“And there’s no River of Stars--no diamonds: a cursed fine explorer that father of yours, Sutton.” He said this savagely, but the boy with his head on his knees, looking wistfully at the river, made no reply. “A cursed fine explorer,” repeated Lambaire. Sutton half turned his head. “Don’t quarrel with me,” he said drearily, “because if you do----” “Hey! if I do?” Lambaire was ripe for quarrelling with anybody. “If you do, I’ll shoot you dead,” said the boy, and turned his head again in the direction of the river. Lambaire’s face twitched and he half rose--they were sitting on the river bank. “None o’ that talk, none o’ that talk, Sutton,” he growled tremulously; “that’s not the sort o’----” “Oh, shut up!” snarled Whitey, “we don’t want your jabber, Lambaire--we want a way out!” A way out! This is what the search for the river had come to: this was the end of four months’ wandering, every day taking them farther and farther into the bush; every week snapped one link that held them to civilization. They had not reached the Portuguese border, because, long before they had arrived within a hundred miles of the frontier, it was apparent that the map was all wrong. There had been little villages marked upon it which they had not come by: once when a village had been traced, and a tribal headquarters located, they had discovered, as other African travellers had discovered, that a score of villages bearing the same name might be found within a radius of a hundred miles. And all the time the little party, with its rapidly diminishing band of carriers, was getting farther and farther into the bush. They had parleyed with the Alebi folk, fought a running fight with the bush people of the middle forest, held their camp against a three-day attack of the painted K’hassi, and had reached the dubious security which the broken-spirited slave people of the Inner Lands could offer. And the end of it was that the expedition must turn back, passing through the outraged territories they had forced. “There is no other way,” persisted Lambaire. Whitey shook his head. A singularly futile ending to a great expedition. I am following the train of thought in Sutton’s mind as he gloomed at the river flowing slowly past. Not the way which such expeditions ended in books. Cynthia would laugh, he shuddered. Perhaps she would cry, and have cause, moreover. And that thief man, Amber; a rum name, Amber--gold, diamonds. No diamonds, no River of Stars: the dream had faded. This was a river. It slugged a way through a cannibal land, it passed over hundreds of miles of cataracts and came to the sea ... where there were ships that carried one to England ... to London. He sprang up. “When shall we start?” he asked dully. “Start?” Lambaire looked up. “We’ve got to go back the way we came,” said the boy. “We might as well make a start now--the carriers are going--two went last night. We’ve no white man’s food; we’ve about a hundred rounds of ammunition apiece.”