"That's true enough," said Clutterbuck; "but did I hit you?"
"No, that you certainly did not," replied Jack; "but then you are a very poor shot, my friend!"
"I fired wide on purpose, I'll swear to it!" said Clutterbuck.
After this, Jack inquired about the crocodile, and found that here, too, the Strongs had cherished amiable intentions with regard to us. They saw the brute right enough, and that was why they left us to ford the river and themselves stayed behind.
"You ought to have warned us somehow," said Jack.
"I dared not," said the other. "James is an awful fellow, and his brother is nearly as bad—was, I mean—poor chap!"
As for the spiking of my revolver and the changing of the map, Clutterbuck knew nothing of either. It was done in the state-room, and he was not there to see.
"You would probably have been shot as you forded the river," he continued, "if you hadn't rather frightened the Strongs by what you said a moment before—that you were a crack shot, and would have no mercy if they missed you."
"So you see, Peter," concluded Jack, telling me all this afterwards, "it pays to blow your own trumpet sometimes. They wouldn't have hit us, probably, but then we should have been obliged to make three bull's-eyes of them, and that would have been unpleasant too!"
But all this while the treasure still lay hid in the bosom of the veldt. Charles Strong's death was very terrible, but I must dig, dig. Regrets and sentiment are mere waste of time with one hundred thousand pounds waiting to be dug out of the earth!