mighty and imperial
Kor.

As for the adventures that subsequently befell us, strange and varied
as they were, I have, after deliberation, determined not to record them
here. In these pages I have only tried to give a short and clear account
of an occurrence which I believe to be unprecedented, and this I have
done, not with a view to immediate publication, but merely to put
on paper while they are yet fresh in our memories the details of our
journey and its result, which will, I believe, prove interesting to
the world if ever we determine to make them public. This, as at present
advised, we do not intend should be done during our joint lives.

For the rest, it is of no public interest, resembling as it does the
experience of more than one Central African traveller. Suffice it to
say, that we did, after incredible hardships and privations, reach the
Zambesi, which proved to be about a hundred and seventy miles south
of where Billali left us. There we were for six months imprisoned by
a savage tribe, who believed us to be supernatural beings, chiefly on
account of Leo's youthful face and snow-white hair. From these people we
ultimately escaped, and, crossing the Zambesi, wandered off southwards,
where, when on the point of starvation, we were sufficiently fortunate
to fall in with a half-cast Portuguese elephant-hunter who had followed
a troop of elephants farther inland than he had ever been before. This
man treated us most hospitably, and ultimately through his assistance
we, after innumerable sufferings and adventures, reached Delagoa Bay,
more than eighteen months from the time when we emerged from the marshes
of Kor, and the very next day managed to catch one of the steamboats
that run round the Cape to England. Our journey home was a prosperous
one, and we set our foot on the quay at Southampton exactly two years
from the date of our departure upon our wild and seemingly ridiculous
quest, and I now write these last words with Leo leaning over my
shoulder in my old room in my college, the very same into which some
two-and-twenty years ago my poor friend Vincey came stumbling on the
memorable night of his death, bearing the iron chest with him.

And that is the end of this history so far as it concerns science and
the outside world. What its end will be as regards Leo and myself is
more than I can guess at. But we feel that is not reached yet. A story
that began more than two thousand years ago may stretch a lo