Geoffrey had taken upon himself the task of providing meat for the party, Patrington's lazy, happy-go-lucky temper readily ceding that post of distinction to the new-comer. A man who had shot every species of beast that inhabits the great continent could easily surrender the privilege of finding meat-dinners along the route; so he only used his gun when the quarry was worthy and his humour prompted; and for the most part smoked the pipe of peace and read Dickens in the repose of a day's halt, while Geoffrey roamed off with his Winchester rifle and his little band of obsequious dark-skins. And now in this period of waiting there was the great inland sea to explore; those romantic shores with their wealth of animal life; those waters teeming with fish, hemmed round and guarded by the majesty of mountains whose lofty peaks and hollows no foot of man had ever trodden. There was plenty of scope for movement and adventure here, so long as the rains held off; and the three men made good use of their time, and the canoes were rarely idle, or the rowers allowed to shirk upon the favourite pretence of bad weather. So long as there was something to be done, Geoffrey and Allan were happy; but with every interval of repose there came the familiar heartache, the longing for home-faces, the sense of disappointment and loss. Sometimes alone by the lake, while the lamp was shining on the faces of his two friends yonder in the verandah, where they sat playing chess, alone in the awful stillness of that vast mountain gorge, the waters rippling with placid movement, only faintly flecked with whiteness here and there in the blue distance, Geoffrey's longing for that vanished face grew to an almost unendurable agony. He felt as if he could bear this anguish of severance no more. He began to calculate the length of the homeward journey. Oh, the weariness of it! for him for whose impatience the fastest express train would be too slow. He shrank appalled from the contemplation of the distance that he had put between himself and the woman he loved, the intolerable distance--thousands and thousands of miles--and the difficulties and vicissitudes of the journey; all the forces of tropical nature to contend with, dependent upon savages, subject to fevers that hinder and stop the eager feet, and lay the weary body low, a helpless log--to waste days and nights in burning agony--to awaken and find a caravan dwindled by desertion, luggage plundered, new impediments to progress. Why had he been so mad as to come here? That was the question which he asked himself again and again in the stillness of night, when the mountain-peaks stood out in silvery whiteness and the mountain-chasms were pits of blackest shadow. Why had he, a free agent, master of his life and its golden opportunities, made himself a voluntary exile?