IN SEARCH OF THE OKAPI***
E-text prepared by Charles Klingman
IN SEARCH OF THE OKAPI
A Story of Adventure in Central Africa
by
ERNEST GLANVILLE
Author of "The Diamond Seekers" "The Fossicker" "Tales from the Veld" etc.
Illustrated by William Rainey, R.I.
Chicago A. C. McClurg & Co. 1904
CONTENTS
CHAP.
I. THE HUNTER
II. A NOVEL CRAFT
III. THE CANOE ADRIFT
IV. THE STORY OF MUATA
V. TROUBLE BREWING
VI. THE FLIGHT
VII. THE THOUSAND ISLANDS
VIII. THE BULLS AND THE WILD DOGS
IX. A LION'S CHARGE
X. A NIGHT IN THE REEDS
XI. A TRAP
XII. THE MAN-EATERS
XIII. THE TREE-LION
XIV. THE OVERHEAD PATH
XV. FIGHT WITH A GORILLA
XVI. ACROSS THE LAGOON
XVII. THE PLACE OF REST
XVIII. THE FIGHT IN THE DEFILE
XIX. THE MAKER OF LAWS
XX. THE SECRET WAY
XXI. A VOICE FROM THE DEAD
XXII. A TERRIBLE NIGHT
XXIII. THROUGH THE VAULTS
XXIV. LETTING IN THE RIVER
XXV. THE CRY IN THE NIGHT
IN SEARCH OF THE OKAPI
CHAPTER I
THE HUNTER
"Dick, why do you study Arabic so closely?"
"To understand Arabic."
"And further?"
Dick 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, Dick. 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, Dick. 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 glass windows in his wide wings to sail with the fire-flies through the dark vaults of the silent woods."
