But he saw nothing--learnt nothing.

These two men were inscrutable.
At eleven o'clock the next morning the Simiacine seekers left their first unhappy camp at Msala.

They had tasted of misfortune at the very beginning, but after the first reverse they returned to their work with that dogged determination which is a better spirit than the wild enthusiasm of departure, where friends shout and flags wave, and an artificial hopefulness throws in its jarring note.
They had left behind them with the artifice of civilisation that subtle handicap of a woman's presence; and the little flotilla of canoes that set sail from the terrace at Msala one morning in November, not so many years ago, was essentially masculine in its bearing.

The four white men--quiet, self-contained, and intrepid--seemed to work together with a perfect unity, a oneness of thought and action which really lay in the brain of one of them.

No man can define a true leader; for one is too autocratic and the next too easily led; one is too quick-tempered, another too reserved.