A moon had lit up in the sky above, and under it Cartels jaw looked of a sudden more square and grim than usual—at least the other thought so. His tone, too, changed from banter to something hard. "I decline to hear another word on the matter. We will confine our dealings with one another entirely to details of business, if you please, Cascaes, and leave matters of sentiment alone. Here is your gun. You say you are a gentleman, and I believe you. That means you won't shoot me from behind, or when I'm not armed equally with yourself. If the necessity arrives for a turn-up on level terms, I'm your man. Good-night."
And so for that night they parted, each very much misunderstanding the other. Once more the tired sentries yawned at their posts, and the Europeans of the factory retired to their beds, and the blacks to their sleeping mats; but sleep for the rest of that hot, damp night was broken, and no half-hour passed without a cry from some dreamer which woke restless echoes from his neighbors.
But with daylight the steady stream of merchandise, which the factory was beginning to attract, recommenced. The native traders of the hinterland had their hands full of the stock that had been pouring in upon them ever since the King of Okky had closed the roads to the old Coast factories with which they were accustomed to deal, and when the news spread, as it does spread in that mysterious West Africa, that the white woman of Mokki bought and sold in spite of the King's teeth, they were only too ready to back her with their custom. The merchants of that unknown back country are some of the keenest traders on earth.
Some came in single canoes through the gloom and odors of uncharted muddy creeks, trusting to secrecy for safe passage; others joined forces, and brought armed flotillas of great sixty-man-power dugouts down the main stream; others clubbed together into caravans, so strong and so well-defended that even Kallee's truculent raiders dared not cross the Okky marches to hold them up. So marvellously accurate were the rumors that had spread up country, that few of these keen merchants came into Mokki without a grass basket full of spoiled specimens of butterfly as a "dash" to propitiate the new trading power.
Every day the influx of merchants increased, till at last more came than the staff of the factory could deal with, and they camped outside the fort awaiting their turn to trade. Actually, a small native food market grew there to supply them. Kate had lowered the price the factory paid for every commodity, but still the bush merchants sold, and were only too glad of the chance. Times they felt were troublous; the shadow of the King of Okky hung over the steaming forests, and they wished to get what they could in European produce and be gone. At the Malla-Nulla, the Monk, or the Smooth River factories they would not have taken such prices; but the King of Okky had closed the roads to these, and for business purposes they were extinct. Nor would they have sold at such rates to the Germans when they held Mokki. Keen business man though he may be, the West African merchant is a creature of whim; the German he defines as a "bush-Englishman," which is a term of reproach; he distrusts both him and his goods; and he will not trade with a German factory on anything like the same terms he will accept from the Briton, even though the Briton sell him German-made goods.
"We are doing such a tremendous business," said Carter one day at the evening meal, "that presently we shall strangle ourselves. We have used up all our own trade stuff, and we have stripped the Smooth River factory and Malla-Nulla, and pretty well emptied Burgoyne at Monk River. I don't know how finances are?"
"Tight," said Kate.
"And yet we've got at the very least £8,500 in kernels, palm oil, and high-grade rubber lying idle here. Moreover, we've tapped an unexpected vein of ivory. I thought at first that it was some small king's state reserve, some hoard he'd got buried, under the bed of a stream perhaps, which he wanted to realize on, and which would soon come to an end. But it's not that, it's new stuff that's been hunted within the last three years, and it's been diverted, I really believe, from the Congo market. It's a splendid line for us, but it will pinch out very promptly if we once stop buying. I verily believe these natives can telegraph a piece of commercial news half-way across Africa in the inside of a week."
"We are doing splendid business.
"Of course, we've got the firm's Miss K. O'Neill here on the spot, and hence the prosperity; but I wish we'd got our Miss K. for just half a day at the Liverpool end to diagnose that we're starving for a steamer. The fact is, that greedy old scoundrel Cappie Image-me-lad looks upon Mokki as his special private preserve, and he doesn't intend to see any of the other skippers picking up his cargo commission if he can avoid it."