THE NEW REPUBLIC
The fighting ended, and promptly both the invaders and the invaded
settled down to the new course of things without further exultation or
regret. An hour after it had happened, the capture of the village was
already regarded as ancient history, and the two white men had got a
long way on in their discussion on its ultimate fate.
"No," Captain Kettle was saying, "no being king for me, Doctor, thank
you. I've been offered a king's ticket once, and that sickened me of the
job for good and always. The world's evidently been going on too long to
start a new kingdom nowadays, and I'm too much of a conservative to try
and break the rule. No, a republic's the thing, and, as you say, I'm the
stronger man of the two of us. Doc, you may sign me on as President."
Dr. Clay turned away his face, and relieved his feelings with a grin.
But he very carefully concealed his merriment. He liked Kettle, liked
him vastly; but at the same time he was more than a little scared of
him, and he had a very accurate notion that the man who failed to take
him seriously about this new scheme, would come in contact with trouble.
The scheme was a big one; it purposed setting up a new state in the
heart of the État du Congo, on territory filched from that power; but
the little sailor was in deadly earnest over the project, and already
he had met with extraordinary luck in the initial stages. Central Africa
is a country where determined _coups de main_ can sometimes yield
surprising results.
The recent history of these two vagabond white men cannot be given in
this place with any web of detail. They had gone through their
apprenticeship amongst these African inlands as officers of the Congo
Free State; they had been divorced from that service with something of
suddenness; and a purist might have held that the severance of their
ties was complicated with something very near akin to piracy. I know
that they had been abominably oppressed; I know that Kettle chose
running away with his steamer to the alternative of handcuffs and
disgrace, and a possible hanging to follow; but there was no getting
over the fact that the stern-wheeler was Free State property, and that
these two had alienated it to their own uses.
The black crew of the launch and the black soldiers on board, some
seventy head all told, they had little trouble in dragooning into
obedience. The Central African native never troubles himself much about
niceties of loyalty, and as the sway of the Congo Free State (or "Buli
Matdi," as it is named by the woolly aboriginal), had been brutally
tyrannous, the change of allegiance had worried them little. Besides,
they had been in contact with Captain Kettle before, and knew him to be
that admirable thing, a Man, and worthy of being served; while Clay,
whom they also knew, amused them with his banjo, and held powerful
_ju-ju_ in the shape of drugs; and so they went blithely enough where
they were led or driven, and described themselves as soldiers or slaves,
whichever word happened to come handiest. The African of the interior
never worries his head about the terms of his service. So long as he has
plenty of food, and a master to do all the thinking for him, he is quite
content to work, or steal, or fight, or be killed, as that master sees
fit to direct.
The progress of the little stern-wheel steamer on her return journey up
the Haut Congo might also give rise to misapprehension here at home, if
it were described exactly as it happened. There are no ship's chandlers
in Central Africa, and it is the custom there, when you lack stores, to
go to a village on the bank and requisition anything that is available.
The Arab slave-traders who once held the country did this; the
prehistoric people before them founded the custom; and the Free State
authorities, their lineal descendants, have not seen fit to change the
policy. At least, they may have done so in theory at Brussels, but out
there, in practice, they have left this matter _in statu quo_.
There is a massive conservatism about the heart of Africa with which it
is dangerous to tamper. If you rob a man in that region, he merely
respects your superior power. If you offer him payments, he promptly
suspects you of weakness, and sets his clumsy mind at work to find the
method by which you may be robbed of whatever you have not voluntarily
surrendered.
"Of course," said Kettle, taking up the thread of his tale again, "it's
understood that we run this country for our own advantage first."
"What other object should white men have up-country in Africa?" said
Clay. "We don't come here merely for our health."
"But I've got a great notion of treating the people well besides. When
we have made a sufficient pile--and, mark you, it must be all in ivory,
as there's nothing else of value that can be easy enough handled--we
shall clear out for the Coast, one-time. And then we must realize on the
ivory, and then we can go home and live as Christians again." He stared
through the doorway of the hut at the aching sunshine beyond. "Oh, Lord!
Think of it, Doc--Home! England! Decent clothes! Regular attendance in
chapel on Sundays, and your soul well cared for and put into safe going
order again!"
"Oh, my soul doesn't bother me. But England! that's fine to think about,
old man, isn't it? England!" he repeated dreamily. "Yes, I suppose I
should have to change my name if I did go back. I don't know, though.
