I told him hands were wanted for the stoke-hold, and that the gorgeous
pay of four shillings English per diem was offered.
"We no fit for stoke, sar," said he. "We gentlemen wid money, sar. We
passenger-boys, sar."
"Very well, daddy," said I. "But stoke you've got to. And if you won't
do it civilly you'll do it the other way. Now my frien', pick me out
twelve good strong boys. If you don't do it, I'll shoot you dead
one-time; if they won't work, I'll shoot them. You quite savvy?"
We got the men and they went off to the stokehold, frightened and
raging. Poor wretches, eight of them toppled over in the next
twenty-four hours, and half-a-day later the engines stopped for the last
time. I was smoking industriously under the alley-way, and Tordoff came
and loafed near me.
"I'm a bally fine chief-engineer, aren't I?" said he.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I'm the best man that's left of all our crowd, that's all.
They're every sinner of them dead, black men, white men, and Portuguese.
Where are we now?"
"Slap bang under the equator. That mountain-top sticking out of the
water is San Thome."
"Then I'm off there," said Tordoff. "This bloomin' steamer's played out.
She can't steam, and she wouldn't sail if there was any wind, which
there isn't. I shall take one of the boats and skip. You'd better come
too."
"No."
"What for? Why not?"
"Because there are only two boats and they aren't enough for all hands."
"The boats will hold all the white men, or them that call themselves
white. But if you are one of the missionary crowd that hold niggers as
good----"
"I'm not. I know what niggers are, and therefore I'm not an Exeter Hall
fool about them. I'll make free to tell you this boat-game's been
thought of before; but that bishop says he won't leave the niggers to
peg out alone; and if he's going to be idiot enough to stay, I am going
to be another idiot. That's the size of it."
"Well," said Tordoff, "I've got no use for that kind of foolishness
myself, and if you're left, you needn't come and haunt me afterwards.
You've had the straight, square tip. And you'll do no good by spreading
this palaver about. If anyone tries to stop us there'll be a lot of men
killed. We aren't the kind of crowd that'll stick at trifles if we're
meddled with. So long!"
[Illustration: "'THIS STEAMER IS PLAYED OUT. I SHALL TAKE ONE OF THE
BOATS AND SKIP.'"]
He slouched off, and I went to the deck of the bridge and looked down on
a curious scene. The main deck was a shambles. There were a score of
corpses there, pitching about stiffly to the roll of the ship, with no
one offering to touch them. There were a score more of sick, shrieking
and knotting themselves in their agony. The survivors were in two sorts
of panic--the comatose, and the madly violent. A crowd of yelling
dancing negroes, most of them stark naked, had set up a ju-ju on a
barrel of the fore-deck winch, and were sacrificing to it a hen which
they had stolen from one of the coops. The little wooden god I knew: it
was one that I had picked up in the Kasai country, and I was taking it
home as a curiosity. It had been lifted from my own state-room by some
prowling negro, and was now receiving fresh daubs of red blood amid the
clamour of frantic worshippers. It was quite a reasonable thing to
expect under the circumstances. But what threw the action of these
savages into grotesque relief was the sight of another man crouched in
prayer beside the bulwarks. It was the bishop. His tottering hands were
pinning the crucifix to his hollow chest; his hips were swaying under
him with weakness; his dry cracked lips moved noiselessly; and the
molten sunlight beat upon him as it pleased.
[Illustration: "I WAS FIGHTING FOR MY LIFE AMONGST A CROWD OF FURIES."]
The sight of that man gave me a bad feeling. Before I knew quite how it
happened, I was down on the frizzling main-deck, and the ju-ju had been
plucked from the winch barrel and flung over the side, together with the
tortured hen, and I was fighting for my life amongst a crowd of furies.
Tordoff was there too (though I'm sure I don't know how he came), and
thanks to him I got back again on to the bridge deck; but the bishop did
not come with us. He stayed down there amongst those sullen animal
blacks, imploring them, praying with them, soothing them. He was a
braver man than I, that Portuguese.
