“Then I should be obliged if you would mention the fact that I would rather not be left alone with that blackguard Durnovo, either up at the Platter or travelling down. That man's got on my nerves, sir; and I'm mortal afraid of doing him a injury. He's got a long neck--you've noticed that, perhaps. There was a little Gourkha man up in Cabul taught me a trick--it's as easy as killing a chicken--but you want a man wi' a long neck--just such a neck as Durnovo's.” “But what harm has the man done you,” asked Meredith, “that you think so affectionately of his neck?” “No harm, sir, but we're just like two cats on a wall, watchin' each other and hating each other like blue poison. There's more villainy at that man's back than you think for--mark my words.” Joseph moved towards the door. “Do you KNOW anything about him--anything shady?” cried Meredith after him. “No, sir. I don't KNOW anything. But I suspects a whole box full. One of these days I'll find him out, and if I catch him fair there'll be a rough and tumble. It'll be a pretty fight, sir, for them that's sittin' in the front row.” Joseph rubbed his hands slowly together and departed, leaving his master to begin a long letter to Guy Oscard. And at the other end of the passage, in her room with the door locked, Jocelyn Gordon was sitting, hard-eyed, motionless. She had probably saved the life of Jack Meredith, and in doing so had only succeeded in sending him away from her. CHAPTER XXXIII. DARK DEALING Only an honest man doing his duty. When Jack Meredith said that there was not another man in Africa who could make his way from Loango to the Simiacine Plateau he spoke no more than the truth. There were only four men in all the world who knew the way, and two of them were isolated on the summit of a lost mountain in the interior. Meredith himself was unfit for the journey. There remained Joseph. True, there were several natives who had made the journey, but they were as dumb and driven animals, fighting as they were told, carrying what they were given to carry, walking as many miles as they were considered able to walk. They hired themselves out like animals, and as the beasts of the field they did their work--patiently, without intelligence. Half of them did not know where they were going--what they were doing; the other half did not care. So much work, so much wage, was their terse creed. They neither noted their surroundings nor measured distance. At the end of their journey they settled down to a life of ease and leisure, which was to last until necessity drove them to work again. Such is the African. Many of them came from distant countries, a few were Zanzibaris, and went home made men.