The fat was in the fire then, of course.  We paid the owners handsomely, giving them their choice of money or blankets when they bore down on us in long canoes demanding vengeance.  They voted for blankets and money, but vowed they would far rather have the bananas, because now their own people would be on short commons to make up for the surfeit of ours.

We left them never doubting that they would send word to the nearest German officer. (They told us there was a wood-cutting station within a “few hours,” and we prayed he might be only a non-commissioned man in charge of it, but knew that prayer was too sweetly reasonable to be answered where the German Gott makes war on foreigners.) Kazimoto assured us he heard them telling one another they would make complaint against us within the day.

It remained, then, only to guess where that steam launch might be.  We were approaching the northern end of Ukerewe, not a day’s sail, if the light wind held, from the narrow mouth of the channel between Ukerewe and the mainland.  That was the likeliest place for the launch to lie in wait; it was where we would have waited had we been pursuers and they the pursued.  So we decided after a council of war to put the helm over and sail almost due westward, hoping to meet with an island where we might stop for a few days, catch fish and dry them, and caulk the leaky dhow, without the risk of letting the Germans know our whereabouts. (It is a peculiar fact that whatever the native secret system of transferring messages may be, it does not work across water.)

Not all the little gods of Africa were fighting for the Germans, although it began to seem so.  An hour after putting up the helm we sighted a school of hippopotami—­fifty at least, and for half a day we chased them, Fred trying to shoot one until Will and I objected to further waste of ammunition.  A dead hippo would have provided us with meat enough for a month for the whole ship’s company.  We could have towed the carcass ashore somewhere and dried the meat in slabs.  But the glare on the water made shooting very nearly impossible (Fred’s eyes were sore from it); and if we should meet the Germans those remaining cartridges would be our only hope.  But the diversion took us out of sight of land, and that stood us in better stead presently than tons of fresh meat.

Whether the Germans heard us, or were merely quartering that part of the lake in wait, we never knew.  Probably they heard the shooting in the distance and gave chase.  At any rate, within ten minutes of Fred’s last wasted shot Coutlass caught sight of smoke and announced the fact with his favorite oath.

“Gassharamminy!  The launch!”

At first we were all in a stew because there was no land near, where we might have beached the dhow and scattered.  It was an hour before our advantage of position dawned on us, and all the while the launch approached us leisurely.  She had plenty of fuel; the wood was piled high above her gunwale in a stack toward the stern; but those on board her seemed to take more pleasure in contemplation of our defenselessness than in speed.  She steamed twice around us slowly before closing in; and then we made out Schillingschen’s hairy shape, leaning against the cord-wood with a rifle between his hands.