As I turned and looked back from the beach towards the gloomy and sullen forest, in the vivid realization of the exposure of that long night and the fever which I knew was imminent, I had the feeling which Stanley describes when he and his long caravan emerged from the dark prison forest after the immurement of several months, in which scores of their comrades had died by the way, the whole caravan now enfeebled and wasted with hunger, the black, glossy skin turned an ashen gray. They ascended a hill and first looking up yearningly towards the bright blue sky, they then turned with a sigh and looked back over the sable forest that heaved away to the infinity of the west. In their sudden exaltation they shook their clenched fists at it, uttering imprecations, and with gestures of defiance and hate. They apostrophized it for its cruelty to themselves and their kinsmen; they compared it to hell, and accused it of the murder of a hundred of their comrades. But the forest which lay vast as a continent before them, and drowsy, like a great beast, answered not a word, but rested in its infinite sullenness, remorseless and implacable. I was not mistaken in my apprehension of fever. I did not return to Efulen again. One fever followed another in quick succession, becoming at length so serious that my fellow missionaries at Batanga united in urging me not to risk another attack. An English steamer on the outward voyage called just at that time and I went south to Gaboon, where I sailed on a French steamer for Marseilles and thence home. Little did I think when I was leaving Efulen for a few days, as I supposed, that I was really taking a long leave of Efulen and Africa, not again to see either for four years, and never again to see Dr. Good. That last morning, when I was setting out for the beach, he walked with me down the long Efulen hill to the foot, where we stood perhaps half an hour, formulating our expectations and making the clearest-cut plans, none of which were realized, although they pertained to the immediate future. The element of accident is a constant factor in Africa, that continually changes the course of our reckoning and overturns our surest calculations. Accidents are no more numerous there than elsewhere, but they are more serious. Climbing a mountainside, a slip of the foot is fraught with more danger than on a level road. In the hostile climate of Africa, the smallest accident, a moment’s incaution or forgetfulness on your own part or on the part of others, may change the entire future. Elsewhere the best-laid plans of men have about an equal chance with the best-laid plans of mice, if the observation of Burns is to be trusted. But in Africa the probability of the future is entirely with the mice.