e
wake of the young officer. The latter led us across a small parade
ground, where a battery of light field guns was parked, and toward a
log building, in front of which rose the flagstaff.

I was escorted within the building into the presence of an old negro, a
fine looking man, with a dignified and military bearing. He was a
colonel, I was to learn later, and to him I owe the very humane
treatment that was accorded me while I remained his prisoner.

He listened to the report of his junior, and then turned to question
me, but with no better results than the former had accomplished. Then
he summoned an orderly, and gave some instructions. The soldier
saluted, and left the room, returning in about five minutes with a
hairy old white man--just such a savage, primeval-looking fellow as I
had discovered in the woods the day that Snider had disappeared with
the launch.

The colonel evidently expected to use the fellow as interpreter, but
when the savage addressed me it was in a language as foreign to me as
was that of the blacks. At last the old officer gave it up, and,
shaking his head, gave instructions for my removal.

From his office I was led to a guardhouse, in which I found about fifty
half-naked whites, clad in the skins of wild beasts. I tried to
converse with them, but not one of them could understand Pan-American,
nor could I make head or tail of their jargon.

For over a month I remained a prisoner there, working from morning
until night at odd jobs about the headquarters building of the
commanding officer. The other prisoners worked harder than I did, and
I owe my better treatment solely to the kindliness and discrimination
of the old colonel.

What had become of Victory, of Delcarte, of Taylor I could not know;
nor did it seem likely that I should ever learn. I was most depressed.
But I whiled away my time in performing the duties given me to the best
of my ability and attempting to learn the language of my captors.

Who they were or where they came from was a mystery to me. That they
were the outpost of some powerful black nation seemed likely, yet where
the seat of that nation lay I could not guess.

They looked upon the whites as their inferiors, and treated us
accordingly. They had a literature of their own, and many of the men,
even the common soldiers, were omnivorous readers. Every two weeks a
dust-covered trooper would trot his jaded mount into the post and
deliver a bulging sack of