Coulson swore softly at the African night. The velvet darkness had fallen on them suddenly, and it was a case of tie-up or go on—Jim decided to go on.
They had struck a submerged log and ripped away the bottom of the tiny compartment that was magniloquently called "No. 1 hold"; the bulkhead of Nos. 1 and 2 was of the thinnest steel and was bulging perceptibly.
Coulson did not know this, but Jim did.
Now he turned the prow of the ancient steamer to the dark shore, and the revolving paddle-wheels made an expiring effort.
Somewhere on the river bank a voice called to them in the Akasava tongue; they saw the fires of the village, and black shadows passing before them; they heard women laughing.
Jim turned his head and gave an order to one of his naked crew, and the man leapt overboard with a thin rope hawser.
Then the ripped keel of the little boat took the sand and she grounded.
Jim lit his pipe from a lantern that hung in the deck cabin behind him, wiped his streaming forehead with the back of his hand, and spoke rapidly in the Akasava tongue to the little crowd who had gathered on the beach. He spoke mechanically, warning all and sundry for the safety of their immortal souls not to slip his hawser! warning them that if he lost so much as a deck rivet he would flay alive the thief, and ended by commending his admiring audience to M'shimba M'shamba, Bim-bi, O'kili, and such local devils as he could call to his tongue. "That's let me out," he said, and waded ashore through the shallow water as one too much overcome by the big tragedies of life to care very much one way or another whether he was wet or dry.
He strode up the shelving beach and was led by a straggling group of villagers to the headman's hut to make inquiries, and came back to the boat with unpleasant news.
Coulson had brought her nose to the sand, and by a brushwood fire that the men of the village had lit upon the beach, the damage was plainly to be seen.