“I don’t know about that,” said Mr. Hampton thoughtfully, in talking the matter over in a general conference later. “He may have managed to reach shore without being observed. And in that case he is on his way to his confederates with word of our coming to the disturbed regions with you, Ransome, as a spy and not merely a member of our exploring and picture-taking party. However, the boys feel so strongly that they want to proceed that I shall chance it. We must all be very much on our guard, however.”
“Bully for you, Dad,” said Jack, enthusiastically. “We can take care of ourselves, never fear. We’ve been in tight fixes before, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” sighed Mr. Hampton, half-humorously, as he regarded his strapping son and the two other boys with a twinkle blending affection and respect. “But every time you get there you add to my bowed shoulders and gray hairs.”
As Mr. Hampton was as straight and lithe as any of the boys, while his thick hair showed little signs of the advance of age, everybody laughed. A laugh in which he, too, joined.
“But what I’d like to know,” said Bob, after the laughter had subsided, “is what Mabele did with our radio set. He couldn’t have carried it far alone, and so far as we have been able to discover he had nobody with him.”
“It’s a puzzle,” said Frank. “But he must have hidden it, intending to return for it later, somewhere near Chief Ungaba’s village. At any rate, the report of his trackers that he was never observed to have that cumbersome piece of baggage with him is satisfactory in one respect. For it means that he was unable in all likelihood to communicate by radio with the enemy, supposing them to have a secret radio station as Mr. Ransome suspects.”
Several days the party spent at Masaka, completing the purchase of supplies to add to their baggage which had been shipped from Entebbe, and in recruiting a new corps of bearers, one hundred in number. A guard of a dozen trusty fellows in the pay of Mr. Ransome, every one of whom knew how to handle a rifle or revolver, appeared mysteriously from somewhere. And into this number Samba was recruited to his great delight.
“A mighty satisfactory man to have around,” was Mr. Hampton’s dictum, and accordingly Mr. Ransome took him into the force.
“We’ll need the guards, perhaps,” he said. “And I have obtained a permit from the Belgian authorities for them to carry arms. Our own permits as hunters also have been obtained, so now everything is settled.”
Then the party set out for the Mountains of the Moon, lying around Lake Kivu to the west and south. This gem-like lake is in the real heart of Africa, and to get there it was necessary to travel more than three hundred miles west by south. Kivu lies about one hundred and fifty miles west of the southern extremity of Lake Victoria, and between Lakes Edward and Tanganyika.