They explained in bold, clear tones that they
were the chief ju-ju men of all Africa. [Page 224].
Kate Meredith
FINANCIER
By
C. J. CUTCLIFFE HYNE
Author of
"Captain Kettle, K.C.S.," "McTodd,"
"The Filibuster," "Adventures of Captain Kettle,"
"The Trials of Commander McTurk."
Illustrated in Water-Colors by FRANK PARKER
Copyright, 1906, by C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
A. HAMBURGER & SONS, INC.,
SPECIAL EDITION,
LOS ANGELES, CAL.
NEW YORK AND LONDON
THE AUTHORS AND NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION
1906
Copyright 1906 by C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
Entered at Stationers' Hall
All rights reserved
Composition and Electrotyping by
J. J. Little & Co.
Printed and bound by the
Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. [A West Coast Welcome]
II. [Introduces Miss Laura Slade]
III. [The King who Stopped the Roads]
IV. [The Beach by Moonlight]
V. [Events at Malla-Nulla]
VI. [The Coming of the Okky-Men]
VII. [The Invisible Fire]
VIII. [Presents the Head of the Firm]
IX. [Navigation of Dog's-Leg Creek]
X. [Envoys in Council]
XI. [Again Presents the Head of the Firm]
XII. [Exhibits Antiseptics]
XIII. [At the Liverpool End]
XIV. [Tin Hill: The Journey]
XV. [Tin Hill: The Mine]
XVI. [The King's Bounty]
XVII. [Kate Sends a Cablegram]
XVIII. [Carter Makes A Purchase]
XIX. [Senhor Cascaes]
XX. [Major Meredith]
XXI. [The Feeling on the Coast]
XXII. [A Fisherman and his Catch]
XXIII. [The Song of Speed]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
[These explained, in bold, clear tones that they were the chief ju-ju men of all Africa] . . . . . . Frontispiece
[She gazed her fill on this very crude presentment of George Carter]
(Facsimile Page of Manuscript from KATE MEREDITH FINANCIER)
KATE MEREDITH, FINANCIER
CHAPTER I
A WEST COAST WELCOME
"Mighty beach to-day!" grumbled Captain Image, and handed binoculars across to the purser.
Mr. Balgarnie tossed his cigarette over the lee rail and tucked a sheaf of papers into his mouth so as to have two spare hands. Day had ten minutes before glared up over an oily swell-writhing sea of bottle-green; dew lay in fat greasy gouts on the deck planks and the skylight frames, foretelling in clear prophecy another spell of scalding West African sunshine; and a mile out from the crashing, bellowing surf that smoked along the beach, the S.S. M'poso buttocked sullenly over the swells, with engines rung off, and sweating firemen on the top of the fiddley, slewing ventilators to catch a flavor of the breeze.
"They've seen us, sir, at the factory," said Mr. Balgarnie. "All the boys are out working cargo, and there's old Swizzle-Stick Smith sucking his eternal pipe and hustling them with a chiquot. I can catch the glint of his eyeglass. Wonder how long that man's been out on the Coast? Must be a matter of twenty years now by all accounts since he had his last run home. He's found the right kind of ju-ju to dodge fever-palaver, anyhow. They say he's a lazy old beach-comber as a general thing, but he's up bright and early this morning."
"Wouldn't you rouse out in a hurry if you only saw a Christian steamboat once in three months at the oftenest? I told the second mate to make fast the whistle string to the bridge rail when he judged he was five miles off the old sinner's beach, and I guess Swizzle-Stick Smith jumped slap through his mosquito bar at the first toot. See those pyjamas he's wearing? He bought them at the forecastle shop aboard here just six months ago."
"Blue, with a pink stripe, so they are. This is a rare good glass of yours, sir. Yes, I remember Chips telling me. Three pairs he got at nine bob a pair. Wouldn't pay a sixpence more. And tried to get a bottle of Eno thrown in as a make-weight. Phew! but this day's going to be a ringtailed scorcher. Look at the mist clearing away from those hills at the back already."
Captain Image stuffed a pipe and lit it. "It's a murdering bad beach to-day," he repeated. "Always is when there's a few tons of cargo waiting for me to get commission on."
The purser touched no cargo commission, and so had but small sympathy for cargo gathering. "I see old Swizzle-Stick's making his boys run down the oil casks into the surf. They'll never swim them through. Rather a pity, isn't it, sir, to stay on here and let them try? They're bound to get half of them stove at the very least."
"That's his palaver. I missed calling here last round. There was a swell like a cliff that day; but then there always is a bad beach along this run of the Coast; and so he should have double lot of cargo ready for me. There'll be oil and there'll be rubber, and I shouldn't wonder but what he's a few bags of kernels as well. I bet that factory on the beach there is just bulging with cargo. It ought to tally up to quite fifty tons, and I'm not going to have some other captain snapping up old Swizzle-Stick Smith's trade if I know it. Balgarnie, my lad, I'd the straight tip given me from O'Neill and Craven's in Liverpool when I was home. If we don't make it handy to call at their factories along this Coast, the Hamburg boats will. They've shipped a new director or something at O'Neill and Craven's—K. O'Neill he signs himself—and that man intends to make things hum."
"My Whiskers!" said the Purser. "I clean forgot. We've a new clerk for O'Neill and Craven's here at Malla-Nulla. It's that red-haired young chap, Carter, in the second class."
"Last three red-haired passengers I knew all pegged out within three months of being put ashore. Color of the hair seems to counteract the effects of drugs. Purser, I'll bet you just two cocktails Carter's planted before we're here again next trip."
"It's on," said Mr. Balgarnie, "and I shall remember it. The young chap's made me a picture frame for my room as good as you could buy in a shop, and he's built the Doc some barbed arrows just like those Kasai ones the old chief brought along from the Congo when he was on the Antwerp run. He's a handy young fellow."
"That doesn't get over the red hair, Purser. You'll lose that cocktail. Bet you another cocktail, if you like, he gets spilt in the surf getting ashore."
Mr. Balgarnie winked pleasantly. "Then we'll consider that last one lost already." He put his head inside the chart-house and called out the captain's Krooboy steward—"Brass-Pan?"
"Yessar."
"We fit for two cocktail."
"Savvy."
"You lib for my room, you fetch dem gin-bottle, an' give him to bar steward."
"Savvy."
"Well, what are you waiting for? Get along, you bush-man, one-time ... That's a poor boy I'm afraid you've got, Captain."
"Pipe-clays shoes very neatly," said Captain Image. "Oh, you've brought those papers for me to sign. Well, come into the chart-house, Purser, and we'll get them through. Hope that fool of a boy will bring the cocktails quick. These early morning chills are dangerous unless you take the proper preventives."
Meanwhile the brazen day had grown, and work proceeded at a forced speed both on the steamer and on the beach. Ashore, the lonely factory bustled with evil-scented negroes, who strained at huge white-ended palm oil puncheons. On the M'poso a crew of chattering Krooboys busied themselves aft, and presently under the guidance of a profane third mate a brace of surf-boats jerked down towards the water, the tackles squealing like a parcel of angry cats as they rendered through the blocks. The boats spurned away into the clear sea before the steamer's rusty iron side crashed down onto them: the Krooboys perched themselves ape-like on the gunwales, paddle in hand: and in the stern of each straddled a noisy headman, in billycock and trousers, straining and swaying at the steering oar.
The headman was in charge, and the well-spiced official English of ship-board ceased. The speech in the boats was one of the barbaric tongues of savage Africa. But the work they got through and the skill they showed exceeded by far that which could have been put forth by any crew of white men. Indeed, in his more pious moments, Captain Image, in common with other mariners of his kind, firmly believed that God had invented certain of the West African Coast tribes for the sole purpose of handling the boats of the Liverpool oil tanks on surf-smitten beaches.
Now, Captain Image was not in the least degree a snob, and he did not take even first-class passengers on their face value. As he would explain to intimates, he was not out on the Coast for his health; he very much wished to be able some day to retire on a competency, and grow cabbages outside of Cardiff; and so he dispensed his affability on a nicely regulated scale. If a man could influence cargo in the direction of the M'poso, Captain Image was ready at all times to extend to him the rough red hand of friendship, and to supply gin cocktails and German champagne till conversation flowed into the desired commercial channel. He called this casting bread upon the waters, and could always rely on getting the prime cost back in commission. But he was no man to waste either his good liquor or his pearls of speech on a mere fifty-pound-a-year clerk, with a red head, who would very possibly be dead before the M'poso's next call, and who certainly could influence no cargo for the next two years to come. So from the day they left Liverpool to the day when the steamer's forefoot scraped at her cable off Malla-Nulla beach, Captain Image had not condescended to offer that particular second-class passenger so much as a morning nod.
But Captain Image was kindly enough in the West African way, and when he had drunk his morning cocktail and gone through the Purser's papers, he came out of the chart-house again and produced from his pyjama pocket a half-filled box of pills.
