other means can be found, we must swim the dike, dispose of the
sentry there also and gain the slave camp. Then we must try to free some
of the slaves and send them round through the garden into the morass to
fire the reeds, should the wind blow strong enough. Meanwhile I propose
to walk boldly into the camp, salute Pereira, pass myself off as a
slaver with a dhow at the mouth of the river, and say that I have come
to buy slaves, and above all to bid for the white girl. Luckily we have
a good deal of gold. That is my plan so far as it goes, the rest we must
leave to chance. If I can buy the Shepherdess I will. If not, I must try
to get her off in some other way."

"So be it, Baas, and now let us eat, for we shall need all our strength
to-night. Then we will go down to the landing-place and take our
chance."

They ate of the food they had with them and drank sparingly of the
slave-dealers' brandy, saying little the while, for the shadow of what
was to come lay upon them. Even the phlegmatic and fatalistic Otter was
depressed, perhaps because of the associations of the place, which,
for him, were painful, perhaps because of the magnitude of their
undertaking. Never had he known such a tale, never had he seen such an
adventure as this--that two men and an old woman should attack an armed
camp. Indeed, although he was not acquainted with the saying, Otter's
feelings would have been correctly summed up in the well-known phrase,
"_C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre_."

As yet the night was intensely dark, and its gloom did not tend to
improve their spirits; also, as Otter had predicted, the wind was rising
and soughed through the reeds and willows in melancholy notes.

So the time passed till it was nine o'clock.

"We must move down to the landing-place," said Leonard; "there will soon
be some light, enough for us to work by."

Then Otter took the lead and slowly, step by step, they crept back
to the road and followed it down the shore of the canal opposite the
water-gate. Here was a place where boats and canoes were tied, both for
convenience in crossing the canal to and from the camp and for the use
of the slave-dealers when they passed to the secret harbour six miles
away, where the dhows embarked their cargoes.

They waited awhile. From the Nest came the sound of revelry, and from
the slave camp there rose other sounds, the voice of groaning broken by
an occasional wail wrung out of the misery of some lo