“Do you mean to tell me that you have disabled my ship merely with the idea of helping the natives?”
“Yes, captain.”
“Then, sir, let me tell you that it is a damnably absurd action. My ship is helpless, and it is impossible to repair her without docking. What am I to do with my passengers?”
“Take them back to Boma,” Gaunt broke in drily.
The captain of the Leopoldville turned round quickly.
“I know you. You’re Gaunt,” he cried.
“You are right. Come below and I will give you a full explanation. You are an Englishman and we’ve no ill feeling against you personally. It is only right that you should know why we’ve taken such a liberty with your ship,” Gaunt said pleasantly.
Half an hour later the captain again appeared on deck, and his face bore a very perplexed look; but all his indignation had vanished.
“Well, I am damned,” he muttered to himself as he stepped into his gig. “But I’m not at all sure that I don’t wish that they come out of it all right. I never did like these Belgian Congo brutes.”
For the rest of the day the Esmeralda cruised about the entrance of the river but no other ship appeared until the following morning when a Woermann liner steamed from the north; she was treated in a similar way to the Leopoldville greatly to the indignation of her German captain, who came on board the cruiser and threatened them with the vengeance of the “mailed fist.”