They strained their ears, and soon caught the measured plashing. Then Mrs Hume began to weep. Evelyn knelt by her side in mute sympathy. She was too dazed to find relief in tears. For the moment she seemed to be passing through a torturing dream from which she would soon awake. Hume, who had gone to the door, came to his wife.
“Don’t cry, Mary,” he said. “That does no good—and—it breaks my heart. I have not abandoned hope. God can save us even yet. Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.”
His voice was strong and self–reliant. Even Bambuk glanced at him with a kind of awe, and thought, it may be, that the creed he had tried dimly to understand was nobler than the mere stoicism that was the natural outcome of his own fantastic beliefs. The negro was stupid with terror, or he could not have failed to distinguish the steady hum of an engine running at half speed.
And so they waited, while the thud of the paddles came nearer, until at last the bow of a heavy craft crashed into the foliage overhanging the bank, and they were rapt into a heaven of relief by hearing an English voice.
“Hello, there!” it shouted. “Is this the Kadana Mission?”
Mrs. Hume straightway fainted, but Evelyn was there to tend her, and Hume rushed down to the landing–place. The gleam of a moon rising over some low hills was beginning to make luminous the river mist. He was able dimly to note the difference between the pith hats of two Europeans and the smart round caps of a number of Hausa policemen. And, though a man of peace, he found the glint of rifle barrels singularly comforting.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Well,” said he who had spoken in the first instance, “I am Lieutenant Colville of the constabulary, but I have brought with me the Earl of Fairholme. Have you a lady named Dane, Miss Evelyn Dane, staying with you?”
Hume, who wanted to fall on his knees and offer thanks to Providence, managed to say that Evelyn Dane was certainly at Kadana at that moment.
“Ah, that’s the ticket!” said another voice. “I suppose you can put us up for the night? Any sort of shake–down will do, so long as we get away from this beastly river. Sleepin’ on board gives one the jim–jams, eh, what?”