product of our hot-house civilization. Mortimer, I forgot to say, wore
glasses; and, if there is one time more than another when a man should
not wear glasses, it is while a strong-faced, keen-eyed wanderer in the
wilds is telling a beautiful girl the story of his adventures.

For this was what Denton was doing. My arrival seemed to have
interrupted him in the middle of narrative. He shook my hand in a
strong, silent sort of way, and resumed:

"Well, the natives seemed fairly friendly, so I decided to stay the
night."

I made a mental note never to seem fairly friendly to an explorer. If
you do, he always decides to stay the night.

"In the morning they took me down to the river. At this point it widens
into a _kongo_, or pool, and it was here, they told me, that the
crocodile mostly lived, subsisting on the native oxen--the short-horned
_jongos_--which, swept away by the current while crossing the ford
above, were carried down on the _longos_, or rapids. It was not,
however, till the second evening that I managed to catch sight of his
ugly snout above the surface. I waited around, and on the third day I
saw him suddenly come out of the water and heave his whole length on to
a sandbank in mid-stream and go to sleep in the sun. He was certainly a
monster--fully thirty--you have never been in Central Africa, have you,
Miss Weston? No? You ought to go there!--fully fifty feet from tip to
tail. There he lay, glistening. I shall never forget the sight."

He broke off to light a cigarette. I heard Betty draw in her breath
sharply. Mortimer was beaming through his glasses with the air of the