It'd have blown over by now, perhaps; things do blow over, and if I went
to a new part of the country I expect I could still stick to the old
name, and not be known from Adam. Yes, things do blow over with time,
and if you don't make too much stir when you go back. I should have to
keep pretty quiet; but I bet I'd have a good time for all that. Fancy
the luxury of having good Glenlivet in a cask again, with a tap half-way
up, after the beastly stuff one got on the coast, or, worse still, what
one gets up here--and that's no whiskey at all!"
"Well, you needn't worry about choosing your home drinks just now," said
Kettle. "'Palaver no set' here by a very long chalk yet, and till it is
you'll have to go sober, my lad, and keep a very clear head."
Clay came to earth again. "Sorry, Skipper," he said, "but you set me
off. 'Tisn't often I look across at either to-morrow or yesterday. As
you say, it's a very dry shop this, and so the sooner we get what we
want and quit, the sooner we shall hit on a good time again. And the
sooner we clear out, too, the less chance we have of those beastly
Belgians coming in here to meddle. You know we've had luck so far, and
they haven't interfered with us. But we can't expect that for always.
The Congo Free State's a trading corporation, with dividends to make for
the firm of Leopold and Co., in Brussels, and they don't like trade
rivals. What stealing can be done in the country, they prefer to do
themselves."
"When the time comes," said the little sailor grimly, "we shall be ready
for them, and if they interfere with me, I shall make the Congo Free
State people sit up. But in the mean while they are not here, and I
don't see that they need be expected. They can trace us up the Congo
from Leopoldville, if you like, by the villages we stopped at--one,
we'll say, every two hundred miles--but then we find this new river, and
where are we? The river's not charted; it's not known to any of the Free
State people, or I, being in their steamboat service, would have been
told of it; and the entrance is so well masked at its Congo end by
islands, that no one would guess it was there. The Congo's twenty miles
wide where our river comes in, and very shallow, and the
steamer-channel's right at the further bank. If they'd another
Englishman in their service up here, I'd not say; but don't you tell me
that the half-baked Dutchmen and Dagos who skipper their launches would
risk hunting out a new channel, and blunder on it that way."
"No," said Clay, "I'm with you there. But word travels amongst the
natives. You can't get over that."
"That's where the risk comes in. But I've done my best to make it
travel slow. I've got hold of that beast of a witch-doctor, who deserves
hanging anyway for all the poor wretches he's killed, and I've told him
that as soon as word slips out downriver of our being here, he'll get
shot, one-time. He's a man of influence, that witch-doctor, and I
shouldn't wonder but what he makes the natives keep their heads shut for
quite a long time."
"It may be professional prejudice, but I rather hope that local
practitioner gets his gruel somehow before we clear out." Clay shivered.
"He's a cruel devil. Remember the remains of those two poor sacrificed
wretches we found when we got here?"
Kettle shrugged his shoulders. "I know. But what could one do? Niggers
always are like that when they're left to play about alone--as these
here have been, I suppose, since Creation Day. We couldn't pin the
sacrifices on to the witch-doctor, or else, of course, we'd have strung
him up. We could only just give him an order for these customs to stop
one-time, and stand by to see it carried out. But we start the thing
from now, on fresh, sensible lines. We're going to have no foolery about
the nigger being as good as a white man. He isn't, and no man that ever
saw him where he grows ever thought so."
"Speaking scientifically," said Clay, "it has always struck me that a
nigger is an animal placed by the scheme of creation somewhere between a
monkey and a white man. You might bracket him, say, with a Portugee."
"About that," said Kettle; "and if you treat him as more, you make him
into a bad failure, whereas if he's left alone, he's a bit nasty and
cruel. Now I think, Doc, there's a middle course, and that's what I'm
going to try here whilst we're making our pile. We've grabbed four tidy
villages already, and that makes a good beginning for this new republic;
and when we've got things organized a bit more, and have a trifle of
time, we can grab some others. And, by James! Doc, there's a name for
you--the New Republic!"
"I seem to think it's been used in a book somewhere."
"The New Republic!" Kettle repeated relishingly. "It goes well. It's
certain to have been used before, but it's good enough to be used again.
Some day, perhaps, it'll have railways, and public-houses, and a postal
service, and some day it may even issue stamps of its own."
"With your mug in the middle!"
