Then, as if dismissing the matter from his mind, Van der Wyck regarded his strapped portmanteau with a far-away air.
"Hang it!" he muttered to himself, yet sufficiently loud to enable Colin to hear. "Hang it! I wish I hadn't lost my revolver."
CHAPTER VII
DETAINED AT CAPE TOWN
Almost the first discovery Colin Sinclair and Tiny Desmond made upon setting foot ashore at Cape Town was that the next Dar-es-Salaam boat did not sail until the following Monday week. That came as a nasty shock, since it meant hanging about in Cape Town for ten days.
Van der Wyck did not make any further suggestion that they should go by the overland route. He, however, recommended the lads to a quiet and, as things went, inexpensive hotel just off Adderley Street, the principal thoroughfare of the capital of the Federation of South Africa.
Van der Wyck lost little time in getting his young chums settled, and two hours later Colin and Tiny saw him off at the railway station.
For the next four or five days the two lads passed their time exploring in a modest way the town and its surroundings, including a strenuous climb to the summit of Table Mountain under the guidance of a Kaffir whose command of English was both voluble and ludicrous.
One evening, just before going to bed, the chums overheard a conversation between two of the guests at the hotel. One was a tall bronzed man, with large horny hands, and who was apparently an engineer on one of the Rand mines. The other was a sergeant of the Cape Mounted Police, spending his annual leave in Cape Town as a bewildering change from the quiet of Nieuwveldt.