Desmond was asleep when the men his comrade had left behind came in, but the negroes' sense of hearing was quicker than his, and when he rose drowsily to his feet there was already a bustle in the camp. Ormsgill, who was giving terse directions, turned to him.
"These boys have brought me word that there is a handful of troops in a village a few hours' march away," he said, pointing towards two half-seen men who were talking excitedly to the dusky carriers. "As they know where we are heading for they will probably be upon our trail as soon as the sun is up." He did not seem very much concerned, and when he once more turned to the negroes, Desmond, reassured by his quietness, glanced about him. The fire had died out, and there was no longer any moonlight, but the palms cut with a sharp black distinctness against the eastern sky. It was also a little cooler. Indeed, Desmond shivered, for he was stiff and clammy with the dew. The negroes were hurrying to and fro, apparently getting their loads together, and the seamen were asking each other disjointed questions as they scrambled to their feet. Desmond could see their faces faintly white which he had not been able to do when he went to sleep.
"Well," he said, "I suppose we'll have to make a move of some kind?"
"It would be advisable," said Ormsgill. "Fortunately, it will be daylight in a few minutes. You will start for the coast as soon as you are ready, and take most of the boys I brought down along. It would be wiser to push on as fast as possible, though it's scarcely likely that the troops will come up with you. If they do, you will give the boys up to them, but in that case one of the carriers will slip away and bring me word. Any resistance you could make would be useless and very apt to involve you in serious difficulties."
Desmond smiled dryly, and did not pledge himself. He was not a man who invariably did the most prudent thing.
"You are not coming with us?" he said.
"No," said Ormsgill. "There are six boys not accounted for yet. I am going back inland for them. The troops will, of course, pick up your trail, and they will probably be content with that. It's scarcely likely to occur to them that there might be another."
Desmond exerted all his powers of persuasion during the next minute or two, and it was not his fault if his comrade did not realize that it was a folly he was undertaking. Desmond, at least made a strenuous attempt to impress that point on him, in spite of the fact that it was a folly he would in all probability have been guilty of himself. Ormsgill, however, only smiled.
"As you have pointed out, anything I can do to straighten out things in this country is scarcely worth while," he said. "I'm also willing to admit that it's not exactly my business, and I'm far from sure that the rôle of professional philanthropist is one that fits me. Still, you see, I have undertaken the thing, and I can't very well leave it half done." He stopped a moment, and laughed, a trifle harshly. "Especially as it's scarcely probable that I shall have an opportunity of doing anything of the kind again."
Then he turned to the negroes, and spoke to them for several minutes in scraps of Portuguese and a native tongue. Their villages on the inland plateau had been burned, he said, and there was, so far as he knew, no one he could trust them to in the country. If they stayed in it some white man would in all probability claim them, and they would be sent to toil for a term of years upon the plantations. They knew what that meant.