Argosy, Vol. 1 (1882) — page 198: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE ARGOSY. Vel. XXXII. JANUARY, 1900. No. 2. AN AFRICAN SECRET. BY FREDERICK R. BURTON. An experience in the heart of the Dark Continent, The strange manner in which an American chances on a fellow countryman of whom he is in search, and the terrifying chain of in- cidents to which association with him gives rise. (Complete in This Issue.) CHAPTER I. A MAN IN THE AIR. OR more than an hour it had been a steady ascent, and when, at last, these two wanderers in the heart of Africa emerged from the blind forest, they saw a considerable stretch of com- paratively barren upland before them. They halted as with one will and gazed across it. “Well, Pan,” said one of them, in a cheerful voice from which months of roughing it had not taken the Yankee twang, “it’s not yet noon. We'd bet- ter keep on and have our midday snooze among the trees at the top there.” He pointed to what seemed to be a fringe of forest along the horizon at the summit of the slope. “ Yes, Mr. Bradshaw,” the other as- sented quietly. They resumed their march without further words, the American striding a little in advance of his companion, who seemed, therefore, to be more a servant than a guide. So it was, indeed, for although the black man had been engaged on the strength of his extraordinary familiar- ity with the interior of equatorial Africa and the tribes that dwell there, the American had long since pushed on to regions as little known to the guide as to himself; and this fact added to Bradshaw’s unassuming gift of leader- ship, caused Pan instinctively to fol- low rather than lead, or even presume so far as to walk abreast of his em- ployer. His full name was Pantonga, or something like that. Maybe he had been endowed with a long string of names besides, but if so, he himself had forgotten them, and -when Bradshaw made his acquaintance at St. Paul de Loanga, the black had smilingly said that white men, if they began by calling him Pantonga, speedily shortened it to Pan, and that it might as well be Pan from the start. Pan’s trade, if so it could be called, was that of assistant to explorers. You know, every white man who makes a bit of an excursion into Africa is an “explorer.” He may never ven- ture to step aside from the well beaten caravan roads, or plunge so far into the wilds that a card with Uneh Saa’e. CO