Late one night, when the weary carriers lay camped for a brief rest in thick forest, Maxwell beckoned Amadu. He lay in the slung hammock, a lantern burning behind his head.
"You will start in two hours. I must reach the camp before another night comes. My time is short," he said.
Amadu, looking down at him gravely, saw that the words were true; but he strove to deny them in his own tongue.
Maxwell smiled wearily, answering him in English beyond his complete comprehension.
"I have known many men of lighter tint I could part from more easily, Amadu. If we reach the camp before another night comes you shall have my big elephant gun."
The dusky man stood upright.
"I carried an Emir's standard. Will you bribe me with a gun to keep the oath I swore?"
Maxwell must have been in a state of torment about that time, but he was in his own way a man of extravagant pride, and it was perhaps to deny his weakness that he spoke again.
"Yet it is a good gun," he said, with a trace of his old dryness. "Once you will remember at over a hundred paces it drove a smooth ball through a rash bushman's head. You could keep it in remembrance—couldn't you?"
The alien stooped and laid one of the thin hands on his own bent head, then dropped it suddenly, for from somewhere far off a faint sound scarcely more than audible trembled across the forest. Maxwell strove to raise himself to listen, but before he could speak his lieutenant sprang bolt upright, and his voice rang out. It was the sound of firing, and even at that distance something warned the listeners that the quick beat of it betokened modern rifles.