"There, my lad," he said to Carter, as he made the presentation, "you take one of those according to the directions on the lid, when required, and you'll have your health kept in a repair that will surprise you. Now, mark me well; you'll be tempted with other brands of pills; old Swiz—I mean Mr. Smith, your boss, is a regular crank on drugs; but as sure as you tip other medicines down into your inside, my pills will get hindered at their proper work, and you'll be knocked over."
"Thanks," said Carter. "But I always understood——"
"I'm sure you did. Now there's one other thing I want to impress on you, my lad. Your duty is to get on, and the way to do that is to scratch up cargo and send it home by the M'poso. You see, my lad, I've got more influence with O'Neill and Craven than any other captain on the Coast (though you needn't go and stir up mischief by spreading that about), and if you keep yourself in my memory by the way Malla-Nulla ships cargo by me, I'll let them fully understand at the home office that services like yours want a big raise in salary. There, don't you bother to thank me, my lad, and just you stow that box of pills where they won't get lost if you're spilt going ashore through that surf. It's a mighty bad beach to-day."
"Ah, morning, Carter," said Mr. Balgarnie as he bustled up. "Got all your things up on deck? It's no concern of mine, of course, but if there are any little odds and ends you want, such as socks, or Florida water, or a mosquito bar, I believe Chips and the bos'n keep a sort of surreptitious shop somewhere in the forecastle where you could fill up your stores."
"Much obliged," said the passenger, "but I think I've got all I want, or rather all I can afford."
"Remembered to bring donkey-clippers for hair-cutting? No? Well, just as you please. What I really wished to mention to you was this: when your pay comes in, you'll naturally want little comforts sent out from home, and you won't care to worry any of your friends to get them for you. Now don't you have any qualms about making use of me. Just say what you want, and I'll get it and bring it out." Mr. Balgarnie winked most pleasantly. "I'm purser here, of course, and have to back up the Company's charges, but I can always make the rates reasonable to oblige a friend. There, good-by, old fellow. The boat's ready to take you off."
A surf boat swung dizzily up and down at the guess-warp alongside and the two yellow gladstone bags on its floor seemed ludicrously out of place beside the savage paddlers. Carter was conscious that his heart worked up to an unpleasant activity; but he carried a serene face, dropped to his knees in the gangway, and began with unaccustomed feet to clamber down the Jacob's ladder. He noted without disturbance that he was daubing coal dust and orange-colored palm oil onto his hands and white drill clothes in the process; but he had a mind now which entirely disregarded the trivial; all his interest was fixed upon the boat.
"Don't jump too soon."
"Take care you don't drop that new pith hat."
"Mind, don't let the boat come up and squash you."
"Don't flurry the man so. Put your feet in your pocket if you see a shark."
A stream of advice, much of it satirical, pelted him from above. Looking over his shoulder, he saw beneath him the leaping boat and a ring of negro grins. It was these last that stiffened him into action. The surf-boat swooped up sideways, and when it seemed to him that she had reached the zenith of her leap, he let go the Jacob's ladder and sprang for her.
It is a matter of nice judgment, this determination of the psychological moment for a jump; and the amateur has it not. As a consequence Carter's foot slid on the wet gunwale; he buttocked painfully onto a thwart; and was saved from spinning overboard by rough and ready black fingers. The new pith helmet received its first crack, the white drill clothes were further soiled, and he was left to gather himself out of the slop of water on the bottom of the boat as best he pleased. Already the Krooboy crew were perched ape-like on the gunwales, and stabbing strenuously at the water with trident-headed paddles. The headman straddled in the stern with the muscles standing out in him like nuts, as he sculled with the steering oar.
It had all passed so quickly that the steamer had only accomplished one-half of a roll. The white faces that he had seen last beside him were now small and far away at the top of an enormously high iron wall, and to their shouts of farewell and fluttering of handkerchiefs he could not bring himself to return more than a curt hand-wave. It seemed to him that he was cut off entirely from white men and white man's territory, and was launched beyond release into West Africa with all its smells and accoutrements.
He settled himself in the mid thwart of the surf-boat with the water on the floor flowing merrily in and out of his pipe-clayed shoes. Whatever a white man may feel, he always assumes coolness and indifference before the black, and Carter picked up the instinct of his race.
His progress shoreward had two distinct phases. At one time he and the boat lay in a watery ravine with high sides towering above him, and no view save of sleek bottle-green water and cobalt sky overhead. The next moment he was expressed upwards on to an eminence and there before him lay landscape and seascape of most pleasant qualities. At these last moments of exaltation, he saw a glaring beach set along the sea's edge, carrying white factory buildings, and backed in by an orderly wall of green.
He saw also palm-oil puncheons being brought off, and an interest in the work bit him immediately. Here was the commodity which (bar death) would for years to come be his chiefest intimate. Between eclipses of the rollers, he watched every stage of the work—the great white-ended barrels rolled down the glaring beach, naked savages swimming them through the surf with unimaginable skill, a green painted surf-boat at anchor outside the breakers making them fast to a buoyed hawser. He saw another hawser-load being heaved out to the steamer's winch, with the great casks popping about like a string of gigantic cherries. Already on the M'poso he had seen other puncheons howked on board by a steam-crane which was driven by a one-eared Krooboy.
He had grasped this much of his new trade when sight seemed to grow misty to him, and his body was chilled with an unpleasant perspiration. It is one thing to take one's regular meals on a fine-sized steamboat, whatever weather may befall; it is quite another to do one's voyaging in a leaping, lancing, dancing, wallowing surf-boat. Few men take their first surf-boat ride over a bad roll without being violently seasick, and Carter was no exception to the normal law.
In a hazy sort of way he noted that the paddlers had stopped their song and their monotonous effort, and he was seized with a tremendous desire to hurry them forward and get himself and his gladstone bags planted on the stable beach. Ahead of them were roaring, spouting breakers, which it seemed impossible for any boat to live through; but waiting outside their fringe was even more intolerable.
"Oh, get on! For Heaven's sake, get on!" he wanted to shout, but almost to his astonishment pride of race kept him grimly silent. He had never felt before the whole debt that is owing to a white skin.
The headman in the stern-sheets sculled now and again with his oar to keep the boat head on to the roll, and between whiles chattered nervously. The Krooboy paddlers on the gunwales rested on their paddles and scratched themselves. Roller after roller went by, flinging the boat up towards heaven, sucking her back again to the sea grass below, with a rocking motion that was horrible beyond belief. Carter felt the color ebb from his cheeks; he wondered with a grisly humor if his head was paling also.
But at last the headman delivered himself of a shriek, and a galvanic activity seized the paddlers. They stabbed the water with their trident-shaped blades, and stabbed and stabbed again. The surf-boat was poised on the crest of a great mound of water, and they were straining every sinew to keep her there. But the water motion travelled more swiftly than the clumsy boat. She slid down the slope, still paddling frantically, and the following wave lifted her rudely by the tail. She reared dizzily almost to the vertical, the headman at the apex of the whole structure keeping his perch with an ape's dexterity.
She just missed being upset that time, and part of the water which she had shipped was flung over the gunwales as she righted. But she floated there half swamped: labor with what frenzy they choose, the iron-muscled Krooboys could not keep her under command; and the next roller sent the whole company of them flying.
There is one piece of advice constantly dinned into a white man's ear on the West Coast. "If in a surf-boat you see the boat boys jump overboard, jump yourself also if you do not wish to have the boat on top of you." Profoundly sound advice it is. But it has the disadvantage of presupposing capability for obedience, and if (as frequently happens) the passenger is dizzy and weak from sudden seasickness, then the leap may be neither prompt nor well-aimed.
As to where Carter's fault occurred, I have no certain information. The headman shrieked an order in his own barbarous tongue; the boat boys took to water on either side like so many black frogs; the boat spilt, flinging far two yellow gladstone bags and one limp passenger in soiled white ducks; and, look how one would into that boiling hell of broken water, no red head appeared.
On the glaring beach Swizzle-Stick Smith broke off from his overseeing for a moment, and limped down into the smoke of the surf. He had a chiquot in his hand, which is a whip made of the most stinging part of the hippopotamus, and with it he slashed venomously at every black form that scrambled out of the brine.
He screamed at them in their own tongue. "Get back, you black swine! Get back, and fetch out my clerk. If you drown my clerk, I will drown you, too. My last clerk died a year ago, and they have got me no other out here since. I won't lose this one. Back, you bushmen!"
The chiquot had many terrors to the Krooboys, the water few. It was as much out of forgetfulness as anything else that they had not brought their passenger to shore with them. Besides, how were they to know that he could not swim as well as themselves (that is, about as well as a seal can swim)? But they were not above striking a bargain for their services. A black head, served upon a white pother of creamy surf, gave tongue.
"Oh, Smith. You give cash, suppose we fit for catch 'im?"
"You lib for beach with my clerk, and I dash you one whole box of gin. Hurry up now, you thieves, or a shark will chop him, or else he'll drown."
