"Who goes with you?" asked Max.
"Crouch," said Harden; "Captain Crouch. The most remarkable man on the Coast. Nobody in England has ever heard of him; but on the West Coast, from Lagos to Loango, he is either hated like sin or worshipped like a heathen god. There's no man alive who understands natives as well as Crouch. He can get more work out of a pack of Kru-boys in a day than a shipping-agent or a trader can in a week."
"How do you account for it?" asked Max.
"Pluck," said Harden, "and perseverance. Also, from the day he was born, a special providence seems to have guarded him. For many years he was captain of a coasting-packet that worked from St. Louis to Spanish Guinea. He fell overboard once in the Bight of Biafra, and lost a foot."
"How did he do that?" asked Max, already vastly interested in the personality of Captain Crouch.
"Sharks," said Harden, as if it were an everyday occurrence. "They swim round Fernando Po like goldfish in a bowl. Would you believe it? Crouch knifed that fish in the water, though he'll wear a cork foot to his dying day. He was one of the first men to force his way up the Niger, and I happened to be at Old Calabar when he was brought in with a poisoned arrow-head in his eye. At that time the natives of the interior used to dip their weapons in snake's poison, and no one but Crouch could have lived. But he pulled through all right. He's one of those small, wiry men that can't be killed. He has got a case full of glass eyes now, of all the colours in the rainbow, and he plays Old Harry with the natives. If they don't do what he wants, I've seen him pull out a blue eye and put in a red one, which frightens the life out of them. Crouch isn't like any one else I've ever met. He has the most astonishing confidence in himself; he's practically fever-proof; he can talk about twenty West African dialects, and he's a better shot than I am. I believe the only person he cares for in the world is myself. I would never dream of undertaking this expedition without him."
"I suppose," said Max, a trifle nervously, "you wouldn't think of including a third member in your party?"
Edward Harden looked at his nephew sharply. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"I mean," said Max, "that I have undertaken to investigate certain tropical diseases, such as sleeping sickness and malarial typhoid, in the very districts to which you are going. I thought you might not object if I came with you. I didn't know I had Captain Crouch to deal with."
Edward Harden rose to his feet and knocked out his pipe in the grate.