After marching about half an hour he stopped abruptly¹ and said, with a heavy sigh,—“I hope we haven’t missed our way?”

“Hope not sir, but it looks like as if we had.”

“I’ve bin² so took up thinkin’ o’ that accursed traffic in human bein’s that I’ve lost my reckonin’. Howsever, we can’t be far out, an’, with the sun to guide us, we’ll—”

He was stopped by a loud halloo in the woods, on the belt of the swamp.

It was repeated in a few seconds, and Antonio, who, with Jumbo, had followed his master, cried in an excited tone—

“Me knows dat sound!”

“Wot may it be, Tony?” asked Disco.

There was neither time nor need for an answer, for at that moment a ringing cry, something like a bad imitation of a British cheer, was heard, and a band of men sprang out of the woods and ran at full speed towards our Englishmen.

“Why, Zombo!” exclaimed Disco, wildly.

“Oliveira!” cried Harold.

“Masiko! Songolo!” shouted Antonio and Jumbo.

“An’ José, Nakoda, Chimbolo, Mabruki!—the whole bun’ of ’em,” cried Disco, as one after another these worthies³ emerged from the wood and rushed in a state of frantic⁴ excitement towards their friends—“Hooray!”

“Hooroo-hay!” replied the runners.

In another minute our adventurous⁵ party of travellers was re-united, and for some time nothing but wild excitement, congratulations, queries⁶ that got no replies, and replies that ran tilt⁷ at irrelevant⁸ queries, with confusion worse confounded by explosions of unbounded and irrepressible laughter not unmingled with tears, was the order of the hour.

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