“Up the tallest of those palm trees, Quatermain. Saw an Arab climbing one of them with a rope and got another Arab to teach me the trick. It isn’t really difficult, though it looks alarming.”
“What in the name of goodness——” I began.
“Oh!” he interrupted, “my ruling passion. Looking through the glasses I thought I caught sight of an orchid growing near the crown, so went up. It wasn’t an orchid after all, only a mass of yellow pollen. But I learned something for my pains. Sitting in the top of that palm I saw the Maria working out from under the lee of the island. Also, far away, I noted a streak of smoke, and watching it through the glasses, made out what looked to me uncommonly like a man-of-war steaming slowly along the coast. In fact, I am sure it was, and English too. Then the mist came up and I lost sight of them.”
“My word!” I said, “that will be the Crocodile. What I told our host, Hassan, was not altogether bunkum. Mr. Cato, the port officer at Durban, mentioned to me that the Crocodile was expected to call there within the next fortnight to take in stores after a slave-hunting cruise down the coast. Now it would be odd if she chanced to meet the Maria and asked to have a look at her cargo, wouldn’t it?”
“Not at all, Quatermain, for unless one or the other of them changes her course that is just what she must do within the next hour or so, and I jolly well hope she will. I haven’t forgiven that beast, Delgado, the trick he tried to play on us by slipping away with our goods, to say nothing of those poor devils of slaves. Pass the coffee, will you?”
For the next ten minutes we ate in silence, for Stephen had an excellent appetite and was hungry after his morning climb.
Just as we finished our meal Hassan appeared, looking even more villainous than he had done the previous day. I saw also that he was in a truculent mood, induced perhaps by the headache from which he was evidently suffering as a result of his potations. Or perhaps the fact that the Maria had got safe away with the slaves, as he imagined unobserved by us, was the cause of the change of his demeanour. A third alternative may have been that he intended to murder us during the previous night and found no safe opportunity of carrying out his amiable scheme.
We saluted him courteously, but without salaaming in reply he asked me bluntly through Sammy when we intended to be gone, as such “Christian dogs defiled his house,” which he wanted for himself.
I answered, as soon as the twenty bearers whom he had promised us appeared, but not before.
“You lie,” he said. “I never promised you bearers; I have none here.”