When I had finished reading this extraordinary narrative, which, strange as it was and teeming with marvellous and incredible incidents, yet seemed to me to bear the evident impress of truth, I was singularly affected. Up to the present I had seen but the outside fringe of Africa, which, with its gin cases, its bales of cotton goods, its bags of kernels and puncheons of oil, seemed prosaic and sordid enough. But yet, even in my brief and shallow experience of the country, there had repeatedly reached me faint echoes of a more romantic and mysterious life enacting in those little known regions on whose blue and shadowy distances I had so often turned a longing eye from the verandah of Pereira’s house. And now, like a personal message to me from the dim, forgotten past, came this story of the old-time Portuguese trader, stirring up all that was romantic and adventurous in my nature, and awakening in me an irresistible desire to see the wonders of Africa for myself. When I had paced the beach for awhile I returned to the journal to see if it contained any further account of Almeida, but no reference was made to the Portuguese until I came to the 30th January, when I read:-- “The man José d’Almeida, who hath been very sickly of late, was founde dead in his bedde this morning. We buried him in the sea about nine of the clock and fired a salute with our small cannon after his corpse had been cast into the water. He seemed a godly man, although, like moste of his nation, a rank papist.” It was late that night before I turned in to rest, for the travel fever that had infected Mungo Park, Denham, Clapperton, Lander and the host of other intrepid wanderers whose exploits I recalled and whose remains rested in this ill-omened but fascinating land, had fairly taken hold of me; and when I at last tucked in my mosquito curtain and blew out my candle it was only to fall asleep and dream that I sat, a destitute wanderer, under the shade-tree of some far-away village in the heart of the continent. CHAPTER VII. I FORM AN ABSURD RESOLUTION. The day following that on which I met with the narrative of Almeida in the old log-book was one of more than usual activity, for a large consignment of produce had just been acquired on our behalf by Olympio from no less a person than Mr. David Annan. The “scholar man” had, in fact, rather effectually tapped our source of supply by intercepting the little caravans of “bush people” and clearing them out before they could reach the coast. In consequence, I spent the greater part of the day seated upon a pile of gin-cases, tally-sheet in hand, watching Olympio and his myrmidons weigh out the kernels and rubber, and measure the palm oil.