At the entrance to a tent a man sat silent, watching the setting sun. A wild scene, truly, far beyond the bounds of civilization, where the foot of the white man had never trodden before, where the savage tribes had lived since the first of Time in primeval simplicity, where Nature, with lavish hand, spread her uncultured luxuriance in forest, in mountain, and in plain, under a burning, tropical sky. It was a scene far in the interior of Africa, that mysterious continent, which has yet to yield up her secrets to the dogged curiosity of European races. The man was reading a letter, a letter that had come through swamp, through jungle, over mountains, across plains, by the hands of savage carriers, the last letter he would receive before plunging still deeper into the unknown lands beyond, the last link that bound him to civilization--a letter from home. Inside the tent, another man was also reading letters, from friends and club companions, which gave him all the latest gossip of that London, now so far away, but he read them lightly, and tossed them aside with a careless hand. The man outside, however, had only one letter, and, as he read it, his eyes grew moist, blinding him so much that he could not see the writing, and looking up, gazed at the scene before him through a blurred mist of tears. Undulating grass plains, a wide river winding through the country like a silver serpent, clumps of tropical trees, and a distant vision of fantastic peaks, all flushed with splendid colours under the fierce light of the sunset. And the sky, like a delicate shell of pale pink, fading off in the east to cold blue and sombre shadows, in the west deepening into vivid billowy masses of golden clouds, which tried unsuccessfully to veil the intolerable splendour of the sinking sun. A breath of odorous wind under the burning sky, the chattering of monkeys, the shrieking of brilliant-coloured parrots, and the low, guttural song of a naked negro cleaning his weapons in the near camp. The man looked at all this with vague, unseeing eyes, for his thoughts were far away, then, dashing away the tears, he once more began to read the letter he held in his hand. "MY DEAR EUSTACE, "I can hardly believe that it is nine months since you left us. I wonder in what part of Africa you will read this letter, that is, if it ever reaches you, of which I have considerable doubt. The papers, of course, informed us of your many months of delay at Zanzibar before you could go forward, so perhaps this letter may reach you before you get beyond the confines of civilization. I was very much astonished to hear you were at Zanzibar, as I thought you left England with the intention of going up the Nile, and getting into the inland country that way. However, I suppose you had good reason for changing your plans, and are now pushing forward into unknown lands.