Swizzle-Stick Smith screwed his eyeglass into place and examined his assistant with thoughtful care. "Shouldn't dream of letting you go, my dear fellow. Always make a point of sticking by my officers. Just thought I'd let you know of the King's offer in case his Majesty refers to it to-morrow. There now, go to bed again, and don't dream the fighting's begun. You'll see plenty of service over this affair without dreaming over it on ahead."
When Carter set out for the West Coast of Africa from the Upper Wharfedale Vicarage, the one article in his kit which he thought suitable for the Coast was a small-bore nickel-plated revolver, which he had picked up second hand in Skipton for ten and six. It had been smuggled in without his mother's knowledge, as there was no reason to add to her already great anxiety. His father had provided half a sovereign towards the cost, had advised him not to use the wretched thing except in case of necessity, but if need arose, to take heed that he held it straight.
Of course on arrival he found, firstly, that the weapon was too small to be of effective use; secondly, that he could not hit a mark six feet square at more than a twelve-yard rise; and, thirdly, that revolvers are not really articles of fashionable wear for clerks in West Coast factories, whatever they may be in story-books. So the weapon lay in his mouldy portmanteau, and the moist Coast climate changed its nickel dress for a good coat of bright red rust.
But the morning after the King of Okky's arrival, while that bulky potentate was still asleep in the factory, Carter went in, cleaned the revolver as well as he could, and jammed cartridges into its reluctant chambers. He carried it pirate-fashion for the remainder of that day inside the band of his trousers, to his great personal discomfort, and to the vast enjoyment of Mr. Smith. However, the truculent Okky soldiers who had deliberately shaken weapons at him in the morning were reduced by the sight of it to a certain surly civility, and work in the feteesh went on without any open rupture.
Mr. Smith was distinctly irritable when dawn came in with the morning tea, but presently, when the swizzle-stick began its merry swishing in the cocktail pitcher, he thawed into a pleasing geniality, which, by frequent application of the same remedy, endured throughout the day. Laura Slade had returned in her hammock by the beach road in the cool of the preceding night, and Carter's thoughts followed her to Smooth River factory, to the detriment of his work down in the feteesh. He gave no mental attention whatever to the King of Okky who sat cross-legged in a long chair in the factory veranda above him, but that bulky potentate kept returning with a dogged persistency to the subject of George Carter.
"Oh, Smith," he kept on saying, "I savvy champagne palaver, n' I savvy cocktail palaver, n' I fit for chop when chop-time lib. But I ask you for tell me, one-time, if you fit for dash me dem Red-head that savvies machine-palaver. If you no fit, I stop dem road, an' no more trade lib for Malla-Nulla."
To which Mr. Smith, who knew his West Africa from a twenty-five years' study of its men and customs, would reply with an unruffled geniality that he was sure the King was far too good a heathen to try any such dirty game as putting ju-ju on the factory of an old friend. "You're pulling my leg, old Cockiwax," Mr. Smith would say. "I pray you cease, and you shall have the best cocktail this pagan Coast has seen or sniffed."
"Oh, Smith," the King would say, "I fit," and thereafter there would be truce till the houseboy brought the ingredients, and Mr. Smith with his far-famed skill compounded them, and the pink cocktails went their appointed journey to perform their accustomed work. After which the African would once more repeat his unwearied demand.
From the rising of the King from his mat, to the hour of the midday meal, this demand and reply went on, and Swizzle-Stick Smith parried it with unruffled serenity. But an open rupture very nearly came at the meal time. As a king, the visitor was invited to sit at meat with the white men in their mess-room. He said little during the meal, but he appraised Carter's head so persistently with his eyes that that irritated young man, with the pride of race bubbling within him, would have openly resented the performance if he had not given a promise to Mr. Smith on this very point only a short half-hour before.
Such a state of things could not last long without bringing about an open breach, and Swizzle-Stick Smith, with his vast experience, saw this earlier than anybody, and made his arrangements accordingly.