Page:Rowland--The Mountain of Fears.djvu/283

  "It was easy to guess its course, for with my bushman's education I saw that many persons had traveled that trail since sunset. Down it went, twisting and turning, this way and that: but all the time the beat of the drum, though muffled by the heavy foliage, was growing nearer and nearer.

"It was dark in the jungle, but the moon was up, and there were open spaces here and there. The smell of the smoke—and another smell—were in the air, and I was growing wary and looking for sentries, when my eye was caught by something white hanging to a thorn. I loosed it and held it in a moon-ray—and recognized a fragment of the gown worn that night by Madame Fouchère."

Leyden stopped speaking, then began to hum a little German doggerel. Down below the visitors were saying good-night, and I could hear the men kissing each other on their thick lips. "Ah, mon cher!" they kept saying. "Oh—oh, mon cher!—Oh, m'cher!" Then there would be a rattle of very good [ 267 ]