A moment later there was a sound which can only be written P-ttt between his legs, and he had to wipe a shower of dust from his eyes. A puff of blue smoke rose slowly over the boat and a sharp report broke the silence a second time.
Then Victor Durnovo leapt to his feet and waved his hat in the air. From the canoe there was an answering greeting, and the man on the bank went to the water’s edge, still carrying the rifle from which he was never parted.
Durnovo was the first to speak when the boat came within hail.
“Very sorry,” he shouted. “Thought you were a native boat. Must establish a funk—get in the first shot, you know.”
“All right,” replied one of the Europeans in the approaching craft, with a courteous wave of the hand, “no harm done.”
There were two white men and six blacks in the long and clumsy boat. One of the Europeans lay in the bows while the other was stretched at his ease in the stern, reclining on the canvas of a neatly folded tent. The last-named was evidently the leader of the little expedition, while the manner and attitude of the man in the bows suggested the servitude of a disciplined soldier slightly relaxed by abnormal circumstances.
“Who fired that shot?” inquired Durnovo, when there was no longer any necessity to shout.
“Joseph,” replied the man in the stern of the boat, indicating his companion. “Was it a near thing?”
“About as near as I care about—it threw up the dust between my legs.”
The man called Joseph grinned. Nature had given him liberally of the wherewithal for indulgence in that relaxation, and Durnovo smiled rather constrainedly. Joseph was grabbing at the long reedy grass, bringing the canoe to a standstill, and it was some moments before his extensive mouth submitted to control.
“I presume you are Mr. Durnovo,” said the man in the stern of the boat, rising leisurely from his recumbent position and speaking with a courteous savoir-faire which seemed slightly out of place in the wilds of Central Africa. He was a tall man with a small aristocratic head and a refined face, which somehow suggested an aristocrat of old France.
“Yes,” answered Durnovo.
The tall man stepped ashore and held out his hand.
“I am glad we have met you,” he said; “I have a letter of introduction to you from Maurice Gordon, of Loango.”
Victor Durnovo’s dark face changed slightly; his eyes—bilious, fever-shot, unhealthy—took a new light.
“Ah!” he answered, “are you a friend of Maurice Gordon’s?”
There was another question in this, an unasked one; and Victor Durnovo was watching for the answer. But the face he watched was like a delicately carved piece of brown marble, with a courteous, impenetrable smile.
“I met him again the other day at Loango. He is an old Etonian like myself.”
This conveyed nothing to Durnovo, who belonged to a different world, whose education was, like other things about him, an unknown quantity.
“My name,” continued the tall man, “is Meredith—John Meredith—sometimes called Jack.”
They were walking up the bank towards the dusky and uninviting tent.
“And the other fellow?” inquired Durnovo, with a backward jerk of the head.
“Oh—he is my servant.”
Durnovo raised his eyebrows in somewhat contemptuous amusement, and proceeded to open the letter which Meredith had handed him.
“Not many fellows,” he said, “on this coast can afford to keep a European servant.”
Jack Meredith bowed, and ignored the irony.
“But,” he said courteously, “I suppose you find these coloured chaps just as good when they have once got into your ways?”
“Oh yes,” muttered Durnovo. He was reading the letter. “Maurice Gordon,” he continued, “says you are travelling for pleasure—just looking about you. What do you think of it?”
He indicated the dismal prospect with a harsh laugh.
“A bit suggestive of Hell,” he went on, “eh? How does it strike you?”
“Finer timber, I should think,” suggested Jack Meredith, and Durnovo laughed more pleasantly.
“The truth is,” he explained, “that it strikes one as a bit absurd that any man should travel up here for pleasure. If you take my advice you will come downstream again with me tomorrow.”
He evidently distrusted him; and the sidelong, furtive glance suggested vaguely that Victor Durnovo had something farther up this river which he wished to keep concealed.
“I understand,” answered Meredith, with a half-suppressed yawn, “that the country gets finer farther up—more mountainous—less suggestive of—Hell.”
The proprietors of very dark eyes would do well to remember that it is dangerous to glance furtively to one side or the other. The attention of dark eyes is more easily felt than the glances of grey or blue orbs.
Jack Meredith’s suspicions were aroused by the suspicious manner of his interlocutor.
“There is no white man knows this river as I do, and I do not recommend it. Look at me—on the verge of jaundice—look at this wound on my arm; it began with a scratch and has never healed. All that comes from a month up this cursed river. Take my advice, try somewhere else.”
“I certainly shall,” replied Meredith. “We will discuss it after dinner. My chap is a first-rate cook. Have you got anything to add to the menu?”
“Not a thing. I’ve been living on plantains and dried elephant-meat for the last fortnight.”
“Doesn’t sound nourishing. Well, we are pretty well provided, so perhaps you will give me the pleasure of your company to dinner? Come as you are: no ceremony. I think I will wash though. It is as well to keep up these old customs.”
With a pleasant smile he went towards the tent which had just been erected. Joseph was very busy, and his admonishing voice was heard at times.
“Here, Johnny, hammer in that peg. Now, old cups and saucers, stop that grinning and fetch me some water. None of your frogs and creepy crawly thing this time, my blonde beauty, but clean water, comprenny?”
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