"Yessar."
"We fit for two cocktail."
"Savvy."
"You lib for my room, you fetch dem gin-bottle, an' give him to bar steward."
"Savvy."
"Well, what are you waiting for? Get along, you bush-man, one-time ... That's a poor boy I'm afraid you've got, Captain."
"Pipe-clays shoes very neatly," said Captain Image. "Oh, you've brought those papers for me to sign. Well, come into the chart-house, Purser, and we'll get them through. Hope that fool of a boy will bring the cocktails quick. These early morning chills are dangerous unless you take the proper preventives."
Meanwhile the brazen day had grown, and work proceeded at a forced speed both on the steamer and on the beach. Ashore, the lonely factory bustled with evil-scented negroes, who strained at huge white-ended palm oil puncheons. On the M'poso a crew of chattering Krooboys busied themselves aft, and presently under the guidance of a profane third mate a brace of surf-boats jerked down towards the water, the tackles squealing like a parcel of angry cats as they rendered through the blocks. The boats spurned away into the clear sea before the steamer's rusty iron side crashed down onto them: the Krooboys perched themselves ape-like on the gunwales, paddle in hand: and in the stern of each straddled a noisy headman, in billycock and trousers, straining and swaying at the steering oar.
The headman was in charge, and the well-spiced official English of ship-board ceased. The speech in the boats was one of the barbaric tongues of savage Africa. But the work they got through and the skill they showed exceeded by far that which could have been put forth by any crew of white men. Indeed, in his more pious moments, Captain Image, in common with other mariners of his kind, firmly believed that God had invented certain of the West African Coast tribes for the sole purpose of handling the boats of the Liverpool oil tanks on surf-smitten beaches.
Now, Captain Image was not in the least degree a snob, and he did not take even first-class passengers on their face value. As he would explain to intimates, he was not out on the Coast for his health; he very much wished to be able some day to retire on a competency, and grow cabbages outside of Cardiff; and so he dispensed his affability on a nicely regulated scale. If a man could influence cargo in the direction of the M'poso, Captain Image was ready at all times to extend to him the rough red hand of friendship, and to supply gin cocktails and German champagne till conversation flowed into the desired commercial channel. He called this casting bread upon the waters, and could always rely on getting the prime cost back in commission. But he was no man to waste either his good liquor or his pearls of speech on a mere fifty-pound-a-year clerk, with a red head, who would very possibly be dead before the M'poso's next call, and who certainly could influence no cargo for the next two years to come. So from the day they left Liverpool to the day when the steamer's forefoot scraped at her cable off Malla-Nulla beach, Captain Image had not condescended to offer that particular second-class passenger so much as a morning nod.