Heads disappeared, and many pairs of black heels kicked upwards. The old man hitched together his shabby pyjamas, and stared industriously at the broken water through his eyeglass. "It's all very well for this K. O'Neill to send out letters that the firm is going to double its business," he grumbled, "but if they don't send me men that can get ashore in one piece, how this factory at Malla-Nulla is going to buck up, I can't see. By Jove, they've got him, the beggars. Red-headed chap, too. Well, I might have saved that dash, I'm thinking. Men with red heads never seem to stand the climate here for long. It will be a nuisance if the beggar pegs out within the month, after I've spent a case of gin on him."
It was a very limp and bedraggled Carter that was brought ashore presently by the Krooboys. He was held up by the heels, more Africano, to let the Atlantic drain from his inside back into its proper place, but he did not show any sign of consciousness till he had been lifted up and carried to the shelter of the retail store.
Swizzle-Stick Smith limped beside him, puffing at his briar. "Beggar's got an arm broken," he commented. "Just my luck. And K. O'Neill will expect the work to be done just the same. Oh"—he said when the dripping Krooboys had put down his guest on the counter—"so you've concluded to come to your senses again?"
Carter shuddered and slowly opened his eyes. A brown cockroach, horrible with dust, dropped from the rafter above onto his face.
"I'm afraid you've had rather a rough bout of it, landing, my lad. It's a very bad beach to-day. There, don't move. You're all right. You'll feel a bit queer yet."
"The boat upset——"
"It did, most thoroughly. But you're now at Malla-Nulla factory in West Africa, and I bid you welcome. I'm Mr. Smith, your commanding officer. You'd like to lie still for a bit, perhaps?"
"Yes."
"Well, buck up, and you'll soon be all right. You needn't fancy you'll be a candidate for a top-hat and a gun-case yet."
"For a which?"
The trader pointed with his pipe stem across the store to a wooden box full of flintlock trade guns. "That's a gun case. Man's usually too long to fit it comfortably, especially if he's as well-grown as you are. So we knock out one end, and nail on an old top-hat. Then you can plant him in style."
The patient's mouth twitched with the corner of a smile. "A most tidy custom," he said faintly. "But I say, could you do anything for my arm? Sorry to trouble you, but it's most abominably painful."
"Your arm's broken, worse luck. I'll set it for you when I've got off this cargo."
"I'd rather have a doctor. Will you send off to the M'poso for the doctor there, please?"
The old man laughed and polished his eyeglass on a sleeve of his pyjamas. "My lad, you don't understand. You've left the steamer now, and her doctor's not the kind of fool to risk his own bones trying to get here with the beach as bad as it is to-day. I don't suppose he mistakes you for a millionaire. You came out in the second class, I suppose?"
"Yes."
"Then there you are. His responsibility ended when you left the steamer, and ship's doctors don't come ashore on this Coast unless they're sure of touching a big fat fee. Now you must just lie quiet where you are, and bite on your teeth till I've some time for surgery. Trade comes first in West Africa."
With which naked truth, Swizzle-Stick Smith relit his pipe, and went out again into the brazen sunshine, and presently was hustling on the factory boys at their cargo work with his accustomed eloquence and dexterity.
CHAPTER II
INTRODUCES MISS LAURA SLADE
If a white man in a West African factory volunteers details of his previous history, all hearers are quite at liberty to believe or disbelieve, as suits their whim; but if, on the other hand, no word about previous record is offered, Coast etiquette strictly rules that none shall be asked for.
George Carter found even upon the surface of his superior officer at Malla-Nulla factory much that was mysterious. There were moments when Mr. Smith exhibited an unmistakable gentility; but these were rare; and they usually occurred when the pair of them lunched en tête-à-tête at 11 o'clock, and Smith had worked off his morning qualm, and had not commenced his afternoon refreshment. With a larger audience he was one part cynic and six parts ruffian; he was admitted to be the most skilful compounder of cocktails on all that section of the West African seaboard; and he sampled his own brews in such quantities, and with such impunity, as gave the lie to all text-books on topical medicine.
His head was bald, and the gray hair on his face and above his ears was either as short as clippers could make it, or else bristled with a two weeks' growth. Day and night he wore more or less shrunken pyjamas, from the neck buttonhole of which a single eyeglass dangled at the end of a piece of new black silk ribbon. Carter guessed his age as somewhere between fifty and fifty-five, and wondered why on earth Messrs. O'Neill and Craven kept such a disreputable old person as the head of what might have been a very prosperous factory.
Indeed, theories on this very point were already lodged in the older man's brain. "It's this new partner, K. O'Neill, that I don't like the sound of," he explained to Carter one day. "By the way, who is he?"
"Don't know. As I told you I was staying with my father at the vicarage, and I was engaged by wire the day before the M'poso sailed, and only caught her by the skin of my teeth. There was nobody there to see me off, and on the boat all they could tell me was that 'K.' came into the business when the late head died."
"Old Godfrey, that was"—Swizzle-Stick Smith sighed—"poor old Godfrey O'Neill! He was one of the best fellows going in the old days, not a bit like the usual cut of palm-oil ruffian as we used to call the traders then. And, my God! to think of my coming down to the grade of one of them myself."
Again the subject cropped up when one of their rare mails came in. "Here's expense!" grumbled Swizzle-Stick Smith. "Letters landed at our Monk River factory, and sent on to Mulla-Nulla by special runner. K. O'Neill's orders, the Monk River agent says. In the old days you could always bet on the beach being too bad for the steamer to call twice out of three times, and you weren't pestered with a mail more than once in six months. That's mainly why I've stuck by O'Neill and Craven all these years. Now this new man wants our output of kernels to be doubled by this time next year, and hopes I'll take steps to work up the rubber connection. If I can't see my way to do all this, will I kindly give my reasons in writing, and if necessary forward same by runner to a steamer's calling point, so that reply may be in Liverpool within six weeks at latest. What do you think of that?"
"Oh, I should say it was reasonable enough from the Liverpool point of view."
"Bah! There's not much of the Coast about you." He tore the letters into shreds, and folded these carefully into pipe-lights. "Dear old Godfrey trusted me up to the hilt, and this new fellow's got to learn to do the same, or I shall resign my commission. If he understood anything about running the office, he might know I should do all the work that was good for me."
"I'm sure you do," said Carter civilly. "I'm afraid I'm the slacker. You let me have such an easy time of it whilst my arm was getting well, that I've slid off into lazy ways. I must buck up, and if you'll load the work onto me, Mr. Smith, you'll find I can do a lot more."
Swizzle-Stick Smith dried the perspiration from his eye socket, fixed his glass into a firmer hold, and stared. "Well," he said at last, "you are a d—d fool." And there the talk ended.
It was that same day that Carter had his first introduction to Royalty. He was in the retail store—"feteesh," they call it on the Coast—weighing out baskets of palm kernels, measuring calabashes of orange-colored palm oil, judging as best he could the amount of adulterants the simple negro had added to increase the bulk, and apportioning the value in cotton cloth, powder, flintlock guns at twelve and six-pence apiece, and green cubical boxes of Holland gin. Trade proceeded slowly. The interior of the feteesh was a stew of heat and odors, and the white man's elaborate calculations were none of the most glib. To knock some idea of the fairness of these into the black man's skull was a work that required not only eloquence, but also athletic power. The simple savage who did only one day's shopping per annum was willing always to let the delights of it linger out as long as possible, and all the white man's hustling could not drive the business along at more than a snail's pace.
By Coast custom, work for Europeans starts in those cool hours that know the daybreak, and switches off between eleven and twelve for breakfast; and thereafter siesta is the rule till the sun once more begins to throw a shadow. But on this particular day, when Swizzle-Stick Smith had knocked out his pipe and turned in under his mosquito bar, Carter sluiced a parrafin-can full of water over his red head by way of a final refreshment, and went down once more from the living rooms of the factory to the heat and the odors of the feteesh below.
The sweating customers saw him come and roused up out of the purple shadows, and presently the game of haggle was once more in full swing.
Carter had a natural gift for tongues, and was picking up the difficult Coast languages to the best of his ability, but his vocabulary was of necessity small, and a Krooboy stood by to translate intricate passages into idiom more likely to penetrate the harder skulls. The Krooboy wore trousers and singlet in token of his advanced civilization, and bore with pride the name of White-Man's-Trouble.
There was a glut of customers that baking afternoon. High-scented trade stuffs poured into the factory in pleasing abundance, and bundles of European produce were balanced upon woolly craniums for transportation through bush paths to that wild unknown Africa beyond the hinterland. The new law of K. O'Neill allowed no lingering in the feteesh. Once a customer had been delivered of his goods, and had accepted payment, White-Man's-Trouble decanted him into the scalding sunshine outside, and bade him hasten upon his ways. K. O'Neill had stated very plainly, in a typewritten letter, that the leakage by theft was unpleasing to the directorate in Liverpool, and must be stopped. K. O'Neill understood that the thefts took place after a customer had spent all his cash on legitimate purchase, as then all his savage intelligence was turned to pilfering. Carter, as the man on the spot, recognized the truth of all this, and carried out the instructions to the foot of the letter.
