That was several weeks ago, and they were now approaching the tin-bearing region marked on the map with which Drysdale had provided his friend.
About an hour after the promise of a rest had stimulated the carriers, they were further encouraged by striking a native track, which indicated the proximity of a village. Tired as they were, they quickened their pace, and another half-hour's march brought them to cultivated fields of millet and ground-nuts.
The white men, walking ahead of the party, looked forward eagerly for the conical roofs of the village huts, which they expected to see rising above the crops in the distance, and were surprised to find that nothing of the sort was in sight.
"It must be a bigger place than I thought," said Royce. "A small village wouldn't have such extensive fields. Drysdale marks the people as friendly; I hope we shall find them so."
The narrow track wound through the fields, high stalks growing on either side. A sudden turn brought them in sight of an object which caused them to halt, and struck them with a foreboding of ill.
Lying in a curiously huddled posture across the track was the body of a black man.
Insensibly lightening their tread, they approached it, and found that the man was dead, and bore marks of slashing and defacement.
"There's been bad work here," said Royce in a whisper.
They looked ahead; no one was in sight. They listened; there was not a sound but the chirping of insects in the crops.
Unslinging their rifles, they went slowly on, oppressed with a sense of tragedy; and a few steps more disclosed a scene for which their discovery of the dead man had partly prepared them. The absence of the well-known conical roofs was explained. The site of what had once been a flourishing village was now desolate, a black waste. Great heaps of ashes marked the spots where the cane huts had stood, and here and there lay bodies stiff in death, from which a number of sated carrion birds rose noisily into the air at the approach of men.