"Oh, all right!" said Ferrier, interrupting. "This time, and that time, and all the other times!"
"But you fired the boma!"
"Is that to last me for ever?"
"And came to find me, fighting: what about that? Still, if you want to go----"
"Not a bit of it, old man. It's your idea; you go; I'll run over in my mind all the poetry I know and see if I can get a happy thought like Said Mohammed."
Two hours before dawn the canoe was gently lowered by ropes over the wall at the end of the fort opposite the gate. Here, it will be remembered, the slope of the ground immediately beneath the wall was steep, but the island jutted out, in a fairly level spit, for some distance into the pool. John, the Wanderobbo, and five other men were let down in the same way, four of them to accompany John as carriers of any game he might obtain, the fifth to paddle the canoe back when they had landed. The night was very dark; they moved with scarcely a sound; and having gained the further shore John and his companions struck off across country.
John's intention had been to go directly north, but when Bill told him that the banks of the river would be the most likely quarter in which to find game at sunrise, when the animals came down to drink, he resolved to strike off in a north-westerly direction, from which quarter the wind blew, and gain the river somewhere north of the rapids. They marched very quickly, the plain on this side of the river being open, came to the river-bank in about half-an-hour, and then tramped along up-stream, careful not to approach the water too closely for fear of crocodiles. At dawn they were, John thought, at least five miles from the fort, but he decided to go a mile or two farther before beginning operations, to lessen any risk of shots being heard in the camp.
The river wound this way and that, now between level banks, now bordered by steep bluffs thick with overhanging trees. The current was always swift, and John had been conscious ever since the start that the ground was gradually rising. Bill did not stick closely to the river: indeed, that would have been impossible; he sought the easiest way, which led sometimes through scrub, sometimes over stretches of bare rock which tried John's boots sorely, sometimes through patches of woodland: always, however, coming to the river at last. From one elevated position to which they came John looked back and, now that the morning haze had lifted, saw the river serpentining behind him, and in the far distance the pool gleaming in the sunlight, the island and fort a dark spot in the midst.
At last he considered that he had come far enough to be out of earshot from the enemy's camp, and since the nearest village, the abode of the "bad men," was about a day's march to the north-west, he felt that no danger was to be anticipated from that quarter. Accordingly the party of six descended to the level of the river, and Bill began his search for game-tracks. The river here flowed through narrow channels between great boulders of a pinkish rock, the brink being lined with reeds. Before long Bill came upon the spoor of a hippopotamus, and since necessity knows no law, John thought himself justified in following it up, in spite of the technical transgression of the terms of his licence. He was not shooting for sport, he reflected, but for food.
They came at length to a rocky pool. Bill halted, and pointing to an overhanging rock on the other side, drew John's attention to a gentle rippling disturbance of the water. In a moment appeared two red nostrils covered with coarse black hair. John lifted his rifle, but Bill signed to him to wait, and after a few seconds the nostrils sank below the surface: the animal had merely risen to breathe. They all sat down on the bank to await his reappearance. Several times during half-an-hour he showed just as much of himself, and no more. This was tantalizing. Would he never emerge? John's patience at length gave out. He thought that if he could cross to the other side he might get a fair shot at the beast, or at least stir him to movement. Looking down-stream, he saw that some little distance away the surface of the river was broken, which indicated shallow water. He hastened to the spot, and stripping to his shirt, waded across waist deep, climbed the bank, and stealthily crept up until he came directly over the place where the hippo had last appeared.