Austin smiled at him. "We'll both be guilty of some sentimental nonsense we may be sorry for afterwards if we continue in that strain, my friend. Still, there's one thing to consider. Although I couldn't help it, what I did was, of course, absurd, if you look at it practically, and things of that kind have their results occasionally."
Jefferson seemed to shiver, and then clenched a hard, scarred fist.
"We won't think of it. Your blood's clean," he said. "But if, after all, trouble comes—I'll get even with that damned Funnel-paint if I spend my life in Africa trailing him, and have to kill him with my naked hands!"
CHAPTER XXIV
AUSTIN FINDS A CLUE
The grey light was growing clearer, and the mangroves taking shape among the fleecy mist, when Austin stood looking down upon the creek in the heavy, windless morning. There was no brightness in the dingy sky, which hung low above the mastheads, but the water gleamed curiously, and no longer lapped along the steamer's rusty plates. It lay still beneath her hove-up bilge, giving up a hot, sour smell, and Jefferson, who came out of the skipper's room, touched Austin as he gazed at it.
"The stream should have been setting down by now. Something's backing up the ebb," he said. "A shift of wind along the shore, most likely. The rain's coming!"
Austin glanced up at the lowering heavens, but there was no change in their uniform greyness, and no drift of cloud. The smoke of the locomotive boiler went straight up, and the mist hung motionless among the trees ashore. Still, there was something oppressive and portentous in the stillness, and his skin was tingling.
"If it doesn't come soon we'll not have a man left," he said. "It isn't in flesh and blood to stand this much longer."
"Then," said Jefferson drily, "the sooner we get to work the better. There's a good deal to do, and you're not going to feel it quite so much once you get hold of the spanner."