Captain Kettle reddened. "I don't see why not," he said stiffly. "I
started the show, and by James! whilst I'm running it, the New
Republic's got to hum; and when I'm gone, I shall be remembered as some
one out of the common. I'm a man, Doctor Clay, that's got a high sense
of duty. I should think it wrong to stay here sweating ivory out of
these people, if I didn't put something into them in return."
"Well, you do seem to have got a hold over them, and that's a fact, and
I guess you will be able to make them--" he broke off, and burst into a
cackle of laughter. "Oh, my Christian aunt, look there!"
A mob of natives were reverently approaching the hut, two of them
carrying skinny chickens. The witch-doctor led the advance. Kettle
guessed what was intended, and got up from his seat to interfere.
"Oh, look here, Skipper," Clay pleaded, "don't spoil the show. Let's do
the traveller for once, and observe the 'interesting native customs.'
You needn't be afraid; they're going to sacrifice the bigger hen to you,
right enough."
Captain Kettle allowed himself to be persuaded, and sat back again. The
mob of negroes came up to the doorway of the hut, and the witch-doctor,
with many prostrations to the little sailor, made a long speech. Then
the larger of the two fowls entered into the ceremony, and was slain
with a sword, and the witch-doctor, squatting on the ground, read
the omens.
Kettle accepted the homage with glum silence, evidently restraining
himself, but when Clay's turn came, and the smaller and scraggier of the
chickens yielded up life in his honor, he hitched up his feet, and
squatted cross-legged on the chair, and held up his hand palm outward,
after the manner of some grotesque Chinese idol. A sense of the absurd
was one of the many things which had hampered this disreputable doctor
all through his unlucky career.
The negroes, however, took it all in good part, and in time they
departed, well satisfied. But Kettle wore a gloomy face.
"Funny, wasn't it?" said Clay.
"I call it beastly," Kettle snapped. "This sort of thing's got to stop.
I'm not going to have my new Republic dirtied by shows like that."
"Well," said Clay flippantly, "if you will set up as a little tin god on
wheels, you must expect them to say their prayers to you."
"I didn't do anything of the kind. I merely stepped in and conquered
them."
"Put it as you please, old man. But there's no getting over it that
that's what they take you for."
"Then, by James! it comes to this: they shall be taught the real thing!"
"What, you'll import a missionary?"
"I shall wade in and teach them myself."
"Phew!" whistled Clay. "If you're going to start the New Jerusalem game
on the top of the New Republic, I should say you'll have your
hands full."
"Probably," said Kettle grimly; "but I am equal to that."
"And you'll not have much time left to see after ivory palaver."
"I shall go on collecting the ivory just the same. I shall combine
business with duty. And"--here he flushed somewhat--"I'm going to take
the bits of souls these niggers have got, and turn them into the
straight path."
Clay rubbed his bald head. "If you're set on it," said he, "you'll do
it; I quite agree with you there. But I should have thought you'd seen
enough of the nigger to know what a disastrous animal he is after some
of these missionaries have handled him."
"Yes," said Kettle; "but those were the wrong sort of missionary--wrong
sort of man to begin with; wrong sort of religion also."
And then, to Dr. Clay's amazement, his companion broke out into a
violent exposition of his own particular belief. It was the first time
he had ever heard Kettle open his lips on the subject of religion, and
the man's vehemence almost scared him. Throughout the time they had been
acquainted, he had taken him to be like all other lay white men on the
Congo, quite careless on the subject, and an abhorrer of missions and
all their output; and, lo! here was an enthusiast, with a violent creed
of his very own, and with ranting thunders to heave at all who differed
from him by so much as a hairs-breadth. Here was a devotee who suddenly,
across a great ocean of absence, remembered the small chapel in South
Shields, where during shore days he worshipped beside his wife and
children. Here was a prophet, jerked by circumstances into being,
trumpeting the tenets of an obscure sect with something very near to
inspiration.
He preached and preached on till the tropical day burned itself out, and
the velvety night came down, and with it the mists from the river. The
negroes of the village, with their heads wrapped up to keep off the
ghosts, shivered as they listened to "dem small whiteman make ju-ju"
across the clearing. Clay listened because he could not get away. He
knew the man well, yes, intimately; he was constantly dealing him out
unpalatable flippancies; but in this new, this exalted mood, he did not
care to do less than give attention.
The man seemed to have changed; his eyes were bright and feverish; his
face was drawn; his voice had lost its shipmaster's brusqueness, and had
acquired the drone of the seaman's shore conventicle. There was no doubt
about his earnestness; in Clay's mind, there was no doubt about the
complications which would ensue from it.
