Then through the silence there came the sharp yap of a dog who has struck the scent, and next the loud, excited bark. Too cautious to land on the suspected island themselves, some of the canoe-men had drawn near from the north side and thrown a cur on the island to find the white men in their supposed hiding. The dog had, of course, struck the spoor and found the dark hiding, empty, but suspicious- looking. In his fear he gave tongue. The gun from the launch fired, a yell rose from every side, and all the canoes near dashed forward.
Mr. Hume shoved out, and the Okapi slipped up-stream undetected under the uproar, darting from one island to another, and keeping as near the banks as possible. They were doing splendidly! The enemy was behind; it seemed that they must reap the advantage of their caution and resourcefulness, when, without any intimation of danger, they came right upon a canoe lying in mid-channel between two of the innumerable islands.
"Back-water!" cried Mr. Hume, at once.
The boys obeyed without, of course, any knowledge of the course, and the Okapi slackened down.
"Well met, my friends," came a voice they knew; and the two looked over their shoulders.
"Dished, after all!" muttered Compton, bitterly; then he s.n.a.t.c.hed up his rifle.
"Ha.s.san thought you would come along this way," went on the junior officer--for it was he; "but I doubted, and yet here you are."
"The praise be to Allah," remarked Ha.s.san, piously, as he glanced along his rifle.
The Okapi had lost the little way she was making, and began to move with the current away from the canoe. Mr. Hume suddenly spoke for the first time since his order.
"Turn that canoe round!" he roared; and his Express leapt to his shoulder. The boys followed suit.
The paddle-men promptly ducked their heads, and one of them called out in his lingo that this was the slayer of crocodiles and of the great bull.
"But, my friend----" began the Belgian, who now, together with Ha.s.san and several Arabs in the stern of the canoe, came under the levelled barrels.
"Oblige me," said the hunter. "Compton, cover that Arab Ha.s.san with your rifle, and Venning, take the man to the right. If they move their weapons, shoot."
Ha.s.san snarled and turned a furious face to the Belgian. "This is your folly!" he hissed. "Why didn"t you fire at once?"
Mr. Hume repeated his orders in the native tongue, and the cowed men, using their paddles, turned the long canoe round.
"Now, keep straight on in silence, till I tell you to stop. Follow them"--this to the boys, who immediately picked up their sculls.
The Belgian glanced back. "Come," he said, "this is not amiable.
See, we could, had we liked, have caught you in an ambush."
"And so your friend Ha.s.san advised you, eh?" replied Mr. Hume; "but you thought we would surrender at discretion. You see, you were mistaken. Now just listen to me. Do not look back again, or this rifle may go off. Out with the sculls, lads."
Ha.s.san growled out curses at this complete turning of the tables upon him, but the natives bent to their paddles. They bad no wish to be shot down in the cause of the slave-hunter, however ready they would have been to have fallen on the Englishmen if the advantage had been with them.
The darkness was coming on fast as the strange procession pa.s.sed up the channel to thread the intricate pa.s.sages among the cl.u.s.tering islands. In a few minutes the canoe would be almost hidden from sight; but the very last thing Mr. Hume wanted was to keep company.
"Baleka!" he cried. "Quicker! I have your heads in one line. One bullet would stretch you all dead. Quicker!" he roared.
The broad paddles flashed, the water churned fiercely, and the long canoe shot off into the dusk; and as it sped on the hunter pulled the wheel over, altering the course of the Okapi, and taking it towards the open water between the islands and the south bank.
"By Jove! you did that splendidly," said Compton. "I thought it was all over."
Venning laughed that little nervous laugh of his. "I wonder why they gave in like that?"
"We had the drop on then," said Mr. Hume, grimly; "and we knew our own minds. Now, then! up with the sail, and, dark or not, we must get on."
