"River to-night, Sambo," he said airily, but after that one swift glance
Sambo rode after us as stolid as ever--Sambo was always difficult to
fathom--while Dan spent the afternoon congratulating himself on the
success of his dust-throwing, proving with many illustrations that "it's
the hardest thing to spring a surprise on niggers. Something seems to
tell 'em you're coming," he explained. "Some chaps put it down to
second-sight or thought-reading."
When we turned in Dan was still chuckling over his cute handling of the
trip. "Bluffed 'em this time all right," he assured us, little guessing
that the blacks at the "Red Lilies," thirty miles away, and other little
groups of blacks travelling down the river towards the lagoons were
conjecturing on the object of the Maluka's visit--"something having told
them we were coming."
The "something" however, was neither second-sight nor thought-reading,
but a very simple, tangible "something." Sambo had gone for a stroll
from our camp about sundown, and one of Jack's boys had gone for a stroll
from Jack's camp, and soon afterwards two tell-tale telegraphic columns
of smoke, worked on some blackfellow dot-dash-system, had risen above the
timber, and their messages had also been duly noted down at the Red
Lilies and elsewhere, and acted upon.
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