he night of the first great storm. That
evening he took up his abode in some fold or seam of our tent, and there
stayed throughout all the rest of the journey. Every evening he tuned up
cheerfully, and we dropped to sleep to the sound of his homelike piping.
We grew very fond of him, as one does of everything in this wild and
changing country that can represent a stable point of habitude.

Nor must I forget one evening when all of a sudden out of the darkness
came a tremendous hollow booming, like the beating of war drums or the
bellowing of some strange great beast. At length we identified the
performer as an unfamiliar kind of frog!

XXXI.

THE LOST SAFARI.

We were possessed of a map of sorts, consisting mostly of wide blank
spaces, with an occasional tentative mountain, or the probable course of
streams marked thereon. The only landmark that interested us was a
single round peak situated south of our river and at a point just before
we should cross the railroad at Tsavo Station. There came a day when,
from the top of a hill where we had climbed for the sake of the outlook,
we thought we recognized that peak. It was about five miles away as the
crow flies.

Then we returned to camp and made the fatal mistake of starting to
figure. We ought to cover the distance, even with the inevitable twists
and turns, in a day; the tri-weekly train passed through Tsavo the
following night; if we could catch that we would save a two days' wait
for the next train. You follow the thought. We arose very early the
next morning to get a good start on our forced march.

There is no use in spinning out a sad tale. We passed what we thought
must be our landmark hill just eleven times. The map showed only one
butte; as a matter of fact there were dozens. At each disappointment we
had to reconstruct our theories. It is the nature of man to do this
hopefully--Tsavo Station must be just around the _next_ bend. We marched
six hours without pause; then began to save ourselves a little. By all
the gods of logical reasoning we _proved_ Tsavo just beyond a certain
fringe of woods. When we arrived we found that there the river broke
through a range of hills by way of a deep gorge. It was a change from
the everlasting scrub, with its tumbling waters, its awful cliffs, its
luxuriant tropical growths; but it was so much the more difficult to
make our way through. Beyond the gorge we found any amount of hills,
kopjes, buttes, sugar loaves