“Look there, Dickinson!”
He was pointing to the other side. Something like a strip of clothing was fluttering from a bush hardly above water level. When the river was higher it would have been beneath it.
Now a strip of clothing in that position, amid the wildest part of the very wild Makanya forest, was a thing to attract attention. The natives frequently wore clothes, it was true; still, under the circumstances Sergeant Dickinson thought it worthy of note. And just as he had so decided, something else caught his attention.
“Symes,” he said quickly, “I’m going to swim across. I fancy there’s something worth finding on the other side.”
“Swim across?” said Symes, with an expletive. “I wouldn’t. The river’s full of blooming crocs.”
“I know. But we’ll give ’em a holy scare first.”
“Why not ride round by the blanked drift and come down the bank?” said Trooper Symes. “This is a plaguy rotten deep hole.”
“Because of that krantz. It comes right down to the water, and to dodge it means the devil’s own delay getting here. And if what I see is what I think, why, every minute is important.”
He had thrown off his tunic—he knew better than to throw off all his clothes to swim a crocodile-infested river, for with this obnoxious saurian, as with the wily shark, experience goes to show that a clothed man is safer than an unclothed one; possibly there is something alarming in the artificiality of his clothes—or is it the bad fit of his tailor? Now he drew his revolver and so did the trooper. Both fired several shots into the water at various points.
“But what in blazes d’you think you do see?” said Symes.