"With your mug in the middle!"
Captain Kettle reddened. "I don't see why not," he said stiffly. "I started the show, and by James! whilst I'm running it, the New Republic's got to hum; and when I'm gone, I shall be remembered as some one out of the common. I'm a man, Doctor Clay, that's got a high sense of duty. I should think it wrong to stay here sweating ivory out of these people, if I didn't put something into them in return."
"Well, you do seem to have got a hold over them, and that's a fact, and I guess you will be able to make them--" he broke off, and burst into a cackle of laughter. "Oh, my Christian aunt, look there!"
A mob of natives were reverently approaching the hut, two of them carrying skinny chickens. The witch-doctor led the advance. Kettle guessed what was intended, and got up from his seat to interfere.
"Oh, look here, Skipper," Clay pleaded, "don't spoil the show. Let's do the traveller for once, and observe the 'interesting native customs.' You needn't be afraid; they're going to sacrifice the bigger hen to you, right enough."
Captain Kettle allowed himself to be persuaded, and sat back again. The mob of negroes came up to the doorway of the hut, and the witch-doctor, with many prostrations to the little sailor, made a long speech. Then the larger of the two fowls entered into the ceremony, and was slain with a sword, and the witch-doctor, squatting on the ground, read the omens.
Kettle accepted the homage with glum silence, evidently restraining himself, but when Clay's turn came, and the smaller and scraggier of the chickens yielded up life in his honor, he hitched up his feet, and squatted cross-legged on the chair, and held up his hand palm outward, after the manner of some grotesque Chinese idol. A sense of the absurd was one of the many things which had hampered this disreputable doctor all through his unlucky career.
The negroes, however, took it all in good part, and in time they departed, well satisfied. But Kettle wore a gloomy face.
"Funny, wasn't it?" said Clay.
"I call it beastly," Kettle snapped. "This sort of thing's got to stop. I'm not going to have my new Republic dirtied by shows like that."