"By Jove, Maitland, I admire you!" exclaimed Grosvenor when Dick had come to the end of his story. "There is not one man in a hundred who, under similar circumstances, would have tackled the situation with the indomitable pluck and whole-hearted belief in himself that you have shown; and I feel sure that such courage will meet with its just reward. You are the kind of fellow that always comes out on top, simply because you will not allow yourself to be kept down. Now, look here, I am going to make a proposition to you--and, understand me, it is on purely selfish grounds that I am going to make it. I am going out to South Africa because I want to forget a--well, a very bitter disappointment that I have recently sustained, and the particulars of which I will perhaps tell you some day if you fall in with my proposition, as I hope you will. The way in which I propose to conquer this disappointment of mine is to go in for a life of adventure--exploration of the interior, big-game shooting, and that sort of thing, you understand. I have heard some most thrilling stories of the wonderful things and people that are to be found in the interior of Africa, and, while many of them are doubtless lies, there is evidence enough of a perfectly reliable character to prove that there is at least a certain amount of truth in others; and it is my purpose to ascertain at firsthand the exact measure of that truth. Take, for example, the contention of certain antiquarians that the ruins of Ophir must exist somewhere upon the east coast. I have read pretty nearly everything that has been written upon that subject, and I am convinced of the soundness of the contention, as I am also of the contention that Zimbabwe is not ancient Ophir. Then, again, there is the statement of the existence of a mysterious white race in the far interior, which persistently crops up at intervals. It would be interesting in the extreme to be able to settle that matter beyond a doubt, wouldn't it? Very well, then; my idea is to attempt to find ancient Ophir, and also the mysterious white race, if possible.