A Master of Fortune Part 6

It seemed like a fantastic dream to be a.s.sured in this way that there were white men, civilized white men, men who could read books and enjoy poetry, sitting about swearing and drinking c.o.c.ktails under a decent steamer's awnings close by this barbaric scene of savagery. And yet it was no dream. The flies that crept into his nose and his mouth and his eye-sockets, and bit him through his clothing, and the hateful sounds from the village a.s.sured him of all its reality.

The blazing day burnt itself to a close, and night came hard upon its heels, still baking and breathless. The insects bit worse than ever, and once or twice Kettle fancied he felt the jaws of a driver ant in his flesh, and wondered if news would be carried to the horde in the ant-hill, which would bring them out to devour their prey without the train of honey being laid to lure them. Moreover, fever had come on him again, and with one thing and another it was only by a constant effort of will that he prevented himself from giving way and raving aloud in delirium.

It was under these circ.u.mstances, then, that the missionary came to him again, and once more put in a bid for the ju-ju which lay at the pilotage. Kettle roundly accused the man of having betrayed him, and the fellow did not deny it with any hope of being believed. He had got to get his pile somehow, so he said: the ju-ju had value, and if he could not get hold of it one way, he had to work it another. And finally, would Kettle surrender it then, or did he want any more discomfort.

Now I think it is not to the little sailor's discredit to confess that he surrendered without terms forthwith. "The thing's yours for when you like to fetch it," he snapped out ungraciously enough, and the missionary at once stooped and cut the gra.s.s ropes, and set to chafing his wrists and ankles. "And now," he said, "clear out for your canoe at the river-side for all you're worth, Captain. There's a big full moon, and you can't miss the way."

"Wait a bit," said Kettle. "I'm remembering that I had an errand here.

Can you give me the right physic to pull Captain Nilssen round?"

"You have it in that leopard-skin parcel inside your s.h.i.+rt. I saw the witch-doctor give it you."

"Oh! you were looking on, were you?"

"Yes."

"By James! I've a big mind to leave my marks on you, you swine!"

The trader missionary whipped out a revolver. "Guess I'm heeled, sonny.

You'd better go slow. You'd--"

There was a rush, a dodge, a scuffle, a bullet whistling harmlessly up into the purple night, and that revolver was Captain Kettle's.

"The cartridges you have in your pocket."

"I've only three. Here they are, confound you! Now, what are you going to do next? You've waked the village. You'll have them down on you in another moment. Run, you fool, or they'll have you yet."

"Will they?" said Kettle. "Well, if you want to know, I've got poor old Bra.s.s Pan to square up for yet. I liked that boy." And with that, he set off running down a path between the walls of gra.s.ses.

A negro met him in the narrow cut, yelled with surprise, and turned. He dropped a spear as he turned, and Kettle picked it up and drove the blade between his shoulder-blades as he ran. Then on through the village he raged like a man demented. With what weapons he fought he never afterward remembered. He slew with whatever came to his hand. The villagers, wakened up from their torpid sleep, rushed from the gra.s.s and wattle houses on every hand. Kettle in his Berserk rage charged them whenever they made a stand, till at last all fled from him as though he were more than human.

Bodies lay upon the ground staring up at the moon; but there were no living creatures left, though the little sailor, with bared teeth and panting breath, stood there waiting for them. No; he had cleared the place, and only one other piece of retribution lay in his power. The embers of a great fire smouldered in the middle of the clearing, and with a shudder (as he remembered its purpose) he shovelled up great handfuls of the glowing charcoal and sowed it broadcast on the dry gra.s.s roofs of the chimbeques. The little crackling flames leaped up at once; they spread with the quickness of a gunpowder train; and in less than a minute a great cataract of fire was roaring high into the night.

Then, and not till then, did Captain Kettle think of his own retreat. He put the three remaining cartridges into the empty chambers of his revolver, and set off at a jog-trot down the winding path by which he had come up from the river.

His head was throbbing then, and the stars and the gra.s.ses swam before his eyes. The excitement of the fight had died away--the ills of the place gripped every fibre of his body. Had the natives ambushed him along the path, I do not think he could possibly have avoided them. But those natives had had their lesson, and they did not care to tamper with Kettle's _ju-ju_ again. And so he was allowed to go on undisturbed, and somehow or other he got down to the river-bank and the canoe.

He did not do the land journey at any astonis.h.i.+ng pace. Indeed, it is a wonder he ever got over it at all. More than once he sank down half unconscious in the path, and up all the steeper slopes he had to crawl animal fas.h.i.+on on all-fours. But by daybreak he got to the canoe, and pushed her off, and by a marvellous streak of luck lost his way in the inner channels, and wandered out on to the broad Congo beyond.

I say this was a streak of luck, because by this time consciousness had entirely left him, and on the inner channels he would merely have died, and been eaten by alligators, whereas, as it was, he got picked up by a State launch, and taken down to the pilotage at Banana.

It was Mrs. Nilssen who tediously nursed him back to health. Kettle had always been courteous to Mrs. Nilssen, even though she was as black and polished as a patent leather boot; and Mrs. Nilssen appreciated Captain Owen Kettle accordingly.

