Turn and turn the boys relieved each other at intervals, but Mr. Hume swang to his lever till the dawn, when the mast was stepped, the sail spread, and the spirit-lamp got out for the making of coffee.  After breakfast the awning was spread, the mosquito curtains stretched round, and the boys were ordered to sleep.  They demurred at first, but the hunter rather sharply insisted, and no sooner were they stretched on the rugs than they were asleep.  The yoke had been slipped over the rudder, and, using the lines, Mr. Hume sailed the Okapi single-handed, taking her across the lake-like width till he was under the wooded hills of the south bank, where he beat about for an hour or so in the hope that Muata might have covered the distance at the native’s trotting-pace.  It was, he told himself, not likely, however, that the chief could have done so, after being for hours bound to a post; and after a time he beat out again into mid-stream afar off, so that no village natives should spy upon the craft.  He did not share in the triumph of his young companions.  Too well he knew that they had risked everything by their secret departure; but he could not see that any other course was open to them, as if they had remained it would have been difficult for them to prove that they were not concerned in Muata’s escape.  He knew, too, that if he had abandoned the chief, as the price of security, the boys would have lost all faith in him.

What, however, he did feel was, that the responsibility rested on him.  If a mistake had been made it was his mistake, and if the boys suffered from it the blame would be his.

So he beat out into mid-stream, where the sail of the low-lying craft would be but a speck when viewed from the shore, and with a beam wind laid her on a course which she kept almost dead straight, with a tack at long intervals only.  In the shade of the awning the boys slept the dreamless sleep of the healthy, and he let them sleep on till the sun stood almost above the mast, sending down a blaze that scorched.  Then he beached the Okapi on the shelving shore of a sand-spit, without vegetation of any kind to give shelter to mosquitoes, and awoke them.

“All hands to bathe!” he shouted; and the three of them were soon in, and no sooner in than out; for, according to the hunter, the virtue of a bathe was not in long immersion, but in friction.  “With their heads well protected, but their bodies bare to the sun, the friction was obtained by rubbing handfuls of the dry, clean sand over limbs and body till the skin glowed.

“Now I will snatch a few winks while you work the levers, until the wind springs up again.”