Part 9 (1/2)

But then in my heart I heard a small voice: ”Alphonse,” said the voice, ”restrain thyself, Alphonse! Give not way to this evil passion! These h black, are brothers! And thou wouldst slay theht I knew it; I was about to perpetrate the most horrible cruelties: to wound! to massacre! to tear limb from limb!

And how restrain myself? I looked round; I saw the tree, I perceived the hole ”Entoht! Thou wilt thus overcome temptation by randfather boiled ; I entoh the hole I watched the battle! I shouted curses and defiance on the foe! I noted them fall with satisfaction! Why not? I had not robbed theore was not uponwith you, you little cur!' broke out Sir Henry, with a shout of laughter, and giving Alphonse a good kick which sent hi I had an intervieith Mr Mackenzie, as suffering a good deal froh unqualified doctor, was treating hiht him a lesson, and that, if he recovered safely, he er man, as already on his road to join hiland

'You see, Quater, ere creeping down those benighted savages ”If we live through this and rescue Flossie alive,” I said to es” Well, I did not think that we should live through it at the tih it, and Ibefall us Another such time would kill my poor wife

And besides, Quatermain, between you and me, I am well off; it is thirty thousand pounds I a of it s in the bank at Zanzibar, for living here costs h it will be hard to leave this place, which I have made to blossom like a rose in the wilderness, and harder still to leave the people I have taught, I shall go'

'I congratulate you on your decision,' answered I, 'for two reasons

The first is, that you owe a duty to your wife and daughter, and more especially to the latter, who should receive soirls of her own race, otherwise she will groild, shunning her kind The other is, that as sure as I ae the slaughter inflicted on them today Two or three men are sure to have escaped the confusion ill carry the story back to their people, and the result will be that a great expedition will one day be sent against you It ht be delayed for a year, but sooner or later it will coo When once they have learnt that you are no longer here they may perhaps leave the place alone' {Endnote 8}

'You are quite right,' answered the clergyman 'I will turn my back upon this place in a month But it will be a wrench, it will be a wrench'

CHAPTER IX INTO THE UNKNOWN

A week had passed, and we all sat at supper one night in the Mission dining-roo veryto say goodbye to our kind friends, the Mackenzies, and depart upon our way at dawn on themore had been seen or heard of the Masai, and save for a spear or thich had been overlooked and was rusting in the grass, and a few ees where we had stood outside the wall, it would have been difficult to tell that the old cattle kraal at the foot of the slope had been the scene of so desperate a struggle Mackenzie was, thanks chiefly to his being so teet about on a pair of crutches; and as for the other wounded rene, and the rest were in a fair way to recovery Mr Mackenzie's caravan of men had also returned froarrisoned

Under these circu as were the invitations for us to stay, that it was time to move on, first to Mount Kenia, and thence into the unknown in search of the mysterious white race which we had set our hearts on discovering This tiress by means of the humble but useful donkey, of which we had collected no less than a dozen, to carry our goods and chattels, and, if necessary, ourselves We had now but two Wakwafis left for servants, and found it quite iet other natives to venture with us into the unknown parts we proposed to explore--and small blame to them

After all, as Mr Mackenzie said, it was odd that three s that are supposed to --health, sufficient means, and position, etc--should frooose chase, from which the chances were they never would return But then that is what Englishnificent reat nation, testify to the extraordinary value of the spirit of adventure which at first sight looks like a oes out to meet whatever may come Well, that is e all do in the world one way or another, and, speaking for myself, I am proud of the title, because it implies a brave heart and a trust in Providence Besides, when many and many a noted Croesus, at whose feet the people worshi+p, andpolitician are forgotten, the naland what she is, will be reht with love and pride to little children whose unshaped spirits yet slumber in the womb of centuries to be Not that we three can expect to be nuh, perhaps, to throw a gar, whilst ere sitting on the veranda, s in, who should conificent bow, announce his wish for an interview Being requested to 'fire away', he explained at soth that he was anxious to attach himself to our party--a state what a coward the little man was The reason, however, soon appeared Mr Mackenzie was going down to the coast, and thence on to England Now, if he went down country, Alphonse was persuaded that he would be seized, extradited, sent to France, and to penal servitude

