It was the outlet!
This truth flashed upon me with all the power of instantaneous conviction. I forgot the stakes and all the line of speculation which their mysterious presence had engendered. I looked toward that green gate of deliverance. Mentally I saw myself rowing and drifting down this gentle, winding current, hastening away from this extraordinary land—away from this jungle fastness to the great open sea. A thousand suggestions came tumbling in upon me, as to how to provision my boat, how to leave the Links, how to sleep at night on “Outlet” river, how to search for a village when I should find myself at last free, and how then to take a steamer and hasten back to the world which was really a world!
“The outlet!” I muttered in fervent thankfulness. “Freedom—Life—Home!”
I was wrought to a fever in my excitement of hope; I was all but transported, thus to find the gate that let me out of my prison of greenery, when suddenly I nearly froze from chills and paralysis of all my senses and blood-circulation.
A voice rose clear in the silence of ended day—a human voice, in that wilderness of jungle and jungle-creatures,—a voice pronouncing words in English—a singular mixture of words with no reason. Then presently they settled into the musical order of poetry:
“There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium’s capital had gathered then
Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men,
And when music arose with its voluptuous——”