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match if I can help it, for it is the manliest game we have left. Well, I didnā€™t ask you in here just to talk sport. Weā€™ve got to fix our business. Here are the sailinā€™s, on the first page of the Times. Thereā€™s a Booth boat for Para next Wednesday week, and if the Professor and you can work it, I think we should take itā ā€”what? Very good, Iā€™ll fix it with him. What about your outfit?ā€

ā€œMy paper will see to that.ā€

ā€œCan you shoot?ā€

ā€œAbout average Territorial standard.ā€

ā€œGood Lord! as bad as that? Itā€™s the last thing you young fellahs think of learninā€™. Youā€™re all bees without stings, so far as lookinā€™ after the hive goes. Youā€™ll look silly, some oā€™ these days, when someone comes along anā€™ sneaks the honey. But youā€™ll need to hold your gun straight in South America, for, unless our friend the Professor is a madman or a liar, we may see some queer things before we get back. What gun have you?ā€

He crossed to an oaken cupboard, and as he threw it open I caught a glimpse of glistening rows of parallel barrels, like the pipes of an organ.

ā€œIā€™ll see what I can spare you out of my own battery,ā€ said he.

One by one he took out a succession of beautiful rifles, opening and shutting them with a snap and a clang, and then patting them as he put them back into the rack as tenderly as a mother would fondle her children.

ā€œThis is a Blandā€™s .577 axite express,ā€ said he. ā€œI got that big fellow with it.ā€ He glanced up at the white rhinoceros. ā€œTen more yards, and heā€™d would have added me to his collection.

ā€œā€Šā€˜On that conical bullet his one chance hangs,
ā€™Tis the weak oneā€™s advantage fair.ā€™

ā€œHope you know your Gordon, for heā€™s the poet of the horse and the gun and the man that handles both. Now, hereā€™s a useful toolā ā€”.470, telescopic sight, double ejector, point-blank up to three-fifty. Thatā€™s the rifle I used against the Peruvian slave-drivers three years ago. I was the flail of the Lord up in those parts, I may tell you, though you wonā€™t find it in any blue-book. There are times, young fellah, when every one of us must make a stand for human right and justice, or you never feel clean again. Thatā€™s why I made a little war on my own. Declared it myself, waged it myself, ended it myself. Each of those nicks is for a slave murdererā ā€”a good row of themā ā€”what? That big one is for Pedro Lopez, the king of them all, that I killed in a backwater of the Putomayo River. Now, hereā€™s something that would do for you.ā€ He took out a beautiful brown-and-silver rifle. ā€œWell rubbered at the stock, sharply sighted, five cartridges to the clip. You can trust your life to that.ā€ He handed it to me and closed the door of his oak cabinet.

ā€œBy the way,ā€ he continued, coming back to his chair, ā€œwhat do you know of this Professor Challenger?ā€

ā€œI never saw him till today.ā€

ā€œWell, neither did I. Itā€™s funny we should both sail under sealed orders from a man we donā€™t know. He seemed an uppish old bird. His brothers of science donā€™t seem too fond of him, either. How came you to take an interest in the affair?ā€

I told him shortly my experiences of the morning, and he listened intently. Then he drew out a map of South America and laid it on the table.

ā€œI believe every single word he said to you was the truth,ā€ said he, earnestly, ā€œand, mind you, I have something to go on when I speak like that. South America is a place I love, and I think, if you take it right through from Darien to Fuego, itā€™s the grandest, richest, most wonderful bit of earth upon this planet. People donā€™t know it yet, and donā€™t realize what it may become. Iā€™ve been up anā€™ down it from end to end, and had two dry seasons in those very parts, as I told you when I spoke of the war I made on the slave-dealers. Well, when I was up there I heard some yarns of the same kindā ā€”traditions of Indians and the like, but with somethinā€™ behind them, no doubt. The more you knew of that country, young fellah, the more you would understand that anythinā€™ was possibleā ā€”anythingā€™! There are just some narrow water-lanes along which folk travel, and outside that it is all darkness. Now, down here in the Matto Grandeā€ā ā€”he swept his cigar over a part of the mapā ā€”ā€œor up in this corner where three countries meet, nothinā€™ would surprise me. As that chap said tonight, there are fifty thousand miles of waterway runninā€™ through a forest that is very near the size of Europe. You and I could be as far away from each other as Scotland is from Constantinople, and yet each of us be in the same great Brazilian forest. Man has just made a track here and a scrape there in the maze. Why, the river rises and falls the best part of forty feet, and half the country is a morass that you canā€™t pass over. Why shouldnā€™t somethinā€™ new and wonderful lie in such a country? And why shouldnā€™t we be the men to find it out? Besides,ā€ he added, his queer, gaunt face shining with delight, ā€œthereā€™s a sportinā€™ risk in every mile of it. Iā€™m like an old golf ballā ā€”Iā€™ve had all the white paint knocked off me long ago. Life can whack me about now, and it canā€™t leave a mark. But a sportinā€™ risk, young fellah, thatā€™s the salt of existence. Then itā€™s worth livinā€™ again. Weā€™re all gettinā€™ a deal too soft and dull and comfy. Give me the great waste lands and the wide spaces, with a gun in my fist and somethinā€™ to look for thatā€™s worth findinā€™. Iā€™ve tried war and steeplechasinā€™ and aeroplanes, but this huntinā€™

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