The one, a young, keen-eyed doctor,[44] glanced quickly through the
trees and occasionally turned aside to pick some strange orchid and to
slip it into his collecting case. The other strode steadily along
with that curious, "resolute forward tread" of his.[45] He was David
Livingstone. Behind them came a string of African bearers carrying in
bundles on their heads the tents and food of the explorers.
Suddenly, with a crunch, Livingstone's heel went through a white
object half hidden in the long grass--a thing like an ostrich's egg.
He stooped--and his strong, bronzed face was twisted with mingled
sorrow and anger, as, looking into the face of his younger friend, he
gritted out between his clenched teeth, "The slave-raiders again!"
It was the whitening skull of an African boy.
For weeks those two Britons had driven their little steamer (the
_Asthmatic_ they called her, because of her wheezing engines) up the
Zambesi river and were now exploring its tributary the Shire.
Each morning, before they could start the ship's engines, they had
been obliged to take poles and push from between the paddles of the
wheels the dead bodies of Africans--men, women, and children--slain
bodies which had floated down from the villages that the Arab
slave-raiders had burned and sacked.
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