“Tagati! I should think so,” laughed Francis. “I still don’t believe it was a shot at all. I’ve a theory it was a sort of meteorite exploding. Seemed to come from up in the air too.”
“Sound travels the devil’s own distance at night. What if it was beyond the forest belt? There are kraals out that way.”
The other was unconvinced.
“Sound does travel, as you say,” he rejoined. “But for that very reason no blooming nigger would lash off a gun in the middle of the night to give away that there was such a thing in existence among the kraals. An assegai or knobkerrie would do the trick just as well, and make no noise about it. No, I stick to my meteorite theory.”
“Right-oh! It’s going to be damned hot,” loosening his uniform jacket. “Let’s push on or we shan’t get to old Halse’s by dinner-time, and he does you thundering well when you get to his shebang. Whatever they may say about old Ben, he’s the most hospitable chap you’d strike in a lifetime.”
“Isn’t he a retired gun-runner—if he has retired, that is?” said Francis, who was new to that part of the country. “At least so the yarn goes.”
“The said yarn is very likely true. There are ‘no witnesses present,’ so I don’t mind recording my private belief that it is. But there’s this to be said—that when he did anything in that line it was only when the niggers were fighting each other, and in that case he rendered humanity a service by helping to keep their numbers down. I don’t believe he’d trade them a single gas-pipe if they were going for us. I’ve a better opinion of old Ben than that.”
“Don’t know. I haven’t been up here so long as you; but I’ve heard it said, down country, that gun-running gets into the blood. ‘Once a gun-runner, always a gun-runner.’ What-oh! Suppose Dinuzulu were to start any tricks, wouldn’t our friend Ben see his way to making his little bit then?”
“I don’t believe he would; and what’s more to the point, I don’t see how he could. But I say—hang gun-running. Don’t you get smashed upon his daughter. She’s a record of a fine girl.”
“So I’ve heard from you chaps until I’m sick. You all seem smashed on her.”