We were early astir, and after a quick light breakfast set out towards our goal--the town of Issèlé. At Issèlé M'patimo we were stopped by a stockade, and it was only after much persuasion and many assurances of friendship that we were allowed to pass through--not, however, before every soul in the place had disappeared. Not a house was to be seen. We entered a great clearing completely fenced in by impenetrable barriers of living trees, whose leafy branches interlaced in inextricable folds. Somewhere behind these barriers were the houses. We could see no trace of the hundreds of eyes that we felt--we _knew_--were staring at us from all sides; no inkling of the countless black muzzles of the Long Dane guns that were covering us. Nobody appeared, however, and we marched through this silent clearing without mishap. But we had hardly got beyond the confines of this curious city of the woods before heavy firing broke out in our immediate rear. We felt certain that we were in for it, but our guide reassured us, saying that the townspeople were only giving vent to their feelings of relief at our not having molested them. That night we camped in a village outside Issèlé, and on interviewing the chief found that he had with him a daughter of the man we wished to capture, and persuaded her to come with us next morning into Issèlé. On reaching that town we drew the men up in square before the King's house--a lofty building of enormous circumference, painted or washed a pink colour--and demanded to see His Majesty. After a lot of parleying I entered the building, leaving Townsend outside, but taking my interpreter and four soldiers with me as a body guard. I was shown into a large courtyard, surrounded on all sides by a veranda, whilst in the centre stood a kind of idol on a rude column. Overhanging the palace outside, an enormous cotton-tree rose some two hundred feet into the air. Not a leaf or a vestige of bark adorned its mournful, lonely majesty. From every branch, however, hung some ghastly offering to the ruling fetish of the place--here a dead fowl, there a skull dangling by a matted bunch of hair, and many another gruesome thing. It cast a shadow and a hush of Death over everything; the people seemed to live in continual fear of some unknown terror. As I waited in this strange courtyard with my five companions, I took the opportunity to get my bearings. The doorway by which I had entered led out into the square by some steps, and was about six feet above the level of the ground outside. Its heavy, iron-studded wooden door stood ajar. The only other entrance to the courtyard was opposite this one, and led into the private apartments of the palace. The middle of the courtyard was some two feet below the level of the surrounding veranda.