Another night came down, and the steamer wallowed in inky blackness. In
the morning we were still more helpless. The mates, the few remaining
sailors, the stewards and cooks, and the two yellow traders had gone;
the captain lay in the alley-way with a knife between his
shoulder-blades; the bishop and I and Tordoff were the only white men
remaining on board. Yes, Tordoff. I went into the pantry smoking a
cigarette, and found him there, eating biscuits and raisins.
"You here?" I said, "Why, man, I thought you cleared out with the rest."
"No," he said, "I thought it would be so fine to stay behind and be able
to scoff the cabin grub just as I pleased. I just stayed for the grub,
it's worth it."
"You're rather a decent sort of liar," I said; "do you mind shaking
hands?"
"I don't see the need," he said; "and besides, I'm using my hands to eat
these raisins; but you may kick me if you like. There isn't a redder
fool than me in both Atlantics. By the way, how's the padre?"
"Very sick. I looked into his room and found him lying in his bunk. He
couldn't talk."
"I put him there. Found the old fool preaching to those beasts on all
fours this morning, and looked on till he dropped; then I lugged him
under cover."
"Any more dead?"
"Five pegged out during the night. They were lying pleasantly in and
amongst the others, and there were seven more sick. I told the head-man
when I went down with the padre to have them put over the side or I'd
kill him. And when I came back I found he'd shoved over the whole dozen.
The man-and-a-brother's a tolerable brute when he comes to handling his
own kind, Mr. Calvert."
We went out then and set the passenger-boys to washing down decks. We
could not give them the hose because there was no donkey working; but
they drew water in buckets and holystoned and scraped and scrubbed till
they cleaned the infection out of the decks, and sweated it out of
themselves. The cholera seemed to have exhausted itself. There were
three other cases, it is true, but they were mild, and none died. In
their fright the boys would have chucked their friends overboard as soon
as they were taken sick, but I promised the head-man to shoot him most
punctually if any one went over the side who was not a pukka corpse, and
if niggers were addicted to gratitude (which they are not), there are
gentlemen now living on the Kroos coast who might remember me
favourably. For we did get in. A B. and A. boat picked us up three weary
days later, and towed us at the end of an extremely long hawser into the
very place to which I wanted to go.
Of course Fernando Po, being Spanish, kept us very much at arm's length;
and we did a thirty days' most rigid quarantine, which made (after the
last case had recovered) a matter of forty days in all. But we had no
more deaths, and the bishop pulled up into fine form. He was not a man
that I could ever bring myself to like, and as Tordoff was for the most
part sullen and unwishful for talk, the time that we swung to our anchor
off Port Clarence was not exhilarating.
Still it was pleasant to think that one was alive, and to realise that
one had got respectably out of a very tight corner--yes, one of the
tightest. The tramp's two boats never turned up again. I suppose they
carried cholera away with them, and drifted about in the belt of
equatorial calms, full of sun-dried corpses, till some tornado came and
swamped them. So that we three were the only Europeans left out of
thirty-four, and of the two hundred and thirty negroes who left Banana
in the Congo, only seventy-four came to Fernando Po. It was a tolerable
thinning out, but when it came to climbing the peak, that made up for
all which had gone before. Indeed it is a wonderful mountain.
I saw Tordoff again just as I was going away from the island, and tried
to put it to him delicately that I was not badly off, and would like to
give him a lift if the thing could be managed.
"No, Mr. Calvert," he said, "thanks. I prefer to go to the devil my own
gait. I don't suppose you'd ever know who I am; but if anybody describes
me and asks, just say you haven't seen me."
[Illustration: "'THERE ISN'T A REDDER FOOL THAN ME IN BOTH ATLANTICS.'"]
And that is the last I have seen or heard of him. It is extraordinary
how one drifts away from men. But, on the other hand, I should not be in
the least surprised at stumbling across Tordoff again, in purple and
fine linen for choice on the next occasion.
[Illustration]