Mr. Smith warned him he would have trouble over it. "Ever since the first factory came down to blight this Coast," Smith explained, "the boys have been allowed to hang around the feteesh and steal what wasn't nailed down. They look upon it in the light of a legitimate discount, and it's grown up into a custom. Now in West Africa you may burn a forest, or blot out a nation, or start a new volcano, and nobody will say very much to you, but if you interfere with a recognized custom, you come in contact with the biggest kind of trouble."
"Still," Carter pointed out, "these orders are definite."
"And you are the kind of fool that goes on the principle of 'obeying orders if you break owners.' Well, go ahead and carry out instructions. I won't interfere with you. I'd rather like to see this cocksure K. O'Neill get a smack in the eye to cure his meddling. And for yourself, keep your weather eye lifting, or some indignant nigger will ram a foot of iron into you. It's the Okky-men I'd take especial care of if I were you. They've got their tails up a good deal more than's healthy just now. I'm told, too, that their head witch doctor wants his war drum redecorated." Mr. Smith grinned—"I don't want to be personal, of course."
"Oh, don't mind me. So far I rather fail to understand what I've got to do with the Okky City war drum."
"You see you carry round with you something that would make the very best kind of heap-too-good ju-ju."
"Still I don't understand."
Swizzle-Stick Smith got up and stretched, and limped across to the door. "It's that red head of yours, my lad," he said over his shoulder as he went out. "Every witch doctor in West Africa that sees it will just itch to have it amongst his ornaments. I'd dye it sky-blue if I were you, just for safety sake."
This of course might be Mr. Smith's delicate irony, or again it might be literally true. Carter had already been long enough in West Africa to know that very unusual and unpleasant things can happen there; but that made no change in his determination. K. O'Neill was perfectly right about the matter; this pilfering ought to be stopped; and he felt convinced that White-Man's-Trouble would help to see that justice was done. That particular Krooboy was thievish himself, certainly, but he had a short way with any fellow African who dared to be light-fingered.
So during all that hot morning, and all that sweltering afternoon, merchant after merchant was shown out into the sunshine, and those who chattered and would not go willingly were assisted by the strong right arm of White-Man's-Trouble.
Just upon the time when siestas generally ended, that is, about four o'clock, there came a burly Okky trader who swaggered up to the factory with five carriers in his train laden down with bags of rubber.
Carter examined the evil smelling stuff, and cut open two or three of the larger round lumps. The gentle savage had put in quite thirty per cent. of sticks, and sand, and alien gum by way of makeweight, and was as petulant as a child at having this simple fraud discovered. He still further disliked the price that was offered; and when it came to making his purchases, and he found that the particular spot-white-on-blue cotton cloth on which he had built up his fancy was out of stock, the remaining rags of his temper were frayed completely. For an unbroken ten minutes he cursed Carter, and Malla-Nulla factory, and an unknown Manchester skipper in fluent Okky, here and there embroidered with a few words of that slave-trader's Arabic, which is specially designed as a comfort for the impatient, and when he had accepted a roll of blue cloth spotted in another pattern, and was invited to leave the feteesh, he held himself to be one of the worst used Africans on the Dark Continent.
Carter, who was tired and hot, signed to his henchman. "Here, fire that ruffian out," he said.
But White-Man's-Trouble affected to hear a summons from outside. "Dat you, Smith? Yessar, I come one-time," said he, and bolted out through the doorway.
"Here you," said Carter to the big Okky-man, "you follow that Krooboy out of here. If I have to tell you a second time, there'll be trouble. Come, now, git."
Carter's command of the native might be faulty, but the grammar of his gestures was correct enough. What, go out of the feteesh before he chose? The Okky-man had no idea of doing such a thing. He lifted his walking spear threateningly, and snarled.
Simultaneously Carter put his right hand on the greasy counter and vaulted. He caught the upraised spear with his other hand before his feet had touched ground, and broke the blade close off by the socket; and a short instant later, when he had found a footing, he carried his weight forward in the same leap, and drove his right against the negro's left carotid, just beneath the ear. The man went down as if he had been pole-axed.
Carter went outside and beckoned to the Okky-man's carriers. "Here, you, come and carry your master outdoors"—the men hesitated—"or I'll start in to handle you next." They did as they were bidden. And thereupon Carter, with his blood now well warmed up, was left free to attend to another matter elsewhere.
A noise of voices in disagreement, and the intermittent sounds of scuffling had made themselves heard from the south side of the factory buildings, and now there were added to these a woman's voice calling in English for some one to help her, and then a sharp, shrill scream of unmistakable distress.
Now, Carter was no knight-errant. He had set up the unknown K. O'Neill as his model, and had told himself daily that he intended to meddle with nothing in West Africa, philanthropic or otherwise, which would not directly tend to the advancement of George Carter; but at the first moment when they were put to the test, all these academic resolutions broke to pieces. He picked up his feet and ran at speed through the sunshine, and as he went a mist seemed to rise up before his eyes which tinged everything red.
He felt somehow as he had never felt before; strangely exhilarated and strangely savage; and when he arrived on the scene of the disturbance, he was little inclined to weigh the consequences of interference. There was a woman, white-faced and terror-stricken—he could not for the life of him tell whether she was handsome or hideous. Negroes were handling her. On the ground lay a pole hammock, in which presumably she had arrived. In front of her was a fat negro, over whose head a slave held a gaudy gold and red umbrella, and grouped around this fat one were eight or ten negro soldiers, with swords slung over their shoulders, and long flintlock trade guns in their hands.
The whole scene was, as I say, dished up to Carter's eyes in a red mist, and this thinned and thickened spasmodically so that sometimes he could see clearly what he was doing, and at other times he acted like a man bewitched. But presently the red cleared away altogether, and he found himself clutching the fat negro by a twist of the shoulder cloth, and threatening to split his skull with a sword recently carried by one of the man's own escort. The girl sat limp and white on a green case before them, clearly on the edge of a faint, and round them all stood negro carriers and Haûsa soldiery, frozen to inaction by the fat man's danger.
All human noises had ceased. Only the hot insect hum and the cool diapason of the Atlantic surf droned through the silence. From the dull upraised sword blade outrageous sunrays winked and flickered.
Upon this impasse came Swizzle-Stick Smith from the bush side of the white factory buildings, polishing his eyeglass, and limping along at his usual pace, and no faster. He removed his pipe, and wagged it at them.
"Upon my soul a most interesting picture! Just like a kid's fairy tale book. Gallant young knight rescuing distressed damosel from the clutches of wicked ogre, who incidentally happens to be the King of Okky as anyone but a born fool could have guessed from his state umbrella, and one of the firm's best customers. Kindly observe that I'm the good fairy who always comes in on the last page to put things safe. Carter, I prithee sheath thy virgin sword, and then for God's sake run away and drown yourself."
He had reached the group by this time, and took up in his own the damp black hand of offended majesty, and shook it heartily. He broke out in a stream of fluent Okky, and gradually the potentate's wrath melted. The King still gesticulated violently, and apparently demanded Carter's red head upon a charger as a prelude to truce, but Swizzle-Stick Smith was an old Coaster and knew his man.
"Champagne," Mr. Smith kept on suggesting, "bubbly champagne with plenty of Angostura bitters in it to make it bite. I call attention to your Majesty's historic thirst. Come up into the factory, old Tintacks, and we'll break up a case in honor of the day."
Finally the King, who being a West African king was necessarily a shrewd man, decided that though vengeance would keep till another day, Mr. Smith's champagne might not; and he let himself be led back to the factory, and up the stair. He graciously accepted the most solid-looking of the long chairs in the veranda, sat in it carefully, kicked off his slippers, and tucked his feet beneath him. He waved away Mr. Smith's further speech. "Oh, Smith," he said, "I fit for champagne-palaver, one-time," and loosened the tuck of his ample waist-cloth to give space for the expected cargo. "No damn use more talk-palaver now."
Outside in the sunlight the Haûsa soldiers had taken the cue from their master, and dissolved away unobtrusively; the carriers were dismissed to the Krooboys' quarters under the charge of White-Man's-Trouble, who, now that the disturbance was over, bustled up with many protestations of sorrow for his unavoidable absence, and Carter was left for further attendance on his distressed damsel.
For the first time he found himself able to regard her critically; and he was somehow rather disturbed to find before him a girl who was undeniably beautiful. When he had rushed blindly in to the rescue, he had taken it for granted that the person he saw so vaguely through that red mist was an English or an American missionary woman in distress, and (to himself) excused his mad lust for battle by picturing himself as the champion of the Christian martyr beset by pagans.
The white missionary women of that strip of the Coast occasionally quartered themselves at Malla-Nulla factory on their journeyings, in spite of the very niggardly civility of Mr. Smith, and Carter had been much impressed in the way beneficent Nature had safeguarded them by homely features and unattractive mien from attack by the other sex. He could have taken off his hat to one of these, and said:
"Most happy to have been of service to you, madam. Won't you come into the factory and have a cup of tea?"
