We sat by the fire, Gaston Lestrade and I, one dark and stormy evening, for this was the end of the rainy season. We were in the African interior; fortune had dealt hardly with us. It is not needful to the purpose of this tale to tell by what and by whom we had come to so dismal a ; enough that we found ourselves wet, hungry, surrounded by hostile savages, and, worse than all, poor to nakedness after four months’ irksome traffic in ivory and gum. Lestrade sat pulling his fine black mustache, for all his present wretchedness, with the air of a dandy on the Parisian boulevard, though there was not a petticoat within miles, and death, from one cause or another, more like to be our portion than amorous adventure.

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