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.