Page:Under the Sun.djvu/173

Rh conversation, so, putting them in possession of the facts, I gave the order for returning to our camp. “We approached. I halted the whole party, and binding up the asses’ mouths with cloths, we tied them to a stout liane, and then dividing the party into two, led one myself round to the south side of the camp by a détour, leaving the other about half a mile to the north of it, with orders to rush towards the canebrake and surround it at a hundred yards’ distance as soon as they heard my bugle. Passing swiftly round, we were soon in our places, and then, deploying my men on either side so as to cover a semicircle, I sounded the bugle. The response came on the instant, and in a few minutes there was a cordon round the brake at one hundred yards radius, each man about twenty yards or so from the next. But all was silent as the grave. As jet nothing had got through our line, I felt sure; and if therefore Shumari had indeed seen the Soko, the Soke was still within the circle of our guns. A few tufts of young rattan grew between the line and the brake in the centre of. which were our goods, and unless it was up above us, hidden in the impervious canopy overhead, where was the Soko? A shot was fired into each tuft, and in breathless excitement the circle began to close in upon the brake.

“Let us fire!” cried Mabruki.

“No, no!” I shouted, for the bullets would perhaps have whistled through the lianes amongst ourselves. “Catch the Soko alive if you can.”

But first we had to sight the Soko, and this, in an absolutely impenetrable clump of rope-thick creepers, was impossible, except from above.

Shumari, as agile as a monkey, was called, and