When the soldiers had lost Berselius and Adams, they struck at once for M’Bina, reaching it in a day’s march.
Here they told their tale.
Chef de Poste Meeus was dead. They had escorted a sick white man and a big white man toward M’Bina. One night three leopards had prowled round the camp and the soldiers had gone in pursuit of them.
The leopards escaped, but the soldiers could not find the white men again.
De Wiart listened to this very fishy tale without believing a word of it, except in so far as it related to Meeus.
“Where did you lose the white men?” asked de Wiart.
The soldiers did not know. One does not know where one loses a thing; if one did, then the thing would not be lost.
“Just so,” said De Wiart, agreeing to this very evident axiom, and more than ever convinced that the story was a lie. Meeus was dead and the men had come to report. They had delayed on the road to hold some jamboree of their own, and this lie about the white men was to account for their delay.
“Did anyone else come with you as well as the white men?” asked De Wiart.
“Yes, there was a porter, a Yandjali man. He had run away.”