lass more than once!
Wait till we catch them! See what I do to them! I don't forget
Kamarajes either, or that bastard de Sousa, also pretending they were
friends of mine! Heiah! Hurry! Drive the paddles in, you lazy black
men!"

It was more his hunger for revenge than any other one thing that tipped
the scales of indecision and called us off the chase. A little before
morning, at about that darkest hour, when the stars have seen the
coming sun but the world is not yet aware of it, Fred called to us to
turn in toward a barren-looking hill of granite that rose almost sheer
out of the water but at one corner offered a shelving landing place.
There we all clambered out to stretch cramped muscles and make a fire
to cook the hippo's tongue, Coutlass cursing us for letting what he
called idleness come between us and revenge.

Kazimoto had scarcely more than gathered an armful of wood, thrown it
down, and gone to hunt for more; one of the other boys had struck a
match, and the first little flicker of crimson fire and purple smoke
was starting to curl skyward, when Fred jumped on it and stamped it out.

"Silence!" he ordered. "Keep still every one!" and repeated it twice
in Kiswahili for the natives' benefit.

We could not see at first which way he was staring through the
darkness. It was more than two minutes before I knew what had alarmed
him, and then it was sound, not sight that gave me the first clue.
There came a purring from the lake; and when I had searched for a
minute for the source of it I saw the glow we had watched from the dhow
in the storm the first night out--the telltale crimson stain on the
dark that rides above a steamer's funnel, and at intervals a stream of
sparks to prove they were burning wood and driving her at top speed.

"It can't be the German launch," said I.

"Why not?" demanded Fred irritably. He knew I knew it was the German
launch as certainly as he did.

"How can they have patched her boiler?" I asked.

"How many beans make five? They've done it, and there she goes! No
other launch on the lake can make that speed! I've heard the British
railway people have a launch or two, but they're small enough to have
traveled down the line on ordinary trucks. That's the German launch
and Schillingschen as surely as we stand here!"

We waited there until dawn, arguing at intervals, not daring to light a
fire, nor caring to sleep, Coutlass sitting apart and laughing every
now and then l