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A MASTER ... OF FORTUNE
Being Further Adventures of Captain Kettle
BY
CUTCLIFFE HYNE
Author of "Captain Kettle," "The Stronger Hand," "The Lost
Continent," etc.
ILLUSTRATED BY STANLEY L. WOOD
1898
[Illustration: ATTIRED IN HIGH RUBBER THIGH BOOTS AND LEATHER-BOUND
BLACK OILSKINS. Frontispiece.]
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
IN QUARANTINE.
CHAPTER II.
THE LITTLE WOODEN GOD WITH THE EYES.
CHAPTER III.
A QUICK WAY WITH REBELS.
CHAPTER IV.
THE NEW REPUBLIC.
CHAPTER V.
THE LOOTING OF THE "INDIAN SHERIFF".
CHAPTER VI.
THE WIRE-MILKERS.
CHAPTER VII.
THE DERELICT.
CHAPTER VIII.
To CAPTURE AN HEIRESS.
CHAPTER IX.
A MATTER OF JUSTICE.
CHAPTER X.
DAGO DIVERS.
CHAPTER XI.
THE DEAR INSURED.
CHAPTER XII.
THE FIRE AND THE FARM.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Attired in high rubber thigh boots and leather-bound black oilskins
(Frontispiece).
He came and stood with one foot on Kettle's breast in the attitude of a
conqueror.
The little army could only march in single file.
"You insolent little blackguard, you dare to speak to me like that!"
He picked up the man and sent him after the knife.
"I'm a British subject".
Out of the middle of these spectators jumped the mild, delicate
Hamilton.
Strangers came up and wrung Kettle's unwilling hand.
Dedication
TO CAPTAIN OWEN KETTLE
My dear Kettle,--
With some considerable trepidation, I venture to offer you here the
dedication of your unauthorized biography. You will read these memoirs,
I know, and it is my pious hope that you do not fit the cap on yourself
as their hero. Of course I have sent you along your cruises under the
decent disguise of a purser's name, and I trust that if you do recognize
yourself, you will appreciate this nice feeling on my part. Believe me,
it was not entirely caused by personal fear of that practical form which
I am sure your displeasure would take if you caught any one putting you
into print. Even a working novelist has his humane moments; and besides
if I made you more recognizable, there might be a more dangerous broth
stirred up, with an ugly international flavor. Would it be indiscreet to
bring one sweltering day in Bahia to your memory, where you made play
with a German (or was he a Scandinavian?) and a hundredweight drum of
good white lead? or might one hint at that little affair which made
Odessa bad for your health, and indeed compelled you to keep away from
Black Sea ports entirely for several years? I trust, then, that if you
do detect my sin in making myself without leave or license your personal
historian, you will be induced for the sake of your present
respectability to give no sign of a ruffled temper, but recognize me as
part of the cross you are appointed to bear, and incidentally remember
my forbearance in keeping so much really splendid material (from my
point of view) in snug retirement up my sleeve.
Finally, let me remind you that I made no promises not to publish, and
that you did. Not only were you going to endow the world with a book of
poems, but I was to have a free copy. This has not yet come; and if, for
an excuse, you have published no secular verse, I am quite willing to
commute for a copy of the Book of Hymns, provided it is suitably
inscribed.
C.J.C.H.
OAK VALE, BRADFORD,
June 27, 1899.
CHAPTER I
IN QUARANTINE
"The pay is small enough," said Captain Kettle, staring at the blue
paper. "It's a bit hard for a man of my age and experience to come down
to a job like piloting, on eight pound a month and my grub."
"All right, Capt'n," replied the agent. "You needn't tell me what I know
already. The pay's miserable, the climate's vile, and the bosses are
beasts. And yet we have more applicants for these berths on the Congo
than there are vacancies for. And f'why is it, Capt'n? Because there's
no questions asked. The Congo people want men who can handle steamers.
Their own bloomin' Belgians aren't worth a cent for that, and so they
have to get Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, English, Eytalians, or any one
else that's capable. They prefer to give small pay, and are willing to
take the men that for various reasons can't get better jobs elsewhere.
Guess you'll know the crowd I mean?"
"Thoroughly, sir," said Kettle, with a sigh. "There are a very large
number of us. But we're not all unfortunate through our own fault."
"No, I know," said the agent. "Rascally owners, unsympathetic Board of
Trade, master's certificate suspended quite unjustly, and all that--"
The agent looked at his watch. "Well, Capt'n, now, about this berth? Are
you going to take it?"
"I've no other choice."
"Right," said the agent, and pulled a printed form on to the desk before
him, and made a couple of entries. "Let's see--er--is there a
Mrs. Kettle?"
"Married," said the little sailor; "three children."
