2
THE SHADOW 154 XXII.--TO THE UNKNOWN 162 XXIII.--UNDER THE VAMPIRE'S WING 169 XXIV.--THE FLAMING MOUTH 180 XXV.--LIOLA 191 XXVI.--THE FIRST BLOW 201 XXVII.--BY THE NAYA'S ORDERS 208 XXVIII.--THE FIGHT FOR THE EMERALD THRONE 218 XXIX.--A MYSTERY 229 XXX.--TREASURE AND TREASON 242 XXXI.--A SPY'S STARTLING STORY 255 XXXII.--WAR 264 XXXIII.--THE HAREM SLAVE 271 XXXIV.--LIOLA'S DISCOVERY 287 XXXV.--INTO THE MIST 303 CONCLUSION 308
CHAPTER I.
A ROMANCE!
IT is a curious story, full of exciting adventures, extraordinary discoveries, and mysteries amazing.
Strange, too, that I, Richard Scarsmere, who, when at school hated geography as bitterly as I did algebraic problems, should even now, while just out of my teens, be thus enabled to write down this record of a perilous journey through a land known only by name to geographers, a vast region wherein no stranger had ever before set foot.
The face of the earth is well explored now-a-days, yet it has remained for me to discover and traverse one of the very few unknown countries, and to give the bald-headed old fogies of the Royal Geographical Society a lesson in the science that I once abominated.
I have witnessed with my own eyes the mysteries of Mo. I have seen the Great White Queen!
Three years ago I had as little expectation of emulating the intrepidity of Stanley as I had of usurping the throne of England. An orphan, both of whose parents had been drowned in a yachting accident in the Solent and whose elder brother succeeded to the estate, I was left in the care of a maternal uncle, a regular martinet, who sent me for several long and dreary years to Dr. Tregear's well-known Grammar-school at Eastbourne, and had given me to understand that I should eventually enter his office in London. Briefly, I was, when old enough, to follow the prosaic and ill-paid avocation of clerk. But for a combination of circumstances, I should have,