rection in
which the water-bags lay covered in the grass for the night. As the
groans were repeated several times, he rose to see what was happening
and, walking towards the grass plot a few score paces distant from the
tent, he perceived two dark bodies lying near each other and two
Remington barrels glistening in the moonlight.

"The negroes are always the same," he thought; "they were to watch over
the water, more precious now to us than anything in the world, and both
went to sleep as though in their own huts. Ah! Kali's bamboo will have
some work to do to-morrow."

Under this impression he approached and shook the foot of one of the
sentinels, but at once drew back in horror.

The apparently sleeping negro lay on his back with a knife sticking in
his throat up to the handle and beside him was the other, likewise cut
so terribly that his head was almost severed from the trunk.

Two bags with water had disappeared; the other three lay in the
littered grass, slashed and sunken.

Stas felt that his hair stood on end.

XXIV

In response to his shout Kali was the first to come rushing; after him
came the two guardsmen who were to relieve the previous watch, and a
few moments later all the Wahimas and Samburus assembled at the scene
of the crime, shouting and yelling. A commotion, full of cries and
terror, ensued. The people were concerned not so much about the slain
and the murderers as about the water which soaked into the parched
jungle soil. Some negroes threw themselves upon the ground and, clawing
out with their fingers lumps of earth, sucked out the remnants of
moisture. Others shouted that evil spirits had murdered the guards and
slashed the bags. But Stas and Kali knew what it all meant. M'Kunje and
M'Pua were missing from those men howling above that grass patch. In
that which had happened there was something more than the murder of two
guards and the theft of water. The remaining slashed bags were evidence
that it was an act of revenge and at the same time a sentence of death
for the whole caravan. The priests of the wicked Mzimu revenged
themselves upon the good one. The fetish-men revenged themselves upon
the young king who exposed their frauds and did not permit them to
deceive the ignorant Wahimas. Now the wings of death stretched over the
entire caravan like a hawk over a flock of doves.

Kali recollected too late that, having his mind troubled and engrossed
with something else, he forgot to