No serious mishap befell our pair of adventurers until they neared the
Katonga River, but just here they dropped in for a streak of ill-luck,
which was like to have brought the expedition to a premature and utterly
disastrous termination.
Leaving their men in camp one morning, Leigh and Kenyon had set out to
thoroughly and carefully explore a mighty kloof, or gorge, in the
adjacent hills, expecting to complete their investigations easily in a
couple of hours or thereabouts.
As the pair entered this natural mountain fastness, however, it rapidly
developed into a deep gorge, along which trickled a stream of water so
tiny that it frequently lost itself altogether amongst the stones which
served it for a bed.
On either hand great grey barren walls shot up like precipices, whilst
mighty scarped-out rocks seemed to hang over the very heads of the
explorers, the giant walls elsewhere being thickly fringed towards the
skyline with trees and bushes, many of the former absolutely hanging
head-downwards, and appearing to maintain their precarious tenure of
existence solely by the aid of magnificent festoons of creepers, which
hung from tree to rock, and from rock to tree, these gigantic parasites
absolutely sustaining the decayed trunks of many a long-dead monarch of
the woods, which they had enfolded in their tenacious and eventually
fatal embrace; higher still the foliage upon the very summit of the
cliffs looked like narrow gleaming threads of green and gold against the
dull background of soft sandstone rock. Within the kloof it was
unquestionably more or less dark at the best of times, but just now
darker than usual, for a vast white cloud, which the pair had noticed in
the distance when they entered the pass some hours before, had gradually
and ominously settled down, until it seemed to hang like a veritable
curtain of rich, fleecy wool directly over the chasm; and as our friends
were in the act of discussing the advisability of taking the back track
to camp, and returning to complete their investigations on the morrow,
this cloud suddenly burst over their very heads, and in one short moment
transformed their rocky road into an angry, swelling torrent of
leaden-coloured water, alive with branches, trees, and stones, and this
now rushed foaming and roaring down the awful pass, sweeping everything
before it, and threatening each instant to engulf the two wretched men,
who had saved themselves for the nonce by hanging on to a tree trunk
which was jammed cross-wise in the narrow gully of rock.
Suddenly Leigh gave a gasp, turned white as death, and relaxed his hold,
but ere the water could sweep him away he was in the iron grasp of the
American; many an enemy had known to his bitter cost what it was to feel
the clutch of the detective, but never had that grip of steel stood a
friend in so good a stead as now.
A floating log had struck Leigh violently on the side, dislocating a rib
and causing him to swoon away. For several anxious moments it seemed to
Kenyon that one or both of them must go, but to his intense relief he
suddenly noticed that the rush of the water was becoming less swift, and
Leigh at the same time pulling round again to some extent, the twain
were soon in comparative safety from the water, which vanished almost as
rapidly as it had appeared.
By this time, however, evening was coming on, and this, in the depths
tenanted by our friends, quickly meant the darkness of Erebus, and
unpleasant though it was, they had no alternative but to sit patiently
on their friendly log and wish for daylight. The unfortunates had not
even the consolation of a smoke, for both tobacco and matches had been
reduced to a mere pulp by the water, nor had they aught in the shape of
food or drink save a handful of unpleasantly damp peppermints owned by
the American, and a pint of good brown brandy in Leigh's flask.
Now most people will concede that under such circumstances the
consumption of the brandy was not only permissible but distinctly
advisable, though very few, perhaps, would care to tackle the
peppermints.
Not so, however, our friends, for not once nor twice had they been
indebted at a pinch entirely to these simple "sweets" for keeping body
and soul together during long days and anxious nights, when, with savage
foes following keen-eyed and red-handed on their tracks, any stoppage
for food or fire would have meant certain sudden death.
All that Kingsley has said regarding the use of the "divine weed" may be
re-written, and with much more truth, in favour of the harmless and not
more odorously objectionable peppermint. "A lone man's companion, a
hungry man's food, a sad man's cordial, a chilly man's fire;" all this,
and more, did the despised peppermint prove to our friends that awful
night, and needless to say they appreciated their oft-tried food at its
honest value. Under the coldest conditions it was acceptable to a
degree, and almost equally so under a blazing sun, with the thermometer
registering 80 degrees in the shade, for whilst it comforted the inside
of the body, it cooled the fevered palate by causing every breath of
burning tropic air to rush into the mouth like draughts of nectar, laden
with a welcome icy message from the far unlovely north.
Slowly the hours passed away, so slowly that the American thought his
companion would die of exposure, for he was still suffering keenly from
the blow his side had received, and never was dawn more welcome to man
than when those two miserable mortals at last saw it blushing golden
upon the trees far above them, followed by the glorious sun glinting
upon the damp metallic-looking rocks, till the whole angry chasm was
bathed in a tremulous reddening glow of lovely light and shade.
A weary way it seemed back to camp; indeed, it is doubtful in the
extreme if Leigh would ever have reached it, had the pair not been met
half-way by their anxious sable retainers, who did not in the least
degree appreciate the honour of being left in unsupported possession of
this great lone land; these men very soon had their masters under
canvas, and after a steaming cup of coffee, stowed them away inside
their blankets and left them to the undisturbed enjoyment of their
well-earned repose.
For several days Leigh was in a high fever, consequent upon the
dislocated rib, but this having been carefully put to rights by the
skilful Kenyon, he rapidly mended, and their camp being fortunately
placed in a healthy position, he was completely recovered at the end of
a few weeks, and again ready and eager to betake himself to the search
for his cousin.
With returning health, Leigh had betrayed an increased desire to extract
precise information from Kenyon as to the why and wherefore of their
present position, but all the satisfaction he could obtain from that
worthy was a laconic assurance that so far they had made no mistakes,
and that at that moment they were either very near their destination, or
else were on the tail-end of a trail which had been blinded with
consummate skill Kenyon had, he himself said, been very far from idle
during Leigh's illness, and had thoroughly exploited the district, and
taken a number of photographs in the immediate vicinity; but he had come
to the conclusion that nothing of practical utility could be
accomplished until Leigh was fit to return with him to the pass and
again take up the thread of search where they had dropped it, and he
added that if naught of Richard Grenville was written on its silent
walls, he would then be completely nonplussed.
Kenyon, as Leigh had long since learned, was no ordinary police
detective; he was a shrewd and skilful tracker, a man born and brought
up on the frontier of the Far West, and his experience had been dearly
bought in many an Indian fight and foray before he gravitated to New
York to try his hand at journalism as favoured by the New World.
A crack shot with the revolver, and no mean exponent of the beauties of
the Winchester repeater, he was at all times a man to be feared by his
foes, and to be looked up to by his friends, as a veritable tower of
strength.
Of Leigh we need say little, beyond remarking that he was in the prime
of manhood, was as strong as a bull, and had lost none of his skill with
the rifle, whilst he had derived a new, and to his enemies a doubly
dangerous energy, begotten of his loves and of his hates; to him it
seemed that, could they but find his cousin Dick, nothing would be
impossible with such heads and hearts as Grenville and Kenyon possessed,
especially if he were himself there to take a third hand at the game.