The agent filled these details on to the form. "Just as well to put it
down," he commented as he wrote. "I'm told the Congo Free State has some
fancy new pension scheme on foot for widdys and kids, though I expect
it'll come to nothing, as usual. They're a pretty unsatisfactory lot all
round out there. Still you may as well have your chance of what plums
are going. Yer age, Capt'n?"
"Thirty-eight."
"And--er--previous employment? Well, I suppose we had better leave that
blank as usual. They never really expect it to be filled in, or they
wouldn't offer such wretchedly small pay and commission. You've got your
master's ticket to show, and that's about all they want."
"There's my wife's address, sir. I'd like my half-pay sent to her."
"She shall have it direct from Brussels, skipper, so long as you are
alive--I mean, so long as you remain in the Congo Service."
Captain Kettle sighed again. "Shall I have to wait long before this
appointment is confirmed?"
"Why, no," said the agent. "There's a boat sailing for the Coast
to-morrow, and I can give you an order for a passage by her. Of course
my recommendation has to go to Brussels to be ratified, but that's only
a matter of form. They never refuse anybody that offers. They call the
Government 'Leopold and Co.' down there on the Congo. You'll understand
more about it when you're on the spot.
"I'm sorry for ye, Capt'n, but after what you told me, I'm afraid it's
the only berth I can shove you into. However, don't let me frighten ye.
Take care of yourself, don't do too much work, and you may pull through
all right. Here's the order for the passage down Coast by the Liverpool
boat. And now I must ask you to excuse me. I've another client waiting."
* * * * *
In this manner, then, Captain Owen Kettle found himself, after many
years of weary knocking about the seas, enlisted into a regular
Government service; and although this Government, for various reasons,
happened to be one of the most unsatisfactory in all the wide, wide
world, he thrust this item resolutely behind him, and swore to himself
that if diligence and crew-driving could bring it about, he would rise
in that service till he became one of the most notable men in Africa.
"What I want is a competence for the missus and kids," he kept on
repeating to himself, "and the way to finger that competence is to get
power." He never owned to himself that this thirst for power was one of
the greatest curses of his life; and it did not occur to him that his
lust for authority, and his ruthless use of it when it came in his way,
were the main things which accounted for his want of success in life.
Captain Kettle's voyage down to the Congo on the British and African
S.S. _M'poso_ gave time for the groundwork of Coast language and Coast
thought (which are like unto nothing else on this planet) to soak into
his system. The steamer progressed slowly. She went up rivers protected
by dangerous bars; she anchored in roadsteads, off forts, and straggling
towns; she lay-to off solitary whitewashed factories, which only see a
steamer twice a year, and brought off little doles of cargo in her
surf-boats and put on the beaches rubbishy Manchester and Brummagem
trade goods for native consumption; and the talk in her was that queer
jargon with the polyglot vocabulary in which commerce is transacted all
the way along the sickly West African seaboard, from the Goree to St.
Paul de Loanda.
Every white man of the _M'poso's_ crew traded on his own private
account, and Kettle was initiated into the mysteries of the unofficial
retail store in the forecastle, of whose existence Captain Image, the
commander, and Mr. Balgarnie, the purser, professed a blank and
child-like ignorance.
Kettle had come across many types of sea-trader in his time, but Captain
Image and Mr. Balgarnie were new to him. But then most of his
surroundings were new. Especially was the Congo Free State an
organization which was quite strange to him. When he landed at Banana,
Captain Nilssen, pilot of the Lower Congo and Captain of the Port of
Banana, gave him advice on the subject in language which was plain and
unfettered.
"They are a lot of swine, these Belgians," said Captain Nilssen, from
his seat in the Madeira chair under the veranda of the pilotage, "and
there's mighty little to be got out of them. Here am I, with a wife in
Kjobnhavn and another in Baltimore, and I haven't been able to get away
to see either of them for five blessed years. And mark you, I'm a man
with luck, as luck goes in this hole. I've been in the lower river pilot
service all the time, and got the best pay, and the lightest jobs.
There's not another captain in the Congo can say as much. Some day or
other they put a steamboat on the ground, and then they're kicked out
from the pilot service, and away they're off one-time to the upper river
above the falls, to run a launch, and help at the rubber palaver, and
get shot at, and collect niggers' ears, and forget what champagne and
white man's chop taste like."
"You've been luckier?"
"Some. I've libbed for Lower Congo all my time; had a home in the
pilotage here; and got a dash of a case of champagne, or an escribello,
or at least a joint of fresh meat out of the refrigerator from every
steamboat I took either up or down."
"But then you speak languages?" said Kettle.
"Seven," said Captain Nilssen; "and use just one, and that's English.
