No other mountaineering expedition had ever given me so much pleasure. Truly, the "moleb" did have remarkable qualities; even before we had gathered the first spray of this little weed my lungs were filled with the exhilaration of the high mountain air, and all my distempers of the mind and body had been cured. I breathed of the free cool breezes of the peaks, and felt how puny was the life I had once led among brick walls; I stood gazing into the vacancies of dim, deep canyons, and through blue miles to the shoulders of remote cloud-wrapped ranges, and it seemed to me that I was king and master of all this tumultuous expanse of green and brown and azure. The scenery was magnificent; the sharply cloven valleys, the snow-streaked summits and wide dark-green forests stretched before me even as they may have stretched before my paleolithic forebears; and nowhere was there a funnel of smoke, or a hut or shanty, or a devastated woodland to serve as the signature of man. Yet amid these very solitudes, where all things human appeared as remote as some other planet, I was to find my first hint of the way back to civilized lands. It was afternoon of the second day, and we had gathered a supply of the "moleb" and were returning to Sobul, when I beheld a sight that made me stare as if in a daze. Far, far beneath us, slowly threading their way toward the top of the rocky ridge we were descending, were half a dozen steadily moving black dots! In swift excitement, I turned to Karem and Barkodu, and asked who these men might be. But my companions appeared unconcerned; they remarked that the strangers were doubtless natives of these regions; and they advised that we allow them to pass without seeing us, for the country was infested with brigands. But brigands or no brigands, I was determined to talk with the newcomers. All the pleas of Yasma and the arguments of Karem were powerless to move me. I had a dim hope that the strangers might be of my own race; and a stronger hope that they could give me welcome news. At all events, they were the first human beings other than the Ibandru that I had seen for two years, and the opportunity was not one to scorn. As there was only one trail up the steep, narrow slope, the unknowns would have to pass us unless we hid. And since I would not hide and my companions would not desert me, it was not long before the strangers had hailed us. Up and up they plodded in long snaky curves, now lost from view beyond a ledge, now reappearing from behind some great crag; while gradually they became more clearly outlined. It was not long before we had made out that their garments were of a gray unlike anything worn in Sobul; and at about the same time we began to distinguish something of their faces, which were covered with black beards.