I feel my way to bed.

After an excellent night, as I said, I get up on the 25th March and revise the notes describing the vicissitudes of our kidnapping and our aerial voyage. The day is spent peacefully. I do not see anybody except Tchoumouki, who serves my meals regularly. In the evening, taught by experience, I go to bed earlier. I can congratulate myself. At the same hour as before, the light goes out. It's evidently a rule of the house.

Another good night, and here I am once more, this morning, the 26th of March, fresh and cheerful, but alas! still a prisoner. The position is absurd, for what do they want with us? When shall I see someone I can ask?

In the evening. My wishes have been fulfilled. We have seen His Majesty Harry Killer, and our situation has undergone important alterations since that interview, which has left me still moved, still trembling.

It might be three in the afternoon when the door opened. This time it was not Tchoumouki, who hid behind it but another of our old friends, Morilire. He is accompanied by a score of Negroes whom he seems to command.

In the midst of that troop I can see my companions, including Miss Blazon-Mornas, but not including St. Berain, who still can't be moved, so his young aunt says. I go and join them, thinking my last hour has come, and we're being taken off to the execution shed.

Nothing of the sort. We follow a series of corridors, and at last arrive at a fairly large room. We enter, while our escort waits on the threshold.

The room is furnished only with an arm-chair in palm fibre and a table bearing a glass and a bottle half filled, which emits the smell of alcohol. The armchair is behind the table and in it sits a man. Our eyes converge on that man. He's worth it.

His Majesty Harry Killer must be about forty-five years old, though there are some signs that he's older. As far as we can tell, he is tall, and his sturdy build, his enormous hands, his stout muscular limbs, show an uncommon, not to say an Herculean, strength.

But it is his head which especially attracts attention. His face is hairless, and indicates a complex character, at once powerful and villainous. He is crowned by disheveled graying hair, a veritable rnane which from time immemorial seems to have had a quarrel with the comb. His forehead, whence the hair has retreated, is broad and suggests intelligence, but his protruding jaw and heavy square chin indicate coarse and violent passions. His cheeks, deeply bronzed, and with prominent bones, cave inwards, then hang down in two heavy lobes; they bear scattered pimples so red they almost resemble blood. His mouth is thick-lipped and his lower lip, slightly hanging down, discloses strong teeth, healthy but yellow and badly cleaned. His eyes, deeply sunk in their orbits and surmounted by bristling eyebrows, have an extraordinary and sometimes, indeed, almost an unbearable brilliance.

This personage is certainly not at all commonplace. Every appetite, every vice, every audacity, are surely his. Hideous, yes, but formidable.

His Majesty is clad in a sort of hunting outfit of grey cloth, breeches, leggings and tunic, all filthy and covered with stains. On the table he has placed a large woollen hat; near this is his right hand, which is in a continual tremble.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dr. Chatonnay indicates that shaking hand.