sunk, and four others were so badly
damaged that they could not be kept afloat with their proper complement
of men. There was nothing for it but to establish a camp at Msala, and
wait there until the builders had repaired the damaged canoes.

The walls of Durnovo's house were still standing, and here Guy Oscard
established himself with as much comfort as circumstances allowed. He
caused a temporary roof of palm-leaves to be laid on the charred beams,
and within the principal room--the very room where the three organisers
of the great Simiacine scheme had first laid their plans--he set up his
simple camp furniture.

Oscard was too great a traveller, too experienced a wanderer, to be
put out of temper by this enforced rest. The men had worked very well
hitherto. It had, in its way, been a great feat of generalship, this
leading through a wild country of men unprepared for travel, scantily
provisioned, disorganised by recent events. No accident had happened,
no serious delay had been incurred, although the rate of progress had
necessarily been very slow. Nearly six weeks had elapsed since Oscard
with his little following had turned their backs for ever on the
Simiacine Plateau. But now the period of acute danger had passed away.
They had almost reached civilisation. Oscard was content.

When Oscard was content he smoked a slower pipe than usual--watching
each cloud of smoke vanish into thin air. He was smoking very slowly
this, the third evening of their encampment at Msala. There had been
heavy rain during the day, and the whole lifeless forest was dripping
with a continuous, ceaseless clatter of heavy drops on tropic foliage;
with a united sound like a widespread whisper.

Oscard was sitting in the windowless room without a light, for a light
only attracted a myriad of heavy-winged moths. He was seated before the
long French window, which, since the sash had gone, had been used as a
door. Before him, in the glimmering light of the mystic Southern Cross,
the great river crept unctuously, silently to the sea. It seemed to be
stealing away surreptitiously while the forest whispered of it. On its
surface the reflection of the great stars of the southern hemisphere ran
into little streaks of silver, shimmering away into darkness.

All sound of human life was still. The natives were asleep. In the next
room, Joseph in his hammock was just on the barrier between the waking
and the sleeping life--as soldiers learn to be. Osc