"Just the same, I'll make sure," said Blake. He dived into the
barricade passage, and quickly reappeared, dragging at the butt of the
date palm. "There, me lud; the door is shut. Nobody is going to walk
in on our private conference now. Come on."




CHAPTER III

LORD AND MAN


Blake turned about and swung away up the ravine. Lord James followed
in the half-obliterated path, which led along the edge of a tiny
spring rill. The cleft was here closed in on each side with sheer
walls of rock from twenty to thirty feet high. At the point where this
small box canon intersected the middle of the cliff ridge, the
gigantic baobab that Lord James had seen from the steamer, towered
skyward, its huge trunk filling a good third of the width of the
gorge. Across from it and nearer at hand was a thicket of bamboos,
around which the spring rill trickled from a natural basin in the
rock.

But the visitor gave scant heed to the natural features of the place.
His glance passed from a great antelope hide, drying on a frame, to
the bamboo racks on which sun-seared strips of flesh were curing over
a smudge fire. Looking to his left, he saw a hut hardly larger than a
dog kennel but ingeniously thatched with bamboo leaves. Then his
glance was caught and held by a curious contrivance of interwoven