Now the second item in the stock in trade was a gift of tongues and about this time it began to bring him profit.  Wherever Hatteras was posted, he managed to pick up a native dialect and with the dialect inevitably a knowledge of native customs.  Dialects are numerous on the west coast, and at the end of six years, Hatteras could speak as many of them as some traders could enumerate.  Languages ran in his blood; because he acquired a reputation for knowledge and was offered service under the Niger Protectorate, so that when two years later, Walker came out to Africa to open a new branch factory at a settlement on the Bonny river, he found Hatteras stationed in command there.

Hatteras, in fact, went down to Bonny river town to meet the steamer which brought his friend.

“I say, Dick, you look bad,” said Walker.

“People aren’t, as a rule, offensively robust about these parts.”

“I know that; but your the weariest bag of bones I’ve ever seen.”

“Well, look at yourself in a glass a year from now for my double,” said Hatteras, and the pair went up river together.

“Your factory’s next to the Residency,” said Hatteras.  “There’s a compound to each running down to the river, and there’s a palisade between the compounds.  I’ve cut a little gate in the palisade as it will shorten the way from one house to the other.”

The wicket gate was frequently used during the next few months—­indeed, more frequently than Walker imagined.  He was only aware that, when they were both at home, Hatteras would come through it of an evening and smoke on his verandah.  Then he would sit for hours cursing the country, raving about the lights in Piccadilly-circus, and offering his immortal soul in exchange for a comic-opera tune played upon a barrel-organ.  Walker possessed a big atlas, and one of Hatteras’ chief diversions was to trace with his finger a bee-line across the African continent and the Bay of Biscay until he reached London.

More rarely Walker would stroll over to the Residency, but he soon came to notice that Hatteras had a distinct preference for the factory and for the factory verandah.  The reason for the preference puzzled Walker considerably.  He drew a quite erroneous conclusion that Hatteras was hiding at the Residency—­well, some one whom it was prudent, especially in an official, to conceal.  He abandoned the conclusion, however, when he discovered that his friend was in the habit of making solitary expeditions.  At times Hatteras would be absent for a couple of days, at times for a week, and, so far as Walker could ascertain, he never so much as took a servant with him to keep him company.  He would simply announce at night his intended departure, and in the morning he would be gone.  Nor on his return did he ever offer to Walker any explanation of his journeys.  On one occasion, however, Walker broached the subject.  Hatteras had come back the night before, and he sat crouched up in a deck chair, looking intently into the darkness of the forest.