Shows what a fat lot of influence this État du Congo has got. Why, you
have to give orders even to your boat-boys in Coast English if you want
to be understood. French has no sort of show with the niggers."
Now white men are expensive to import to the Congo Free State, and are
apt to die with suddenness soon after their arrival, and so the State
(which is in a chronic condition of hard-up) does not fritter their
services unnecessarily. It sets them to work at once so as to get the
utmost possible value out of them whilst they remain alive and in
the country.
A steamer came in within a dozen hours of Kettle's first stepping
ashore, and signalled for a pilot to Boma. Nilssen was next in rotation
for duty, and went off in his boat to board her, and he took with him
Captain Owen Kettle to impart to him the mysteries of the great river's
navigation.
The boat-boys sang a song explanatory of their notion of the new pilot's
personality as they caught at the paddles, but as the song was in Fiote,
even Nilssen could only catch up a phrase here and there, just enough to
gather the drift. He did not translate, however. He had taken his new
comrade's measure pretty accurately, and judged that he was not a man
who would accept criticism from a negro. So having an appetite for peace
himself, he allowed the custom of the country to go on undisturbed.
The steamer was outside, leaking steam at an anchorage, and sending out
dazzling heliograms every time she rolled her bleached awnings to the
sun. The pilot's boat, with her crew of savages, paddled towards her,
down channels between the mangrove-planted islands. The water spurned up
by the paddle blades was the color of beer, and the smell of it was
puzzlingly familiar.
"Good old smell," said Nilssen, "isn't it? I see you snuffling. Trying
to guess where you met it before, eh? We all do that when we first come.
What about crushed marigolds, eh?"
"Crushed marigolds it is."
"Guess you'll get to know it better before you're through with your
service here. Well, here we are alongside."
The steamer was a Portuguese, officered by Portuguese, and manned by
Krooboys, and the smell of her drowned even the marigold scent of the
river. Her dusky skipper exuded perspiration and affability, but he was
in a great hurry to get on with his voyage. The forecastle windlass
clacked as the pilot boat drew into sight, heaving the anchor out of the
river floor; the engines were restarted so soon as ever the boat hooked
on at the foot of the Jacob's ladder; and the vessel was under a full
head of steam again by the time the two white men had stepped on to her
oily deck.
"When you catch a Portuguese in a hurry like this," said Nilssen to
Kettle as they made their way to the awninged bridge, "it means there's
something wrong. I don't suppose we shall be told, but keep your
eyes open."
However, there was no reason for prying. Captain Rabeira was quite open
about his desire for haste. "I got _baccalhao_ and passenger boys for a
cargo, an' dose don' keep," said he.
"We smelt the fish all the way from Banana," said Nilssen. "Guess you
ought to call it stinking fish, not dried fish, Captain. And we can see
your nigger passengers. They seem worried. Are you losing 'em much?"
"I done funeral palaver for eight between Loanda an' here, an' dem was a
dead loss-a. I don' only get paid for dem dat lib for beach at Boma.
Dere was a fire-bar made fast to the leg of each for sinker, an' dem was
my dead loss-a too. I don' get paid for fire-bars given to _gastados_--"
His English failed him. He shrugged his shoulders, and said "Sabbey?"
"Sabbey plenty," said Nilssen. "Just get me a leadsman to work, Captain.
If you're in a hurry, I'll skim the banks as close as I dare."
Rabeira called away a hand to heave the lead, and sent a steward for a
bottle of wine and glasses. He even offered camp stools, which,
naturally, the pilots did not use. In fact, he brimmed with affableness
and hospitality.
From the first moment of his stepping on to the bridge, Kettle began to
learn the details of his new craft. As each sandbar showed up beneath
the yellow ripples, as each new point of the forest-clad banks opened
out, Nilssen gave him courses and cross bearings, dazing enough to the
unprofessional ear, but easily stored in a trained seaman's brain. He
discoursed in easy slang of the cut-offs, the currents, the
sludge-shallows, the floods, and the other vagaries of the great river's
course, and punctuated his discourse with draughts of Rabeira's wine,
and comments on the tangled mass of black humanity under the
forecastle-head awning.
"There's something wrong with those passenger boys," he kept on
repeating. And another time: "Guess those niggers yonder are half mad
with funk about something."
But Rabeira was always quick to reassure him. "Now dey lib for Congo,
dey not like the idea of soldier-palaver. Dere was nothing more the
matter with them but leetle sickness."
"Oh! it's recruits for the State Army you're bringing, is it?" asked
Kettle.
"If you please," said Rabeira cheerfully. "Slaves is what you English
would call dem. Laborers is what dey call demselves."