But this slim beauty in the frilled white muslins sent speech further and further away from him the more that he looked at her. For the first time since landing in Africa six months before he was ashamed of mildew-stained pyjamas for afternoon wear, and disgusted with the yellow smears of palm oil which bedaubed them. He was hatefully aware too that he had let his razors rust in the moist Coast climate, and White-Man's-Trouble's fortnightly efforts with the clippers had merely left his chin and head covered with an obscene red bristle.
"... It would be ridiculous," the girl was murmuring, "merely to say 'thank you' for what you did, Mr. Carter. You see I know your name. News about new-comers soon spreads amongst the other factories on the Coast here. If you only knew how I dread that fearful King, you would understand my gratitude. You see this isn't the first time he's tried to carry me off."
"I wish you'd mentioned it earlier," Carter blurted out, "and I'd have split his dirty skull, trade or no trade."
She shook her head. "No, that wouldn't have done. There's the law to be thought of even here. Besides, he's a King, and could let loose, so they say, twenty thousand fighting men against the Coast factories, and wipe them out. If only I could get away to some place he couldn't reach!" She shivered. "If I stay on here at my father's factory, I'm bound to be caught and taken to Okky City."
Carter's brown eyes opened in sheer surprise. "You speak of your father's factory. Do you mean to say that you live here on the Coast?"
"At the Smooth River factory."
"What, Slade's place?"
"Yes, I'm Laura Slade. Couldn't you guess?"
"How could I?" Carter blurted out. "Mr. Smith told me that Slade's girl—" And there he stopped, and could have bitten off his tongue for having said so much.
She finished his sentence quietly, and, as it appeared, without resentment. "Mr. Smith, I suppose, described me as a nigger."
Carter made no reply. His brown eyes hung upon her pretty face intently.
"Mr. Smith, of course, knew my father, and my mother, too, for that matter, before I was born. My mother was a quadroon, and that makes me, you see, one-eighth African."
"You did not arrange your pedigree any more than I did mine. If you hadn't told me, I should never have guessed you weren't a full-blooded European. And after all, what does it matter?"
"There speaks the man who has only been out on the Coast six months."
"Six months or six years," said Carter stoutly, "makes no difference so far as I am concerned. We're neighbors, it appears, and I hope you will let me be one of your friends. Miss Slade, will you take compassion on a very lonely man and let him come over to Smooth River occasionally and see you? I can't tell you how ghastly the loneliness has been with only the Krooboys and Mr.—er—Swizzle-Stick Smith to talk to, though perhaps you can guess at it by the way I've let my outward man run to seed."
She gave him her slim brown hand. "I take frankly what you offer," she said. "If you let me become your friend, I shall count myself fortunate; you see, after what you have done for me to-day we can hardly start from the ordinary basis."
From there onwards their talk flowed easily. She had come over on a business errand for her father, and Carter settled that quickly and promptly. She went presently into the factory to rest after her long hammock ride, and Carter seized upon the chance to dive into his own room. Therefrom he emerged an hour later with a chin half-raw from recent shaving with a rusty razor, and wearing creased white drill clothes and a linen collar that sawed his neck abominably.
"I've arranged," he said, when next he saw her, "that you and I dine tête-à-tête, if you don't mind, down under those palm trees yonder. The mosquitos don't trouble down there just at sunset, and my boy, White-Man's-Trouble, only tastes things when they're going back to the cook house. It's mere prejudice to say he's had his filthy paw in every dish before it comes to me. Oh, by the way, Mr. Smith and his Majesty of Okky ask you to excuse them, as they have still more business to discuss before they can break up their meeting."
She laughed and understood him to a nicety. They slipped off into light easy talk as though they had known one another all their lives, and there was neither that narrow escape from tragedy behind them, nor Africa and possible tragedy ahead. The girl was good comrade. The man was hardly that. He too frankly devoured her with his eyes. And certainly, in her cool, frilled muslin dress, and her big green sun hat she was pretty enough to paint. Her hair was black assuredly, but her pale olive face was moulded in curves of the most delicious. In England, and as an Englishwoman, she would have been dark perhaps, though not noticeably so. Nine hundred and ninety-nine English people out of the thousand would have commented on her beauty only. In America—well, in America, she would at once have been placed in that class apart.
But Carter, the recently imported Englishman, saw nothing save only her beauty and her charm, and he behaved towards her as the English gentleman behaves towards his equal. A man who had been longer in Africa would have had the wisdom of one who had lived in the Southern States, and have picked out the African blood at a glance, and, as is the way of men who have eaten of the tree of that wisdom, would have ordered his civilities accordingly.
CHAPTER III
THE KING WHO STOPPED THE ROADS
Mr. Smith was unsteady neither of speech nor foot, but an expert could have diagnosed that he had been dining. The expert, however, unless he had acquired his expertness near Malla-Nulla factory, would hardly have guessed that Mr. Smith was the better (or worse) for at least half a case of German champagne, generously laced with Angostura bitters.
He limped into Carter's bedroom, put his lamp down on the table, sat on the chair beside the mosquito bar, and very carefully eased up the knees of his shrunk pyjamas.
"I say, Mr. Assistant, wake up."
Carter woke, and blinked at the glare of Mr. Smith's eyeglass.
"Don't get up, please. I apologize for waking you, my dear follow, but since you turned in, you've been made a pawn in the great game of diplomacy. The fate of empires trembles on your nod."
Carter roused up onto his elbow. "Don't you think the empires would tremble no more if we left them over till to-morrow morning?"
"It would be most undiplomatic to leave them trembling too long. I can tell you I have had a devilish hard time of it putting his Majesty to sleep. He can carry his liquor like a man, and he'd a most royal way of seeing I drank level with him. But he may wake up any minute. Put not your trust in the sleep of kings, Mr. Carter."
"All right, sir. I'll make a note of that. I'll brew the gasolene, and when the King wakes I'll stand by with soda-water and fusel oil, which I should think will heal the breach between us."
"Don't you believe it for one instant. The King of Okky's a seasoned vessel with a copper tummy, and you could no more thaw the wickedness out of him with soda-water than you could bring the devil to a reformed temperature in an ice machine. You must recognize, Mr. Carter, that both the King of Okky and the devil have their little ways, and it's above your art to change either of them very much. Question is, how much allegiance do you think you owe to O'Neill and Craven?"
This was a change of front with a vengeance. But Carter took it coolly enough. "That's an interesting point, sir. I hadn't reckoned it up before. But I shouldn't like to give you an answer to so important a question about the firm on the spur of the moment. So by your leave, I'll sleep over it, and tell you in the morning."
"Sorry, but can't allow you the time, and as you don't seem to grasp the fact, I must point out that the fate of this factory of O'Neill and Craven's at Malla-Nulla depends on the august will of the King of Okky. His Portliness also threatens to stop the roads which feed our other factories at Monktown and Smooth River, though I don't think when it comes to the point he'll do that. However, Burgoyne and Slade must see to those themselves. After the way this new K. O'Neill's been treating me on paper, I'm not going to concern myself with the general welfare of all the firm's factories on this coast. But I am in charge of Malla-Nulla, and I'm going to preserve the trade here from extinction if it can be managed."
Carter lifted the mosquito bar and got out of bed. "I'm afraid, sir, I must ask you to come down to my level, and speak rather more plainly."
Swizzle-Stick Smith sat back resignedly in his chair, and dropped his eyeglass to the end of its black watered silk ribbon. "Dulce et decorum est pro factoria mori, though I don't suppose it will come to dying if you play your cards right." Mr. Smith closed his eyes and evidently imagined that he was uttering his next thought silently. "Keep the young beggar out of the way of Slade's girl, too. By Gad, I'd no idea Laura would grow up such a pretty child. If he'd been an ordinary clerk I wouldn't have minded, but the lad's a gentleman by birth, and now he's done the gallant rescue business as a start, he's just the sort of quixotic young ass to think he ought to go and marry the girl as a proper capping for the romance. And that of course would be the end of him socially."
"I say," Carter called out loudly, "Mr. Smith, do you know it's four o'clock in the morning, and there are some dangerous chills about just now? Don't you think you had better have a cigarette paper full of quinine by way of a night cap, and then go to bed? It will be turning-out time in another hour or so."
"Matches, please. My pipe's out. Ah, thank you, Mr. Carter. Well, as I was saying, the King's awfully taken with that punkah you rigged for the mess-room, and the water wheel you set up in the river to run it, and when I showed him the native arrowheads, and the spears, and the execution axes you'd made to sell to the curiosity shops at home, he began to change his tune. By the time we'd got to the fifth bottle he'd given up asking for your head in a calabash to take home with him, and before we'd finished the case he'd offered you the post of Chief Commissioner of Works in Okky City, with a salary in produce and quills of gold that'll work out to £1,000 a year."
"That's very flattering."
"Yes, isn't it, when you remember how he started. The only question is, will he keep his royal word when he's sober?"
