the
very weeds trodden underfoot were sappy, and the smell of their squirting
juice mixed itself with the smell of decay.

It was not even ground, either; the whole forest would dip down into an
unseen valley; you felt yourself going down hill, down, down, and then you
knew you were at the bottom of a sub-arboreal valley by the deeper
stagnation of the air. Open spaces, when they came, showed little sky, and
they were less open spaces than rooms in the surrounding prison.

Felix was not leading them through the uttermost depths of this place; he
was following the vague indications of a road by which the rubber from
M'Bassa was carted to the river.

They were travelling along a highway, in fact, and the dimmest indication
of a track where other men have been before is a thing which robs the
wilderness of much of its terror.

The loneliness of the forest beyond track or way, in those vast depths
where the rubber collectors have to go alone, I leave you to imagine.

At last, at noon, on the third day of their journey to this place they
struck rising ground where the trees fell away till no trees were left,
and the blue sky of heaven lay above their heads, and before them on the
highest point of the rise, Fort M'Bassa burning in the sun.

CHAPTER XI

ANDREAS MEEUS

The Parthenon in all its glory could not have looked more beautiful to the
returning Greek than this half-ruined fort in the eyes of Adams.

A thing built by the hands of white men and shone on by the sun--what
could be more acceptable to the eye after the long, long tramp through the
heart-breaking forest!

The fort of M'Bassa was quite small; the surrounding walls had gone to
decay, but the "guest house" and the office, and the great go-down where
the rubber was stored, were in good repair and well thatched.

Outside the walls were a number of wretched hovels inhabited by the
"soldiers" and their wives, and one of these soldiers, a tall black, with
the eternal red fez on his head and a rifle slung on his back, was the
first to sight the coming expedition, and to notify its approach with a
yell that brought a dozen like him from the sun-baked hovels and, a moment
later from the office, a white man in a pith helmet, who stood for a
moment looking across the half-ruined wall at the newcomers, and then
advanced to meet them.

He was a middle-sized man, with a melancholy face that showed very white
under the shadow of the helmet; he was dressed