"Oh, there is not a doubt of it. I should prefer marching straight away and try and catch up with you. Naturally." "Well, do you begin to understand why I have been sweet, and good, and liberal to Tippu-Tib? Why I have given him free passage and board for himself and followers from Zanzibar to Stanley Falls? Why I have shared the kid and the lamb with him?" "Quite." "Not quite yet, I am afraid, Major, otherwise you would not have doubted me. There is still a serious reason. "Assuming, for instance, that I had not brought Tippu-Tib here, that the Arabs at Stanley Falls were not wrathy with white men for Deane's affair, or that they would fear attacking you. They had but to affect friendship with you, sell you goats and food, and then tell your Zanzibaris that their settlement was but six or seven days away--where they had plenty of rice and fish and oil to tempt three-fourths of your men to desert in a few days, while you were innocently waiting for the Bolobo contingent; and no sooner would the other fellows have reached here than they would hear of the desertion of their comrades for the Falls, and follow suit either wholesale or by twos and threes, sixes and tens, until you would have been left stranded completely. Is it not the fear of this desertion that was one of the reasons I chose the Congo? Having Tippu-Tib as my friend and engaged to me, I have put a stop to the possibility of any wholesale desertion. "Let these reasons sink into your mind, Major, my dear fellow. Yet withal, your column may be ruined if you are not very careful. Be tender and patient with your people, for they are as skittish as young colts. Still, it was with these people, or men like them, that I crossed Africa--followed the course of the Congo to the sea, and formed the Congo State." "Well, now, say do you think Tippu-Tib will keep his contract, and bring his 600 people?" asked the Major. "You ought to know that as well as I myself. What did he say to you before you left him?" "He said he would be here in nine days, as he told you at Bangala. Inshallah!" replied the Major, mimicking the Arab. "If Tippu-Tib is here in nine days, it will be the biggest wonder I have met." "Why?" asked the Major, looking up half wonderingly.