The labor and the exposure very naturally brought its reward in a sharp dose of fever, but White-Man's-Trouble attended to that after the manner of the heathen, and he emerged from it little the worse, and bore with composure the derision of the other Europeans at the factory when they saw his whitened eyesockets.
The engines were not ornamental when he had finished with them, and they were cumbered with a hundred make-shifts; but when he gave the whole a final inspection, he told himself that no vital part had escaped a satisfactory repair. By a merciful chance there was tube ignition, and after a good deal of manipulation he got the burners to light. Then when the bunsens roared and the tubes glowed hot in their cage, he and the Krooboys ground at the starting handle and turned the engines till the sweat ran from them in rivulets. In England Carter had heard without understanding that internal combustion liked their "right mixture." He was thoroughly practised in finding the right mixture for that elderly oil engine before it coughed itself into any continuous activity.
The heavy oil for lubricating that had originally been sent out, Messrs. Dutton and Maidson's agent still had in stock because, as he explained, he had found no possible means of disposing of it, and the ordinary commercial square tins of paraffin were part of the wares they always held in quantity. So Carter was able to buy fuel, in all abundance, for his voyage. Food also he laid in, and a great roll of canvas, and then turned to his host to say good-bye.
"Wait a bit, man," said the agent, "and we'll build you a cabin out of that canvas that will keep at least the thick of the dew off you at nights. There are sockets along the gunwales for awning stanchions that will carry bamboo side-poles capitally, and we can lash duplicate roof-plates across and rig you a double-roofed tent in style."
"Very much obliged," said Carter, "but I won't wait for that now. I intend to do it as we go up river. You'll notice I have shipped a big bundle of bamboos for the woodwork. Good-bye."
"You seem in the devil of a hurry."
"I am. Good-bye. Now then, Trouble, shove over that reversing lever to make the boat go ahead. Confound you, that's astern, you bushman. There, that's better. Good-bye all."
"Good-bye, and good luck," said the agent, and he told his subordinates at supper that night that another good, keen man had gone off to disappear in Africa.
But Carter was developing into one of those tough, tactful fellows that people call lucky because they always seem to succeed in whatever they set a hand to. When the flood tide was under her, the launch coughed her way up the great beer-colored river at a rate that sometimes touched ten knots to the hour. She added her own scents of half-burned paraffin and scorched lubricating oil to the crushed-marigold odor of the water, and disgusted all the crocodiles who pushed up their ugly snouts to see what came between the wind and their nobility. On the ebb she still hauled up past the mangroves at a good steady two miles every hour.
The engine, with rational treatment, seemed a very decent sort of machine, though the feathering propeller, even till its final days, was always liable to moods of uncertainty, and after twenty-four hours of sending the launch ahead, would without any warning suddenly begin to pull her astern. Still these erratic moods always yielded to treatment, and, considering that she had been bought without a rag of reputation, Carter was always full of surprise at prolonged spells of good behavior.