"I might do that, perhaps. But, as you see, they'd have to run the gauntlet of Elbel's forest guards. Elbel either wants to catch my uncle, or he has got some scheme of attack in preparation which he's anxious we shouldn't discover. Whichever it is he means to keep us bottled up."
Jack was sitting at the door of his hut with Barney, talking by the light of a small fire. Samba had been hovering about for some time, waiting, as Barney thought, until the time should come for him to curl himself up as usual at the entrance to the hut after his friend the Irishman had entered. The conversation ceased for a moment, Jack bending forward and drawing patterns on the ground with his stick. Samba came up and began to speak.
"Begorra, massa," he said, "me can do."
"What can you do, my boy?" asked Jack, smiling a little at the exclamation Samba had adopted from Barney.
Samba struggled to find words in the white man's puzzling tongue. But, recognizing that his small stock of phrases was insufficient, he ran off and fetched Lepoko.
"Me tell massa all same," said the interpreter, when Samba had spoken to him. "Samba boy say, sah, he lib for go out see fings for massa. He no 'fraid. He go in dark, creep, creep, no 'fraid nuffin nobody. He lib for see eberyfing massa want see, come back one time say all same fings he see."
"No, no, it's too dangerous. Samba is the very last of my people I should wish to fall into Elbel's hands."
Samba laughed when Lepoko repeated this to him.
"He no 'fraid Elobela," said Lepoko. "He hab got foot like leopard, eye like cat, he make Elobela plenty much 'fraid. Want go plenty much, sah; say Mboyo one fader, massa two fader; two times he want go."
"Shall we let him go, Barney?" asked Jack doubtfully.