70 AFRICAN CAMP FIRES. 



on a long slant. Apparently for miles we fol- 

 lowed thus, the white-robed individual ahead 

 still deaf to ail commands and the blood-curdling 

 threats I had now come to uttering. All our 

 personal baggage had long since mysteriously 

 disappeared, ravished away from us at the 

 customs house by a ragged horde of blacks. It 

 began to look as though we were stranded in 

 Africa without baggage or effects. Billy and B. 

 were all the time growing fainter in the distance, 

 though evidently they too had struck the long, 

 slanting road. 



Then we came to a dim, solitary lantern glow- 

 ing feebly beside a bench at what appeared to 

 be the top of the hill. Here our guide at last 

 came to a halt and turned to me a grinning face. 



" Samama hapa," he observed. 



There ! That was the word I had been fran- 

 tically searching my memory for ! Samama 

 stop ! 



The others struggled in. We were very warm. 

 Up to the bench led a tiny car track, the rails 

 not over two feet apart, like the toy railroads 

 children use. This did not look much like grown- 

 up transportation, but it and the bench and the 

 dim lantern represented all the visible world. 



We sat philosophically on the bench and 



