rm looked around him at the
other remains and swore--swore by the God who had made him, by the mother
who had borne him, and the manhood that lay in him, to rest not nor stay
till he had laid before the face of Europe the skull of Papeete and the
acts of the terrible scoundrel who for long years had systematically
murdered for money.

Then, followed by the savage, he turned and retook his road. At the wood's
edge he looked back at the silent scene, and it seemed to look at him with
the muteness and sadness of a witness who cannot speak, of a woman who
cannot tell her sorrow.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE RIVER OF GOLD

Next morning they started.

The corporal, three of the soldiers, and the two porters made up the
escort.

Berselius, who was strong enough to walk a little way, began the journey
on foot, but they had not gone five miles on their road when he showed
signs of fatigue, and Adams insisted on him taking to the litter.

It was the same road by which Felix had led them, but it was very
different travelling; where the ground had been hard underfoot it was now
soft, and where it had been elastic it was now boggy; it was more gloomy,
and the forest was filled with watery voices; where it dipped down into
valleys, you could hear the rushing and mourning of waters. Tiny trickles
of water had become rivulets--rivulets streams.

Away in the elephant country it was the same, the dry river-bed where they
had found the carcass of the elephant, was now the bed of rushing water.
The elephant and antelope herds were wandering in clouds on the plains. A
hundred thousand streams from Tanganyika to Yandjali were leaping to form
rivers flowing for one destination, the Congo and the sea.

On the second day of their journey, an accident happened; one of the
porters, released for a spell from bearing the litter, and loitering
behind, was bitten by a snake.

He died despite all Adams's attempts to save him, and, leaving his body to
be buried by the leopards, they passed on.

But the soldiers, especially the corporal, took the matter strangely.
These bloodthirsty wretches, inured to death and thinking nothing of it,
seemed cast down, and at the camping place they drew aside, chattered
together for a few minutes, and then the corporal came to Berselius and
began a harangue, his eyes rolling toward Adams now and then as he
proceeded.

Berselius listened, spoke a few words, and then turned to Adams.

"He says you have b