"What will you give um?" demanded Bosambo cautiously. "Forty English pounds?" suggested Cuthbert. "I take um," said Bosambo. It was a remarkably simple business; a more knowledgeable man than Cuthbert would have been scared by the easiness of his success, but Cuthbert was too satisfied with himself to be scared at anything. It is said that his leave-taking with Bosambo was of an affecting character, that Bosambo wept and embraced his benefactor's feet. Be that as it may, his "concessions" in his pocket, Cuthbert began his coastward journey, still avoiding Sanders. He came to Etebi and found a deputy-commissioner, who received him with open arms. Here Cuthbert stayed a week. Mr. Torrington at the time was tremendously busy with a scheme for stamping out sleeping sickness. Until then, Cuthbert was under the impression that it was a pleasant disease, the principal symptom of which was a painless coma. Fascinated, he extended his stay to a fortnight, seeing many dreadful sights, for Torrington had established a sort of amateur clinic, and a hundred cases a day came to him for treatment. "And it comes from the bite of a tsetse fly?" said Cuthbert. "Show me a tsetse." Torrington obliged him, and when the other saw the little black insect he went white to the lips. "My God!" he whispered, "I've been bitten by that!" "It doesn't follow----" began Torrington; but Cuthbert was blundering and stumbling in wild fear to his carriers' camp. "Get your loads!" he yelled. "Out of this cursed country we get as quick as we can!" Torrington, with philosophical calm, endeavoured to reassure him, but he was not to be appeased. He left Etebi that night and camped in the forest. Three days later he reached a mission station, where he complained of headaches and pains in the neck (he had not attended Torrington's clinics in vain). The missionary, judging from the man's haggard appearance and general incoherence that he had an attack of malaria, advised him to rest for a few days; but Cuthbert was all a-fret to reach the coast. Twenty miles from the mission, Cuthbert sent his carriers back, and said he would cover the last hundred miles of the journey alone. To this extraordinary proposition the natives agree--from that day Cuthbert disappeared from the sight of man. * * * * * Sanders was taking a short cut through the forest to avoid the interminable twists and bends of the river, when he came suddenly upon a village of death--four sad little huts, built hastily amidst a tangle of underwood. He called, but nobody answered him. He was too wary to enter any of the crazy habitations. He knew these little villages in the forest. It was the native custom to take the aged and the dying--especially those who died sleepily--to far-away places, beyond the reach of man, and leave them there with a week's food and a fire, to die in decent solitude.