dition. Four water bottles that had been left
intact they filled with water; they took the tent, and the pole that Felix
had spliced. Cassava cakes and tinned meat and a few pounds of chocolate
made up the provisions. There were no guns to carry, no trophies of the
chase. Of all the army of porters only two were left. Berselius was broken
down, Felix had fled, they had no guide, and the crowning horror of the
thing was that they had struck off in pursuit of the herd at right angles
to the straight path they had taken from the forest, and Adams did not
know in the least the point where they had struck off. The porters were
absolutely no use as guides, and unless God sent a guide from heaven or
chance interposed to lead them in the right way, they were lost; for they
had no guns or ammunition with which to get food.

Truly the omen of the elephant lying down had not spoken in vain.

When all was loaded up, and Adams was loaded even like the porters, they
turned their backs on the tree and the pools, and leaving them there to
burn in the sun forever struck straight west in the direction from which
they had come.

Berselius had come in pursuit of a terrible thing and a merciless thing;
he was returning in search of a more terrible and a more merciless
thing--Memory.

It was four hours after sun-up when they left the camp; and two hours'
march brought them to that ridge which Berselius had indicated from the
camp as being near the skyline.

When they reached the ridge, and not before, Berselius halted and stared
over the country in front of him, his face filled with triumph and hope.

He seized Adams's hand and pointed away to the west. The ridge gave a big
view of the country.

"I can remember all that," said he, "keenly, right up to the skyline."

"And at the skyline?"

"Stands the mist," replied Berselius. "But it will lift before me as I go
on. Now I know it is only the sight of the things I have seen that is
needful to recall the memory of them and of myself in connection with
them."

Adams said nothing. It struck him with an eerie feeling that this man
beside him was actually walking back into his past. As veil after veil of
distance was raised, so would the past come back, bit by bit.

But he was yet to learn what a terrible journey that would be.

One thing struck him as strange. Berselius had never tried to pierce the
mist by questions. The man seemed entirely obsessed by the curtain of
mist, and by th