“The palm-oil wine is gone,” I finished.
Here my comrade was pricked to interest. He raised the flask and set it down with a sigh.
“Hélas, thou art ever right, my Dering. What shall it be? Do we fight our way to shore, or on through the jungle, or does it meet with thy judgment that we await here the tender mercies of our royal neighbor yonder?”
I gave the fire an ill-tempered shove with my foot, for I was cold and hungry, and it has ever been my experience that a man’s sweetness of temper will suffer from the emptiness of his stomach. “You know it is equally impossible to go or to stay,” I answered shortly. Lestrade held up his hand for silence, and through the heavy patter of the rain on the roof of our hut came a noise that was not of the jungle. Gaston looked to the priming of his rifle; I held my finger on the trigger of my own.
“Some one running, and for his life,” said Lestrade, under his breath, and even as he spoke, the door of our cabin was thrust open, and a man leaped into the fire-lit circle.
He stood a hunted creature, quivering and amazed for an instant, the next, an arrow sped through the doorway and buried its point in his shoulder.
A yell of triumph rang through the forest, and two Fan warriors, hideous in war-paint, followed. They faltered on seeing Lestrade and me, but quickly plucked forth their spears to do us injury.
It was not the time or place for argument. The report from Gaston’s rifle rang out sharply, and the first savage pitched headlong and lay still, a thin, dark stream trickling from the body over the earthen threshold. The second, I dropped also, but not so neatly, for he wriggled like a big black snake into the underbrush, and was lost to sight. Seeing which I turned to look at our visitor, but here again Lestrade was quicker than I.
The negro was leaning heavily against the side of the hut, and Gaston held in his hand the slender arrow which he had plucked from the man’s shoulder.
“A pin prick,” I began, with some contempt, for indeed the stranger’s pallor, black though he was, and my comrade’s grave face, seemed greater tribute than was needful for so slight a hurt.