the three white men were alone with them in the heart of Africa.

Ahead of the hauptmann marched half his company, behind him the
other half--thus were the dangers of the savage jungle minimized
for the German captain. At the forefront of the column staggered
two naked savages fastened to each other by a neck chain. These
were the native guides impressed into the service of Kultur and upon
their poor, bruised bodies Kultur's brand was revealed in divers
cruel wounds and bruises.

Thus even in darkest Africa was the light of German civilization
commencing to reflect itself upon the undeserving natives just as
at the same period, the fall of 1914, it was shedding its glorious
effulgence upon benighted Belgium.

It is true that the guides had led the party astray; but this is
the way of most African guides. Nor did it matter that ignorance
rather than evil intent had been the cause of their failure. It
was enough for Hauptmann Fritz Schneider to know that he was lost
in the African wilderness and that he had at hand human beings less
powerful than he who could be made to suffer by torture. That he
did not kill them outright was partially due to a faint hope that
they might eventually prove the means of extricating him from his
difficulties and partially that so long as they lived they might
still be made to suffer.

The poor creatures, hoping that chance might lead them at last
upon the right trail, insisted that they knew the way and so led
on through a dismal forest along a winding game trail trodden deep
by the feet of countless generations of the savage denizens of the