The Fire-Gods: A Tale of the Congo

The Explorers' Club no longer exists. To-day, as a matter of fact, it is a tea-shop in Old Bond Street--a small building, wedged between two greater ones, a fashionable milliner's and a famous Art Establishment. Towards the end of the last century, in what is known as the mid-Victorian era, the Explorers' Club was in the heyday of its glory. The number of its members was limited to two hundred and fifty-one. In the inner smoking-room, through the green baize doors, where guests were not admitted, both the conversation and the company were at once remarkable and unique. The walls were adorned with the trophies of the chase: heads of elk, markhor, ibex, haartebeest and waterbuck; great lions and snarling tigers; mouflon from Cyprus, and the white leopard of the Himalayas. If you looked into the room through the glass peep-hole in one of the green baize doors, you might have thought at first that you beheld a menagerie, where the fiercest and the rarest beasts in the world were imprisoned in a single cage. But, presently, your attention would have been attracted by the great, sun-burnt men, sprawling in the leather chairs, dressed in tweeds for the most part, and nearly every one with a blackened briar pipe between his lips.