"I've figured," said Evan thoughtfully, "that it was in the fringe of bush, and when the drums began to close in from three sides, it was flushed out and came on to hide here in or about the house. It had hidden here before." "Probably," Arthur agreed. "But that doesn't say how we're going to elude it during a journey of a hundred and fifty miles without carriers." Evan threw out his hands. "But what are we going to do?" He appealed to me. "What do you think, Murray?" "If we stay here," I reasoned, "either we'll get him or he'll get us. If we go, he'll probably get one or more of us and we may get him. But we can't stay here. The only thing I can think of is that we had better try for him to-night. With the dogs to warn us, we'll have a better chance than before. If he doesn't come to-night, try to-morrow night. Hang on here as long as we dare and then, if we must, try the trail. If we could strike a caravan coming down from the Hungry Country, now----" Evan shook his head. "I haven't been very hospitable to the Portuguese traders," he remarked. "They steal my slaves and sell them in Ticao. They don't turn off the main slave trail to my villages any more." We were, silent for a moment or two. "Are there any of the rest barricades any short distance away?" asked Arthur. "We might reach one of them and wait for a caravan to come." From time to time along the great slave trail from the interior, you will find big inclosures made of tree trunks and filled with grass huts. They were originally built for halting places for the caravans that go up and down from beyond the Hungry Country. Of course they are in ill repair because of the attacks of insects and rot upon dead timber in that climate, but the carriers feel safer in them after nightfall, and the slave traders find them convenient to avoid possible attempts to escape off the part of the "voluntary labor recruits" they are escorting to the coast. "We might try," I said doubtfully. "Frankly, I think the beast would have as much chance at us there as here. If we happened on a caravan right away, though, it would help." "Why doesn't the damned thing go away?" Arthur looked at us with something of dread in his eyes. "I shot its mate four hundred miles away, up in the Kongo. It trailed me those four hundred miles, making attempt after attempt on me. I wounded it once, and got a fair shot at it two weeks before Murray brought Alicia and Mrs. Braymore here. I thought I had killed it then. It went off through the trees as if it were badly injured. I'd made sure it was dead." He began to pace up and down the room nervously. "I've never known one so far from Kongo before," I said, in an attempt to encourage him. "You know what animals are. They'll stick at a thing for an amazing length of time and then will drop it like a shot. He may get a touch of homesickness any day and swing off to the north again."