"It's a nice point. Among other things I believe they're cannibals up in Okky City."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Assistant, you mustn't malign my friend, the King, too much. You need have no fears on that score. The Okky men have never been known to eat anybody with a red head. The only thing you'd have to funk would be sacrifice—with, of course, a most full and impressive ceremony. So I think you'll go, eh? All for the sake of K. O'Neill, whom you admire so much? And then the King won't stop the roads."
"No," said Carter shortly. "I have no intention of committing suicide at present. But if I'm an embarrassment at Malla-Nulla, you may fire me, or I'll resign if you wish it."
Swizzle-Stick Smith screwed his eyeglass into place and examined his assistant with thoughtful care. "Shouldn't dream of letting you go, my dear fellow. Always make a point of sticking by my officers. Just thought I'd let you know of the King's offer in case his Majesty refers to it to-morrow. There now, go to bed again, and don't dream the fighting's begun. You'll see plenty of service over this affair without dreaming over it on ahead."
When Carter set out for the West Coast of Africa from the Upper Wharfedale Vicarage, the one article in his kit which he thought suitable for the Coast was a small-bore nickel-plated revolver, which he had picked up second hand in Skipton for ten and six. It had been smuggled in without his mother's knowledge, as there was no reason to add to her already great anxiety. His father had provided half a sovereign towards the cost, had advised him not to use the wretched thing except in case of necessity, but if need arose, to take heed that he held it straight.
Of course on arrival he found, firstly, that the weapon was too small to be of effective use; secondly, that he could not hit a mark six feet square at more than a twelve-yard rise; and, thirdly, that revolvers are not really articles of fashionable wear for clerks in West Coast factories, whatever they may be in story-books. So the weapon lay in his mouldy portmanteau, and the moist Coast climate changed its nickel dress for a good coat of bright red rust.
But the morning after the King of Okky's arrival, while that bulky potentate was still asleep in the factory, Carter went in, cleaned the revolver as well as he could, and jammed cartridges into its reluctant chambers. He carried it pirate-fashion for the remainder of that day inside the band of his trousers, to his great personal discomfort, and to the vast enjoyment of Mr. Smith. However, the truculent Okky soldiers who had deliberately shaken weapons at him in the morning were reduced by the sight of it to a certain surly civility, and work in the feteesh went on without any open rupture.
Mr. Smith was distinctly irritable when dawn came in with the morning tea, but presently, when the swizzle-stick began its merry swishing in the cocktail pitcher, he thawed into a pleasing geniality, which, by frequent application of the same remedy, endured throughout the day. Laura Slade had returned in her hammock by the beach road in the cool of the preceding night, and Carter's thoughts followed her to Smooth River factory, to the detriment of his work down in the feteesh. He gave no mental attention whatever to the King of Okky who sat cross-legged in a long chair in the factory veranda above him, but that bulky potentate kept returning with a dogged persistency to the subject of George Carter.
"Oh, Smith," he kept on saying, "I savvy champagne palaver, n' I savvy cocktail palaver, n' I fit for chop when chop-time lib. But I ask you for tell me, one-time, if you fit for dash me dem Red-head that savvies machine-palaver. If you no fit, I stop dem road, an' no more trade lib for Malla-Nulla."
To which Mr. Smith, who knew his West Africa from a twenty-five years' study of its men and customs, would reply with an unruffled geniality that he was sure the King was far too good a heathen to try any such dirty game as putting ju-ju on the factory of an old friend. "You're pulling my leg, old Cockiwax," Mr. Smith would say. "I pray you cease, and you shall have the best cocktail this pagan Coast has seen or sniffed."
"Oh, Smith," the King would say, "I fit," and thereafter there would be truce till the houseboy brought the ingredients, and Mr. Smith with his far-famed skill compounded them, and the pink cocktails went their appointed journey to perform their accustomed work. After which the African would once more repeat his unwearied demand.
From the rising of the King from his mat, to the hour of the midday meal, this demand and reply went on, and Swizzle-Stick Smith parried it with unruffled serenity. But an open rupture very nearly came at the meal time. As a king, the visitor was invited to sit at meat with the white men in their mess-room. He said little during the meal, but he appraised Carter's head so persistently with his eyes that that irritated young man, with the pride of race bubbling within him, would have openly resented the performance if he had not given a promise to Mr. Smith on this very point only a short half-hour before.
Such a state of things could not last long without bringing about an open breach, and Swizzle-Stick Smith, with his vast experience, saw this earlier than anybody, and made his arrangements accordingly.
He tried hard to write a letter, but his pen was not in the mood for intelligent calligraphy. So he had to fall back on verbal instructions and a verbal message.
"Mr. Assistant," he said, when at last he put down his knife and fork, and the houseboy handed him his pipe and a match, "Mr. Assistant, I intended to make you a bearer of dispatches, but the gout's got into my confounded fingers this morning, and I doubt if even Slade could read my writing. So we'll just have to do the thing informally. We must have some more of that spot-white-on-blue cloth, and you must post off to the Smooth River factory and bring it back with you. It seems to be in heavy demand just now, though why, I can't imagine. I've been on the Coast twenty-five years now, and I can no more foretell the run of native fashions than I could the day I landed. But there it is, and though I'm sure Slade won't want to part, you must just make him. Say we'll pay him back in salt. He's sure to be short of salt. I never yet knew Slade to indent for half as many bags of salt as his trade required. You needn't hurry. If you're back here in three days' time that will be quite soon enough. You can take a hammock, of course."
"Thanks, very much, but I'd rather walk."
"Well, just as you please. You must commandeer what carriers you want from Slade."
So it came to pass that when the sun had dropped to a point whence it could throw a decent shadow, and the sea breeze mingled a bracing chill even into a temperature of eighty, Carter set off along the beach, with White-Man's-Trouble balancing a mildew-mottled Gladstone bag on his smartly-shaved cranium, in attendance. On one side of him Africa was fenced off by a wall of impenetrable greenery; on the other the Atlantic bumped and roared and creamed along the glaring sand. On the horizon the smoke of a Liverpool palm oil tank called from him the usual Coaster's sigh.
"Oh, Carter," said his valet when they had left the factory buildings well out of earshot, "you plenty-much fine, and you no lib for steamah."
"It was about time I tidied up. When we get back to the factory I'll teach you how to pipe-clay shoes."
The Krooboy thought over this proposition for some minutes. Then said he: "I fit for tell you, Carter, dem last white man I pipe-clay shoes for, he lib for cemetery in two week. Savvy, Carter? Two week."
"All right, don't get so emphatic. I wasn't doubting you. But I'm going to risk the cemetery all the same. You may start by providing me with one pair of clean shoes a day, and when I get the taste of cleanliness again, maybe I'll run to two. Savvy?"
"Savvy plenty," grumbled White-Man's-Trouble, and then presently. "You no fit for steamah palaver? You no lib for home?"
"No, I'm not going home yet awhile."
"But you plenty-much fine."
"Yes," admitted Carter, "I caught sight of myself in mildewed pyjamas and a fortnight's beard, and was struck with the general filthiness of my personal appearance. Savvy?"
"Savvy plenty. Oh, Carter, you lib for wife-palaver? Dem plenty-much fine clothes always one of the customs before wife-palaver."
The Krooboy pondered over this discovery during the next two miles of the march, and then said he, "Oh, Carter?"
"Well?"
"Dem Slade. You savvy seegar?"
"I suppose so. Why?"
"I see Smith dash dem Slade one box seegar an' he got what Slade said 'no fit' for before. Oh, Carter, you dash dem Slade one box seegar," said White-Man's-Trouble, and he treated his employer to a knowing wink.
"Whatever for?"
"Because then, after he got dem seegar, he sell you Laura for half dem price he ask before."
"You're an impertinent savage," said Carter half tickled, half annoyed.
But White-Man's-Trouble stopped, put down the yellow Gladstone bag on the baking sand, and pointed to the blue parallel tribal tattoo marks between his brows. "I Krooboy, sar. I no bushboy, sar! I lib for educate as deckboy an' stan'-by-at-crane boy on steamah, sar. I no fit for stay with you, sar, if you call me impertinent savage."
Carter stared. "Good heavens, man! I didn't intend to hurt your feelings."
White-Man's-Trouble waved the bleached inside of his paw towards his master. "Oh, Carter, you apologize. Palaver set." He bowed a head which was quaintly shaved into garden patches, replaced the Gladstone bag on its central bed of wool, and once more strode cheerfully ahead.
Carter followed moodily. How had they all guessed at his admiration for Laura? He had thought it the most intimate of secrets, a delicate confidence that he had no more than dared breathe even to his own inner consciousness. But first old Smith had blurted it out, and now even his servant talked about it openly. He had no doubt whatever that the whole thing had been fully discussed over the cooking fires of the native compound at Malla-Nulla the night before.
Then somehow his eyes swung round to the dancing horizon, and the Liverpool steamer's smoke, boring up towards the North, easily ferried his thoughts across the gap which lay between that baking African beach, and the cool village tucked snugly in beneath the Upper Wharfedale moors. He tried to concentrate his mind on the roses in the vicarage garden. His mother liked abundance of blooms, and cared little about the size. The Vicar admired big blooms and snipped off superfluous buds when his wife was out of the way, and during summer a gentle wrangle over the roses was quite one of the features of their quiet life.
