"Well, I didn't suppose it was a Chinaman's, you patent idiot. You fit for understand dem tune?"
"Savvy plenty. Dem tune say Okky-men fit for make custom."
"That means 'ceremony,' I suppose. Now, what sort of a ceremony will suit the occasion? Dirge of defeat by the ju-ju men, presumably, and then they'll crucify some wretched slave so that his spirit can go into the Beyond and arrange to have the luck changed. I wish Mr. Smith were here, or Slade. No, I'm hanged if I do, though. I've worked this thing off my own bat so far, and I'll see it onto the finish. Dem Okky-men make crucify palaver?" he asked, and translated the hard word by standing up himself spread-eagled against the factory wall.
White-Man's-Trouble nodded a dismal assent. "Then, by an' by they grow plenty-too-much more brave, an' they come back one-time an' fight some more."
"Then you bet your woolly whiskers it won't do for us to sit quietly taking the air here. Ju-ju's the correct card to play in this country anyway."
The Krooboy shivered. "Oh, Carter, I no fit for touch ju-ju."
"Well, I am. With thought and care, I believe I should develop into a very good ju-ju practitioner. Besides, the subject fascinates me. No white men seem to know anything very definite about it, above the fact that it is beyond their comprehension, and it would be rather fine, if the unlikely happened, and one chanced to survive, to be known as the one authority on West African magic."
"Oh, Carter, if you meddle with dem ju-ju palaver you lib for die plenty soon. If you walk in bush, tree fall on you; if you ride in canoe, arrow jump on you; if you chop,[*] dem chop he fill with powdered glass, and presently you lib for die of tear-tear-belly. Oh, Carter, you lib for Coast now one year; I lib for Coast all my life; I savvy plenty; you alle-same damfool."
[*] In West Coast English to chop is to take food. Chop is food.
"My dear Trouble, I've admitted already that I know meddling with ju-ju isn't altogether an insurance proposition. Much obliged to you for the fresh warning all the same. But I'm afraid your constitutional nervousness rather clouds that massive brain of yours at times, or you'd see that Smooth River factory and its three occupants are in the devil of a fix just now. You say the Okky-men when they've rubbed up their courage will presently return; and I don't dispute your reading of the omens. If they do come, we can't shoot them off, and that's a certain thing. As I'm sure Mr. Smith would say, it's a case of Aut ju-ju aut nullus, and to follow his rather objectionable knack of translating for a man who happened to have been at a different school to his own, that means we've either got to play the ju-ju card or be scuppered. White-Man's-Trouble, you are hereby made conjurer's confederate."