But that beacon, as if it possessed the qualities of the hope it inspired, proved illusive. Soon night overtook him struggling through thickets and stumbling over outcrops. Perhaps those physical obstacles imposed a pause for thought, for before he reached the camp, he had begun to wonder with what cloak to cover his rather ambiguous position. For the moment he could only decide on a policy of caution. The line he took must vary with the number, condition, and temper of his rescuers. It was possible that he only had to deal with natives.
Except that this guess was wrong, scrutiny of the figure, that sat opposite with eyes shaded from the fire heat, revealed little. The mystery may have been partly due to a lack of interest in third parties habitual to Dick. But in truth there did not seem to be anything very remarkable about the owner of the fire. He was youngish, shortish, darkish. Not a missionary, one would say, or an official or a trader, even had that desolate region offered souls for saving, bodies for the governing, or wants for the supplying.
That he was no plutocrat progressing triumphantly across the continent on a well-boomed shooting trip, the absence of blameless hecatombs of slaughtered buck and poisoned carnivora proclaimed. The modesty of his appointments—Dick was reposing his aching limbs on a packing-case and his host was as ill-provided—and the shabbiness of his torn shorts and frayed shirt underlined the point. Taken all round, an unnoteworthy man whom you would never pick out of a crowd. But as there was no crowd for a thousand miles to pick him from, the appearance of the Apollo Belvedere could not have been more welcome, or indeed more surprising.
Several leading questions designed to dispel the mystery were allowed to fall to the ground unanswered.
It is not impossible that, irritated by these feelers, the stranger was moved to repay in like coin. At any rate he followed up his disconcerting, 'You alone?' with a no less awkward, 'I don't know your name?'
'Brown,' said Dick Ward, after a moment's pause.
'Ah!' said the unknown, eyeing him, to Dick's mind, a trifle aggressively. 'Mine's Smith,' he added after a pause.
Suspicion of mockery crossed Dick's mind, causing him to glance quickly at his host. He appeared immersed in thought. At length he produced the result of his deliberations.
'Better start at dawn,' he said.
'Start?' echoed Dick. 'Where for?'