But the roses refused to stay in the centre of the picture. Laura insisted on taking their place. Suppose he took Laura back to Wharfedale—as Mrs. George Carter. His mother, blessed woman, might be sorry, but she would accept her. He was sure of that. But his father? Almost the last piece of advice the Vicar had given on parting was:
"Now, lad, remember always you're a white man, and don't get mixed up with any woman who owns a single drop of blood darker than your own. If you do, you can never come back here, and you'll hate yourself all the rest of your life. Remember I held an Indian chaplaincy before I got this living, and I know what I'm talking about."
Carter shook a sudden fist at the steamer's smoke for supplying him with such a distasteful train of thought, and turned for light conversation to White-Man's-Trouble. That garrulous person was quite ready to humor him in the matter.
The sea breeze died away a little after six, and they marched in breathless heat till the cool land breeze took its place, and brought them spicy odors of the inland trees. And always on one side of them the surf roared, and crashed, and creamed along the beaches.
The sun drooped to the horizon and hurried beneath it in visible inches of fall. Daylight went out. The colors were blotted from the sky, and the stars lit up, one racing another to be first. The noises from the forest changed in correspondence. From close at hand a leopard roared a greeting to the darkness.
Night was fully dressed ten minutes after the sun had vanished. It was after nine o'clock, and in the chill of a wet gray mist, that they reached O'Neill and Craven's factory on the banks of Smooth River.
Now nine o'clock in the lonely factories of the Coast is usually bed time, and Carter was a good deal surprised to hear the hum of a great activity pulsing out into the night; and presently, when they came within eye-range, to see the buildings aglow with lights. But there was a further surprise packed and ready for him. As they came close, a black man leaned over the end of an upraised wall of palm oil puncheons, and deliberately pointed a gun squarely at Carter's chest.
A good deal of discussion took place afterward as to what would have been the proper procedure under the circumstances, but that may conveniently be omitted from this record, which deals only with immediate history; and the fact is that Carter rushed the sentry, clipped him under the ear, skinned his own knuckles, and captured the gun. White-Man's-Trouble in the meanwhile had with much presence of mind thrown himself on his face to avoid any discharge of pot-leg from the concealed marksmen, and was bawling lustily for "Slade, oh Slade," to "Stop dem dam gun-palaver." Which noisy request presently had its wished for result.
Slade himself came out to meet them, and even then his reception was sufficiently startling. "Good God!" he rapped out, "then you've escaped, too, Carter, as well as the Krooboy. What liars these niggers are! I imagined that your—that parts of you were up at Okky City by now. I supposed they've scuppered poor old Swizzle-Stick Smith all right, though? Did he have a bad time of it? Why?" he said as he came nearer, and saw his caller's spruce getup, "you don't look as if you'd been scrapping much. Or bolting very hard, either," he added as an afterthought.
"Unless," said Carter, "you're referring to an invasion by the Turks, or the French, or the Men in the Moon, I haven't a notion what you're talking about."
"Haven't you come from Malla-Nulla?"
"Left there about a quarter to four."
"And hasn't it been sacked?"
"It was sitting down by the beach, looking just as white hot as usual, and no more, when I left."
"What about the King of Okky, then?"
"He was there at Malla-Nulla, filling a very big chair on the veranda."
"And there has been no raid? I don't understand."
"The King of Okky," said Carter patiently, "has raided our factory to the extent of one case of fizz, of which Mr. Smith says he drank half, but barring that, and about six gallons of other mixed drinks, I didn't see him get much out of us. He certainly was threatening to stop the roads when I left, but I think that was all gas. He only wanted to stick Mr. Smith for more drinks."
"He's stopped the roads right enough."
"Not he," said Carter cheerfully.
The older man thought a minute and then, "Come along with me," he said. "I guess ocular demonstration is about the only thing that will convince you that there is mischief in the air, and that that crafty old devil of a king is at the bottom of it." He led to a factory outbuilding, threw open a door, and scraped a match. "Look in there."
Carter did so, and promptly felt sick, and came out. But he got another light and returned resolutely to the inspection. "Two, four, seven. And all killed the same way. I say that's pretty ghastly."
"Isn't it? They were all fine healthy Krooboys when they marched out of here this morning, carrying up some salt bags to our sub-factory on the Okky road. There were some bits of feathers and a rag or two strung up alongside the path, and they didn't notice them, or didn't tumble to it that they were ju-ju. Consequently they are now what you see. This is the King of Okky's way of hinting that the road is stopped. That pot-leg must have been fired at not more than a two-yard range. Some of the poor devils are regularly blown inside out. Here, come into the open again."
"Thanks, you needn't give me the details over again. I saw all that for myself."
"That infernal King must have sent off his messengers the very moment after you had that turn-up with him about Laura—which, by the way, is a thing that I personally shall never forget, so you can draw on me over that down to the last breeches button. You see Okky City is closer in at the back here, but it's quite five hours' march further from Malla-Nulla. So the treacherous old brute stayed where he was, tippling with Smith, in the pious hope of keeping you all quiet till his men could come down and blot you all out. How you got through is a marvel to me. They must have reckoned on getting you as you walked here along the beach or they'd never have let you slip away. You and your boy have certainly escaped by the skin of your teeth. It's a moral certainty that they've got old Smith."
"I don't think so. But I shall go back and see."
"Rubbish! We may be able to hold out here, and perhaps will not be attacked at all when they find out we're ready for them. But it's perfectly impossible for you to get back along the beach to Malla-Nulla. Come up into the house, and we'll find you a bite of something to eat, and Laura shall mix you a whiskey and soda. We've a bit of the last steamer's ice still left, and you shall have it."
"Thanks. I'll come up and see Miss Slade, but I shall start back for Malla-Nulla in half an hour from now. And if, as you prophesy, I don't land, well, at any rate, I shall have done my best to get there."
"It's very nice of you, and all that, but do you think old Smith is worth it?"
Carter laughed. "Mr. Smith's a rough handful, but he's a good sort, and I like him. Besides he happens to be a gentleman."
"Or was one once. A lot of us on the Coast were gentlemen originally. I come of good people myself, and was at Eaton and Jesus, although I don't suppose you'd have guessed it if I hadn't told you. But you see Nature built me with a cutaway chin, and I couldn't hold down a job at home. However, come in, and we'll scratch you up some chop. Here, Laura, I've brought a caller."
"I feel this dreadful trouble is all my fault," said the girl as they came into the lamplit room. "If you had been killed, Mr. Carter, I should have looked upon myself as a murderess."
"My dear Miss Slade, you really mustn't worry about a matter you've no concern in whatever. The whole thing's a 'regrettable incident'—I believe that's the proper term—that Mr. Smith told me has been brewing for years. It's all due to the drop in the price of palm oil on the Liverpool market, which means that we white traders pay less for it on the Coast here, and the black traders get less, and so there's less for the King of Okky to squeeze out of them as they march through his territory from the hinterland. That's what's put his fat back up. The only great mistake that's been made is that I didn't split the old brute's iniquitous skull when I had the chance. I say, do you mind my commenting on those flowers you've got on the table? I haven't seen a cut flower since I left England."
He turned to his host. "You do the thing rather palatially here, Mr. Slade. Board walls and real glass in the windows! We've bamboo walls at Malla-Nulla that let in the dust and the mosquitoes and the Krooboys' stares just as they occur. It felt rather like living in a bird-cage till one got used to it."
"The walls are Laura's doing. You know she was at school in a convent in Las Palmas, and came home with all sorts of extravagant notions. Why, she actually insisted on a tablecloth for meals, and napkins. I'll trouble you, napkins! And yet they still call us palm oil ruffians in Liverpool, and firmly believe that we live on orange-colored palm oil chop, which we pick out of calabashes with our fingers. I sent K. O'Neill a photograph of this room by the last mail, with the table laid for chop, and flowers as you see in a china bowl, in the hope he'd be impressed by it, and raise my screw."
"He's quite likely to do it, too," said Carter, "if I understand Mr. K. right. He's always insisting in his letters to Malla-Nulla that if we make ourselves comfortable, and adapt ourselves to the climate, we shall be able to do more and better work. By the way, do you know Mr. K. O'Neill at all? At Malla-Nulla we only know him on paper."
"I'm in the same box," Slade confessed. "Godfrey, his predecessor, of course I knew well enough. But this new chap I only know from his letters, and they're a deal too rousing for my easy-going tastes. Ah, here's the boy with a tray of chop for you. Observe the parsley; that's Laura's latest triumph in Coast gardening. Boy, Mr. Carter will sleep in the spare bed in my room. See that there are no live things inside the mosquito bar."
"I thank you," said Carter firmly, "but I am going to do as I said."
"He wants to go back to Malla-Nulla," Slade explained to his daughter, "and I tell him it is suicide to think of such a thing. Here, you have a go at him, Laura." Slade always put off onto someone else anything which he found hard to do himself.
