There was in Guy Oscard a dogged sense of justice which sometimes amounted to a cruel mercilessness. When he reached the camp he deliberately withheld from Durnovo the news that the Msala household had left the river station. Moreover, he allowed Victor Durnovo to further inculpate himself. He led him on to discuss the position of affairs, and the half-breed displayed an intimate knowledge of the enemy's doings. There was only one inference to be drawn, namely, that Victor Durnovo had abandoned his people at Msala with the same deliberation which had characterised his cowardly faithlessness to Jack Meredith.
Guy Oscard was a slow thinking man, although quick in action. He pieced all these things together. The pieces did not seem to fit just then--the construction was decidedly chaotic in its architecture. But later on the corner-stone of knowledge propped up the edifice, and everything slipped into its place.
Despite disquieting rumours, the expedition was allowed to depart from the river-camp unmolested. For two days they marched through the gloomy forest with all speed. On the third day one of the men of Durnovo's division captured a native who had been prowling on their heels in the line of march. Victor Durnovo sent captor and prisoner to the front of the column, with a message to Oscard that he would come presently and see what information was to be abstracted from the captive. At the midday halt Durnovo accordingly joined Oscard, and the man was brought before them. He was hardly worthy of the name, so disease-stricken, so miserable and half-starved was he.
At first Durnovo and he did not seem to be able to get to an understanding at all; but presently they hit upon a dialect in which they possessed a small common knowledge.
His news was not reassuring. In dealing with numbers he rarely condescended to the use of less than four figures, and his conception of a distance was very vague.
“Ask him,” said Oscard, “whether he knows that there is an Englishman with a large force on the top of a mountain far to the east.”
Durnovo translated, and the man answered with a smile. In reply to some further question the negro launched into a detailed narrative, to which Durnovo listened eagerly.