Loango is the reverse of cheerful. To begin with, it is usually raining there. The roar of the surf--than which there are few sadder sounds on earth--fills the atmosphere with a never-ceasing melancholy. The country is overwooded; the tropical vegetation, the huge tangled African trees, stand almost in the surf; and inland the red serrated hills mount guard in gloomy array. For Europeans this country is accursed. From the mysterious forest-land there creeps down a subtle, tainted air that poisons the white man's blood, and either strikes him down in a fever or terrifies him by strange unknown symptoms and sudden disfiguring disease. The Almighty speaks very plainly sometimes and in some places--nowhere more plainly than on the West Coast of Africa, which land He evidently wants for the black man. We of the fairer skin have Australia now; we are taking America, we are dominant in Asia; but somehow we don't get on in Africa. The Umpire is there, and He insists on fair play. “This is not cheery,” Jack Meredith observed to his servant as they found themselves deposited on the beach within a stone's-throw of the French factory. “No, sir, not cheery, sir,” replied Joseph. He was very busy attending to the landing of their personal effects, and had only time to be respectful. It was Joseph's way to do only one thing at a time, on the principle, no doubt, that enough for the moment is the evil thereof. His manner implied that, when those coloured gentlemen had got the baggage safely conveyed out of the boats on to the beach, it would be time enough to think about Loango. Moreover, Joseph was in his way rather a dauntless person. He held that there were few difficulties which he and his master, each in his respective capacity, were unable to meet. This African mode of life was certainly not one for which he had bargained when taking service; but he rather enjoyed it than otherwise, and he was consoled by the reflection that what was good enough for his master was good enough for him. Beneath the impenetrable mask of a dignified servitude he knew that this was “all along of that Chyne girl,” and rightly conjectured that it would not last for ever. He had an immense respect for Sir John, whom he tersely described as a “game one,” but his knowledge of the world went towards the supposition that headstrong age would finally bow before headstrong youth. He did not, however, devote much consideration to these matters, being a young man although an old soldier, and taking a lively interest in the present. It had been arranged by letter that Jack Meredith should put up, as his host expressed it, at the small bungalow occupied by Maurice Gordon and his sister. Gordon was the local head of a large trading association somewhat after the style of the old East India Company, and his duties partook more of the glory of a governor than of the routine of a trader.