Swizzle-Stick Smith chuckled. "Well, I haven't been on this Coast for twenty-five years without knowing a thing or two. I told the King I was rather glad to hear him say that because it showed that a prophecy made a year ago was now going to be fulfilled. He asked what it was. I spouted to him
'Maecenas Atavis edite regibus
O et præsidium et dulce decus meum,
Sunt, quos curriculo pulverem Olympicum
Conlegisse juvat, ...
as the first thing that came into my head, and fine pompous lines they are, as you'd remember if you'd ever been to a public school, which you haven't."
"I've written out all Horace twenty times over in impositions and know the bulk by heart, but I can't say I ever got a taste for construing it."
"Well, we won't argue out the value of a classical education just now. Anyway the King of Okky was impressed. Of course he twigged the stuff was not English, or Okky, or Kroo, or Arabic, or any of the tongues hereabouts. He asked what it was. I said it was a priest's tongue. He asked what the words meant. I romanced then and told him they prophesied that the factory would be looted by a King who had made himself a King—the old scoundrel was born a slave, you'll remember, and made the throne vacant by killing his predecessor—and that two days afterwards a new and very curious sort of ju-ju would be put on that King, who would thereupon die a new and very painful sort of death."
"Ripping!" said Carter.
"The meeting broke up in confusion just about then, because his soldiers down below began to run amuck among our boys, and the King heard the row and went for me. However, I'd my big lead tobacco box handy, and I wiped him over the head with that, and as the boys below were frightened, and had got our surf boat ready for launching, I saw that they intended to quit, whatever I might say, and I didn't see the force of holding the fort here alone. So I went to sea with them, and spent the evening preaching them a long sermon on the vice of cowardice. I hadn't much faith that the King would be fool enough to swallow my prophecy, but as I say, you can never be sure which way the African brain will twist. And here you see's the factory untouched."
"When Mr. K. gets a report on this, sir, I fancy you'll have a letter you will like."
"Maybe. But I shan't wear myself out expecting it. Look here"—Mr. Smith produced a letter from the breast pocket of his stained pyjamas—"came in just after you'd left. Sent by canoe and special runner from our factory on the Monk River. Agent there says he wants to charge me seven pound ten for forwarding my mail. If that's K. O'Neill's idea of running a business economically, I wish he'd come out to the Coast here and find a way of making profits to correspond."
Carter had a shrewd suspicion that if Mr. K. had ordered an expenditure of seven pounds ten shilling sterling over the forwarding of a letter, it contained an idea which that very astute business man was sure would produce at least seventy pounds in the near future. But he did not irritate his superior by mentioning this aloud. Instead he asked, "Any instructions for me, sir?"