Charles Repton waited patiently. When he spoke his point was as simple as falling off a log: what was wanted was not a railway in itself, it was a new issue of capital. He was profoundly indifferent what label should be tied onto that issue, so long as it was a label good enough to get the original shareholders to come in. The public would never come in as things were: its pusillanimity was increased by the fact that the Company had been in existence for now eleven years and had hitherto failed to pay a dividend of any kind. After some thought he had decided, in company with one or two others upon the Board, that a railway through a certain district of the concession, locally known as “The Out and Out,” and remarkable for the fact that no white man had yet visited it, would be the best attraction he could offer. He was prepared to show by the aid of maps upon which should be marked all favourable things, that a line driven through this district would unite with the world two provinces teeming with inexhaustible wealth, of a heavenly climate, and hitherto by the mere accident of the Out and Out belt, cut off from the longing embraces of commerce. More; he could show that this single line of railway would bestow upon his beloved country so vast a strategic superiority over all other nations as would ensure her immediate success in any campaign, no matter what the quality of the troops she might employ. To this he added the attractions of touring in the tropics and the allurements of big game for those wealthy gentlemen whom he designed in the new prospectus to term Shikaris. With the new capital subscribed and long before the line was surveyed, there was little doubt that the shares which had fallen from over £9 to the comparatively low quotation--but oh! not price--of 16/3 (at which quotation he had first consented to tender his services to the Company) would rise to certainly over £1, perhaps to nearer £2, and what was more to the point they would be readily saleable. He was prepared in that event to transfer his property in them to others, a course which he sincerely hoped his fellow-shareholders would also follow, though of course he would not take it upon himself to advise any one of them. Bingham, like the practical man he was, pinned himself to the railway. He _knew_ the Out and Out; not that he’d ever been there,--no white man had,--but he had talked to several of the Kawanga in Mutchi-time, and he shook his head despondently. There was one continuous line of precipice 3000 feet deep; there was a river which was now a stream five miles broad, now a marsh and now again dry--, sometimes for years on end. There was a dense mass of forest; there was that much more difficult thing, a belt of shifting sand dunes; there were nearly 300 miles without water through these. He was prepared to speak all day upon the difficulties of building a railway which none but the least intelligent had ever designed to build.