The account which the stranger proceeded to give of himself was not very detailed. He had, Dick gathered, been after elephant somewhere in the Congo. Wonderful game country, not far from the lake. So many elephant that he had used up most of his big bore ammunition. He had plenty of .303 stuff, but his .303 rifle had been twisted into scrap metal by the wounded bull Johnny had saved him from. (Hundred-pound tusks he had.) Then he got into trouble with the Bulamatadi. ('Poaching,' thought Dick.) So that there was question of confiscating his ivory. He'd got too much to risk losing, and he'd induced a fishing village to paddle him and his ulendo across to the British side.
'A bit risky, wasn't it, in a canoe at this time of year?' suggested Dick. 'What if a squall got up?'
'Risky?' repeated Smith. 'Yes, I suppose so. I had to pay the paddlers pretty high. Or rather their headman. I couldn't get enough canoes, either. That's why I left most of my stuff behind.'
He had crossed at night and landed a day's stage north of the present camp. Dick mentally supplied the missing detail of a reverent burial of the ivory on the beach. Now he was on his way to Abercorn.
'But of course I'll stay and see you and your wife through,' he added.
Dick was suitably grateful, but Smith was apparently already thinking of something else.
'We'll have to see what can be done,' he went on. 'Maybe my chaps could build a raft and we could edge our way along the coast till we reach a fishing village.... I'd better move camp alongside of you first thing to-morrow and get to work,' he reflected. A sudden thought seemed to strike him, 'I suppose Mrs. Brown has got a gun.'
Dick explained that the gun was ammunitionless.
'But,' protested Smith, 'you can't leave her alone there without a gun!'
'You're safe from crocs, on land, aren't you?'