Of these latter was Victor Durnovo.
Of one thing Guy Oscard soon became aware, namely, that no one could
make the men work as could Durnovo. He had merely to walk to the
door of his tent to make every picker on the little Plateau bend
over his tree with renewed attention. And while above all was
eagerness and hurry, below, in the valley, this man's name insured
peace.
The trees were now beginning to show the good result of pruning and
a regular irrigation. Never had the leaves been so vigorous, never
had the Simiacine trees borne such a bushy, luxuriant growth since
the dim dark days of the Flood.
Oscard relapsed into his old hunting ways. Day after day he
tranquilly shouldered his rifle, and alone, or followed by one
attendant only, he disappeared into the forest, only to emerge
therefrom at sunset. What he saw there he never spoke of. Sure it
was that he must have seen strange things, for no prying white man
had set foot in these wilds before him; no book has ever been
written of that country that lies around the Simiacine Plateau.
He was not the man to worry himself over uncertainties. He had an
enormous faith in the natural toughness of an Englishman, and while
he crawled breathlessly in the track of the forest monsters he
hardly gave a thought to Jack Meredith.
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