemed to have regained his better self. He was
like a full-blooded horse--tractable enough if kept hard at work. He was
a different man up on the Plateau to what he was down at Loa