Nilssen looked anxiously at his new assistant. Would he have any foolish
English sentiment against slavery, and make a fuss? Nilssen, being a man
of peace, sincerely hoped not. But as it was, Captain Kettle preserved a
grim silence. He had met the low-caste African negro before, and knew
that it required a certain amount of coercion to extract work from him.
But he did notice that all the Portuguese on board were armed like
pirates, and were constantly on the _qui vive_, and judged that there
was a species of coercion on this vessel which would stick at
very little.
The reaches of the great beer-colored river opened out before them one
after another in endless vistas, and at rare places the white roofs of a
factory showed amongst the unwholesome tropical greenery of the banks.
Nilssen gave names to these, spoke of their inhabitants as friends, and
told of the amount of trade in palm-oil and kernels which each could be
depended on to yield up as cargo to the ever-greedy steamers. But the
attention of neither of the pilots was concentrated on piloting. The
unrest on the forecastle-head was too obvious to be overlooked.
Once, when the cackle of negro voices seemed to point to an immediate
outbreak, Rabeira gave an order, and presently a couple of cubical green
boxes were taken forward by the ship's Krooboys, broken up, and the
square bottles which they contained, distributed to greedy fingers.
"Dashing 'em gin," said Nilssen, looking serious. "Guess a Portugee's in
a bad funk before he dashes gin at four francs a dozen to common
passenger boys. I've a blame' good mind to put this vessel on the
ground--by accident--and go off in the gig for assistance, and bring
back a State launch."
"Better not risk your ticket," said Kettle. "If there's a row, I'm a bit
useful in handling that sort of cattle myself."
Nilssen eyed wistfully a swirl of the yellow water which hid a sandbar,
and, with a sigh, gave the quartermaster a course which cleared it.
"Guess I don't like ructions myself," he said. "Hullo, what's up now?
There are two of the passenger boys getting pushed off the
forecastle-head by their own friends on to the main deck."
"They look a mighty sick couple," said Kettle, "and their friends seem
very frightened. If this ship doesn't carry a doctor, it would be a good
thing if the old man were to start in and deal out some drugs."
It seemed that Rabeira was of the same opinion. He went down to the main
deck, and there, under the scorching tropical sunshine, interviewed the
two sick negroes in person, and afterwards administered to each of them
a draught from a blue glass bottle. Then he came up, smiling and
hospitable and perspiring, on to the bridge, and invited the pilots to
go below and dine. "Chop lib for cabin," said he; "palm-oil chop,
plenty-too-much-good. You lib for below and chop. I take dem ship myself
up dis next reach."
"Well, it is plain, deep water," said Nilssen, "and I guess you sabbey
how to keep in the middle as well as I do. Come along, Kettle."
The pair of them went below to the baking cabin and dined off a savory
orange-colored stew, and washed it down with fiery red wine, and dodged
the swarming, crawling cockroaches. The noise of angry negro voices came
to them between whiles through the hot air, like the distant chatter
of apes.
The Dane was obviously ill at ease and frightened; the Englishman,
though feeling a contempt for his companion, was very much on the alert
himself, and prepared for emergencies. There was that mysterious
something in the atmosphere which would have bidden the dullest of
mortals prepare for danger.
Up they came on deck again, and on to the bridge. Rabeira himself was
there in charge, dark, smiling, affable as ever.
Nilssen looked sharply down at the main deck below. "Hullo," said he,
"those two niggers gone already? You haven't shifted them down below,
I suppose?"
The Portuguese Captain shrugged his shoulders. "No," he said, "it was
bad sickness, an' dey died an' gone over the side. I lose by their
passage. I lose also the two fire-bar which I give for funeral palaver.
Ver' disappointing."
"Sudden kind of sickness," said Nilssen.
"Dis sickness is. It make a man lib for die in one minute, clock time.
But it don' matter to you pilot, does it? You lib for below--off
duty--dis las' half hour. You see nothing, you sabby nothing. I
don'-want no trouble at Boma with doctor palaver. I make it all right
for you after. Sabby?"
"Oh, I tumble to what you're driving at, but I was just thinking out how
it works. However, you're captain of this ship, and if you choose not to
log down a couple of deaths, I suppose it's your palaver. Anyway, I
don't want to cause no ill-will, and if you think it's worth a dash, I
don't see why I shouldn't earn it. It's little enough we pick up else in
this service, and I've got a wife at home in Liverpool who has to be
thought about."
Kettle drew a deep breath. "It seems to me," he said, looking very hard
at the Portuguese, "that those men died a bit too sudden. Are you sure
they were _pukka_ dead when you put them over the side?"
"Oh, yes," said Rabeira smilingly, "an' dey made no objection. It was
best dey should go over quick. Bodies do not keep in this heat. An'
pilot, I do you square-a, same as with Nilssen. You shall have your dash
when doctor-palaver set."