When Dr. Clay lay down on his bed that night, his mind was big with
foreboding. Ever since that entanglement with the woman occurred, which
ruined forever his chance of practicing in England, he had gone his way
with a fine recklessness as to consequences. He had lived for the day,
and the day only; he had got to the lowest peg on the medical scale;
and any change would be an improvement. He carried with him an
incomplete case of instruments, a wire-strung banjo, and a fine taste in
liquor and merriment as stock-in-trade, and if any of the many shapes
which Death assumes in the Congo region came his way, why there he was
ready to journey on.
But during these last weeks a chance had appeared of returning to
England with a decent competency, and he jumped at it with an eagerness
which only those who have at one time or other "gone under" themselves
can appreciate. In effect he had entered into a partnership with Captain
Owen Kettle over a filibustering expedition--although they gave the
thing different names--and from the first their ivory raiding had been
extraordinarily successful. If only they could collect on undisturbed
for another six months at the same rate, and then get their spoils down
to the coast and shipped, the pair of them stepped into a snug
competence at once. But this latest vagary of his partner's seemed to
promise disruption of the whole enterprise. He did not see how Kettle
could possibly carry out this evangelizing scheme, on which he had so
suddenly gone crazed, without quite neglecting his other
commercial duties.
However, in the course of the next day or so, as he witnessed Captain
Kettle's method of spreading his faith, Clay's forebodings began to pass
away. There was nothing of the hypocrite about this preaching sailor;
but, at the same time, there was nothing of the dreamer. He exhorted
vast audiences daily to enter into the narrow path (as defined by the
Tyneside chapel), but, at the same time, he impressed on them that the
privilege of treading this thorny way in no manner exempted them from
the business of gathering ivory, by one means or another, for himself
and partner.
Kettle had his own notions as to how this proselytizing should be
carried on, and he set about it with a callous disregard for modern
precedent. He expounded his creed--the creed of the obscure Tyneside
chapel--partly in Coast-English, partly in the native, partly through
the medium of an interpreter, and he commanded his audience to accept
it, much as he would have ordered men under him to have carried out the
business of shipboard. If any one had doubts, he explained
further--once. But he did not allow too many doubts. One or two who
inquired too much felt the weight of his hand, and forthwith the
percentage of sceptics decreased marvellously.
Clay watched on, non-interferent, hugging himself with amusement, but
not daring to let a trace of it be seen. "And I thought," he kept
telling himself with fresh spasms of suppressed laughter, "that that
man's sole ambition was to set up here as a sort of robber baron, and
here he's wanting to be Mahomet as well. The crescent or the sword;
Kettleism or kicks; it's a pity he hasn't got some sense of humor,
because as it is I've got all the fun to myself. He'd eat me if I told
him how it looked to an outsider."
Once, with the malicious hope of drawing him, he did venture to suggest
that Kettle's method of manufacturing converts was somewhat sudden and
arbitrary, and the little sailor took him seriously at once.
"Of course it is," said he. "And if you please, why shouldn't it be? My
intelligence is far superior to theirs at the lowest estimate; and
therefore I must know what's best for them. I order them to become
members of my chapel, and they do it."
"They do it like birds," Clay admitted. "You've got a fine grip over
them."
"I think they respect me."
"Oh, they think you no end of a fine man. In fact they consider you, as
I've said before, quite a little tin--"
"Now stop it, Doc. I know you're one of those fellows that don't mean
half they say, but I won't have that thrown against me, even in jest."
"Well," said Clay, slily, "there's no getting over the fact that some
person or persons unknown sacrificed a hen up against the door of this
hut under cover of last night, and I guess they're not likely to waste
the fowl on me."
"One can't cure them of their old ways all at once," said Kettle, with a
frown.
"And some genius," Clay went on, "has carved a little wooden image in
trousers and coat, nicely whitewashed, and stuck up on that old _ju-ju_
tree down there by the swamp. I saw it when I was down there this
morning. Of course, it mayn't be intended to be a likeness of you,
skipper, but it's got a pith helmet on, which the up-country nigger
doesn't generally add to portraits of himself; and moreover, it's
wearing a neat torpedo beard on the end of its chin, delicately colored
vermilion."
"Well?" said Kettle sourly.
"Oh, that had got a hen sacrificed in front of it, too, that's all. I
recognize the bird; he was a game old rooster that used to crow at me
every time I passed him."
