"For several days I succeeded well enough. I managed to palm off the country as the forest of Atacama, which you may recollect I once visited; but when the youngster began to ask for gutta-percha and humming-birds, and his mother wanted quinquina-trees, and when that old fool of a cousin was bent on finding cocuyos, I was rather nonplussed. One day I had to swear that giraffes were ostriches, but the young captain did not seem to swallow the dose at all easily. Then we saw traces of elephants and hippopotamuses, which of course are as often seen in America as an honest man in a Benguela penitentiary; then that old nigger Tom discovered a lot of forks and chains left by some runaway slaves at the foot of a tree; but when, last of all, a lion roared,-and the noise, you know, is rather louder than the mewing of a cat,-I thought it was time to take my horse and decamp."
Negoro repeated his expression of regret that the whole party had not been carried another hundred miles into the province.
"It really cannot be helped," rejoined the American; "I have done the best I could; and I think, mate," he added confidentially, "that you have done wisely in following the caravan at a good distance; that dog of theirs evidently owes you a grudge, and might prove an ugly customer."
"I shall put a bullet into that beast's head before long," growled Negoro.
"Take care you don't get one through your own first," laughed Harris; "that young Sands, I warn you, is a first-rate shot, and between ourselves, is rather a fine fellow of his kind."
"Fine fellow, indeed!" sneered Negoro; "whatever he is, he is a young upstart, and I have a long score to wipe off against him;" and, as he spoke, an expression of the utmost malignity passed over his countenance.
Harris smiled.
"Well, mate," he said; "your travels have not improved your temper, I see. But come now, tell me what you have been doing all this time. When I found you just after the wreck, at the mouth of the Longa, you had only time to ask me to get this party, somehow or other, up into the country. But it is just upon two years since you left Cassange with that caravan of slaves for our old master Alvez. What have you been doing since? The last I heard of you was that you had run foul of an English cruiser, and that you were condemned to be hanged."
"So I was very nearly," muttered Negoro.
"Ah, well, that will come sooner or later," rejoined the American with philosophic indifference; "men of our trade can't expect to die quietly in our beds, you know. But were you caught by the English?"