CHAPTER II
"Rubber is Death"
"Whew! This is a warm country, Jack. There'll soon be nothing left of us."
"There's plenty at present, uncle," replied Jack Challoner with a smile. "Barney can spare less, after all."
"Sure an' that's the truth's truth, sorr. 'Twas the sorrow uv me mother's heart that I ran to length instid uv breadth. Whin I was a bhoy she had to buy breeches always a size too long for me, and me bones grew so fast they almost made holes in me skin—they did."
"Confound it, man, that's where you score. The mosquitoes leave you alone: can't find enough juice in you to make it worth their while to worry you. Whereas they suck at me till I'm all ulcers. Hi! Nando, when shall we get to this Banonga we've heard so much about?"
"Berrah soon, sah. Paddle small small, sah, den Banonga."
Mr. Martindale mopped his brow and drew his white umbrella closer down upon his head. He was lying under a grass shelter amidships a dug-out, with his nephew Jack at his side and his man Barney O'Dowd at his feet. The clumsy native craft rocked to and fro under the paddles of twelve stalwart Baenga, who stood, their bodies bent slightly forward, singing in time with their strokes. They were paddling against the current of a stream that forced its brown waters into one of the tributaries of the Congo. It was a broiling day. A rainstorm in the night had cleared the sky of the haze that commonly covered it, and the sun beat down out of a dome of fleckless blue, irradiating the crimsons and purples, the golds and whites, of the rich vegetation on the banks.
"I tell you, Jack," continued Mr. Martindale, "I shall grumble if this talk of Banonga turns out to be wind. I don't see what the Congo State has to gain by exterminating the natives; and we know what liars these blacks can be."