CHAPTER VII
THE INVISIBLE FIRE
In the factories which dot the West African seaboard and rivers, death is such a constant visitor that much of his grimness had faded. At home, in England, or America, or Hamburg, we shiver with apprehension whenever our relative who is "out on the West Coast" comes up into the mind; but the relative himself takes his doses of fever when they fall due with a certain callous philosophy, and on his emergence shattered and shrunken from the attack, congratulates himself on not being a candidate for a gun-case and a top hat that time. Those who go up in the bush and are there engulfed, those who get drowned in the ever-grinding surf, those who go out by the thousand and one opportunities which the climate and the surroundings offer, slip off their human garb with an easy nonchalance; and those who are left pronounce some pithy epitaph over the deceased, and go on with their quicker interests.
With the native African, death is an event of even smaller moment still; and in the event of a quarrel, one competitor will often sit down, cuddle his knees, shut his eyes, and there and then deliberately suspend his vital processes, merely to cause temporary annoyance to his rival.
Now, the above paragraphs are somewhat of the nature of a footnote elevated to the text. But they are necessary at this point in these memoirs to explain the coolness with which Laura and Carter viewed the near prospect of extinction. Neither of them of course in the least wished to die, but it never occurred to them to face death with anything beyond the usual Coast philosophy.
"I shall stick Mr. K. for a rise in screw if we get through this," said Carter.
"If I hadn't made a promise," said the girl, "I could tell you something about your Mr. K. that would startle you."
"You're a tantalizing baggage, and I've a good mind to pick you up and shake it out of you. Gad! Here they come. Now, I'll shoot, and you get a box of matches and light those bombs for White-Man's-Trouble to throw."
"Bombs! Do you mean the cigarette-tins?"
"Yes. You'd a big brazing-lamp in the factory. Remember it? Well, you had. And that meant benzoline, I guessed. I found a drum full of it, anyway, and I've loaded up those tins with benzoline. It'll burn like winking in this sun, and the niggers'll never see the flame. Only thing to take care of, is not to set light to the factory. Now, do you understand?"