Their progress was painfully slow. M'Wané and his four followers worked continually with the paddles, assisted in turn by Harden and his nephew. As for Crouch, he was always the look-out man. His only eye was quick and keen as that of a falcon.
Hour by hour they toiled into the Unknown, until the sweat poured from their faces and their hands were blistered in the sun; and the blisters would not heal, because of the insects that followed in a crowd. The jungle grew more magnificent and wild as the river narrowed. The character of the trees changed, and of the undergrowth--all became more luxuriant, more profuse, until they found themselves in a land where Nature was something fantastic and superb.
It was on the third day after they had set out from Hippo Pool that they turned an angle of the river, and came on a sudden into a cup-shaped valley where there was but little vegetation. A circle of granite hills stood all around them, and in the centre on either side of the river was a plain of sand. Crouch turned in the bows and pointed to something ahead, and at that moment the sharp crack of a rifle echoed in the stillness, and a bullet sped into the water a few inches from the bows of the canoe.
[CHAPTER V--THE STOCKADE]
As the bullet cut into the water Crouch sprang upright in the canoe. His thin form trembled with eagerness. The man was like a cat, inasmuch as he was charged with electricity. Under his great pith helmet the few hairs which he possessed stood upright on his head. Edward Harden leaned forward and picked up his rifle, which he now held at the ready.
By reason of the fact that the river had suddenly widened into a kind of miniature lake, the current was not so swift. Hence, though M'Wané and his Fans ceased to paddle, the canoe shot onward by dint of the velocity at which they had been travelling. Every moment brought them nearer and nearer to the danger that lay ahead.
In order to relate what followed, it is necessary to describe the scene. We have said that the wild, impenetrable jungle had ceased abruptly, and they found themselves surrounded by granite hills, in the centre of which lay a plain of glaring sand. To their left, about a hundred paces from the edge of the river, was a circular stockade. A fence had been constructed of sharp-pointed stakes, each about eight feet in height. There was but a single entrance into this stockade--a narrow gate, not more than three feet across, which faced the river. Up-stream, to the south, the granite hills closed in from either bank, so that the river flowed through a gorge which at this distance seemed particularly precipitous and narrow. Midway between the stockade and the gorge was a kraal, or large native village, surrounded by a palisade. Within the palisade could be seen the roofs of several native huts, and at the entrance, seated cross-legged on the ground, was the white figure of an Arab who wore the turban and flowing robes by which his race is distinguished, from the deserts of Bokhara to the Gold Coast. Before the stockade, standing at the water's edge, was the figure of a European dressed in a white duck suit. He was a tall, thin man with a black, pointed beard, and a large sombrero hat. Between his lips was a cigarette, and in his hands he held a rifle, from the muzzle of which was issuing a thin trail of smoke.
As the canoe approached, this man grew vastly excited, and stepped into the river, until the water had risen to his knees. There, he again lifted his rifle to his shoulder.
"Put that down!" cried Crouch. "You're a dead man if you fire."
The man obeyed reluctantly, and at that moment a second European came running from the entrance of the stockade. He was a little man, of about the same build as Crouch, but very round in the back, and with a complexion so yellow that he might have been a Chinese.