out of the hotel in Zanzibar. I wish he could have escaped with his
life--a picturesque scoundrel if ever there was one! I'd rather be
robbed by him than flattered by ten Schillingschens or Lady Saffren
Waldons. I suppose if I'd been with you I'd have killed him. It's
well I wasn't. I might have regretted it all my days!"

We buried our newly won ivory under a tree, locating the spot exactly
with the aid of Monty's compass, and broke camp, starting sleepless up
the mountain. As Monty said:

"No use meandering around the mountain. Hassan might be higher up or
lower down. If he is there you may depend on it he's tired of waiting.
He's looking for a safari. Let's climb where we can be seen from
miles away."

So climb we did, thousand after thousand feet, until the night air grew
so cold that the porters' teeth chattered and they threatened to desert
us. They grew afraid, too, remembering the tales the villagers had
told them down below.

"Wow! You are not fat babies!" Kazimoto told them. "Who would eat
such stringy meat as you?"

We came to caves that none of the men dared enter--vast, gloomy tunnels
into the mountain through which the chill wind whistled like a dirge.
Yet the caverns were warmer than the wind, and not bad camping-places
if we could have persuaded the boys to take advantage of them.

The earth, too, all over the mountain and the range to eastward of it
was warm in spite of the wind. In places there were warm springs
bubbling from the rock, and at night and early morning a blanket of
white mist that was remarkably like steam covered everything. It was a
land of thunderless lightning--lightning from a clear sky, flashing
here and there without warning or excuse. On the high slopes there was
little or no game, and no signs whatever of inhabitants, until late one
afternoon the porters shouted, and we saw an old man racing toward us
along the top of a ridge.

He held his hands out, and shouted as he ran--a round-faced,
big-bellied man, although not nearly so fat as when we saw him last;
unclean, unkempt, in tattered shirt and crushed-in fez--a man with one
desire expressed all over him--to see, and touch, and talk with other
men. He ran and threw himself at Monty's feet, clasped his legs, and
blubbered.

"Bwana! Oh, bwana! Oh, bwana!"

"Get up, Johnson!" Fred took him by the arm and raised him. "Tell us
what's the matter."

"Men who eat men! Men who eat men! I had three porters