"No," said Kettle, "you may keep it in your own trousers, Captain. Money
that you've fingered, is a bit too dirty for me to touch."
"All right," said Rabeira with a genial shrug, "so much cheaper for me.
But do not talk on the beach, dere's good boy, or you make
trouble-palaver for me."
"I'll shut my head if you stop at this," said Kettle, "but if you murder
any more of those poor devils, I'll see you sent to join them, if
there's enough law in this State to rig a gallows."
The Portuguese did not get angry. On the contrary, he seemed rather
pleased at getting what he wanted without having to bribe for it, and
ordered up fresh glasses and another bottle of wine for the pilots'
delectation. But this remained untouched. Kettle would not drink
himself, and Nilssen (who wished to be at peace with both sides) did not
wish to under the circumstances.
To tell the truth, the Dane was beginning to get rather scared of his
grim-visaged little companion; and so, to prevent further recurrence to
unpleasant topics, he plunged once more into the detail of professional
matters. Here was a grassy swamp that was a deep water channel the year
before last; there was a fair-way in the process of silting up; there
was a mud-bar with twenty-four feet, but steamers drawing twenty-seven
feet could scrape over, as the mud was soft. The current round that bend
raced at a good eleven knots. That bank below the palm clump was where
an Italian pilot stuck the _M'poso_ for a month, and got sent to upper
Congo (where he was eaten by some rebellious troops) as a recompense for
his blunder.
Almost every curve of the river was remembered by its tragedy, and had
they only known it, the steamer which carried them for their observation
had hatching within her the germs of a very worthy addition to
the series.
More trouble cackled out from the forecastle-head, and more of the green
gin cases were handed up to quell it. The angry cries gradually changed
to empty boisterous laughter, as the raw potato spirit soaked home; and
the sullen, snarling faces melted into grotesque, laughing masks; but
withal the carnival was somewhat grisly.
It was clear that more than one was writhing with the pangs of sickness.
It was clear also that none of these (having in mind the physicking and
fate of their predecessors) dared give way, but with a miserable gaiety
danced, and drank, and guffawed with the best. Two, squatting on the
deck, played _tom-tom_ on upturned tin pans; another jingled two pieces
of rusty iron as accompaniment; and all who in that crowded space could
find foot room, danced _shuff-shuff-shuffle_ with absurd and
aimless gestures.
The fort at Chingka drew in sight, with a B. and A. boat landing
concrete bags at the end of its wharf; and on beyond, the sparse roofs
of the capital of the Free State blistered and buckled under the sun.
The steamer, with hooting siren, ran up her gaudy ensign, and came to an
anchor in the stream twenty fathoms off the State wharf. A yellow-faced
Belgian, with white sun helmet and white umbrella, presently came off in
the doctor's boat, and announced himself as the health officer of the
port, and put the usual questions.
Rabeira lied pleasantly and glibly. Sickness he owned to, but when on
the word the doctor hurriedly made his boat-boys pull clear, he laughed
and assured him that the sickness was nothing more than a little fever,
such as any one might suffer from in the morning, and be out, cured, and
making merry again before nightfall.
That kind of fever is known in the Congo, and the doctor was reassured,
and bade his boat-boys pull up again. Yet because of the evil liver
within him, his temper was short, and his questioning acid. But Captain
Rabeira was stiff and unruffled and wily as ever, and handed in his
papers and answered questions, and swore to anything that was asked, as
though care and he were divorced forever.
Kettle watched the scene with a drawn, moist face. He did not know what
to do for the best. It seemed to him quite certain that this oily,
smiling scoundrel, whom he had more than half suspected of a
particularly callous and brutal double murder, would be given _pratique_
for his ship, and be able to make his profits unrestrained. The
shipmaster's _esprit de corps_ prevented him from interfering
personally, but he very much desired that the heavens would
fall--somehow or other--so that justice might be done.
A _dens ex machina_ came to fill his wishes. The barter of words and the
conning of documents had gone on; the doctor's doubts were on the point
of being lulled for good; and in a matter of another ten seconds
_pratique_ would have been given. But from the forecastle-head there
came a yell, a chatter of barbaric voices, a scuffle and a scream; a
gray-black figure mounted the rail, and poised there a moment, an
offence to the sunlight, and then, falling convulsively downwards, hit
the yellow water with a smack and a spatter of spray, and sank
from sight.
A couple of seconds later the creature reappeared, swimming frenziedly,
as a dog swims, and by a swirl of the current (before anybody quite knew
what was happening) was swept down against the doctor's boat, and
gripped ten bony fingers upon the gunwhale and lifted towards her people
a face and shoulders eloquent of a horrible disorder.
