Maybe he was sent adrift by some rival faction; but that can scarcely be, for he would not have survived a long journey; and, again, the canoe would have gone aground." "There is another explanation," said Compton, with a grin.

"He may not have come down the river at all.

He may have been set adrift from one of those ships we passed for insubordination." "Ships do not carry canoes or jackals," said Venning, who had made up his mind that the castaway was from the forest, and from nowhere else.
They went down to breakfast, and the morning was occupied in getting their kit and packages together.

At noon the steamer was berthed at a pier, and their packages were transferred to a paddle-wheeler, which was to take them over three hundred miles up the wide estuary to a Belgian station.

Thence, perhaps, they would proceed hundreds of miles further by another river steamer before they took to their own boat.
"Why, we may be days before we really get to work," said Venning, when the vastness of the Congo was forced on his attention by a casual reference to "hundreds of miles." "Days--weeks, my boy, before we come to the fringe of our field.