But Laura Slade read a certain doggedness in Carter's face that told her what to say. She did not join in imploring him to stay at Smooth River when he had so obviously determined to go. But instead, her mind flew to some scheme that might make his passage less desperately risky. "I am sure father could spare you some men. With an escort you might get through. I wish you were not so plucky."
Carter laughed. "Oh, I am frightened hard enough, but I should be still more frightened at what I should think of myself if anything happened to Mr. Smith which I could have prevented if I'd been there. It's very kind of you to offer an escort, and I'd thought of that before; but I'm sure I shall be able to move quicker and more quietly without one. But if Mr. Slade could lend me a gun, I'd feel a lot more comfortable with that."
"Certainly, my boy, certainly. You shall have my Winchester, and I believe I can scare up a revolver somewhere."
"You are very good. I have a revolver already, but it's only useful to me as a sort of knuckleduster. I couldn't hit a haystack with it ten yards off. Same with the rifle; I've never used one. But where I was brought up in Wharfedale, you see, the Governor had some glebe, and his income was small. We mostly lived on rabbits and a few grouse in the season, and so you see I learned to be pretty useful with a shot gun."
Slade handed a weapon. "There you are. That's a double 12-bore hammer gun, and both barrels are cylinders. It's an early Holland and was a swell tool in its day, which was some time ago."
"Thank you very much. I hope I shan't have to use it, but it'll feel comfortable under my arm. When you've lived most of your life in the country, you miss going out with a gun. Well, now, I'll say good-by."
"Wait a minute till we've called up your boy. I'll shout from the veranda."
"Don't, please," said Carter, remembering that on all previous occasions when trouble foreboded White-Man's-Trouble disappeared. He did not wish to call Laura's attention more than necessary to the risks of the journey. "I'd far rather go alone."
"Oh, Carter," said the voice of the Krooboy from the darkness outside, "then you plenty-much dam fool. I say I lib for come with you to Malla-Nulla. You no fit to go by your lone."
They looked out through the lit doorway and saw the yellows of White-Man's-Trouble's eyes, and the gleam of his teeth, which latter were eclipsed when he finished his speech, leaving the eyes alone to tell of his whereabouts.
"Now, that's a real stout boy of yours, Carter," the trader said. "Hi you, come in. You fit for a peg?"
"I fit for a bottle," said White-Man's-Trouble, who looked nipped and gray when he stood up in the lamplight. Poor fellow, he thought he was going to certain death with perhaps torture as an addition, but when it came to a pinch, and the white man led, he screwed up his pluck to follow.
So at last the pair of them set off quietly into the shadows. Two handshakes were all the farewell, but there was a soft something in Laura's eyes that sent queer thrills down George Carter's spine. Slade himself saw them through the outer line of the sentries, and warned those enthusiasts not to fire on them should they presently return; and a dozen yards away from those sentries, they melted into the warm blackness of the African night.
Up on the veranda of the factory Laura Slade leaned over the rail and listened to the beating of her own heart. She strained her eyes and she strained her ears along the line of mysterious phosphorescence which marked the beach, but no trace or hint did she get of how it fared with the man she loved. Once only during that watch did she hear a sound which she took to be a distant gunshot, and then, din, din, as though two other shots followed it. Then the roar of the surf and the night noises of Africa closed in again, and for safety or hurt Carter had passed beyond her reach.
"Kate will like that man," she said to herself, and then she shivered a little. "I wonder if Kate will take him away from me?"
CHAPTER IV
THE BEACH BY MOONLIGHT
White-Man's-Trouble was abominably frightened during that night march along the beach to Malla-Nulla, and did not mind showing it. Indeed, the fact that he screwed up his determination sufficiently to make the trip at all, says a great deal for his admiration of Carter.
Carter, on the other hand, though he was fully alive to the desperate risks that lay ahead, felt himself to be the white man in command, and adjusted his demeanor accordingly. To look at him one might have thought that he was merely taking exercise and the evening air for the general good of his health.
Had there been cover he would have taken it, but there was none. The beach was the only path; the bush which walled it on one side was impassable, and though the sea might have been considered an alternative route, they had only cotton-wood dug-outs at the Smooth River factory, and it would have taken at least a surf-boat to get out over the Smooth River bar, to say nothing of landing, when the time came, through the rollers which crashed always on Malla-Nulla beach. So he marched along where the sand was wet and hard, just above the cream of surf, and he carried the twelve-bore, hammers downwards, over his shoulder, with his forefinger on the trigger guard above. He was very grateful for those past days of rabbit shooting in Upper Wharfedale which had taught him to be so quick and deadly on a sudden mark.
The surf on one side, and the night noises of Africa on the other, roared in their ears as they marched, and every now and again they came into a cloud of fireflies, which switched their tiny lamps in and out with inconceivable rapidity, and left them quite blinded during the intervals of darkness.
So that on the whole, as Carter realized very fully, if the King of Okky had set men to waylay them, these could scarcely be incompetent enough to miss their mark. But he did not admit this knowledge to White-Man's-Trouble. When that Krooboy stated things exactly as they were, Carter pooh-poohed his deductions lightly enough, and stormed at the man because he was ignorant of the most approved method of pipe-claying shoes.
An African moon floated cleanly overhead, and great African stars punctured the purple roof of heaven, and to Carter's chilled fancy he and the Krooboy were as conspicuous as two actors strutting under lime light. But there were two things he overlooked, and these I believe must have been the salvation of the pair of them. The thick night mists were steaming out of the forest, and from the surf the thick white sea smoke drove in on the land breeze to meet them. This translucent fog, though it might not be very apparent to the eyes of the walkers themselves, would be quite enough to screen them from the gaze of hostile pickets who, after the manner of Africans, were already half scared out of their dusky skins by the fear of ghosts.
They had made the journey out to Smooth River in five and a quarter hours; they completed the journey back to Malla-Nulla in four, which meant good travelling; and because a heavy march like this may not be undertaken without physical payment in the stewy climate of the Coast, Carter felt certain premonitory symptoms which told him that a good thumping dose of fever would be his when once he slackened his efforts and gave it a chance to take charge. But he was not much alarmed at the circumstance. As he told himself coolly enough, either by the time the fever came on he would have rejoined Mr. Smith at Malla-Nulla, who in that case was perfectly capable of looking after him, or he would have rejoined Mr. Smith in the Shades Beyond, and a fever owing to his body left behind on earth would not matter. As it happened neither of these alternatives had to be bargained with.
Malla-Nulla factory was eaves deep in white wet mist when they got to it, and found it earthy-smelling and empty. It was unmarked by fire, unsmirched by signs of battle, and, strangest of all, unlooted.
The pair of them charged up the veranda steps, Carter in the lead, with the twelve-bore held ready for an instant discharge. The Krooboy with matchet uplifted and teeth at the snarl looked the very picture of savage desperation and ferocity. They stepped into the empty mess-room and lit matches and a lamp. The land breeze sang through the bamboo walls, and Carter's home-made punkah swished overhead to the unseen impulse of the water wheel; but of quick human life, there was not a trace.
He had fitted up bells about the place, or rather strings that actuated wooden clappers which could beat on wooden drums. He set these all a-clang and listened. The place reeked of its usual mildew, and the smell nauseated him. They had got rid of the mildew scent at the Smooth River factory. But there was not a murmur of reply to his clamor.
White-Man's-Trouble delivered himself of wisdom. "Oh, Carter, I think dem Smith, an' all dem boys at factory lib for die. Dis place lib for full of ghosts. I fit for run back for Smooth River."
"Run away, then," said Carter, who was beginning to examine the mess-room systematically.
The Krooboy cowered in a chair and covered his eyes. "Oh, Carter, I no fit for march back alone. Dem ghosts plenty-too-much fond o' Kroo chop. Oh, Carter, you no be dam fool an' stay here. You lib back for Smooth River all-e-same me."
"My pagan friend, don't get too familiar. The next time I hear you calling me names, I shall break my knuckles up against one of the places where the worsted's been shaved off your skull. Observe"—said Carter, and poured some whiskey onto the table top and set light to it—"Observe those blue flames that crawl and flicker about, but do not burn the wood. In those the ghosts that have been threatening you are now being most painfully consumed. Do you believe it?"
"I fit for see 'em die," said White-Man's-Trouble devoutly. "Oh, Carter, you plenty-much-fine witch doctor. I fit for pipe-clay dem shoes, three pair a day. Oh, Carter, if Okky men lib for come, you burn them, too?"
"Certainly," said Carter, "anything to soothe your nerves. Though, as a matter of fact, I should demonstrate to them with a shotgun, not by burning methylated. Now, just nose around, boy, and help me to find out where Mr. Smith's evaporated to. They can't have eaten him, or some of them must have stayed behind to digest the meal; and they can't have kidnapped him, or he'd have broken up the happy home before he condescended to go, and as we see it now, it's no more squalid than usual. So now, Trouble, produce Mr. Smith."
"Smith? Oh, Carter, dem Smith lib for surf boat."