the fire, extended a limp, cold hand to Jason and I in turn with an
almost inaudible greeting, and crouched down by the dying blaze, his
dark eyes bent upon the glowing embers. Naturally expecting him to be
Dutch, both Jason and I had greeted him in the usual manner by giving
our own names in self-introduction. He had made no reply; but though
our hearth was but a campfire in a wild country, we felt that whoever
he was he was in a measure our guest, and therefore we made no
immediate attempt to find out who or what he was. Still he did not
speak. He put aside our proffered coffee, gently but without a word,
and sat glowering and gazing into the fire.

At last Jason spoke to him direct first in Dutch, and, getting no
reply, in English.

"Come far?" he queried.

There was no sign that the man had heard. Jason looked at me with a
lift of the eyebrow. Then I tried.

"Farming?" I asked.

No answer.

"Trading?"

Still no answer.

"Man's dumb!" grunted Jason.

But he was muttering now. Gradually his words became clearer, and to
our amazement he was speaking Portuguese!

"Pesquisadores pesquisadores," he murmured, "como nos outras dos tempos
antigos." (Prospectors searchers for wealth, like we others of the
olden days.) "... Searching for that which is not yours, but mine, mine
by every right. . . . But you will never find it or if you do your
bones will lie beside those others beneath the black water, where the
dead drink . . .!"

His mutterings became again inarticulate. I looked at Jason. He sat
staring open-mouthed at our strange visitor. For my own part I confess
I was puzzled and somewhat startled. Jason's eyes left the stranger
abruptly, and met my own, and mutually and silently our lips framed the
word "Mad!" Yes, surely he must be mad, this strange man who spoke of
the "ancient days" in a tongue rarely heard in this part of Africa; but
what was he doing here, here, alone, in this desolate spot, full fifty
miles from human habitation.

And as we looked at each other in doubt and hesitation the stranger
began again to speak, first in broken, disconnected sentences. But
gradually the strange, far-away tone like that of a man talking in his
sleep became clearer and more connected, and soon Jason and I were
gazing at him as though spellbound, and drinking in every word of the
queer archaic-sounding Portuguese in which he told his weird story
fragment, delirium, wanderings of a madman, call it what you will