Then stores had
to be arranged and put together in a convenient form for carrying; clothes
had to be mended and patched--even his boots had to be cobbled with
twine--but at last all was ready, and on the day before they started the
weather improved. The sun came out strong and the clouds drew away right
to the horizon, where they lay piled in white banks like ranges of
snow-covered mountains.

That afternoon, an hour before sunset, Adams announced his intention of
going on a little expedition of his own.

"I shall only be a few hours away," said he, "five at most."

"Where are you going?" asked Berselius.

"Oh, just down into the woods," replied Adams. Then he left the room
before his companion could ask any more questions and sought out the
corporal.

He beckoned the savage to follow him, and struck down the slope in the
direction of the Silent Pools. When they reached the forest edge he
pointed before them and said, "Matabayo."

The man understood and led the way, which was not difficult, for the feet
of the rubber collectors had beaten a permanent path. There was plenty of
light, too, for the moon was already in the sky, only waiting for the sun
to sink before blazing out.

When they were half-way on their journey heavy dusk fell on them suddenly,
and deepened almost to dark; then, nearly as suddenly, all the forest
around them glowed green to the light of the moon.

The Silent Pools and the woods, when they reached them, lay in mist and
moonlight, making a picture unforgettable for ever.

It recalled to Adams that picture of Dore's, illustrating the scene from
the "Idylls of the King," where Arthur labouring up the pass "all in a
misty moonlight," had trodden on the skeleton of the once king, from whose
head the crown rolled like a rivulet of light down to the tarn--the misty
tarn, where imagination pictured Death waiting to receive it and hide it
in his robe.

The skeleton of no king lay here, only the poor bones still unburied of
the creatures that a far-off king had murdered. The rain had washed them
about, and Adams had to search and search before he found what he had come
to find.

At last he saw it. The skull of a child, looking like a white stone amidst
the grass. He wrapped it in leaves torn from the trees near by, and the
grim corporal stood watching him, and wondering, no doubt, for what fetish
business the white man had come to find the thing.

Then Adams with the dreary bundle under his a