Kate Meredith, Financier

by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

"They'll do it, too, confound them," Carter assured himself vexedly.

And so it came to pass, as he could not very well condemn the enterprising seven to death—for that is what leaving them amounted to—he was forced to take them with him, and very idle, inefficient boatmen they proved. They knew nothing of the river, once the two miles of their fishing had been passed; they had no idea of the obvious set of currents, no eyes for the plainest shoal. If they were left to themselves for a dozen minutes they would run the raft into the bush, and as likely as not get on board a cargo of red ants that seemed to have white-hot teeth when they started to bite. They gorged upon the scanty store of dried fish if they were not watched, and never caught more unless they were incessantly goaded. When the reeking yellow river was more than usually full of crocodiles they would dangle their legs over the side; and when the raft was drifting past a village which was most probably hostile, they would break into song. They always felt that the great white ju-ju man, under whose protection they had elected to place themselves, was competent to shelter them if he so desired. And if he willed otherwise, and they died, well, that did not greatly concern them. They were very exasperating animals, and Carter about three times a day much wished that the handling of them could be transferred to some of those kind-hearted people at home who always insist that the negro of the West Africa hinterland is a man and a brother.

They had a small dugout canoe in tow, and greatly they needed it. After twice running the big raft down streams that ended in impassable morass, and having tediously to tow and punt her back against the current, they always hereafter sent the lighter craft ahead on voyages of discovery. Or to be more accurate, Carter had to go in her with one of the fishers as assistant. The excellent White-Man's-Trouble had limits to his intelligence, and there was no driving into him that water which would carry a canoe that drew three inches of water was too shallow for a heavy raft that drew three feet.

The Winchester rifle and the remains of the Gladstone bag seemed the only two things that linked them now with civilization. They lived in the African manner upon African food; the intricate branching of the creeks was charted in matchet-scratches upon the smoothed surface of a log of wood; even English speech was discarded in favor of the native tongue.

Carter had shaved till the steamy atmosphere of the bush had turned his razors into mere sticks of rust; and with the growth of his red stubble of beard, all respect for his outward man had vanished. He caught sight of himself one evening in a pool of black water. "Well," he commented, "I always thought that Swizzle-Stick Smith was a filthy old ruffian, but at his worst he looks a prince to me now. That I suppose is where gray has the pull over ginger."

But it was the rescue of the King of Okky which really gave the turn to the whole of Carter's fortune. They had got the raft into a regular cul-de-sac of reeds and water-lilies, and she lay there stuck on a shoal in the face of a falling river. Creeks radiated all around them like the spokes of some gigantic wheel. The place was alive with crocodiles and flies. Not very far away an intertribal battle advertised itself by an ugly mutter of firing.

"An' chop no lib," said White-Man's-Trouble, by way of winding up the sum of their difficulties.

"Well, find some," Carter snapped. "Make spears, and stab the fish up out of the mud if you can't catch them with nets or hooks. Only see that there's a meal ready for me when I get back, or I'll lam into you with that chiquot you're so fond of using."

He went off then in the warped dugout, with the one-eared man as bow pole, laboriously hunting for a passage into some main stream. The river beneath them gave up fat bubbles of evil odors; the banks of slime on either side reeked under the sun blaze. A dozen times Carter thought he saw open water ahead, and pushed on, and a dozen times found himself embayed. And always he had to jot down compass notes with a nail on the well-scored gunwale of the canoe, so as to keep in touch with the raft, and be ready against that forthcoming time when he would have to pilot a steam launch up to Tin Hill. For though he barely expected to escape with life out of this horrible labyrinth of creeks and waterways, be it always understood he intended to return and demand from the country a fortune, if so be he ever got down again to the seaboard.

At last, however, he swung out into what was obviously a main channel, and was on the point of turning back to fetch the raft, when his eye was held by something that moved sluggishly in mid-stream.