Instantly there was an alarm, and a sudden panic. "_Sacre nom d'un
pipe_," rapped out the Belgian doctor; "_variole!_"
"Small-pox lib," whimpered his boat-boys, and before their master could
interfere, beat at the delirious wretch with their oars. He hung on
tenaciously, enduring a perfect avalanche of blows. But mere flesh and
bone had to wither under that onslaught, and at last, by sheer weight of
battering, he was driven from his hold, and the beer-colored river
covered him then and for always.
After that, there was no further doubt of the next move. The
yellow-faced doctor sank back exhausted in the stern sheets of the gig,
and gave out sentence in gasps. The ship was declared unclean until
further notice; she was ordered to take up a berth a mile away against
the opposite bank of the river till she was cleared of infection; she
was commanded to proceed there at once, to anchor, and then to blow off
all her steam.
The doctor's tortured liver prompted him, and he spoke with spite. He
called Rabeira every vile name which came to his mind, and wound up his
harangue by rowing off to Chingka to make sure that the guns of the fort
should back up his commands.
The Portuguese captain was daunted then; there is no doubt about that.
He had known of this outbreak of small-pox for two days, had stifled his
qualms, and had taken his own peculiar methods of keeping the disease
hidden, and securing money profit for his ship. He had even gone so far
as to carry a smile on his dark, oily face, and a jest on his tongue.
But this prospect of being shut up with the disorder till it had run its
course inside the walls of the ship, and no more victims were to be
claimed, was too much for his nerve. He fled like some frightened animal
to his room, and deliberately set about guzzling a surfeit of
neat spirit.
Nilssen, from the bridge, fearful for his credit with the State, his
employer, roared out orders, but nobody attended to them. Mates,
quartermasters, Krooboys, had all gone aft so as to be as far as
possible from the smitten area; and in the end it was Kettle who went to
the forecastle-head, and with his own hands let steam into the windlass
and got the anchor. He stayed at his place. An engineer and fireman were
still below, and when Nilssen telegraphed down, they put her under weigh
again, and the older pilot with his own hands steered her across to the
quarantine berth. Then Kettle let go the anchor again, paid out and
stoppered the cable, and once more came aft; and from that moment the
new _regime_ of the steamer may be said to have commenced.
In primitive communities, from time immemorial, the strongest man has
become chieftain through sheer natural selection. Societies which have
been upheaved to their roots by anarchy, panic, or any of these more
perfervid emotions, revert to the primitive state. On this Portuguese
ship, authority was smashed into the smallest atoms, and every man
became a savage and was in danger at the hands of his fellow savage.
Rabeira had drunk himself into a stupor before the boilers had roared
themselves empty through the escapes. The two mates and the engineers
cowered in their rooms as though the doors were a barrier against the
small-pox germs. The Krooboys broached cargo and strewed the decks with
their half-naked bodies, drunk on gin, amid a litter of smashed
green cases.
Meals ceased. The Portuguese cook and steward dropped their collective
duties from the first alarm; the Kroo cook left the rice steamer because
"steam no more lib"; and any one who felt hunger or thirst on board,
foraged for himself, or went without satisfying his wants. Nobody helped
the sick, or chided the drunken. Each man lived for himself alone--or
died, as the mood seized him.
Nilssen took up his quarters at one end of the bridge, frightened, but
apathetic. With awnings he made himself a little canvas house, airy, but
sufficient to keep off the dews of night. When he spoke, it was usually
to picture the desolation of one or other of the Mrs. Nilssens on
finding herself a widow. As he said himself, he was a man of very
domesticated notions. He had no sympathy with Kettle's constantly
repeated theory that discipline ought to be restored.
"Guess it's the captain's palaver," he would say. "If the old man likes
his ship turned into a bear garden, 'tisn't our grub they're wasting, or
our cargo they've started in to broach. Anyway, what can we do? You and
I are only on board here as pilots. I wish the ship was in somewhere
hotter than Africa, before I'd ever seen her."
"So do I," said Kettle. "But being here, it makes me ill to see the way
she's allowed to rot, and those poor beasts of niggers are left to die
just as they please. Four more of them have either jumped overboard, or
been put there by their friends. The dirt of the place is awful. They're
spreading small-pox poison all over the ship. Nothing is ever cleaned."
"There's dysentery started, too."
"Very well," said Kettle, "then that settles it. We shall have cholera
next, if we let dirt breed any more. I'm going to start in and make
things ship-shape again."
"For why?"
"We'll say I'm frightened of them as they are at present, if you like.
Will you chip in and bear a hand? You're frightened, too."
"Oh, I'm that, and no error about it. But you don't catch me
interfering. I'm content to sit here and take my risks as they come,
because I can't help myself. But I go no further. If you start knocking
about this ship's company they'll complain ashore, and then where'll you
be? The Congo Free State don't like pilots who do more than they're
paid for."
