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were black slaves, They advanced warily and in silence upon the fresh spoor of el-fil the elephant, the thoughts of the swart ’Aarab dwelling upon ivory, those of the black slaves upon fresh meat. The ’abd Fejjuan, black Galla slave, sleek, ebon warrior, eater of raw meat, famed hunter, led the others. Fejjuan, as his comrades, thought of fresh meat, but also he thought of el-Habash, the land from which he had been stolen as a boy. He thought of coming again to the lonely Galla hut of his parents. Perhaps el-Habash was not far off now. For months Ibn Jad had been traveling south and now he had come east for a long distance. El-Habash must be near. When he was sure of that his days of slavery would be over and Ibn Jad would have lost his best Galla slave. Two marches to the north, in the southern extrem- ity of Abyssinia, stood the round dwelling of the father of Fejjuan, almost on the roughly mapped route that Ibn Jad had planned nearly a year since when he had undertaken this mad adventure upon the advice of a learned Sahar, a magician of repute. But of either the exact location of his father’s house or the exact plans of Ibn Jad, Fejjuan was equally ignorant. He but dreamed, and his dreams were flavored with raw meat. The leaves of the forest drowsed in the heat above the heads of the hunters. Beneath the drowsing leaves of other trees a stone’s throw ahead of them