Part 25 (2/2)

”What good does he suppose all this hocus-pocus is going to do us?”

muttered Harry irritably, ”as if an old fire could tell us anything we didn't know already. It's all rubbish, I say.”

”I'm not so sure,” remarked Frank thoughtfully. ”We have already seen something of what his skill can do and I don't mind letting him see if he can't conjure up something to give us a ray of hope.”

”Oh bosh, Frank,” replied Harry, ”if he ever did get anything right through this rigmarole and hanky-panky it was simply because he had good luck. That's all.”

”For my part, I've knocked around the world too much to be so c.o.c.k sure of some things as some young chaps seem to be,” put in Ben Stubbs, with a chuckle, looking up from the frying-pan that he was scouring with sand.

Harry looked abashed and said nothing.

If old Sikaso had heard any of this colloquy he made no sign, but with the face of a graven image went about his preparations. Slowly he struck the sparks from his never-failing flint and steel, and a few seconds later the little fire was sending up a blaze.

”Do you see anything?” asked Frank.

”Too soon now, wait till smoke come,” he said, and resumed his intense watching of the fire.

After a delay that seemed maddening, to two at least of the group that was watching, the old Krooman announced that all was ready.

Even Harry felt a thrill of interest as the old man began to spin slowly on his toes round the column of smoke, chanting slowly some strange mixture of savage music which was, as Frank guessed, an incantation to the fetish that, as he believed, dwelt in the smoke.

As the smoke grew thicker he cast some sort of powder from a skin-bag into it and instantly a thick yellow column of vapor shot up.

The whole forest about seemed impregnated with the strong odor of the stuff and the boys' eyes smarted. Old Sikaso kept up his dance, bending lower and lower till it seemed that he must be actually inhaling the pungent, acrid smoke.

As this strange scene progressed, Frank felt his eyes begin to grow dim and an unaccountable languor fill his limbs. His head swam round and he desired nothing so much as to lie down and sleep---and yet a compelling power forced him to keep his eyes fixed on the column of smoke over which the aged Krooman was now stooping with outspread hands.

Suddenly he gave a sharp cry--an exclamation almost of command.

”Look--look, white boys, and you, old man of the sea and the forests of the far-off land, and I shall show you the magic of the sleeping heart of Africa.”

With eyes that started from his head Frank gazed, in obedience to a majestic sweep of the African's hand, full into the ascending column of yellowish smoke.

The languor the boy had felt at first had now quite left him and he was only intent on seeing what was about to transpire.

Sikaso's voice once more rose in his dismal chant and he cast more of the powder from his skin-bag into the fire. The smoke pillar grew to an immense size and, as he gazed at it, before Frank's amazed eyes a scene as strange to him as any he had ever set eyes on, began slowly to take shape.

There was a river edge with mighty banks at the summit of which waved fronds of tropical plants and in which huge beasts, that he recognized as hippopotami, wallowed and sputtered. An unhealthy steam arose from the banks and the river boiled angrily along between its confines in a dark mud-colored flood.

So far the scene was not unlike the river in which he and Harry had so nearly lost their lives, but as he gazed the details grew clearer, as if it had been a magic lantern view, growing by degrees stronger and every outline of the tropical view was suddenly thrown into strong relief.

All at once the boy uttered a sharp cry, which was echoed by his brother and Ben. Old Sikaso never moved a muscle but kept on chanting.

Into the center of the wonderful smoke picture there had swum a canoe.

And in it were seated Billy Barnes and Lathrop!

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