it now as soundly asleep as the two
porters and Berselius. The fire stood guard; crackling and flickering
beneath the stars, it showed a burning spark that made the camping place
determinable many miles away.

Now the Zappo Zap, when he had fled from Adams, put ten miles of country
behind him, going almost with the swiftness of an antelope, taking low
bush and broken ground in his stride, and halting only when instinct
brought him to a stand, saying, "You are safe."

He knew the country well, and the thirty miles that separated him from the
eastern forest, where he could obtain food and shelter, were nothing to
him. He could have run nearly the whole distance and reached there in a
few hours' time.

But time was also nothing to him. He had fed well, and could last two days
without food. It was not his intention to desert the camp yet; for at the
camp, under that tree away to the west, lay a thing that he lusted after
as men lust for drink or love: the desire of his dark soul--the elephant
gun.

Before Adams drove him away from the camp he had made up his mind to steal
it. Sneak off with it in the night and vanish with it into his own country
away to the northeast, leaving B'selius and his broken camp to fend for
themselves. This determination was still unshaken; the thing held him like
a charm, and he sat down, squatting in the grass with his knees drawn up
to his chin and his eyes fixed westward, waiting for evening.

An hour before sunset he made for the camp, reaching within a mile of it
as the light left the sky. He watched the camp fire burning, and made for
it. Toward midnight, crawling on his belly, soundless as a snake, he crept
right up beside Adams, seized the gun and the cartridge bag, and with them
in his hands stood erect.

He had no fear now. He knew he could outrun anyone there. He held the gun
by the barrels. Adams's white face, as he lay with mouth open, snoring and
deep in slumber, presented an irresistible mark for the heavy gun-butt,
and all would have been over with that sleeper in this world, had not the
attention of the savage been drawn to an object that suddenly appeared
from beneath the folds of the improvised tent.

It was the hand of Berselius.

Berselius, moving uneasily in his sleep, had flung out his arm; the
clenched fist, like the emblem of power, struck the eye of the Zappo Zap,
and quelled him as the sight of the whip quells a dog.

B'selius was alive and able to clench his f