At such times the serious man and the lovely child would sit close to each other upon a bench in the dense shade of the bananas, watching the play of the shadows which the bluish moonlight made through the foliage upon the dark red ground. Over all reigned a mysterious silence, only broken by the rustling of the banana leaves. Great bats flitted like spirits through the air. “The father of the four wings,” as the Arabs call the nightjar, with its long fantastic feathers, which in flying give it the appearance of a dragon, flew noiselessly about. Bluish lights marked the course of the great “lamp carriers,” the tropical fireflies, and whirring night butterflies fluttered about, hardly visible to the eye in their dark dress. All nature was filled with the deepest peace. Then Emin would tell her of his quiet peaceful life in the far northern cities; of his joyous yet strenuous student life in beautiful Berlin; of his journey over the blue sea, which Ferida cannot yet imagine, notwithstanding his description of it; of Constantinople and its splendid palaces with their golden domes; of the desert, with its burning sun and the silence of the dreamy nights, when the stars are unnaturally bright; of brown and black people with their different habits and costumes; of wars and adventures; of the terrors of forest fires, and of the curious dwellings of the negroes. Then he would describe the plants, birds, and four-footed animals he had studied so closely and tell her fables and romances that he had heard on his many journeys from the natives, so that his child, who had no story books, might at least have a pretty one of her own father’s telling. Chapter II The Slave Question Dr. Junker greatly enjoyed the quiet, peaceful life which his friend was leading on the extreme frontier of civilization, but many serious questions were troubling him, and he availed himself of the first leisure moments to ask Emin about the condition of the slave trade in the Soudan. “I heard in Europe,” he said, “that this shameful business was to be entirely suppressed and yet I have been for a year among these unfortunate people in the district of Bahr-el-Ghazal and have seen how the Arab robbers in armed bands have fallen upon the poor negroes, carried off the young women and boys, driven away their herds, often burned their villages, and left ruin and desolation in their wake. It is dreadful to think that so many of these poor captives have perished on the way from hunger and brutal treatment and that they have been needlessly sacrificed. And yet it is asserted that the Egyptian government has abolished the slave trade and made the exporting of blacks impossible.”