“Our jaunt this time will take us rather off it. I say—that time we ran the gauntlet through to Kambula, from that infernal mountain. It was something to remember, eh?”
Wyvern looked grave.
“One might run as narrow a shave as that again, but it’s a dead cert we couldn’t run a narrower one,” he said.
“Not much. I say, though. You’ve seen some rather different times since then. Let on, old chap—is that her portrait you’ve got stuck up in Number 3 Ulundi Square? Because, if so, you’re in luck’s way, by jingo you are.”
“You’re quite right, Fleetwood, as to both ventures. Only a third ingredient is unfortunately needed to render the luck complete, and that is a sufficiency of means.”
“That all? Well, then, buck up, old chap, because I’d lay a very considerable bet you’ll find that difficulty got over by the time you next set foot in hot—and particularly thirsty—Durban.”
Wyvern looked up keenly. Something in the other’s tone struck him as strange.
“What card have you got up your sleeve, Joe?” he said. “You let out something about ‘a few months’ a little while ago. Well now, I may not know much about the native trade, but I have a devilish shrewd idea that a man doesn’t scare up a fortune at it in that time.”
“You’re right there—quite right—and that’s the very thing we’ve come out to chat about—and sniff the ozone at the same time. It’ll keep till we get there. Here’s our tram.”
These two were great friends. Fleetwood, indeed, was prone to declare that he owed his life to the other’s deftness and coolness on one occasion when they had been campaigning together; a statement, however, which Wyvern unhesitatingly and consistently pooh-poohed. Anyhow, there was nothing that Fleetwood would not have done for him; and having lit upon the marvellous discovery which was behind his sanguine predictions of immediate wealth, he had written at once to Wyvern to come up and share it.