"Why doesn't the damned thing go away?" Arthur looked at us with something of dread in his eyes. "I shot its mate four hundred miles away, up in the Kongo. It trailed me those four hundred miles, making attempt after attempt on me. I wounded it once, and got a fair shot at it two weeks before Murray brought Alicia and Mrs. Braymore here. I thought I had killed it then. It went off through the trees as if it were badly injured. I'd made sure it was dead."
He began to pace up and down the room nervously.
"I've never known one so far from Kongo before," I said, in an attempt to encourage him. "You know what animals are. They'll stick at a thing for an amazing length of time and then will drop it like a shot. He may get a touch of homesickness any day and swing off to the north again."
"If he only would!" Arthur burst out. "I'm beginning to feel that he's going to get me yet. Something tells me he's going to get me."
"Nonsense," said Evan heartily. "Get a grip on yourself, old man."
"If he killed me," Arthur muttered morosely, "he'd be satisfied. I'm the one he's after. If he killed me, he might go off and leave the rest of you in peace."
"Don't be an ass, Arthur," I told him sharply. "The beast can't distinguish between white men. He'd be just as apt to try to wipe out the lot of us, and I have a strong objection to being wiped out."
Arthur walked out on the veranda and stood there, leaning against the side of the house and staring moodily off into the bush. Evan looked at me significantly.
"Nerves," he said quietly. "I feel the same way, but I'm trying not to show it. I'll go and round up the dogs. I have a feeling that something is due to happen to-night."
I went out to the back. Alicia saw me passing her door and joined me, leaving Mrs. Braymore behind.