e dark wild eyes flashed and glared into the
Englishman's steady glance.

"What," he hissed, "what if I know where Simiacine grows like a weed?
What if I could supply the world with Simiacine at my own price?
Eh--h--h! What of that, Mr. Meredith?"

He threw himself suddenly back and wiped his dripping face. There was
a silence, the great African silence that drives educated men mad, and
fills the imagination of the poor heathen with wild tales of devils and
spirits.

Then Jack Meredith spoke, without moving.

"I'm your man," he said, "with a few more details."

Victor Durnovo was lying back at full length on the hard dry mud,
his arms beneath his head. Without altering his position he gave the
details, speaking slowly and much more quietly. It seemed as if he spoke
the result of long pent-up thought.

"We shall want," he said, "two thousand pounds to start it. For we must
have an armed force of our own. We have to penetrate through a cannibal
country, of the fiercest devils in Africa. It is a plateau, a little
plateau of two square miles, and the niggers think that it is haunted by
an evil spirit. When we get there we shall have to hold it by force
of arms, and when we send the stuff down to the coast we must have an
escort of picked men. The bushes grow up there as thick as gooseberry
bushes in a garden at home. With a little cultivation they will yield
twice as much as they do now. We shall want another partner. I know a
man, a soldierly fellow full of fight, who knows the natives and the
country. I will undertake to lead you there, but you will have to take
great care of me. You will have to have me carried most of the way. I am
weak, devilish weak, and I am afraid of dying; but I know the way there,
and no other man can say as much! It is in my head here; it is not
written down. It is only in my head, and no one can get it out of
there."

"No," said Meredith, in his quiet, refined voice, "no, no one can get it
out. Come, let us turn in. To-morrow I will go down the river with you.
I will turn back, and we can talk it over as we go downstream."

CHAPTER VIII. A RECRUIT

Said the Engine from the East,
"They who work best talk the least."

It is not, of course, for a poor limited masculine mind to utter
heresies regarding the great question of woman's rights. But as things
stand at present, as, in fact, the forenamed rights are to-day situated,
women have not found comprehension of the du