We decided to leave at once for a district where he had not yet done any of his infernal preaching.

“You should set a trap and shoot the swine!” Coutlass insisted.  Will was inclined to agree with him, but Fred and I demurred.  The British writ had never really run as far as the slopes of Elgon, and we could see them ahead of us not very many marches away.  If Schillingschen intended to dog us and watch chances we preferred to have him do that in a remote wilderness, where our prospect of influencing natives would likely be as good as his, that was all.

Part of our strategy was to make an early start and march swiftly, taking advantage of his physical weariness after a night in the open on the prowl; but after a few days in camp it is the most difficult thing imaginable to get a crowd of porters started on the march.  It was more particularly difficult on that occasion because none of our men were familiar with Schillingschen’s loads, and the captured ten, even when we loosed their hands and treated them friendly, showed no disposition to be useful.  We gave them a load apiece to carry, but to every one we had to assign two of our own as guards, so that, what with having lost the fifteen donkeys, we had not a man to spare.

It was after midday when we got off at last.  We had not left the camp more than half a mile behind when I looked back and saw Schillingschen where his great tent had stood, cavorting on hands and feet like an enormous dog-baboon, searching every inch of the ground for anything we might have left.  We three stood and watched him for half an hour, sweating with fear lest he chance on the place where his diary lay buried in the tin box.  We began to wish we had brought it with us.  I said we had done foolishly to leave it, although I had approved of Fred’s burying it at the time.

“Suppose,” I argued, “he sets the natives of that village to searching!  What’s to prevent him?  You know the kind of job they’d make of it—­blade by blade of grass—­pebble by pebble.  Where they found a trace of loosened dirt they’d dig.”

“Did you bury something, then?” inquired a voice we knew too well.  “By the ace of stinks, those natives can smell out anything a white man ever touched!”

We turned and faced Coutlass, whom we had imagined on ahead with the safari.  If he noticed our sour looks, he saw fit to ignore them; but he took an upperhanded, new, insolent way with us, no doubt due to our refusal to shoot Schillingschen.  He ascribed that to a yellow streak.

“I was right.  Gassharamminy!  I could have sworn I saw two of you on watch while the third man dug among the stones!  What did you bury?  I came back to talk about Brown.  The poor drunkard wants to head more to the east.  I say straight on.  What do you say?”

We told him to go forward.  Then we looked in one another’s eyes, and said nothing.  Whether or not the original decision had been wise, there was no question now what was the proper course.