Carter had shaved till the steamy atmosphere of the bush had turned his razors into mere sticks of rust; and with the growth of his red stubble of beard, all respect for his outward man had vanished. He caught sight of himself one evening in a pool of black water. "Well," he commented, "I always thought that Swizzle-Stick Smith was a filthy old ruffian, but at his worst he looks a prince to me now. That I suppose is where gray has the pull over ginger." But it was the rescue of the King of Okky which really gave the turn to the whole of Carter's fortune. They had got the raft into a regular cul-de-sac of reeds and water-lilies, and she lay there stuck on a shoal in the face of a falling river. Creeks radiated all around them like the spokes of some gigantic wheel. The place was alive with crocodiles and flies. Not very far away an intertribal battle advertised itself by an ugly mutter of firing. "An' chop no lib," said White-Man's-Trouble, by way of winding up the sum of their difficulties. "Well, find some," Carter snapped. "Make spears, and stab the fish up out of the mud if you can't catch them with nets or hooks. Only see that there's a meal ready for me when I get back, or I'll lam into you with that chiquot you're so fond of using." He went off then in the warped dugout, with the one-eared man as bow pole, laboriously hunting for a passage into some main stream. The river beneath them gave up fat bubbles of evil odors; the banks of slime on either side reeked under the sun blaze. A dozen times Carter thought he saw open water ahead, and pushed on, and a dozen times found himself embayed. And always he had to jot down compass notes with a nail on the well-scored gunwale of the canoe, so as to keep in touch with the raft, and be ready against that forthcoming time when he would have to pilot a steam launch up to Tin Hill. For though he barely expected to escape with life out of this horrible labyrinth of creeks and waterways, be it always understood he intended to return and demand from the country a fortune, if so be he ever got down again to the seaboard. At last, however, he swung out into what was obviously a main channel, and was on the point of turning back to fetch the raft, when his eye was held by something that moved sluggishly in mid-stream. It lay up towards the sun, and was hard to make out because of the dazzle of radiance. "Can you see what that is?" he asked his bow man in the native. "It is just a man on a branch," said that savage, with cheerful indifference. "Presently the crocodiles will chop him. Shall we go back now, Effendi, to the raft?" "No, my callous friend. We'll investigate the person in the tree first. Full speed ahead!" The clumsy dugout lurched and twisted down the broad marigold-smelling river, and as there was a strong current under her, she soon drew the obstruction into clearer view.