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The natives who were chasing you, they found him and then the Englishman whom you met in Bekwando on his way inland, he rescued him. You see that little white house with a flagstaff yonder?" He pointed to a little one-storey building about a mile away along the coast. Trent nodded. "That is," Oom Sam said, "a station of the Basle Mission and old Monty is there.
"Da Souza," he said, "if I had you just for five minutes at Bekwando we would talk together of black-mail, you and I, we would talk of marrying your daughter. We would talk then to some purpose you hound! Get out of the room as fast as your legs will carry you. This revolver is loaded, and I'm not quite master of myself." Da Souza made off with amazing celerity. Trent drew a short, quick breath.
"Francis," he said, "you have been my enemy since the day I saw you first in Bekwando village." "Scarcely that," Francis objected. "I have distrusted you since then if you like." "Call it what you like," Trent answered. "Only to-night you have served me a scurvy trick. You were a guest at my table and you gave me not the slightest warning.
With its faint, grey streaks came the savages of Bekwando, crawling up in a semicircle through the long, rough grass, then suddenly, at a signal, bounding upright with spears poised in their hands an ugly sight in the dim dawn for men chilled with the moist, damp air and only half-awake. But Trent had not been caught napping.
"A very nice arrangement," Da Souza drawled with a devilish smile. "He is old and weak. You were with him up at Bekwando where there are no white men no one to watch you. You gave him brandy to drink you watch the fever come, and you write on the concession if one should die all goes to the survivor. And you gave him brandy in the bush where the fever is, and behold you return alone!
"I think," Cathcart said, "that he has gone to try and sell his shares in the Bekwando concessions." "Gone to sell his shares!" Trent repeated slowly. "You mean to say that he has gone straight from here to put a hundred thousand Bekwando shares upon the market?" Cathcart nodded. He said so! "And why? Did he tell you that?"
I told him of course that Monty died a pauper and he'd no share of our concession to will away, but I'd done so well that I thought I'd like to make over a trifle to her in fact I'd put away 10,000 pounds worth of Bekwando shares for her.
Then, with an awful suddenness, their cry became the cry of death, for out from the bushes belched a yellow line of fire as the rifles of Trent and his men rang out their welcome. A dozen at least of the men of Bekwando looked never again upon the faces of their wives, the rest hesitated. Trent, in whom was the love of fighting, made then his first mistake.
A hundred years ago the men of Bekwando, who went naked and knew no drink more subtle than palm wine had one virtue bravery. But civilisation pressing upon their frontiers had brought Oom Sam greedy for ivory and gold, and Oom Sam had bought rum and strong waters. The nerve of the savage had gone, and his muscle had become a flaccid thing.
Trent did not mention the fact that for four days and nights they were hiding in holes and up trees from the natives whom the King of Bekwando had sent after them, that their bearers had fled away, and that they had been compelled to leave the track and make their way through an unknown part of the bush. "But your partner's share," the Jew asked. "What of that?"
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