“Well met, my friends,” came a voice they knew; and the two looked over their shoulders.

“Dished, after all!” muttered Compton, bitterly; then he snatched up his rifle.

“Hassan thought you would come along this way,” went on the junior officer—­for it was he; “but I doubted, and yet here you are.”

“The praise be to Allah,” remarked Hassan, piously, as he glanced along his rifle.

The Okapi had lost the little way she was making, and began to move with the current away from the canoe.  Mr. Hume suddenly spoke for the first time since his order.

“Turn that canoe round!” he roared; and his Express leapt to his shoulder.  The boys followed suit.

The paddle-men promptly ducked their heads, and one of them called out in his lingo that this was the slayer of crocodiles and of the great bull.

“But, my friend——­” began the Belgian, who now, together with Hassan and several Arabs in the stern of the canoe, came under the levelled barrels.

“Oblige me,” said the hunter.  “Compton, cover that Arab Hassan with your rifle, and Venning, take the man to the right.  If they move their weapons, shoot.”

Hassan snarled and turned a furious face to the Belgian.  “This is your folly!” he hissed.  “Why didn’t you fire at once?”

Mr. Hume repeated his orders in the native tongue, and the cowed men, using their paddles, turned the long canoe round.

“Now, keep straight on in silence, till I tell you to stop.  Follow them”—­this to the boys, who immediately picked up their sculls.

The Belgian glanced back.  “Come,” he said, “this is not amiable.  See, we could, had we liked, have caught you in an ambush.”

“And so your friend Hassan advised you, eh?” replied Mr. Hume; “but you thought we would surrender at discretion.  You see, you were mistaken.  Now just listen to me.  Do not look back again, or this rifle may go off.  Out with the sculls, lads.”

Hassan growled out curses at this complete turning of the tables upon him, but the natives bent to their paddles.  They bad no wish to be shot down in the cause of the slave-hunter, however ready they would have been to have fallen on the Englishmen if the advantage had been with them.

The darkness was coming on fast as the strange procession passed up the channel to thread the intricate passages among the clustering islands.  In a few minutes the canoe would be almost hidden from sight; but the very last thing Mr. Hume wanted was to keep company.

“Baleka!” he cried.  “Quicker!  I have your heads in one line.  One bullet would stretch you all dead.  Quicker!” he roared.

The broad paddles flashed, the water churned fiercely, and the long canoe shot off into the dusk; and as it sped on the hunter pulled the wheel over, altering the course of the Okapi, and taking it towards the open water between the islands and the south bank.