noon
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 .