This was the idea that haunted hi Charles's head haunted Mr dick, and he brooded over it till his ier ten times As a ainst the laws of his country had long ago been forgotten, and that he would have been allowed to pass unot to see this Constitutional coward as the little man was, he infinitely preferred to face the certain hardshi+ps and great risks and dangers of such an expedition as ours, than to expose hi for his native land, to the possible scrutiny of a police officer--which is after all only another exemplification of the truth that, to the er, however shadowy, is ency After listening to what he had to say, we consulted areed, with Mr Mackenzie's knowledge and consent, to accept his offer To begin with, ere very short-handed, and Alphonse was a quick, active felloho could turn his hand to anything, and cook--ah, he _could_ cook! I believe that he would have randfather which he was so fond of talking about Then he was a good-tempered little lorious talk was a source of infinite amusement to us; and what isso pronounced a coas a great drawback to hiuard against it So, after warning hi himself to, we told him that ould accept his offer on condition that he would proive hies at the rate of ten pounds a month should he ever return to a civilized country to receive thereed with alacrity, and retired to write a letter to his Annette, which Mr Mackenzie proot down country He read it to us afterwards, Sir Henry translating, and a wonderful composition it was I am sure the depth of his devotion and the narration of his sufferings in a barbarous country, 'far, far from thee, Annette, for whose adored sake I endure such sorrow,' ought to have touched the feelings of the stoniest-hearted chambermaid

Well, the morrow came, and by seven o'clock the donkeys were all loaded, and the ti was at hand It was a oodbye to dear little Flossie She and I were great friends, and often used to have talks together--but her nerves had never got over the shock of that awful night when she lay in the power of those bloodthirsty Masai 'Oh, Mr Quater into tears, 'I can't bear to say goodbye to you I wonder e shall irl,' I said, 'I am at one end of life and you are at the other I have but a short tis lie in the past, but I hope that for you there arelies in the future By-and-by you will grow into a beautiful woman, Flossie, and all this wild life will be like a far-off dreaain, that you will think of your old friend and reood, ht, rather than what happens to be pleasant, for in the end, whatever sneering people ood and what is happy are the sa hand to others--for the world is full of suffering, my dear, and to alleviate it is the noblest end that we can set before us If you do that you will beco wohter, and then you will not have lived, as so iven you a lot of old-fashi+oned advice, and so I a to sweeten it with You see this little piece of paper It is what is called a cheque When we are gone give it to your father with this note--not before, mind You will marry one day,present which you are to wear, and your daughter after you, if you have one, in remembrance of Hunter Quaterave ht hair in return, which I still have The cheque I gave her was for a thousand pounds (which being noell off, and having no calls upon me except those of charity, I could well afford), and in the note I directed her father to invest it for her in Governe to buy her the best diaet for the money and accumulated interest I chose dia Solomon's Mines are lost to the world, their price will never be much lower than it is at present, so that if in after-life she should ever be in pecuniary difficulties, she will be able to turn theot off, afterfro copiously (for he has a war with his master and mistress; and I was not sorry for it at all, for I hate those goodbyes Perhaps the aas' distress at parting with Flossie, for who affection He used to say that she was as sweet to see as the only star on a dark night, and was never tired of loudly congratulating hionani who had threatened to murder her And that was the lastof the pleasant Mission-house--a true oasis in the desert--and of European civilization But I often think of the Mackenzies, and wonder how they got down country, and if they are now safe and well in England, and will ever see these words Dear little Flossie! I wonder how she fares there where there are no black folk to do her i snow-clad Kenia for her to look at when she gets up in thethe Mission-house we made our way, comparatively unmolested, past the base of Mount Kenia, which the Masai call 'Donyo Egere', or the 'speckled mountain', on account of the black patches of rock that appear upon its hty spire, where the sides are too precipitous to allow of the snow lying on theo, where one of our two re unfortunately trodden on a puff-adder, died of snake-bite, in spite of all our efforts to save him Thence we proceeded a distance of about a hundred and fifty nificent snow-clad mountain called Lekakisera, which has never, to the best of my belief, been visited before by a European, but which I cannot now stop to describe There we rested a fortnight, and then started out into the trackless and uninhabited forest of a vast district called Elgumi In this forest alone there are more elephants than I ever hty mammals literally swarm there entirely unmolested by man, and only kept down by the natural law that prevents any ani beyond the capacity of the country they inhabit to support them

