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evidently his blankets. His other hand was raised in a gesture commanding
silence, a grimy forefinger upon his lips.
He came quite close to her.
"Carry this," he said. "Do not make some noise when you see it. It ban your kid."
Quick hands snatched the bundle from the cook, and hungry mother arms folded
the sleeping infant to her breast, while hot tears of joy ran down her cheeks and
her whole frame shook with the emotion of the moment.
"Come!" said Anderssen. "We got no time to vaste."
He snatched up her bundle of blankets, and outside the cabin door his own as
well. Then he led her to the ship's side, steadied her descent of the monkey-
ladder, holding the child for her as she climbed to the waiting boat below. A
moment later he had cut the rope that held the small boat to the steamer's side,
and, bending silently to the muffled oars, was pulling toward the black shadows
up the Ugambi River.
Anderssen rowed on as though quite sure of his ground, and when after half an
hour the moon broke through the clouds there was revealed upon their left the
mouth of a tributary running into the Ugambi. Up this narrow channel the
Swede turned the prow of the small boat.
Jane Clayton wondered if the man knew where he was bound. She did not know
that in his capacity as cook he had that day been rowed up this very stream to a
little village where he had bartered with the natives for such provisions as they
had for sale, and that he had there arranged the details of his plan for the
adventure upon which they were now setting forth.
Even though the moon was full, the surface of the small river was quite dark.
The giant trees overhung its narrow banks, meeting in a great arch above the
centre of the river. Spanish moss dropped from the gracefully bending limbs,
and enormous creepers clambered in riotous profusion from the ground to the
loftiest branch, falling in curving loops almost to the water's placid breast.
Now and then the river's surface would be suddenly broken ahead of them by a
huge crocodile, startled by the splashing of the oars, or, snorting and blowing, a
family of hippos would dive from a sandy bar to the cool, safe depths of the
bottom.
From the dense jungles upon either side came the weird night cries of the
carnivora--the maniacal voice of the hyena, the coughing grunt of the panther,
the deep and awful roar of the lion. And with them strange, uncanny notes that
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