Clay came to earth again. "Sorry, Skipper," he said, "but you set me off. 'Tisn't often I look across at either to-morrow or yesterday. As you say, it's a very dry shop this, and so the sooner we get what we want and quit, the sooner we shall hit on a good time again. And the sooner we clear out, too, the less chance we have of those beastly Belgians coming in here to meddle. You know we've had luck so far, and they haven't interfered with us. But we can't expect that for always. The Congo Free State's a trading corporation, with dividends to make for the firm of Leopold and Co., in Brussels, and they don't like trade rivals. What stealing can be done in the country, they prefer to do themselves."
"When the time comes," said the little sailor grimly, "we shall be ready for them, and if they interfere with me, I shall make the Congo Free State people sit up. But in the mean while they are not here, and I don't see that they need be expected. They can trace us up the Congo from Leopoldville, if you like, by the villages we stopped at--one, we'll say, every two hundred miles--but then we find this new river, and where are we? The river's not charted; it's not known to any of the Free State people, or I, being in their steamboat service, would have been told of it; and the entrance is so well masked at its Congo end by islands, that no one would guess it was there. The Congo's twenty miles wide where our river comes in, and very shallow, and the steamer-channel's right at the further bank. If they'd another Englishman in their service up here, I'd not say; but don't you tell me that the half-baked Dutchmen and Dagos who skipper their launches would risk hunting out a new channel, and blunder on it that way."
"No," said Clay, "I'm with you there. But word travels amongst the natives. You can't get over that."
"That's where the risk comes in. But I've done my best to make it travel slow. I've got hold of that beast of a witch-doctor, who deserves hanging anyway for all the poor wretches he's killed, and I've told him that as soon as word slips out downriver of our being here, he'll get shot, one-time. He's a man of influence, that witch-doctor, and I shouldn't wonder but what he makes the natives keep their heads shut for quite a long time."
"It may be professional prejudice, but I rather hope that local practitioner gets his gruel somehow before we clear out." Clay shivered. "He's a cruel devil. Remember the remains of those two poor sacrificed wretches we found when we got here?"
Kettle shrugged his shoulders. "I know. But what could one do? Niggers always are like that when they're left to play about alone--as these here have been, I suppose, since Creation Day. We couldn't pin the sacrifices on to the witch-doctor, or else, of course, we'd have strung him up. We could only just give him an order for these customs to stop one-time, and stand by to see it carried out. But we start the thing from now, on fresh, sensible lines. We're going to have no foolery about the nigger being as good as a white man. He isn't, and no man that ever saw him where he grows ever thought so."
"Speaking scientifically," said Clay, "it has always struck me that a nigger is an animal placed by the scheme of creation somewhere between a monkey and a white man. You might bracket him, say, with a Portugee."
"About that," said Kettle; "and if you treat him as more, you make him into a bad failure, whereas if he's left alone, he's a bit nasty and cruel. Now I think, Doc, there's a middle course, and that's what I'm going to try here whilst we're making our pile. We've grabbed four tidy villages already, and that makes a good beginning for this new republic; and when we've got things organized a bit more, and have a trifle of time, we can grab some others. And, by James! Doc, there's a name for you--the New Republic!"
"I seem to think it's been used in a book somewhere."
"The New Republic!" Kettle repeated relishingly. "It goes well. It's certain to have been used before, but it's good enough to be used again. Some day, perhaps, it'll have railways, and public-houses, and a postal service, and some day it may even issue stamps of its own."