Three weeks or so before four men had entered the marshes of Kor, and now two of us were dead, and the other two had gone through adventures and experiences so strange and terrible that death himself hath not a more fearful countenance.  Three weeks—­and only three weeks!  Truly time should be measured by events, and not by the lapse of hours.  It seemed like thirty years since we saw the last of our whale-boat.

“We must strike out for the Zambesi, Leo,” I said, “but God knows if we shall ever get there.”

Leo nodded.  He had become very silent of late, and we started with nothing but the clothes we stood in, a compass, our revolvers and express rifles, and about two hundred rounds of ammunition, and so ended the history of our visit to the ancient ruins of mighty and imperial Kor.

As for the adventures that subsequently befell us, strange and varied as they were, I have, after deliberation, determined not to record them here.  In these pages I have only tried to give a short and clear account of an occurrence which I believe to be unprecedented, and this I have done, not with a view to immediate publication, but merely to put on paper while they are yet fresh in our memories the details of our journey and its result, which will, I believe, prove interesting to the world if ever we determine to make them public.  This, as at present advised, we do not intend should be done during our joint lives.

For the rest, it is of no public interest, resembling as it does the experience of more than one Central African traveller.  Suffice it to say, that we did, after incredible hardships and privations, reach the Zambesi, which proved to be about a hundred and seventy miles south of where Billali left us.  There we were for six months imprisoned by a savage tribe, who believed us to be supernatural beings, chiefly on account of Leo’s youthful face and snow-white hair.  From these people we ultimately escaped, and, crossing the Zambesi, wandered off southwards, where, when on the point of starvation, we were sufficiently fortunate to fall in with a half-cast Portuguese elephant-hunter who had followed a troop of elephants farther inland than he had ever been before.  This man treated us most hospitably, and ultimately through his assistance we, after innumerable sufferings and adventures, reached Delagoa Bay, more than eighteen months from the time when we emerged from the marshes of Kor, and the very next day managed to catch one of the steamboats that run round the Cape to England.  Our journey home was a prosperous one, and we set our foot on the quay at Southampton exactly two years from the date of our departure upon our wild and seemingly ridiculous quest, and I now write these last words with Leo leaning over my shoulder in my old room in my college, the very same into which some two-and-twenty years ago my poor friend Vincey came stumbling on the memorable night of his death, bearing the iron chest with him.