In Search of the Okapi

In Search of the Okapi

The Project Gutenberg eBook, In Search of the Okapi, by Ernest
Glanville
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Title: In Search of the Okapi A Story of Adventure in Central Africa
Author: Ernest Glanville

Release Date: January 28, 2006 [eBook #17615]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 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."
"All that from a caterpillar?"
"That and much more, Dicky."
"And where will this study of the caterpillar lead you, Godfrey? One
can't live on a caterpillar."
"Yet there is one kind--fat and creamy--that makes good soup."
"Ugh, you cormorant! But tell me seriously, what is the end of your
studies--where will they lead you?"

"To Central Africa."
"Do you mean that, Venning?"
"I do, Dick. There is one spot on the map of Africa that is marked black.
That spot is covered over hundreds of square miles by the unexplored
forest. Think what that means to me!"
"Fever most likely--or three inches of spear-head."
"A forest big enough to cover England! Just think of the new forms of
life--from a new ant to an elephant or hornless giraffe. The okapi was
discovered near that great hunting-ground--and, who is to say there are
not other animals as strange in its untrodden depths?"
"Is it a wild-fowl, the okapi?"
"A wild-fowl, you duffer!" exclaimed Venning, indignantly. "Haven't
you heard of the dwarfed giraffe, part zebra, discovered by Sir Harry
Johnston? It lost the long neck of the original species which browses in
the open veld by the necessity to adapt its habits to the changed
conditions of life within the forest."
"Your neck is rather long, my boy, from much stretching to watch
things. Look out that you don't have it shortened. And so you intend to
visit Central Africa? That is very curious!"
"I don't see anything curious about it."
"Nor do I, as to one thing. If a fellow is crazy about butterflies, he may
as well roam in Africa as a lunatic with a net as anywhere else; but the
curious part of the matter is, that my study of Arabic is