“I don’t know,” I replied dreamily. “He’s a prisoner somewhere.”
“Then we must seek him among the villages of the blacks near the sea-shore. The farther we go the more we seem to be making our way into the desert. Look there!” he cried, pointing in different directions; “the foot of man never treads there. These forests are impassable.”
“Are you getting weary of our search, doctor?” I said bitterly.
He turned upon me an angry look, which changed to one of reproach.
“You should not have asked me that, my lad,” he said softly. “You are tired or you would not have spoken so bitterly. Wait and see. I only want to direct our energies in the right way. The blacks could go on tramping through the country; we whites must use our brains as well as our legs.”
“I—I beg your pardon, doctor!” I cried earnestly.
“All right, my lad,” he said quietly. “Now for getting back to camp. Where must our bearers be?”
He adjusted the glass and stood carefully examining the broad landscape before us, till all at once he uttered an exclamation, and handed the glass to me.
“See what you make of that spot where there seems to be a mass of rock rising out of the plain, and a thin thread of flashing water running by its side. Yonder!” he continued, pointing. “About ten miles away, I should say.”
I took the glass, and after a good deal of difficulty managed to catch sight of the lump of rock he had pointed out. There was the gleaming thread of silver, too, with, plainly seen through the clear atmosphere and gilded by the sun, quite a tiny cloud of vapour slowly rising in the air.