A moment later there was a sound which can only be written “P-ttt” between his legs, and he had to wipe a shower of dust from his eyes. A puff of blue smoke rose slowly over the boat and a sharp report broke the silence a second time. Then Victor Durnovo leapt to his feet and waved his hat in the air. From the canoe there was an answering greeting, and the man on the bank went to the water's edge, still carrying the rifle from which he was never parted. Durnovo was the first to speak when the boat came within hail. “Very sorry,” he shouted. “Thought you were a native boat. Must establish a funk--get in the first shot, you know.” “All right,” replied one of the Europeans in the approaching craft, with a courteous wave of the hand, “no harm done.” There were two white men and six blacks in the long and clumsy boat. One of the Europeans lay in the bows while the other was stretched at his ease in the stern, reclining on the canvas of a neatly folded tent. The last-named was evidently the leader of the little expedition, while the manner and attitude of the man in the bows suggested the servitude of a disciplined soldier slightly relaxed by abnormal circumstances. “Who fired that shot?” inquired Durnovo, when there was no longer any necessity to shout. “Joseph,” replied the man in the stern of the boat, indicating his companion. “Was it a near thing?” “About as near as I care about--it threw up the dust between my legs.” The man called Joseph grinned. Nature had given him liberally of the wherewithal for indulgence in that relaxation, and Durnovo smiled rather constrainedly. Joseph was grabbing at the long reedy grass, bringing the canoe to a standstill, and it was some moments before his extensive mouth submitted to control. “I presume you are Mr. Durnovo,” said the man in the stern of the boat, rising leisurely from his recumbent position and speaking with a courteous savoir-faire which seemed slightly out of place in the wilds of Central Africa. He was a tall man with a small aristocratic head and a refined face, which somehow suggested an aristocrat of old France. “Yes,” answered Durnovo. The tall man stepped ashore and held out his hand. “I am glad we have met you,” he said; “I have a letter of introduction to you from Maurice Gordon, of Loango.” Victor Durnovo's dark face changed slightly; his eyes--bilious, fever-shot, unhealthy--took a new light. “Ah!” he answered, “are you a friend of Maurice Gordon's?” There was another question in this, an unasked one; and Victor Durnovo was watching for the answer. But the face he watched was like a delicately carved piece of brown marble, with a courteous, impenetrable smile. “I met him again the other day at Loango. He is an old Etonian like myself.” This conveyed nothing to Durnovo, who belonged to a different world, whose education was, like other things about him, an unknown quantity. “My name,” continued the tall man, “is Meredith--John Meredith--sometimes called Jack.”