He had nearly walked in onto the top of a native village.
He had been going down-wind, or the smoke of their fires would have warned him earlier. As it was, the bark of a scavenger dog gave him the first hint of the village's nearness, or he would have descended onto its roofs. It lay beneath a small bluff, and its houses so assimilated with the rest of the forest that even close at hand it was hard to pick out the human dwellings.
It was the hour of heat, when only Englishmen and dogs (according to the old libel) are wont to be abroad, and the village slept. Even the dogs found the heat too great for wakefulness, so that only the Englishman carried an open eye. But the smell of the place advertised it as a village of fishers, and a closer scrutiny showed the harvest of the river, gutted, and strung up upon the stripped boughs of trees to dry in the outrageous sun-heat. There are always markets for these dried river fish throughout all West Africa.
Carter backed into thicker cover, and waited till the sun began once more to cast a shadow, and the village woke. First the dogs opened their eyes and began their endless scavengers' prowl. Then the children came out to play in the dust. Next the women roused to do the village work. And last of all, the men emerged from the clumps of bush, which one had to accept as huts, spear-armed all of them, and sat in the patches of purple shade, and oversaw all, to approve and direct.
"You lazy hounds," said the Englishman to himself, "I should like to set you to shoveling ore all day, and signing checks all night for your women's bonnet bills. But then," he reminded himself with a sigh, "there are some women these days who insist on working themselves, however hard you may press your services."
He reported his find to White-Man's-Trouble on his return to the old Portuguese house that evening, and that worthy was seized with his usual tremors. "O Carter," said he, "dem bushmen that live by fish-palaver fit for be worst kind of bushmen. They come here one day soon, an' they throw spear till we lib for die, an' they chop us afterwards. You savvy?" said the Krooboy, with a whimper and a shudder—"chop us after?"
"Don't try and work up my feelings over the post-mortem, because you can't do it. Once dead, what happens to my vile corpse doesn't interest me. But I don't intend to peg out yet, especially at the hands of a pack of ignorant cannibals like these. Observe, Trouble. You have seen me practise ju-ju already?"
"I fit."
"And you have been my assistant in the black art?"
The Krooboy shuddered, but he said sturdily enough, "I fit."