The man positively quivered with impatience, but the girl laughed.
"No. I have sold him the blind Englishman. Rideau has the map that belonged to the Señor Maxwell."
"Thanks be to heaven!" Dom Pedro exclaimed piously; but his sallow face grew grave again. "It is a great deliverance, but it is not well to make one's profit from the blood of white men. This Rideau, who is very cunning, will follow and bring disaster upon the Englishmen up yonder. Already, I have suffered many things because of the black men the Emir stole from me."
"You do not see clearly, father, or know the manner of those other men. What is it to me if these strangers do not find the gold—but I would not have them die. I have been in their country, and if the cur dog follows, plotting treachery, as I think he will, the Señor Maxwell will surely kill him."
"Ojala! Heaven send it so," murmured Dom Pedro, and would have embraced his daughter, but that, shrinking from him, she slipped out into the moonlit veranda. The little olive-faced gentleman stood staring at the papers before him, and hoping that it might come about as she had predicted.
CHAPTER XI
THE TRAIL OF THE LEOPARD
Maxwell expressed his approval of the recruits Dane brought in, for Dom Pedro had chosen well. They were sturdy, woolly-haired Kroomen from Liberia who had gained some experience of forest warfare in petty skirmishes with the troops of the black republic. It is noticeable that the untamed African cherishes little love for his partly civilized brother. When he had harangued them, the two white men sat talking together.
"I would give a good deal to know what is in Dom Pedro's mind just now," said Maxwell. "It is quite possible that the offer he made you was genuine. There is, if one may say it without appealing to your vanity, a certain air of solidity and force about you which might appeal to a man of his type who could supply all the finesse necessary—and who possesses a troublesome enemy. The map would in any case be of little use to Dom Pedro, who would never venture into the Leopards' country; and I hardly fancy he would give it to Rideau. In the meantime our own program is clear. We start again at sunrise to-morrow."