"Very well," said Kettle, "I'll start in and take my risks, and you can
look on and umpire." He walked deliberately down off the bridge, went to
where the mate was dozing against a skylight on the quarter deck, and
stirred him into wakefulness with his foot.
"Well?" said the man.
"Turn the hands to, and clean ship."
"What!"
"You hear me."
The mate inquired, with abundant verbal garnishings, by what right
Kettle gave the order.
"Because I'm a better man than you. Because I'm best man on board. Do
you want proof?"
Apparently the mate did. He whipped out a knife, but found it suddenly
knocked out of his hand, and sent skimming like a silver flying fish far
over the gleaming river. He followed up the attack with an assault from
both hands and feet, but soon discovered that he had to deal with an
artist. He gathered himself up at the end of half a minute's interview,
glared from two half-shut eyes, wiped the blood from his mouth, and
inquired what Kettle wanted.
"You heard my order. Carry it out."
The man nodded, and went away sullenly muttering that his time would
come.
"If you borrow another knife," said Kettle cheerfully, "and try any more
of your games, I'll shoot you like a crow, and thank you for the chance.
You'll go forrard and clean the forecastle-head and the fore main deck.
Be gentle with those sick! Second Mate?"
"Si, Señor."
"Get a crew together and clean her up aft here. Do you want any rousing
along?"
Apparently the second mate did not. He had seen enough of Captain
Kettle's method already to quite appreciate its efficacy. The Krooboys,
with the custom of servitude strong on them, soon fell-to when once they
were started. The thump of holy-stones went up into the baking air, and
grimy water began to dribble from the scuppers.
With the chief engineer Kettle had another scuffle. But he, too, was
eased of the knife at the back of his belt, thumped into submissiveness,
and sent with firemen and trimmers to wash paint in the stewy
engine-room below, and clean up the rusted iron work. And then those of
the passenger boys who were not sick, were turned-to also.
With Captain Rabeira, Kettle did not interfere. The man stayed in his
own room for the present, undisturbed and undisturbing. But the rest of
the ship's complement were kept steadily to their employment.
They did not like it, but they thought it best to submit. Away back from
time unnumbered, the African peoples have known only fear as the
governing power, and, from long acclimatization, the Portuguese might
almost count as African. This man of a superior race came and set
himself up in authority over them, in defiance of all precedent, law,
everything; and they submitted with dull indifference. The sweets of
freedom are not always appreciated by those who have known the easy
luxury of being slaves.
The plague was visibly stayed from almost the very first day that Kettle
took over charge. The sick recovered or died; the sound sickened no
more; it seemed as though the disease microbes on board the ship
were glutted.
A mile away, at the other side of the beer-colored river, the rare
houses of Boma sprawled amongst the low burnt-up hills, and every day
the doctor with his bad liver came across in his boat under the blinding
sunshine to within shouting distance, and put a few weary questions.
The formalities were slack enough. Nilssen usually made the necessary
replies (as he liked to keep himself in the doctor's good books), and
then the boat would row away.
Nilssen still remained gently non-interferent. He was paid to be a pilot
by the État Indépendant du Congo--so he said--and he was not going to
risk a chance of trouble, and no possibility of profit, by meddling with
matters beyond his own sphere. Especially did he decline to be co-sharer
in Kettle's scheme for dealing out justice to Captain Rabeira.
"It is not your palaver," he said, "or mine. If you want to stir up
trouble, tell the State authorities when you get ashore. That won't do
much good either. They don't value niggers at much out here."
"Nor do I," said Kettle. "There's nothing foolish with me about niggers.
But there's a limit to everything, and this snuff-colored Dago goes too
far. He's got to be squared with, and I'm going to do it."
"Guess it's your palaver. I've told you what the risks are."
"And I'm going to take them," said Kettle grimly. "You may watch me
handle the risks now with your own eyes, if you wish."
He went down off the bridge, walked along the clean decks, and came to
where a poor wretch lay in the last stage of small-pox collapse. He
examined the man carefully. "My friend," he said at last, "you've not
got long for this world, anyway, and I want to borrow your last moments.
I suppose you won't like to shift, but it's in a good cause, and anyway
you can't object."
He stooped and lifted the loathsome bundle in his arms, and then, in
spite of a cry of expostulation from Nilssen, walked off with his burden
to Rabeira's room.
The Portuguese captain was in his bunk, trying to sleep. He was sober
for the first time for many days, and, in consequence, feeling not a
little ill.
Kettle deposited his charge with carefulness on the littered settee, and
Rabeira started up with a wild scream of fright and a babble of oaths.
Kettle shut and locked the door.
