here, Polly, what do you say to _that_?' said Nora.

'Your grandmother!' I replied.

'Polly!' said Miss Nora, looking at me with quite needlessly flashing
eyes, 'you and I will set out on the search for this unhappy mummied
one.'

'Don't you think the critics will call the _motive_ rather thin?' I
demurred.

'Thin, to rescue my ancestress from a curse!' said Leonora.

'There's just one other thing,' she mused. 'Shall we take a low comedy
character this time, or not?'

'Let's take Ustani,' I proposed, 'he can double the part with that of
the Faithful Black! A great saving in hotel bills and railway fares.'

CHAPTER IV.

THE EQUIPMENT.

After it had been decided that we should start in search of '_He_ who
had been mummified alive,' the next step seemed to be to go. But
Leonora demurred to this.

'We must have our things,' she said; 'what do you think we should
take?'

'Scissors,' I replied; and I regret to say that at first she
misinterpreted the phrase.

Leonora is a powerful as well as a pretty girl, and when the bear fight
that ensued was over my rooms were a little mixed.

This suggested mixed biscuits, that invaluable refreshment of the
traveller, and from one thing to another we soon made up a complete
list of our needs.

The scissors, and skates, and the soap we procured at the Church and
State stores,[11] but not, of course, the revolvers. The revolvers we
got of the genuine Government pattern, because both Leonora and I are
dreadfully afraid of fire-arms, and we knew that _these_, anyhow, would
not 'go off.' The jam we got, of course, at the official cartridge
emporium, same which we did _not_ shoot the Arabs. The Gladstone bag
and the Bryant & May's matches we procured direct from the makers,
resisting the piteous appeals of itinerant vendors. Some life-belts we
laid in, and, as will presently be seen, we could have made no more
judicious purchase.

[11]
Won't the critics say you are advertising the stores? And the
tradesmen won't like it.--PUBLISHER.

Where would the _stern reality_ of the story be (see _Spectator_),
and the contrast with the later goings on, if you didn't give
names?--ED.

As, from information received on a mummy case, we were travelling in
search of a mummy, of course we laid in a case of Mumm, which was often
a source of gaiety in our darkest hours. The wine was procured, as I
would advise every African traveller to do, fro