"Beastly pagans," Kettle growled. "There's no holding some of them yet.
They suck up the glad tidings like mother's milk at first, and they're
back at their old ways again before you've taught them the tune of a
hymn. I just want to catch one or two of these backsliders. By James!
I'll give them fits in a way they won't forget."
But if Captain Kettle was keen on the conversion of the heathen to the
tenets of the Tyneside chapel, he was by no means forgetful of his
commercial duties. He had always got Mrs. Kettle, the family, and the
beauties of a home life in an agricultural district at the back of his
mind, and to provide the funds necessary for a permanent enjoyment of
all these items close at hand, he worked both Clay and himself
remorselessly.
Ivory does not grow on hedgerows even in Africa, and the necessary store
could by no means be picked up even in a day, or even in a matter of
weeks. Ivory has been looked upon by the African savage, from time
immemorial, not as an article of use, but as currency, and as such it is
vaguely revered. He does not often of his own free will put it into
circulation; in fact, his life may well pass without his once seeing it
used as a purchasing medium; but custom sits strong on him, and he likes
to have it by him. An African chief of any position always has his store
of ivory, usually hidden, sometimes in the bush, sometimes buried--for
choice, under the bed of a stream. It is foolish of him, this custom,
because it is usually the one thing that attracts the white man to his
neighborhood, and the white man's visits are frequently fraught with
disaster; but it is a custom, and therefore he sticks to it. He is not
a highly reasoning animal, this Central African savage.
The African, moreover, is used to oppression--that is, he either
oppresses or is oppressed--and he is dully callous to death. So the
villages were not much surprised at Kettle's descents upon them, and
usually surrendered to him passively on the mere prestige of his name.
They were pleasantly disappointed that he omitted the usual massacre,
and in gratitude were eager to accept what they were pleased to term his
_ju-ju_, but which he described as the creed of the Tyneside chapel.
They reduced him to frenzy about every second day by surreptitiously
sacrificing poultry in his honor; but he did not dare to make any very
violent stand against this overstepping of the rubric, lest (as was
hinted to him) they should misinterpret his motive, and substitute a
plump nigger baby for the more harmless spring chicken. It is by no
means easy to follow the workings of the black man's brain in
these matters.
But all the time he went on gathering ivory--precious ivory, worth as
much as a thousand pounds a ton if he could but get it home. Some of it
had been buried for centuries, and was black-brown with age and the
earth; some was new, and still bloody-ended and odorous; but he figured
it all out into silk dresses for Mrs. Kettle, and other luxuries for
those he loved, and gloated even over the little _escribellos_ which lay
about on the village refuse heaps as not being worthy to hide with the
larger tusks.
And, between-whiles, he preached to the newly conquered, ordered them to
adopt the faith of the South Shields chapel, and finally sang them
hymns, which he composed himself especially to suit their needs, to the
tunes of "Hold the Fort," and "From Greenland's Icy Mountains," which he
played very sweetly on the accordion. Captain Kettle might be very keen
after business, but at the same time it could never be laid to his
charge that he was ever forgetful of the duty he owed to the souls of
these heathen who came under his masterful thumb.
Dr. Clay, however, watched all the proceedings now with a jubilant mind.
As a political division, the much-talked-of New Republic might be said
to lack cohesion, but as a conquered tract of country it was very
pleasantly in awe of Captain Kettle. A very comfortable store of ivory
was stored in the principal hut of each village they came to, which
Clay, who commanded the rear guard, always took care to "put _ju-ju_ on"
after his senior officer at the head of the force had marched out of the
village _en route_ for the next, that being the most satisfactory
fashion of warding off pilferers. And last but not least, they had
agreed upon their route of exit to a sea-coast, and (in theory at any
rate) considered it eminently practicable.
The Congo, of course, _via_ Leopoldville, Matadi, and Banana was barred
to them, on account of their trouble with the Free State authorities.
Their original idea had been to cross the great continent eastward by
way of the Great Lakes, and take shipping somewhere by Mozambique or
Zanzibar. But the barbarous difficulties of that route daunted even
Kettle, when they began to consider it in detail, and the advantages of
the French Congo territory showed up brightly in comparison.
