Terrified, Nkima scampered to his master's side. He screamed and chattered in his ear and pulled and tugged upon him in an effort to raise him, but the ape-man lay motionless, a tiny stream of blood trickling from a cut on his temple into his shock of black hair. As Nkima mourned, the black warriors, who had been watching them from below, clambered quickly up the mountainside toward him and his helpless master. _Chapter Four_ As Erich von Harben turned to face the thing that he had heard approaching behind him, he saw a negro armed with a rifle coming toward him. "Gabula!" exclaimed the white man, lowering his weapon. "What are you doing here?" "Bwana," said the black, "I could not desert you. I could not leave you to die alone at the hands of the spirits that dwell upon these mountains." Von Harben eyed the negro incredulously. "But if you believe that, Gabula, are you not afraid that they will kill you, too?" "I expect to die, Bwana," replied Gabula. "I cannot understand why you were not killed the first night or the second night. We shall both surely be killed tonight." "And yet you followed me! Why?" "You have been kind to me, Bwana," replied the black. "Your father has been kind to me. When the others talked they filled me with fear and when they ran away I went with them, but I have come back. There was nothing else that I could do, was there?" "No, Gabula. For you or for me there would have been nothing else to do, as we see such things, but as the others saw them they found another thing to do and they did it." "Gabula is not as the others," said the black, proudly. "Gabula is a Batoro." "Gabula is a brave warrior," said von Harben. "I do not believe in spirits and so there was no reason why I should be afraid, but you and all your people do believe in them and so it was a very brave thing for you to come back, but I shall not hold you. You may return, Gabula, with the others." "Yes?" Gabula exclaimed eagerly. "The Bwana is going back? That will be good. Gabula will go back with him." "No, I am going down into that canyon," said von Harben, pointing over the rim. Gabula looked down, surprise and wonder reflected by his wide eyes and parted lips. "But, Bwana, even if a human being could find a way down these steep cliffs, where there is no place for either hand or foot, he would surely be killed the moment he reached the bottom, for this indeed must be the Land of the Lost Tribe where the spirits of the dead live in the heart of the Wiramwazi." "You do not need to come with me, Gabula," said von Harben. "Go back to your people." "How are you going to get down there?" demanded the black. "I do not know just how, or where, or when. Now I am going to descend as far along this fissure as I can go. Perhaps I shall find my way down here, perhaps not." "But suppose there is no foothold beyond the fissure?" asked Gabula. "I shall have to find footing."