Kate Meredith, Financier

by Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

"Here you," said Carter to the big Okky-man, "you follow that Krooboy out of here. If I have to tell you a second time, there'll be trouble. Come, now, git."

Carter's command of the native might be faulty, but the grammar of his gestures was correct enough. What, go out of the feteesh before he chose? The Okky-man had no idea of doing such a thing. He lifted his walking spear threateningly, and snarled.

Simultaneously Carter put his right hand on the greasy counter and vaulted. He caught the upraised spear with his other hand before his feet had touched ground, and broke the blade close off by the socket; and a short instant later, when he had found a footing, he carried his weight forward in the same leap, and drove his right against the negro's left carotid, just beneath the ear. The man went down as if he had been pole-axed.

Carter went outside and beckoned to the Okky-man's carriers. "Here, you, come and carry your master outdoors"—the men hesitated—"or I'll start in to handle you next." They did as they were bidden. And thereupon Carter, with his blood now well warmed up, was left free to attend to another matter elsewhere.

A noise of voices in disagreement, and the intermittent sounds of scuffling had made themselves heard from the south side of the factory buildings, and now there were added to these a woman's voice calling in English for some one to help her, and then a sharp, shrill scream of unmistakable distress.

Now, Carter was no knight-errant. He had set up the unknown K. O'Neill as his model, and had told himself daily that he intended to meddle with nothing in West Africa, philanthropic or otherwise, which would not directly tend to the advancement of George Carter; but at the first moment when they were put to the test, all these academic resolutions broke to pieces. He picked up his feet and ran at speed through the sunshine, and as he went a mist seemed to rise up before his eyes which tinged everything red.

He felt somehow as he had never felt before; strangely exhilarated and strangely savage; and when he arrived on the scene of the disturbance, he was little inclined to weigh the consequences of interference. There was a woman, white-faced and terror-stricken—he could not for the life of him tell whether she was handsome or hideous. Negroes were handling her. On the ground lay a pole hammock, in which presumably she had arrived. In front of her was a fat negro, over whose head a slave held a gaudy gold and red umbrella, and grouped around this fat one were eight or ten negro soldiers, with swords slung over their shoulders, and long flintlock trade guns in their hands.

The whole scene was, as I say, dished up to Carter's eyes in a red mist, and this thinned and thickened spasmodically so that sometimes he could see clearly what he was doing, and at other times he acted like a man bewitched. But presently the red cleared away altogether, and he found himself clutching the fat negro by a twist of the shoulder cloth, and threatening to split his skull with a sword recently carried by one of the man's own escort. The girl sat limp and white on a green case before them, clearly on the edge of a faint, and round them all stood negro carriers and Haûsa soldiery, frozen to inaction by the fat man's danger.

All human noises had ceased. Only the hot insect hum and the cool diapason of the Atlantic surf droned through the silence. From the dull upraised sword blade outrageous sunrays winked and flickered.

Upon this impasse came Swizzle-Stick Smith from the bush side of the white factory buildings, polishing his eyeglass, and limping along at his usual pace, and no faster. He removed his pipe, and wagged it at them.