They still had the little stern-wheel steamer that was filched--I beg
their pardon, captured from the Free State, and in her, with the loot on
board, they must creep down the Congo again, almost to Stanley Pool,
steaming by night only, hiding at the back of islands during the days,
always avoiding observation. And then they must strike across country
due west, till they made the head-waters of the Ogowe, and so down to
the sea, fighting a way through whatever tribes tried to impede them.
The French Customs would take their toll of the ivory, of course, but
that could not be helped; but after that, a decent steamer again, and
the sea, and home. It was an appetizing prospect.
But castles in the clouds have been built before, and often it is the
unexpected that sets them trundling; and in this case such an ordinary
occurrence as a tornado stepped into the reckoning and split this
sighed-for edifice of success and prosperity with all completeness.
There had been no tornado to clear the atmosphere for nine whole days,
and the country was unendurable accordingly. The air was stagnant with
heat, and reeked with the lees of stale vegetation. The sky overhead was
full of lurid haze, which darkened the afternoon almost to a twilight,
and in the texture of this haze, indicated rather than definitely seen,
was a constant nicker of lightning. It was the ordinary heat-lightning
of the tropics, which is noiseless, but it somehow seemed to send out
little throbs into the baking air, till, at times, to be alive was for a
white man almost intolerable.
[Illustration: THE LITTLE ARMY COULD ONLY MARCH IN SINGLE FILE.]
Under this discomfort, a predatory column was marching on from one
captured village to another, whose possible store of ivory had so far
not been gleaned. The road was the ordinary African bush-path, intensely
winding and only foot-sole wide; the little army, with Kettle at its
head, could only march in single file, and Clay, who brought up the
straggling rear, sweated and panted quite half a mile behind his leader.
Every one knew the tornado was approaching, and both the worn and
haggard white men and the sweating, malodorous blacks hoped for it with
equal intensity. For be it known that the tropical tornado passes
through the stale baked air at intervals, like some gigantic sieve,
dredging out its surplus heat and impurities. The which is a necessity
of Nature; else even the black man could not endure in those regions.
And in due time, though it lingered most cruelly in its approach, the
tornado burst upon them, coming with an insane volley of rain and wind
and sound, that filled the forests with crashings, and sent the parched
earth flying in vicious mud-spirts. In a Northern country such a furious
outburst would have filled people with alarm; but here, in the tropic
wilderness, custom had robbed the tornado of its dignity; and no one was
awed. Indeed the blacks fairly basked in its violence, turning their
glistening bodies luxuriously under the great ropes of rain.
The march stopped at the first outbreak of the squall. Kettle bolted to
a rock ahead of him, and squatted down in a dry lee, sucking up great
draughts of the new cool air. There are times when a drop of five
degrees of temperature can bring earthly bliss of a quality almost
unimaginable. And there he stayed, philosophically waiting till the
tornado should choose to blow itself out.
The wind had started with a roar and a sudden squall, reaching the full
climax of its strength in a matter of thirty seconds, and then with
equal hurry it ended, leaving the country it had scoured full of a
fresh, cool, glistening calm. Kettle rose to his feet, shook his clothes
into shape, and gave the order to start.
The black soldiers stepped out in his wake, and for half a mile he
strode at their head through the new-made mud of the path. But then he
was suddenly brought up all standing. Word had been tediously handed
down the long straggling line of men that there had been an accident in
the rear; that a great tree had fallen to the blast; and finally that
"dem dokitar, he lib for die."
Swiftly Kettle turned, and worked his way back down the narrow lane of
the path. The negroes he hustled against watched him with stupid stares,
but he gave them little notice. Leaving out the facts that Clay was his
only white companion and assistant, he had grown strangely to like the
man, and the vague report of the accident filled him with more
than dismay.
He had over a mile to go before he came upon the scene, and when he did
get there he found that the first report had exaggerated. Clay was not
dead, but he lay unconscious on the ground, pinned there by a great
cotton-wood which had crashed down before the fury of the wind, and
which had fallen across his right leg. To move the tree was an
impossibility; but with a sailor's resourcefulness Kettle set his men to
dig beneath it, so that the imprisoned leg might be released that way;
and himself gave them a lead.
Clay, fortunately for himself, remained the whole time in a state of
blank unconsciousness, and at last he was released, but with his leg
horribly mangled. A hammock had meanwhile been rigged, and in this he
was carried back to the village from which they had set out. Kettle led
the retreat in front of the hammock bearers. He left his force of
soldiers and carriers to follow, or straggle, or desert, as they
pleased. The occupation of ivory raiding had completely passed from his
mind; he had forgotten his schemes of wholesale conversion; he had
nothing but Clay's welfare left at his heart.
