"I want every sixpence. Man, do you think I'm going to nibble at my cake now it's been given me? Kallee's straight, I firmly believe. But what's his life worth?"
Captain Image shook his head. "Very heavy drinker even for a darky, and of course he hasn't a white man's advantages in knowing the use of drugs."
"Besides, there are the usual risks of kings and of Africa. He's put down the local anarchist. He cooked the only two who tried to assassinate him, and took a day about it over slow fire, and that discouraged the breed in Okky. But still there are risks. So that altogether he's not a good life, and if he was to go out, it's quite on the cards his heirs, successors, and assigns might not recognize my title."
"You're right, me-lad. What you've got to do is to rip the guts out of that mine at the biggest pace possible, and I'll bring in the M'poso round here to load every time I come along the Coast."
Carter nearly laughed. He knew the capacity of his mine—quarry, it was, rather—and the hold space of the little M'poso. Tin was wavering about just under £176 per ton just then; he had reckoned that he could produce for £10 a ton; and the more profit he could get, the more pleased he would be. But he was not afraid of bringing down the price; he had plenty of margin for a cut. His only fear was that the river road might be stopped before he had made his fortune. And he intended to empty the veins of Tin Hill at the highest speed that all the strained resources of Africa were capable of, and if necessary to keep three steamers the size of the little M'poso ferrying his riches across to the markets. But he did not let out any word of this to Image. If the locality and the enormous wealth of this mine were to leak out, nothing could prevent a rush. At the existing moment he was penniless, and in any great influx of capital and men must inevitably be swamped. Secrecy was essentially his game for the present.
So he accepted Captain Image's proposal in the spirit in which it was made, and then put forward feelers for a steam launch. Was there such a thing already on the Coast that one could pick up cheap just then?
Captain Image lit a thoughtful pipe. "I don't know of any little steamboat that you could buy just now out here, cheap or dear. There are one or two in Sarry Leone, certainly, but they are all either too big for your job or too tender to bring round the Coast."
"I'm a bit of mechanic, you know. I wouldn't mind nursing engines. My boy, White-Man's-Trouble, too, would make, according to his own account, a pretty decent second engineer."
"Oh, I know him. Used to be stand-by-at-crane boy on the Secondee, and stole everything that wasn't nailed down. But you'd never get one of those Sarry Leone wrecks round here without being drowned in the process. I tell you what, though. D'ye know anything about motor cars, me lad?"
"Why?" asked Carter, who had never handled one in his life.