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At which Cobby lowered his lids, silent, many of Macray's jests not being quite to the scientist's liking.

And now the forenoon trek, to the singing of the blacks; and the noontide rest; and the sun's altitude taken; and now the afternoon trek, which revealed that the forest was not really infinite, but had a limit where open country basked in the sun, and a river rolled between rows of crocodile-snouts, where flamingos in their crimson uniforms stood like sentinels who all have lost a leg in the wars; up which river the trek went three miles to find a drift, christened "Crocodile Drift" by Rolls over two years gone; and, crossing the river, they came upon the ashes and charred remains of a cannibal kraal, which, Rolls said, was but one of many of which the Wa-Ngwanya had cleared that region; and now the field-glass, scanning northward, could see a mirage of the mountain-range which bounds Wo-Ngwanya on the south.

And that evening the three men held their indaba on the plan of action, seated on a hillock in the shade of a yellow-wood tree, whence they could see eastward the reeds of a lagoon on a plain peopled with game, deer in thousands, giraffe and buffalo, crane and egret, the three smoking together like friends, with a jest anon; and no one could have guessed the suspense and tension that was between two of them.