He got the wounded man under cover of one of the village huts, and
there, with the help of stimulants, poor Clay's senses came back to him,
He was lividly pale with pain and the shock, but he was game to the
backbone, and made no especial complaint. Indeed, he was rather disposed
to treat the whole thing humorously.
"All the result of having a musical ear," he explained. "I made the boy
who carried it put my banjo in a hollow of that tree out of the wet, and
when I saw the old stick was going to crash down, I made a grab for the
'jo, and got it right enough. Well, I wasn't sufficiently nippy in
jumping out of the way, it seems, and as the old banjo's busted for
good, I shall have to trouble you for a funeral march on the
accordion, Skipper."
"Funeral be hanged!" said Kettle. "You're worth a whole cemetery full of
dead men yet."
"Speaking as a doctor," said Clay cheerfully, "I may tell you that your
unprofessional opinion is rot. Now, if I'd a brother sawbones here to
perform amputation, I might have a chance--say, one in a thousand."
"Your leg ought to be cut off?"
"Just there, above the knee. That'll mortify in twenty hours from now.
Thank the Lord I never wasted much morphia on the niggers. There's
plenty in stock. So it won't worry me much."
"Look here," said Kettle, "I will cut that leg off for you."
"You! My good Skipper, you're a handy man, I know, but what the blazes
do you know about amputation?"
"You've got to teach me. You can show me the tools to use, and draw
diagrams of where the arteries come."
"By the powers, I've a great mind to. There's something pretty rich in
giving an amputation lecture with one's own femorals as a subject."
"You'd better," said Kettle grimly, "or I shall cut it off without being
taught. I like you a lot too well, my man, to let you die for want of a
bit of help."
And so, principally because the grotesqueness of the situation appealed
to his whimsical sense of humor, Clay forthwith proceeded to pose as an
anatomy demonstrator addressing a class, and expounded the whole art of
amputation, handling the utensils of the surgeon's craft with the gusto
of an expert, and never by shudder or sigh showing a trace of the white
feather. He carried the whole thing through with a genial gayety,
pointing his sentences now with a quip, now with some roguish sparkle of
profanity, and finally he announced that the lecture was complete and
over, and then he nodded familiarly at his wounded limb.
"By-bye, old hoof!" he said. "You've helped carry the rest of me into
some queer scrapes, one time and another. But we've had good times
together, as well as bad, you and I, and anyway, I'm sorry to lose you.
And now, skipper," said he, "get off your coat and wade in. I've put on
the Esmarch's bandage for you. Don't be niggardly with the
chloroform--I've got a good heart. And remember to do what I told you
about that femoral artery, and don't make a mistake there, or else
there'll be a mess on the floor. Shake hands, old man, and good luck to
your surgery; and anyway, thank you for your trouble."
I fancy that I have made it clear before that Captain Kettle was a man
possessed not only of an iron nerve, but also of all a sailor's
handiness with his fingers; but here was a piece of work that required
all his coolness and dexterity. At home, on an operating table, with
everything at hand that antiseptic surgery could provide, with highly
trained surgeons and highly trained nurses in goodly numbers, it would
have been a formidable undertaking; but there, among those savage
surroundings, in that awful loneliness which a white man feels so far
away from all his kin, it was a very different matter.
It makes me shiver when I think how that little sailor must have
realized his risks and his responsibility. It was a situation that would
have fairly paralyzed most men. But from what can be gathered from the
last letter that the patient ever wrote, it is clear that Kettle carried
out the operation with indomitable firmness and decision; and if indeed
some of his movements were crude, he had grasped all the main points of
his hurried teaching, and he made no single mistake of any but pedantic
importance.
Clay woke up from the anaesthetic, sick, shaken, but still courageous as
ever. "Well," he gasped, "you've made a fine dot-and-go-one of me,
Skipper, and that's a fact. When you chuck the sea, and get back to
England, and set up in a snug country practice as general practitioner,
you'll be able to look back on your first operation with pride."
Kettle, shaken and white, regarded him from a native stool in the middle
of the hut. "I can't think," he said, "how any men can be doctors whilst
there's still a crossing to sweep."
"Oh," said Clay, "you're new at it now, and a bit jolted up. But the
trade has its points. I'll argue it out with you some day. But just at
present I'm going to try and sleep. I'm a bit jolted up, too."
