"What sort of a place is Bulonga?" asked Olive.
"Haven't the faintest idea," replied Peter. "Never heard of the show until a day or two ago. Don't expect a second Durban, Miss Baird. If you do you'll be disappointed. I shouldn't be at all surprised if it's a pestilential mud-hole. By Jove, it's close on eight bells, and it's my watch."
Half an hour later Mostyn "took in" a message from Durban addressed to Miss Baird. It contained the brief announcement that Mr. and Mrs. Gregory—Olive's relations to whom she was on her way—were returning to England in three days' time, and that Olive's passage-money home was lying at the Company's offices at Durban.
CHAPTER XX
An Eventful River Trip
"What a one-eyed crib!" exclaimed Anstey, as the West Barbican slowly approached the low-lying coast in the neighbourhood of Bulonga.
Mostyn nodded in concurrence.
The outlook was dreary in the extreme. All there was to be seen was a squalid collection of galvanized-iron huts rising above a low, sandy spit; a few gaunt palms; a line of surf—not milk-white, but coffee-coloured—and a background of sun-dried hills.
The whole coast seemed to have been scorched up by the sun. Brown and drab colours predominated. The foliage was of a sombre drab-green narrowly approaching a dull copper colour. Even the sea in the vicinity of the harbour had lost its usual clearness and appeared to be charged with a muddy sediment.