"Now look here," he said, "you've earned more than you'll ever get paid
in this life, and there's a tolerably heavy bill against you for the
next. It looks to me as if it would be a good thing if you went off
there to settle up the account right now. But I'm not going to take upon
myself to be your hangman. I'm just going to give you a chance of
pegging out, and I sincerely hope you'll take it. I've brought our
friend here to be your room mate for the evening. It's just about
nightfall now, and you've got to stay with him till daybreak."
"You coward!" hissed the man. "You coward! You coward!" he screamed.
"Think so?" said Kettle gravely. "Then if that's your idea, I'll stay
here in the room, too, and take my risks. God's seen the game, and I'll
guess He'll hand over the beans fairly."
Perspiration stood in beads on all their faces. The room, the one
unclean room of the ship, was full of breathless heat, and stale with
the lees of drink. Kettle, in his spruce-white drill clothes, stood out
against the squalor and the disorder, as a mirror might upon a
coal-heap.
The Portuguese captain, with nerves smashed by his spell of debauch,
played a score of parts. First he was aggressive, asserting his rights
as a man and the ship's master, and demanding the key of the door. Then
he was warlike, till his frenzied attack earned him such a hiding that
he was glad enough to crawl back on to the mattress of his bunk. Then he
was beseeching. And then he began to be troubled with zoological
hauntings, which occupied him till the baking air cooled with the
approach of the dawn.
The smitten negro on the settee gave now and then a moan, but for the
most part did his dying with quietness. Had Kettle deliberately worked
for that purpose, he could not have done anything more calculated to
make the poor wretch's last moments happy.
"Oh, Massa!" he kept on whispering, "too-much-fine room. You plenty-much
good for let me lib for die heah." And then he would relapse into
barbaric chatterings more native to his taste, and fitting to his
condition.
Captain Kettle played his parts as nurse and warder with grave
attention. He sat perspiring in his shirt sleeves, writing at the table
whenever for a moment or two he had a spell of rest; and his screed grew
rapidly. He was making verse, and it was under the stress of severe
circumstances like these that his Muse served him best.
The fetid air of the room throbbed with heat; the glow from the candle
lamp was a mere yellow flicker; and the Portuguese, who cowered with
twitching fingers in the bunk, was quite ready to murder him at the
slightest opening: it was not a combination of circumstances which would
have inspired many men.
Morning came, with a shiver and a chill, and with the first flicker of
dawn, the last spark of the negro's life went out. Kettle nodded to the
ghastly face as though it had been an old friend. "You seemed to like
being made use of," he said. "Well, daddy, I hope you have served your
turn. If your skipper hasn't got the plague in his system now, I shall
think God's forgotten this bit of Africa entirely."
He stood up, gathered his papers, slung the spruce white drill coat over
his arm, and unlocked the door. "Captain Rabeira," he said, "you have my
full permission to resume your occupation of going to the deuce your own
way." With which parting salutation, he went below to the steamer's
bathroom and took his morning tub.
Half an hour passed before he came to the deck again, and Nilssen met
him at the head of the companion-way with a queer look on his face.
"Well," he said, "you've done it."
"Done what?"
"Scared Rabeira over the side."
"How?"
"He came scampering on deck just now, yelling blue murder, and trying to
catch crawly things that weren't there. Guess he'd got jim-jams bad.
Then he took it into his head that a swim would be useful, and before
any one could stop him, he was over the side."
"Well?"
"He's over the side still," said the Dane drily. "He didn't come to the
surface. Guess a crocodile chopped him."
"There are plenty round."
"Naturally. We've been ground baiting pretty liberally these last few
weeks. Well, I guess we are about through with the business now. Not
nervous about yourself, eh?"
"No," said Kettle, and touched his cap. "God's been looking on at this
gamble, as I told Rabeira last night, and He dealt over the beans the
way they were earned."
"That's all right," said Nilssen cheerfully. "When a man keeps his
courage he don't get small-pox, you bet."
"Well," said Kettle, "I suppose we'll be fumigated and get a clean bill
in about ten days from now, and I'm sure I don't mind the bit of extra
rest. I've got a lot of stuff I want to write up. It's come in my head
lately, and I've had no time to get it down on paper. I shouldn't wonder
but what it makes a real stir some day when it's printed; it's real good
stuff. I wonder if that yellow-faced Belgian doctor will live to give us
_pratique_?"
"I never saw a man with such a liver on him."
"D'you know," said Kettle, "I'd like that doctor to hang on just for
another ten days and sign our bill. He's a surly brute, but I've got to
have quite a liking for him. He seems to have grown to be part of the
show, just like the crows, and the sun, and the marigold smell, and the
crocodiles."
"Oh," said Nilssen, "you're a blooming poet. Come, have a cocktail
before we chop."