"One day we learned from the natives that Yusuf was twenty mile ahead of us wi' plenty o'
tusks and a big trade-caravan. Two days later we caught up, formin' a zareba near his. He had twice as many men, but mine were picked, ye remember.
"Well, the details o' what happened don't matter. We were busy for three days, and I will admit that Yusuf had his merits as a fighter. But at the last his nerve failed him, and when we rushed his zareba, he and his men made their getaway—leaving everything behind. While I was lookin' over his stuff I found two things wrapped up in oilskin.
"One was a queer shaped bit o' wood which I flung away, like a fool. The other was a bit o' cloth with Arabic written on it. I can read the lingo, and I made out that Yusuf had been down near the pigmy country an' had run across some yarn about white pigmies."
"White pigmies!" ejaculated Mr. Wallace in astonishment, while a look of keen interest swept across his face. "Then the story was so!"
"What story?" asked Montenay sharply.
"Why, a tradition I heard up in the Sahara, that there was a white race of small people somewhere down this way. The Arab who told me was mighty reticent about it, and I gathered that there was some queer religious feature to the tradition, if it was one."
"It was not," asserted Montenay, betraying signs of excitement for the first time, and leaning forward. "Wallace, it was fact! I found the white pigmies!"
"What!" A simultaneous cry went up from his three listeners and Mr. Wallace's eagle-face was bent sternly upon the narrator.
"Careful, Montenay!" he said with repressed eagerness. "Remember you are not talking to green hands!"