Very smartly and silently the boys hoisted the sail, and as the Okapi beat up they heard a great uproar from the left. Apparently Ha.s.san was using violent language to the Belgian officer for not having ambushed the "dogs of Englishmen." Then several rifle-shots were fired from the canoe, and answered from the people down-stream, who were still searching for their prey. But the Okapi slipped on, making a musical ripple under her bows, until she beat up under the great wall of woods on the south bank, when she tacked away into the gathering darkness, feeling for the wind. Down-river was the glare of fires at different spots, where the men had landed from the different canoes; but there was no light ahead through the whole vast width of the river, and they dare not even rig up their own lamp to get what little guidance it could give. The wind was fitful, and the direct progress was slow, so that when the glow went out of the sky they were still within hearing of the shouting. Indeed, it seemed that the shouting gained on them, as if the men in Ha.s.san"s boat were keeping their place in the renewed pursuit, and directing other crews as to the line they should take.
Then the sail napped idly against the mast as the wind died down, and as they unstepped the mast before depending on the screw, a fire sprang out right ahead, sending up a tall column of flame that flung its reflection far across the waters.
"We must make out into the islands again," said Mr. Hume; but, as the boat pointed on the new course, an answering flame sprang up, and then another and another at brief intervals, until from the fire on the bank there was a semicircle of flame from island to island barring their advance.
"There must be an army out," muttered Venning.
"It is one canoe, but most likely Ha.s.san"s, firing the dried reeds as they pa.s.s from island to island."
"Then the flames will die out soon."
"Yes, they will die down; but in the mean time other canoes will come up, and if there are men on the sh.o.r.e waiting, they will see us outlined against the reflection."
Even as he finished there came a shrill cry from the sh.o.r.e, followed by the wild beat of the war-drum, and next by the sound of paddling.
"Shall we make a bolt for it?" asked Compton.
"Not yet," said the hunter; and he brought the Okapi stem on for the deep shadows under the bank.
The oars moved softly, covered by the noise of the paddling, and the Okapi slipped out of the reflection into the darkness, while the canoes dashed straight on, pa.s.sing about one hundred yards behind her stem.
"Easy now," whispered Mr. Hume, "and keep quite still."
The oars were drawn in as the Okapi, caught in a current, was borne right into the bank at a spot where the trees came down to the brink. Mr. Hume caught a branch, and the stern swung round. Before them, about a quarter of a mile off perhaps, was the great fire they had first seen, still fed by natives, whose dark figures stood out and disappeared as they moved about. Out on the river they could hear the noise of paddles, and of men calling to each other.
Near them on the bank something moved, and above the swishing of the current they heard the low whine of an animal.
Mr. Hume p.r.i.c.ked his ears at the sound, and crept into the well, where the boys sat anxiously watching.
"Put on your coats," he muttered.
Again there came the whine, then the sound of an animal scrambling, and next the patter of feet.
"A dog," whispered Venning.
"I advise keeping on," said Compton.
"And I," replied Mr. Hume, "advise that we have something to eat.
Will you serve us, Venning?"
They ate hungrily, for through the day they had been too much excited to think of food. And as they feasted their eyes were on the move, and their ears on the stretch. Their manoeuvre had apparently succeeded, for the canoes were all beating up towards the fires under the belief that the Okapi had kept on, and there was no suspicious movement by the people on the sh.o.r.e. So they remained where they were, keeping themselves in position by holding on to the branches. To the boys it was a weird scene, with the blood-red glow on the waters and the sense of vastness and of wildness. They were not afraid, but they could not help a feeling of weariness, and they edged nearer the hunter for the comfort of his presence. For a long time they watched, sitting silent; and by-and-by the fires on the islands died down one by one, until only the flare on the bank remained as a beacon to those on the river. Then the sound of paddling drew near again.
Again the whine came from behind the screen of trees, and there was a rustling among the branches.
Taking a bit of the dried meat he had been eating, Mr. Hume tossed it through the leaves. There came a sniff, a snap of the jaws, and a whimper. The hunter shifted his rifle till it pointed through the boughs.
"Peace," said a low voice. "It is Muata and his beast. They hunt me yet."