"Agreed," returned the missionary, as his comrade placing his knapsack under his head, threw himself under a low bush, and was soon sleeping heavily. Hours went by, and still the missionary, with his rifle thrown across his knee, sat by the fire. He rose from time to time to collect and heap on it the dried branches. Once he heard distinctly above the noises incidental to an African night in the wilderness, the splintering of wood. He was in the act of throwing an armful of dry branches on the blaze. Stooping, he seized his rifle, and was just about to wake his companion, when the noise ceased. Stepping up to where the soldier lay, he looked at him. The starlight shone over the bronzed and travel-worn face. The cap had fallen off, and the long locks of dark hair touched the ground. "It would be a pity to wake him," muttered the missionary. "I am not tired; the presentiment of evil is upon me, and I could not sleep even if I tried." Turning, he again squatted down by the fire, the cocked rifle over his knee. Once, more than an hour after, the same sound, like to the breaking of wood, reached his ear. "It may be some heavy animal feeding," he thought, "and my fears be groundless; the darkness of the night, the loneliness and fatigue, have unnerved me." Soon his thoughts were away in other lands, and with friends, some of whom had been long since dead. Then they returned to the ruined cities of this wild land. Had they any affinity to those found in Mexico? he asked himself. No, they must be Egyptian. Suddenly a wild shout burst on his ear, a crashing blow, a whizzing in the ears, and all was darkness. The missionary lay stretched beside the embers of the fire. How long he remained insensible on the ground Wyzinski never knew, but the grey dawn was just breaking as he struggled back to consciousness, to find his arms tightly and painfully bound behind his back, his head splitting with pain, while the clearing seemed filled with the dark forms of the Amatongas, seated in a circle, and evidently debating on their prisoner's fate. As he lay there on his back, barely able to turn his head, his open eyes gazing upwards at the stars, whose feeble light was just paling before the first grey streaks of dawn, a black mass intervened between him and the blue sky. It was a woman's head, the long hair told him this much, but the face was that of a demon; the beadlike eyes which peered into his flashing with malicious hatred; the thick lips parted, showing the yellow teeth clenched with passion; the flat nostrils distended with rage, and the hair, matted with grease and dirt, sweeping his face as she bent over him.