is it?" asked Adams.

"Tent," replied Felix.

To the left of where the birds were, and close to them, lay a mound of
something showing dark amidst the grass. It was a tent, or a large part of
one of the tents; tangled, perhaps, in a tusk, it had been brought here
and cast, just as a storm might have brought and cast it. Even at this
distance the air was tainted with the odour of the birds and their prey,
but the thing had to be fetched, and Adams was not the man to exhibit
qualms before a savage.

"Come," said he, and they started.

The birds saw them coming, and some flew away; others, trying to fly away,
rose in the air heavily and fluttering a hundred yards sank and scattered
about in the grass, looking like great vermin; a few remained waddling
here and there, either too impudent for flight or too greatly gorged.

Truly it had been a great killing, and the ground was ripped as if by
ploughs. Over a hundred square yards lay blistering beneath the sun, red
and blue and black; and the torment of it pierced the silence like a
shout, though not a movement was there, save the movement of the
bald-headed vulture as he waddled, or the flapping of a rag of skin to the
breeze.

They seized on the tent, the Zappo Zap laughing and with teeth glinting in
the sun. It was the smallest tent, ripped here and there, but otherwise
sound; the mosquito net inside was intact and rolled up like a ball, but
the pole was broken in two.

As they carried it between them, they had to pass near a man. He was very
dead, that man; a great foot had trodden on his face, and it was flattened
out, looking like a great black flat-fish in which a child, for fun, had
punched holes for eyes and mouth and nose; it was curling up at the edges
under the sun's rays, becoming converted into a cup.

"B'selius," said Felix, with a laugh, indicating this thing as they passed
it.

Adams had his hands full, or he would have struck the brute to the ground.
He contented himself with driving the tent pole into the small of his back
to urge him forward. From that moment he conceived a hatred for Felix such
as few men have felt, for it was not a hatred against a man, or even a
brute, but a black automatic figure with filed teeth, a thing with the
brain and heart of an alligator, yet fashioned after God's own image.

A hatred for Felix, and a pity for Berselius.

CHAPTER XXII

THE LOST GUIDE

They improvised a shelter against the tree with the te