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beautiful creatures before us. But it had to be done--we must eat. I left the work

to Delcarte, however, and in a moment we had two antelope and the landscape to

ourselves.

After eating, we boarded the launch and continued up the river. For two days we

passed through a primeval wilderness. In the afternoon of the second day we

landed upon the west bank of the river, and, leaving Snider and Thirty-six to

guard Victory and the launch, Delcarte, Taylor, and I set out after game.

We tramped away from the river for upwards of an hour before discovering

anything, and then only a small red deer, which Taylor brought down with a neat

shot of two hundred yards. It was getting too late to proceed farther, so we rigged

a sling, and the two men carried the deer back toward the launch while I walked

a hundred yards ahead, in the hope of bagging something further for our larder.

We had covered about half the distance to the river, when I suddenly came face to

face with a man. He was as primitive and uncouth in appearance as the

Grabritins--a shaggy, unkempt savage, clothed in a shirt of skin cured with the

head on, the latter surmounting his own head to form a bonnet, and giving to him

a most fearful and ferocious aspect.

The fellow was armed with a long spear and a club, the latter dangling down his

back from a leathern thong about his neck. His feet were incased in hide

sandals.

At sight of me, he halted for an instant, then turned and dove into the forest, and,

though I called reassuringly to him in English he did not return nor did I again

see him.

The sight of the wild man raised my hopes once more that elsewhere we might

find men in a higher state of civilization--it was the society of civilized man that I

craved--and so, with a lighter heart, I continued on toward the river and the

launch.

I was still some distance ahead of Delcarte and Taylor, when I came in sight of

the Rhine again. But I came to the water's edge before I noticed that anything

was amiss with the party we had left there a few hours before.

My first intimation of disaster was the absence of the launch from its former

moorings. And then, a moment later--I discovered the body of a man lying upon

the bank. Running toward it, I saw that it was Thirty-six, and as I stopped and

raised the Grabritin's head in my arms, I heard a faint moan break from his lips.

He was not dead, but that he was badly injured was all too evident.

The Lost Continent