The Pools of Silence

VI. Matadi 51 VII. Yandjali 56 VIII. The Voice Of The Congo Forest 64 IX. Big Game 72 X. M'bassa 80 XI. Andreas Meeus 84 XII. Night at the Fort 94

XIII. The Pools of Silence 101 XIV. Behind the Mask 110 XV. The Punishment 115 XVI. Due South 123 XVII. Sun-washed Spaces 127 XVIII. Far Into Elephant Land 130 XIX. The Great He...

XXX. The Avenger 219 XXXI. The Voice of the Forest by Night 230 XXXII. Moonlight on the Pools 236 XXXIII. The River of Gold 245 XXXIV. The Substitute 252 XXXV. Paris 258 XXXVI....

The bank of cloud above the west, corrugated by the wind, seemed not unlike the lowermost slats of a Venetian blind; one might have fancied that a great finger had tilted them u...

"Ah, that's just it," said Thenard. "A patient of mine, Captain Berselius, is starting on a big-game shooting expedition to the Congo. He requires a medical man to accompany him...

Next morning was chill and a white Seine mist wrapped Paris in its folds. It clung to the trees of the Avenue Champs Elysees, and it half veiled the Avenue Malakoff as Adams's _...

In twenty-four hours a complete change had taken place in his life. His line of travel had taken a new and most unexpected course; it was as though a train on the North German h...

Nearly all the sporting members of the great club were present to speed the man who after Schillings was reckoned on the Continent the most adventurous big-game hunter in the wo...

It was evening. _La Joconde_, Berselius's yacht, lay moored at the wharf of Matadi; warpling against the starboard plates, whimpering, wimpling, here smooth as glass, here eddie...

The _Leopold_ was officered entirely by Belgians, and it would have been almost impossible to find a pleasanter set of men. Tilkins, the captain, especially, won Adams's regard....

Berselius, Adams, the gun-bearers and Felix headed the line; a long way after came the porters and their loads, shepherded by half a dozen soldiers of the state specially hired...

Just as going along the coast by Pondoland one sees English park scenery running down to the very sea edge, so the Congo has its surprises in strips of country that might, as fa...

Twenty miles a day ought to have been covered on an average, but they had delayed here and there to shoot, and the extra porters, whose duty it was to carry the trophies, were a...

A thing built by the hands of white men and shone on by the sun--what could be more acceptable to the eye after the long, long tramp through the heart-breaking forest!

The night was hot and close and the paraffin lamp in the guest house mixed its smell with the tobacco smoke and with a faint, faint musky odour that came from the night outside....

Next morning Berselius ordered Felix to have the tents taken from the go-down and enough stores for two days. Tents and stores would be carried by the "soldiers" of the fort, wh...

The Silent Pools and the woods around were the haunts of innumerable birds. Rose-coloured flamingoes and gorgeous ducks, birds arrayed in all the jewellery of the tropics, birds...

The sun rose, bringing with it a breeze. Above the stir and bustle of the birds you could hear the gentle wind in the tree-tops like the sound of a sea on a low-tide beach.

When Berselius and Meeus returned to Fort M'Bassa Adams, who met them, came to the conclusion that Berselius had been drinking. The man's face looked stiff and bloated, just as...

A two days' march brought them clear of the woods and into a broken country, vast, sunstrewn and silent; a beautiful desolation where the tall grass waved in the wind, and ridge...

They sighted a small herd of giraffe two days later, but so far off as to be beyond pursuit; but before evening, just as they were about to camp by some pools, they came across...

Two things had disturbed him: the bad luck of meeting a lying-down elephant and the fact that a giraffe was with the herd. He had spotted giraffe spoor in the river-bed where th...

The whole thing had scarcely lasted twenty minutes. During the storming and trumpeting, Adams, clinging to the tree, had felt neither terror nor interest. His mind was cast out,...

It was full, blazing day, and the Zappo Zap, standing erect just as he had sprung from sleep, was staring with wrinkled eyes straight out across the land. Two black figures were...

They improvised a shelter against the tree with the tent cloth over the sleeping man, and then Adams set Felix to work splicing and mending the tent pole. The two porters, who h...

Adams, wearied to death with the events of the past day and night, slept by the camp fire the deep dreamless sleep of utter exhaustion. He had piled the fire with wood, using br...

Adams had said to him nothing of Felix, his horrible deeds or his theft of the rifle. Felix, though he had vanished from Adams's life completely and forever, had not vanished fr...

When Berselius, standing on the ridge, had looked long enough at the country before him, taking in its every detail with delight, they started again on their march, Berselius le...

They camped two hours before sundown. One of the few mercies of this country is the number of dead trees and the bushes from which one can always scrape the materials for a fire.

It was the big tree which Berselius had pointed out to him as having been tusked by an elephant; and an hour after they had started from the mid-day rest, the horizon to the nor...

To be lost in the desert or in a land like the elephant country is bad, but to be lost in the dense parts of the tropical forest is far worse.

Somewhere about noon they halted for a rest and some food. It was less boggy here, and the sunlight showed stronger through the dense roof of foliage. The cassava cakes were tai...

It was a hot night up at the fort, a night eloquent of the coming rains. The door of the guest house stood open and the light of the paraffin lamp lay upon the veranda and the g...

The first thing to be done was to bury Meeus. And now came the question, How would the soldiers take the death of the _Chef de Poste_? They knew nothing of it yet. Would they re...

Now began for Adams a time of trial, enough to break the nerve of any ordinary man. Day followed day and week followed week, Berselius gaining strength so slowly that his compan...

Berselius, who was strong enough to walk a little way, began the journey on foot, but they had not gone five miles on their road when he showed signs of fatigue, and Adams insis...

District Commissioner De Wiart, chief at M'Bina, was a big man with a blond beard and a good-natured face. He worked the post at M'Bina with the assistance of a subordinate name...

One hot day in June Schaunard was seated in the little office just behind his shop. He was examining an improved telescopic sight which had just been put upon the market by an o...

When Adams arrived at the Avenue Malakoff he found Berselius in the library. He was seated in a big armchair, and M. Pinchon, his secretary, a man dry-looking as an account-book...

The change in the man was apparent even in his walk. In the old days he was rapid in his movements, erect of head, keen of eye. The weight of fifteen years seemed to have sudden...

The day after that on which Berselius had seen Leopold, Madame Berselius, moved by one of those fits of caprice common to women of her type, came back suddenly from Trouville.

On the night of the day upon which Berselius had paid his visit to M. Cambon, Adams, seated in the smoking room at a writing table before a broad sheet of white paper covered wi...

Pugin lived in the Boulevard Haussmann. He had begun life quite low down in the Parisian world on the quays as apprentice to Manasis, a jew book-dealer, who has been dead twenty...

Sulphonal, trional, morphia, each tried in turn had no power to prevent him from dreaming. Sleep as soundly as he would, just as he was awaking, the black blanket of slumber, tu...

One day in March, nine months later, at Champrosay, in the garden of a little cottage near the Paris road, Maxine Berselius stood directing the movements of an old man in a blue...