toward the bank. To his
surprise he found that rain had fallen. He was treading in ooze, which
rose higher and higher until it clogged his footsteps. He struggled, but
now it held him fast, and he was sinking slowly, but persistently, now
to the waist, now to the shoulders. Frantically he thrust his hands
downward to free himself, and withdrew them sticky with--jam! He scooped
up great handsful greedily; and even as he raised it to his mouth it
vanished, and he awoke once more in his tent.

He flung himself out of bed with an oath, took down his canteen, and
started toward the river. The noise of the tom-toms was louder than
ever, proceeding, apparently, from some point in the bush a little to
the left of the king's palace. Scrambling and struggling through the
thorn thickets, he reached the sandy bed of the stream, filled his
water-bottle at a pool, and drank greedily.

It was that still hour of night when the many-voiced clamor of the bush
grows hushed, because the lions are coming down to drink at the waters.
The rising moon threw a pale light over the land. The tom-toms were
still resounding in the bush, but to Peters's distorted mind they took
on the sound of ripe mangoes falling to the ground and bursting open as
they struck the soil. He counted, "one, two, three," and waited. He
counted again. There must be thousands of them. Peters began to edge
his way through the reeds in the direction of the sound. After a while
he came to a wall of rocks perpendicular and almost insurmountable. He
paused and considered, licking his lips greedily as the thud, thud
continued, now, apparently, directly in front of him. All at once his
eyes, curiously sensitive to external impressions, discovered a little,
secret trail between two boulders. He followed it; a great stone
revolved at his touch, and he found himself inside the sacred groves. He
went on, gulping greedily in anticipation of the feast which awaited
him.

Suddenly he stopped short. He had seen something that brought back to
him with a rush the realization of his whereabouts. Seated in the
shelter of a cactus tree, not fifty yards away, was King Mtetanyanga,
wearing his three opera hats, one upon another, in the form of a triple
crown, and drinking his own rum with Raguet, under the shade of Raguet's
umbrella. Prone at their feet crouched Tom, the interpreter.

"His Majesty say, 'How you fix him Ju-Ju?'" translated Tom.

"Tell His Majesty, my Ju-Ju stronger than t