“I was just thinking, when you spoke, that we were running into a nest of the enemy.”

“Just before the battle of the Alma, I went on just such an expedition as this; but we went down the river beyond the enemy’s lines, and doubled up in the rear of them; thus finding out all we wanted to know.”

“That is what I propose to do.”

“Captain Brickfield and myself landed, and walked sixty-four miles between nine o’clock in the evening and four o’clock in the morning,” added Captain de Banyan.

“How far?”

“Sixty-four miles.”

“Good!” exclaimed Somers. “Did you walk all the way?”

“Every step.”

“It was tip-top walking, De Banyan—a little more than nine miles an hour.”

“Do you doubt the story?”