Obviously it was out of the question to attack St. Louis where they came from. If they were to be obtained, they must be searched for in some other direction.
Sore with defeat, he brooded on the strange guns. And very often he talked of them to the boy he called his son.
Raoul Le Breton was about thirteen when the Sultan met with his first rebuff at the hands of France. And he had the welfare and prestige of the desert kingdom at heart, and was as anxious as the Sultan to possess this new weapon.
Far away in the south was the outpost of another European power; just a handful of white men struggling to keep a hold on a country an indifferent and short-sighted government was inclined to let slip.
Round and about the River Gambia the British had a footing. Among the men most determined to keep a hold on this strip of territory was Captain George Barclay.
He was a man of about twenty-eight, of medium height and wiry make, with a thin face and steady grey eyes where tragedy lurked. His confrères said that Barclay had no interests outside of his work. But they were wrong.
He had one thing that was more to him than his own life; a tiny, velvety-eyed, golden-haired daughter.
He had come out to North-West Africa in quest of forgetfulness.
At twenty-three, although he was only a penniless lieutenant, the beauty of the London season, the prospective heiress of millions, had thought well to marry him. It was a runaway match. For his sake Pansy Carrington had risked losing both wealth and position. She was only nineteen, and her guardian and godfather, whose acknowledged heiress she was, had disapproved of George Barclay; gossip said because he was madly in love with her himself, although he was nearly thirty years her senior.
However, whether this was so or not, Henry Langham had forgiven the girl. He had taken her back into his good graces, and, in due course, had become godfather to the second Pansy. "Grand-godfather," the child called him as soon as she could talk.