Captain Image smacked his knee. "Daisy isn't the word for you, Miss," he affirmed, "and you can tell people I said so, if you like. A young lady that can pull the leg of these beastly foreigners in that way is worth going a long way to meet. You oughtn't to come out here to the Coast. You ought to stay at home, Miss Kate, and marry a Member of Parliament."
"Poof! I wouldn't for worlds. They're all too pompous and too dull. They only talk, and pose for the newspapers; they never really do anything constructive in the House. Now, I like to do things; and if ever I marry, it will be a man who can do things that I've tried at rather better than I can do them myself. But we're getting away from the factory at Mokki. Now, the German agent doesn't know it, and I didn't feel called upon to tell him, but it's quite possible to open up trade routes to that point that don't pass through the Okky country at all. So that upsets the old King's notion of stopping the roads at present, and in the future, when he gets tired of cutting off his nose to spite his face, and tries to set trade going again, he'll find the stuff is being carried round very comfortably outside his boundary, and that there is no more blackmail to collect. How does that strike you, Captain? Now, am I a crazy woman who is bound to bust up O'Neill and Craven's if I am left long enough to it?"
"I never said that," Captain Image protested violently, "and I'll wring that pious old Crewdson's neck next time I see him. That man can't carry corn. He evidently gets a heap too loose tongue if you offer him just a little civility."
"Well, I really am awfully glad you're going to be nice," said Miss O'Neill as she handed back her teacup with a sigh of relief, "and steam off up to the creeks to Mokki when you've finished working the cargo here."
Captain Image stood with the empty teacup in his hand, revolving in his mind many things, and some of his muttered comments were profane. He carried throughout all the seaboard of West Africa a reputation for a hard obstinacy of which in his way he was not a little proud, as men can be of assets whose value is more than doubtful; and he arrived at the idea that this pretty young woman in the crisp grass green muslin was twisting him round to carry out her own peculiar wishes with ridiculous ease. "It's enough to make any man swear," declared Captain Image, as a final summing up of his sentiments.
"I agree with you cordially," said Miss O'Neill, "and as I am sure that you must have done tremendous violence to your feelings in letting me have so much of my own way, I'll just let you swear as a reward."
"No, I'm damned if I do, Miss Kate," said Image politely. "I shouldn't dream of forgetting what is due to a lady. But don't you be too sure of having your whim gratified even now. I don't see any way of getting the M'poso to Mokki up those bits of creeks unless we put wheels under her and pull her there through the bush."
"Have you ever seen a steamer called the Frau Pobst?"
"I have. She's a funny old brig-rigged relic, with sawn-off smoke stacks and no boats."
"No boats?"