I had not the slightest doubt that although the Kalubi himself had brought us here in the wild hope that we might save him from a terrible death at the hands of the Beelzebub he served, Komba and the councillors, inspired thereto by the prophet called Motombo, designed that we should be murdered and eaten as an offering to the gods.

How we were to escape this fate, being unarmed, I could not imagine, unless some special protection were vouchsafed to us.

Meanwhile, we must go on to the end, whatever it might be.
Brother John, or to give him his right name, the Reverend John Eversley, was convinced that the white woman imprisoned in the mountain was none other than the lost wife for whom he had searched for twenty weary years, and that the second white woman of whom we had heard that night was, strange as it might seem, her daughter and his own.

Perhaps he was right and perhaps he was wrong.

But even in the latter case, if two white persons were really languishing in this dreadful land, our path was clear.