Needless to say, however, we did not shoot many of them, first because we could not afford to waste a perilously low, a donkey loaded with it having been swept away in fording a flooded river; and secondly, because we could not carry away the ivory, and did not wish to kill for the reat beasts be, only shooting one or two in self-protection

In this district, the elephants, being unacquainted with the hunter and his tender mercies, would allow one to walk up to within twenty yards of thereat ears cocked for all the world like puzzled and gigantic puppy-dogs, and stared at that new and extraordinary phenomenon--man Occasionally, when the inspection did not prove satisfactory, the staring ended in a true, but this did not often happen When it did we had to use our rifles

Nor were elephants the only wild beasts in the great Elgu lions--confound theht of a lion since one bitthat abounded was the dreadful tsetse fly, whose bite is death to doether with men, hitherto been supposed to enjoy a peculiar immunity from its attacks; but all I have to say, whether it was on account of their poor condition, or because the tsetse in those parts is more poisonous than usual, I do not know, but ours succuht Fortunately, however, that was not till two months or so after the bites had been inflicted, when suddenly, after a two days'

cold rain, they all died, and on re yellow streaks upon the flesh which are characteristic of death fro the spot where the insect had inserted his proboscis On e northwards, in accordance with the information Mr Mackenzie had collected froically, struck the base in due course of the large lake, called Laga by the natives, which is about fiftyby twenty broad, and of which, it may be remembered, he made mention

Thence we pushed on nearly alike those in the Transvaal, but diversified by patches of bush country

All this ti at the rate of about one hundred feet every ten miles Indeed the country was on a slope which appeared to terminate at a , and where we learnt the second lake of which the wanderer had spoken as the lake without a botto ascertained that there _was_ a large lake on top of the mountains, ascended three thousand feet reat sheet of water so fifteen hundred feet below us, and evidently occupying an extinct volcanic crater or craters of vast extent

Perceiving villages on the border of this lake, we descended with great difficulty through forests of pine trees, which now clothed the precipitous sides of the crater, and ell received by the people, a simple, unwarlike folk, who had never seen or even heard of a white reat reverence and kindness, supplying us with as much food and milk as we could eat and drink This wonderful and beautiful lake lay, according to our aneroid, at a height of no less than 11,450 feet above sea-level, and its cliland Indeed, for the first three days of our stay therelittle or nothing of the scenery on account of an unmistakable Scotch mist which prevailed It was this rain that set the tsetse poison working in our re donkeys, so that they all died

This disaster left us in a very aard position, as we had now no h on the other hand we had notto but one hundred and fifty rounds of rifle cartridges and soet on we did not know; indeed it seemed to us that we had about reached the end of our tether Even if we had been inclined to abandon the object of our search, which, shadow as it as by noour way back soht; so we ca to be done was to stop where ere--the natives being so well disposed and food plentiful--for the present, and abide events, and try to collect infor purchased a capital log canoe, large enough to hold us all and our baggage, fro hies by way of payhted, we set out to make a tour of the lake in order to find the most favourable place to make a cae, we put all our gear into the canoe, and also a quarter of cooked water-buck, which when young is delicious eating, and off we set, natives having already gone before us in light canoes to warn the inhabitants of the other villages of our approach