Now, it is a melancholy fact to record that Dr. Clay did not pull round
again after his accident and the subsequent operation. To any one who
knows the climate, the reason will be easily understood. In that heated
air of Central Equatorial Africa, tainted with all manner of harmful
germs, a scratch will take a month to heal, and any considerable flesh
wound may well prove a death warrant. Captain Kettle nursed his patient
with a woman's tenderness, and Clay himself struggled gamely against his
fate; but the ills of the place were too strong for him, and the
inevitable had to be.
But the struggle was no quick thing of a day, or even of a week. The man
lingered wirily on, and in the mean while Kettle saw the marvellous
political structure, which with so much labor and daring he had built
up, crumbling to pieces, as it were, before his very eyes. A company of
Arab slave-traders had entered the district, and were recapturing his
subject villages one by one.
At the first attack runners came to him imploring help. It was useless
to send his half-baked soldiers without going himself. They knew no
other leader; there was not a negro among them fit to take a command;
and he himself was tied. He said nothing to Clay, but just sent a
refusal, and remained at his post.
Again and again came clamorous appeals for help against these new
invaders, and again and again he had to give the same stubborn refusal.
His vaunted New Republic was being split up again into its primitive
elements; the creed of the South Shields chapel was being submerged
under a wave of red-hot Mohammedanism; and the ivory, that hard-earned
ivory, with all its delicious potentialities, was once more being lifted
by alien raiders, and this time forever beyond his reach.
Clay got some inkling of what was going on, and repeatedly urged him to
be off at once and put things straight in person. "Don't you worry about
me, Skipper," he'd say. "I'll get along here fine by myself. Nobody'll
come to worry me. And if they did, they'd let me alone. I'm far too
unwholesome-looking to chop just now."
But Kettle always stolidly refused to leave him. Indeed, with difficulty
(for he was at all times a painfully truthful man) he used to lie to his
patient and say that there was no need for him to go at all; that
everything was going on quite as they could wish; and that he was vastly
enjoying the relaxation of a holiday.
But in sober fact things were going very much awry. And every day they
got worse. Even his original bevy of troops, those he had brought up
with him into the country on the stern-wheel launch, seemed to grasp
the fact that his star was in the descendant. There was no open mutiny,
for they still feared him too much personally to dare that; but in the
black unwatched nights they stole away from the village, and every day
their numbers thinned, and the villagers followed their lead; and when
the end came, the two lonely white men had the village to themselves.
Clay's last words were typical of him. Kettle, with devotional intent,
had been singing some hymn to him, which he had composed as being
suitable for the occasion. But the dying man's ears were dulled, and he
mistook both air and words. "You're a good fellow to sing me that," he
whispered. "I know you don't like striking up that sort of music. By
Jove! I heard that song last at the Pav. Good old Piccadilly Circus."
And then a little later: "I say, Skipper. I'm close on the peg-out.
There's a girl in Winchester--but hang her, anyway. No, you've been my
best pal. You're to have all my share of the loot--the ivory, I mean.
You savvy, I leave it to you in my last will and testament, fairly and
squarely. And Skipper, I'm sorry I ragged you about your mug on those
New Republic stamps. If ever a man deserved what he wanted in that line,
you're--you're--"
The voice failed. "Yes?" said Kettle, and stooped nearer.
Clay feebly winked. "You're him," he whispered. "So long, old cock."
Captain Kettle buried his friend in the first gold of the next dawn
under a magnolia tree, which was hung with sweet-scented blossoms, in
the middle of the village. During the heat of the day he composed a copy
of verses to his memory, and when the sun had dropped somewhat, he went
out with his knife to carve them on the tree above the grave.
It appeared that the village was not so completely deserted as seemed to
the eye, or, at any rate, that he had been watched. On the newly turned
earth was a chicken, which had been sacrificed in the orthodox fashion;
and for once he beheld the sight without resentment.
He raised his hat to the dead, and "Doc," he said, "this hen-killing is
bang against my principles, but I won't say anything now. I guess it's
some nigger's way of showing respect to you, and, by James! you're a
fellow that ought to be admired. If only it hadn't been for that tree
falling down, there'd have been two men round here that would have left
their mark on Africa, and you're one of them. Well, old man, you're
gone, and I hope you're looking down this moment--or up, as the case may
be--to read this bit of poetry I'm going to stick above your head. It's
worth attention. It's about the best sample of rhyme I ever
hoisted out."