“You jus’ leabe dat to me, sar. Suppose you gib me leabe to go, I take ration for, say, free day, and go off by myself into de bush to meet dem cauffle. Dhen when I hab met dem I soon find out when dem expec’ to arribe here, and I come back and tell you.”
The skipper regarded the black doubtfully.
“But,” he objected, “if you fall in with them, my man, the traders are as likely as not to shoot you; or, if not that, at least to seize you and chain you on to the cauffle. Then how could you let us know when to expect the beggars?”
“No fear ob dat, sar,” answered Cupid with a grin. “I shall take care dat dem do not know I, Cupid, am anywhere near dem. Dem shall neber suspec’ my presence, sar; but I shall be dere, all de same, and shall take partikler care to hear eberyt’ing dat dem say, so dat we may know exactly when to expec’ dem. And when I hab learned dat piece of information, I shall hurry back so as to let you know as early as possible. I don’ t’ink dat dere is much fault to find wid dat plan, sar.”
“No,” answered the skipper, smiling at the black’s eagerness and excitement, “provided, of course, that you are quite confident of your ability to carry it through.”
“You trust me, sar; I’ll carry it through all right, sar,” answered Cupid, in huge delight at being specially entrusted by the skipper with this mission. “You hab but to gib me leabe to go, and I will undertake to carry out de enterprise to your entire satisfaction.”
“Very well,” said the skipper, now struggling manfully to suppress his inclination to laugh outright at the man’s high-flown phraseology; “let it be so, then. Mr Fortescue, I leave it with you to arrange the matter.” And he turned away.
On the following morning, Cupid having called me at daylight, I snatched a hasty breakfast of cocoa and biscuit, and then wended my way to the wharf, where the Krooboy, in light marching order, with three days’ rations—which he proposed to supplement on the way, if necessary—tied up in a gaudy bandana handkerchief, awaited me in the dinghy. Scrambling down into the boat with some circumspection—for my broken arm, although knitting together again nicely, was still rather painful at times, and very liable to break again in the same place if treated roughly—I took my place in the stern-sheets, whereupon Cupid, giving the little cockle-shell a powerful thrust off from the wharf wall, threw out the two tiny oars by which the boat was usually propelled, and proceeded with long powerful strokes to row across to the mainland, at this point a bare half-mile distant. As we went the black informed me that, with the view of ascertaining a few additional items of information of which he had thought during the night, he had looked into the ward wherein his friend M’Pandala had been lodged, but had discovered, as he indeed more than half feared, that the Eboe had quietly slipped his moorings during the night and passed on into his own particular “happy hunting grounds.” But he added cheerfully that, after all, it really did not greatly matter; he would probably be able to obtain the required information in some other way.
Arrived at the other side of the inlet, it became necessary for us to search the shore for the spot at which the bush road debouched, and this we eventually found with some difficulty, for, like everything else connected with the factory, it had been very carefully arranged with the object of screening it from casual observation. But once discovered, our difficulties in that respect were at an end, for we found that it ran down into a tiny indentation in the shore, just sufficiently spacious to accommodate two of the large flats or punts at a time, with firm ground, sloping gently down into the water, affording admirable facilities for the rapid embarkation of large numbers of people.
Hauling the dinghy’s stem up on this piece of firm sloping ground, and making fast her painter to a convenient tree, as a further precaution, Cupid and I set out along the firm, well-beaten path, some six feet in width, which had been cleared through the dense and impenetrable bush that hemmed us in on either hand, tormented all the while by the dense clouds of mosquitoes and other stinging and biting insects that hovered about us in clouds and positively declined to be driven away.