With Captain Nilssen, pilot of the lower Congo, Kettle had one especially interesting talk during his convalescence. "You may as well take that troublesome wooden G.o.d for yourself now," said Nilssen. "But, if I were you, I'd s.h.i.+p it home out of harm's way by the next steamer."

"Hasn't that missionary brute sent for it yet?"

Captain Nilssen evaded the question. "I'll never forget what you've done for me, my lad. When you were brought in here after they picked you up, you looked fit to peg out one-time, but the only sane thing you could do was to waggle out a little leopard-skin parcel, and bid me swallow the stuff that was inside. You'd started out to get me that physic, and, by gum, you weren't happy till I got it down my neck."

"Well, you look fit enough now."

"Never better."

"But about the missionary brute?"

"Well, my lad, I suppose you're well enough to be told now. He's got his trading cut short for good. That n.i.g.g.e.r with the yaws who paddled you up brought down the news. The beggars up there chopped him, and I'm sure I hope he didn't give them indigestion."

"My holy James!"

"Solid. His missionary friends here have written home a letter to Boston which would have done you good to see. According to them, the man's a blessed martyr, nothing more or less. The gin and the guns are left clean out of the tale; and will Boston please send out some more subscriptions, one-time? You'll see they'll stick up a stained-gla.s.s window to that joker in Boston, and he'll stand up there with a halo round his head as big as a frying-pan. And, oh! won't his friends out here be resigned to his loss when the subscriptions begin to hop in from over the water."

"Well, there's been a lot of trouble over a trumpery wooden idol. I fancy we'd better burn it out of harm's way."

"Not much," said Nilssen with a sigh. "I've found out where the value comes in, and as you've earned them fairly and squarely, the dividends are yours to stick to. One of those looking-gla.s.s eyes was loose, and I picked it out. There was a bit of green gla.s.s behind. I picked out the other eye, and there was a bit of green gla.s.s at the back of that too."

"Oh, the n.i.g.g.e.rs'll use anything for ju-ju."

"Wait a bit. I'd got my notions as to what that green gla.s.s was, and so I toted them in my pocket up and down the river and asked every man who was likely to know a jewel what he thought. They aren't green gla.s.s at all. They're emeralds. They're come from the Lord knows where, but that doesn't matter. They're worth fifty pounds apiece at the very lowest, and they're yours, my lad, to do what you like with."

Captain Kettle lay back on his pillow and smiled complacently. "That money'll just set up my Missis nicely in a lodging-house. Now I can go on with my work here, and know that whatever happens she and the kids are provided for."

"Eh, well," said Nilssen with a sigh, "she'll be nicely fixed up now. I wish I could make provision like that for my old women."

CHAPTER III.

A QUICK WAY WITH REBELS.

Another bullet came silently up out of the distance, and the n.i.g.g.e.r second engineer of the launch gave a queer little whimper and fell down _flop_, and lay with his flat nose nuzzling the still warm boiler. A hole, which showed up red and angry against the black wool just underneath his gra.s.s cap, made the diagnosis of his injury an easy matter.

The noise of the shot came to them quite a long time afterward, when the little puff of smoke which had spirted up from the distant sandbank had already begun to thin under the suns.h.i.+ne; but it was that gun-crack, and not the sight of the dead engineer, which gave the working negroes their final scare. With loud children's cries, and queer dodgings of fear, they pitched down their working tools, and fled to where the other black soldiers and pa.s.sengers were lying on the iron floor-plates of the launch, in security below her water-line.

The Belgian Commandant, from his shelter at the other side of the boiler, swore volubly, and Clay, the English doctor, laughed and tw.a.n.ged out a music-hall tune on his banjo. Kettle, intent on getting his vessel once more under command, was for driving the negro crew back to their work by the simple methods peculiar to the British merchant officer. But this Commandant Balliot forbade, and, as he was Kettle's superior in the Congo Free State service, that small mariner had (very much against his grain) to obey.

"We shall have these fellows rebelling next," said the Commandant, "if you push them too hard; and if they join the rest, where shall we be?"

"There are a thousand of your troops in the mutiny already, according to your tally," said Kettle stiffly, "and I don't see that if this hundred joined them it would make much difference to us, one way or the other.

Besides," he added, almost persuasively, "if I had the handling of them they would not join the others. They would stay here and do as they were told."

"Captain Kettle," snapped the Commandant, "you have heard my orders. If I have any more of this hectoring spirit from you, I shall report your conduct when we get back to Stanley Pool."

"You may report till you're black in the face," said Kettle truculently; "but if you don't put a bit more backbone into things, you'll do it as a ghost and not as a live man. Look at your record up to date. You come up here at the head of a fine expedition; you set your soldiers to squeeze the tribes for rubber and ivory; they don't bring in enough n.i.g.g.e.rs'

ears to show that they've used their cartridges successfully, and so you shoot them down in batches; and then you aren't man enough to keep your grip on them, but when they've had enough of your treatment, they just start in and rebel."

"One man can't fight a thousand."