to the
bank, and went off with his head in the air, whistling cheerily.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED.

"I don't like the news, Johnnie," said our hero, one day, some weeks
later, when he had quite settled down to his duties at the mine. "You
say you saw some men encamped five miles and more away. Tell me all
about them."

The native lad, an inhabitant of the coast near Sierra Leone, who had
come from that part with Mr Pepson, and who had been left to keep Dick
company and to tend to the launch, put the short black pipe which he was
smoking into the other corner of his mouth, and turned his eyes up till
the whites alone showed, a trick of which he was very fond. He was, in
fact, a comical-looking fellow. Short and square for a native, with
woolly hair, and a few stray wisps of beard at his chin, he was dressed
in a much patched pair of breeches, with ragged edges, the tags hanging
about his naked toes. These same breeches were suspended from his
shoulders by an ancient pair of braces, a gift from Dick himself, while
a soiled and disreputable jacket, smeared with many a patch of grease,
was over his back, serving for shirt as well as coat. He held a rifle
in his hand, and the state of his feet showed that he had just come in
from the forest.

"Me go dere, as you say," he said, taking the pipe from his mouth. "Me
look for something to eat, for massa want fresh meat. And then me see
smoke. `Dat strange,' say Johnnie. On de coast where me lib noting
wrong in dat. Fires eberywhere. Smoke all de time. But here--"

Again his eyes turned up as if to show that this smoke was a matter for
astonishment.

"Exactly so. Here one would feel surprised and alarmed. Go on."

"Den Johnnie tink, and say, `dese surely bad men, not like Johnnie,' so
me start to run 'way. Den me creep back, and soon me see better. Dere
ten, tirty, yes, fifty big native, all wid sword and gun, and dey sit
round de fire cookin' and eatin'. Me look for dat scoundrel, dat white
man who attack us below. But no, he not dere. Den me come 'way and
tell massa."

It was serious news, and for a long while our hero was silent. For
three weeks he had gone about his work at the mine till he was
thoroughly acquainted with it. He had been down each one of the shafts,
and had ingratiated himself with the men. It happened that in two of
the shafts a rich deposit of nuggets had been come upon, not an uncommon
find in the goldfie