"Ah! it is trying, this suspense; but I suppose we shall get an explanation before long."
"Before long! I should think so," cried Mr. Barkworth. "Burnaby, I'm going across to Bukoba; start to-morrow morning. Never imagined the boy'd be wounded--badly wounded, the padre says. This is terrible, terrible!"
"I guessed you would go on," said Lister, "and wired to Port Florence, as soon as your boat was signalled, to fix a launch for you. We may find a reply at the hotel."
"Thanks, Lister," said Sir John. "Yes, I shall go on to-morrow."
It was a sad and silent party on the hotel veranda that evening. Sir John was almost angry with the doctor for not cabling the whole of the padre's message, though on reflection he saw that he had been spared three weeks of intolerable anxiety. It was a keen disappointment to them all to meet, instead of Tom himself, a messenger of bad news, and they were all disinclined to talk. Mr. Barkworth did indeed find some relief from his anxiety in opening his mind to a Monsieur Armand Desjardins whom he met in the smoking-room. He poured out a recital of Tom's heroic deeds, drawing freely upon his imagination to fill up the gaps, until he had worked the impressionable Frenchman into a fit of enthusiasm. Monsieur Desjardins was a 'functionary' of course, and a journalist to boot, and he seized on Mr. Barkworth as an abundant reservoir of 'copy'. He went down to see the party off when they left next morning, and said to Lilian, to whom he had been specially attentive:
"I burn with envy to see dis Monsieur Tom; truly he is a hero, and I go to put him in a book. Good-bye, mees! you spik French? Oui, je m'en souviens. Eh bien, mademoiselle, vos beaux yeux vont guérir bientôt le jeune malade, n'est-ce-pas? Hein?"
"What's that, what's that?" exclaimed Mr. Barkworth suspiciously.
"Nothing, Father," said Lilian with a blush. "Monsieur Desjardins is pleased to be complimentary."
"Well, it's a good thing he don't do it in English, for compliments in English just sound--piffle, humbug! Train's off; good-bye, Mossoo!"
On reaching Port Florence the travellers found that a launch was waiting for them. They embarked without delay, and reached Bukoba on the third evening after leaving Mombasa. The German commandant--no longer Captain Stumpff, who, like so many of his kind, had carried things a little too far and been recalled three months before--put his bungalow at their disposal, and told them that a runner had come in that very afternoon with the news that Father Chevasse was only a day's march distant, and was bringing the wounded Englishman in a litter. Dr. O'Brien had gone into the interior with an escort of German native soldiers as soon as he learnt where to find the padre, and all the information brought back by them was that he had found the Englishman under the missionary's care in a large native camp. Mr. Barkworth was for starting at once to meet the returning wanderer, but was persuaded to restrain his impatience and accept the German officer's hospitality.