"For a which?"
The trader pointed with his pipe stem across the store to a wooden box full of flintlock trade guns. "That's a gun case. Man's usually too long to fit it comfortably, especially if he's as well-grown as you are. So we knock out one end, and nail on an old top-hat. Then you can plant him in style."
The patient's mouth twitched with the corner of a smile. "A most tidy custom," he said faintly. "But I say, could you do anything for my arm? Sorry to trouble you, but it's most abominably painful."
"Your arm's broken, worse luck. I'll set it for you when I've got off this cargo."
"I'd rather have a doctor. Will you send off to the M'poso for the doctor there, please?"
The old man laughed and polished his eyeglass on a sleeve of his pyjamas. "My lad, you don't understand. You've left the steamer now, and her doctor's not the kind of fool to risk his own bones trying to get here with the beach as bad as it is to-day. I don't suppose he mistakes you for a millionaire. You came out in the second class, I suppose?"
"Yes."
"Then there you are. His responsibility ended when you left the steamer, and ship's doctors don't come ashore on this Coast unless they're sure of touching a big fat fee. Now you must just lie quiet where you are, and bite on your teeth till I've some time for surgery. Trade comes first in West Africa."
With which naked truth, Swizzle-Stick Smith relit his pipe, and went out again into the brazen sunshine, and presently was hustling on the factory boys at their cargo work with his accustomed eloquence and dexterity.