In Search of the Okapi.

by Ernest Glanville.

CHAPTER I

THE HUNTER

"d.i.c.k, why do you study Arabic so closely?"

"To understand Arabic."

"And further?"

d.i.c.k Compton closed his book and placed it carefully in a leather case.

"It is a pity you were born curious, Venning, otherwise you would have made an excellent companion for a studious man. 'Why do I wish to understand Arabic?' Why do you stand on one leg watching a tadpole shed its tail."

"Excuse me, I always sit down to watch a tadpole."

"Yet I have seen you poised on one leg for an hour like a heron, afraid to put down the other foot lest you should scare some wretched pollywog. Why?"

"I do it for the love of the thing, d.i.c.k. What is a page of your crooked signs compared with a single green pond and all that it holds?"

"By Jove! Is that so--and would you find a volume in a caterpillar?"

"Why not? Listen to me, d.i.c.k. Take the silver-spiked caterpillar, with a skin of black satin and a length that runs to four inches. He lives his life in the topmost boughs of an African palm--a feathered dome amid the forest--and there beneath the blue sky he browses till he descends into the warm earth to sleep in chrysalis form before he emerges as a splendid moth, with gla.s.s windows in his wide wings to sail with the fire-flies through the dark vaults of the silent woods."

"All that from a caterpillar?"

"That and much more, d.i.c.ky."

"And where will this study of the caterpillar lead you, G.o.dfrey? One can't live on a caterpillar."

"Yet there is one kind--fat and creamy--that makes good soup."

"Ugh, you cormorant! But tell me seriously, what is the end of your studies--where will they lead you?"

"To Central Africa."

"Do you mean that, Venning?"

"I do, d.i.c.k. There is one spot on the map of Africa that is marked black. That spot is covered over hundreds of square miles by the unexplored forest. Think what that means to me!"

"Fever most likely--or three inches of spear-head."

"A forest big enough to cover England! Just think of the new forms of life--from a new ant to an elephant or hornless giraffe. The okapi was discovered near that great hunting-ground--and, who is to say there are not other animals as strange in its untrodden depths?"

"Is it a wild-fowl, the okapi?"

"A wild-fowl, you duffer!" exclaimed Venning, indignantly. "Haven't you heard of the dwarfed giraffe, part zebra, discovered by Sir Harry Johnston? It lost the long neck of the original species which browses in the open veld by the necessity to adapt its habits to the changed conditions of life within the forest."

"Your neck is rather long, my boy, from much stretching to watch things. Look out that you don't have it shortened. And so you intend to visit Central Africa? That is very curious!"

"I don't see anything curious about it."

"Nor do I, as to one thing. If a fellow is crazy about b.u.t.terflies, he may as well roam in Africa as a lunatic with a net as anywhere else; but the curious part of the matter is, that my study of Arabic is intended to prepare me for a trip to the very same place."

"Compton, you don't mean it," said the other, jumping from his seat.

"I do, most decidedly."

"But what has Arabic got to do with the Central African Forest?"

"Quite as much as your short-nosed elephant or long-tailed hippopotamus. I also wish to discover something that has been lost.

Don't open your mouth so wide."

"Is it an animal, d.i.c.k?"

"Good gracious, no! I don't care twopence about an animal, except it is for the pot, or unless it wants me for dinner. No; mine is another search. It is connected with my father."

"Yes," said Venning, quietly; for his friend had suddenly grown grave.

"When I was a little chap, about seventeen years ago, my mother received a letter dated from the 'great forest.'"

"It contained only these words, 'Good-bye.' With it there was a letter in Arabic, written by my father's headman. That letter was seven months on its travels, and since then no other word have I heard."

Venning muttered something in sympathy.

"My mother," continued the other, "died five years ago, without having learnt the meaning of the message in Arabic. She had a wish that no one but I should read the letter, and often she told me that if it contained any instructions or directions, I was to carry them out. Well, I have interpreted the Arabic signs."

"Yes, d.i.c.k; and----"

"And I can't quite make out the meaning. There is a reference to the journal my father kept, with the statement that it was safely hidden; but then follows a reference to a Garden of Rest, to certain people who protected him, and to a slave-trader who did him an injury. These references to me are a mystery; but what is clear is his desire to have his journal recovered from the Arab slave-dealer, described merely as 'The Wolf.'"

"And that is why you wish to go to Central Africa?"

"That is why, Venning. I must recover my father's journal if it exists; I must, if it is not too late, find out how he died; I must find out who are the wild people, and what is the Garden of Rest."

"The Garden of Rest! That sounds peaceful, but it is very vague, d.i.c.k, as a direction. A garden in a forest hundreds of miles in length will take some finding."

"I have a clue."

"So."

"There is mention of the 'gates' to the garden, whose summits 'are in the clouds'--twin mountains, I take it."

"Even so, d.i.c.k, I think I should have more chance of finding my new animal than you would have of hitting off your garden."