"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 snatched up his rifle.
"Hassan 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 Hassan, 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 Hassan and several Arabs in the stern of the canoe, came under the levelled barrels.