But Bennett shook his head. “I’ve just sense enough left to keep away from gambling now. If we started we wouldn’t stop till we’d won or lost every cent we’ll ever have.”
Elliott acquiesced moodily. The strain was wearing on his nerves, and he went out of the smoking-room and walked along the deserted deck. It was a brilliant blue night; the stars overhead blazed like torches, and the dark line of the foremast plunged through the Southern Cross as the bows rose and fell. The steamer shook with the pulsations of the screws, and the water foamed and thundered back upon her sides, but to Elliott she seemed barely to crawl. It occurred to him that the treasure must be then almost directly east of him, on the other side of Africa.
The Avon Castle ran into a gale off Cape Frio which kept most of the passengers below decks for a day or two. Thence the weather was fresh to the latitude of the Cape, where it became equinoctially blustering. It was not sufficiently rough to affect the speed materially, however, and at last the cloud swathed head of Table Mountain loomed in sight above the long-desired harbour. It seemed as if the long trail was almost done, for success or failure.
Cape Town was swarming with uniforms and campaign khaki, and animated with just renewed peace and the business of peace, but they stayed there only six hours before they caught the boat for Durban.
Here was a check. There was no railroad to Lorenzo Marques, unless they took the long détour through Pretoria, over a line choked with military service, and there was no regular steamer plying. After the two men had spent a fevered day of searching the harbour, however, Bennett discovered a decayed freighter which would sail the next day, and he promptly engaged three passages at an exorbitant figure.
Then there was a day to wait, and two days more at sea, and these proved the most trying days of all. It was so near the goal,—a goal which, perhaps, they would never reach! The sun blazed down hotly on the unshaded decks as the rusty steamer wallowed along at the speed of a horse-car, while they all three leaned over the bows, watching for the first glimpse of the Portuguese harbour.
They reached it just before sunset. A white British gunboat was lying in the English River, and there was little shipping in the bay except native craft. A flock of shore-boats swarmed about the steamer as she dropped anchor, the customs launch having already come aboard.
“See that! By thunder, that’s Henninger!” cried Bennett, pointing to a good-sized and very dirty Arab dhow lying some fifteen fathoms away. She was the nearest craft in the harbour, and there were a dozen or more men moving about her decks. Standing in the stern with a glass to his eye, which was turned on the steamer, was a white man who looked familiar to Elliott as well.
“I believe you’re right. That’ll be his ship. Yes, I caught a flash of eye-glasses on another fellow—that’ll be Sullivan,” exclaimed Elliott, excitedly, and Bennett sent a long hail over the water.
“Ahoy! The dhow! Hen-ning-er! How-oop!”