THE LOOTING OF THE "INDIAN SHERIFF."
Captain Kettle dived two fingers into the bowl of odorous,
orange-colored palm-oil chop, and fished out a joint suspiciously like a
nigger baby's arm. He knew it was a monkey's; or at least he was nearly
certain it was a monkey's; but he ate no more from that particular bowl.
The tribe he was with were not above suspicion of cannibalism, and
though their hospitality was lavish, it was by no means guaranteed as
to quality.
The head-man noticed his action, and put a smiling question: "You no
like dem climb-climb chop? Tooth him plenty sore?"
"No," said Kettle, "my teeth are all in good working order, daddy,
thanks. But now you mention it, the monkey is a bit tough. Not been
stewed long enough, perhaps."
The head-man gave an order, and presently a woman at the cooking fire
outside brought another calabash into the hut, and set it at the little
sailor's feet. The head-man examined and explained: "Dem's dug chop,
too-plenty-much fine. You fit?"
"I fit," said Kettle; "that'll suit me down to the ground, daddy. Stewed
duck is just the thing I like, and palm-oil sauce isn't half bad when
you're used to it. I'll recommend your pub to my friends, old one-eye,
when I get home."
He dipped his digits into the stew, and drew forth a doubtful limb. He
regarded it with a twitching nose and critical eye.
"Thundering heavy-boned duck this, of yours, daddy."
"Me no savvy?" said his host questioningly.
"I say dem dug he got big bone. He no fit for fly. He no say
quack-quack."
"Oh, I savvy plenty," said the one-eyed man, smiling. "Dem not
quack-quack dug, dem bow-wow dug. You see him bow-wow dis morning. You
hit him with foot, so."
"Ugh," said Kettle, "dog stew, is it? Yes, I know the animal, if you say
he's the one I kicked. I had watched the brute eating garbage about the
village for half an hour, and then when he wanted to chew my leg, I hit
him. Ugh, daddy, don't you bring on these delicacies quite so sudden, or
I shall forget my table manners. African scavenger dog! And I saw him
make his morning meal. Here, Missis, for Heaven's sake take this
dish away."
The glistening black woman stepped forward, but the head-man stopped
her. There was some mistake here. He had killed the best dog in the
village for Captain Kettle's meal, and his guest for some fastidious
reason refused to eat. He pointed angrily to the figured bowl. "Dug
chop," said he. "Too-much-good. You chop him." This rejection of
excellent food was a distinct slur on his ménage, and he was working
himself up into passion. "You chop dem dug chop one-time," he repeated.
The situation was growing strained, and might well culminate in
fisticuffs. But Captain Kettle, during his recent many months' sojourn
as a lone white man in savage Africa, had acquired one thing which had
never burdened him much before, and that was tact. He did not openly
resent the imperative tone of his host, which any one who had known him
previously would have guessed to be his first impulse. But neither at
the same time did he permit himself to be forced into eating the noxious
meal. He temporized. With that queer polyglot called Coast English, and
with shreds from a score of native dialects, he made up a tattered
fabric of speech which beguiled the head-man back again into good humor;
and presently that one-eyed savage squatted amicably down on his heels,
and gave an order to one of his wives in attendance.
The lady brought Kettle's accordion, and the little sailor propped his
back against the wattle wall of the hut, and made music, and lifted up
his voice in song. The tune carried among the lanes and dwellings of the
village, and naked feet _pad-padded_ quickly up over dust and the grass;
the audience distributed itself within and without the head-man's hut,
and listened enrapt; and the head-man felt the glow of satisfaction that
a London hostess feels when she has hired for money the most popular
drawing-room entertainer of the day, and her guests condescend to enjoy,
and not merely to exhibit themselves as _blases_.
But Captain Kettle, it must be confessed, felt none of the artist's
pride in finding his art appreciated. He had always the South Shields
chapel at the back of his mind, with its austere code and creed, and he
felt keenly the degradation of lowering himself to the level of the
play-actor; even though he was earning his bare existence--and had been
doing all through the heart of barbarous Africa--by mumming and
carolling to tribes whose trade was murder and cannibalism.
He felt an infinite pity for himself when he reflected that many a time
nothing but a breakdown, or a loudly bawled hymn, or a series of twisted
faces, had been the only thing which stood between him and the cooking
fires. But there was no help for it. He was a fighting man, but he could
not do battle with a continent; and so he had either to take the only
course which remained, and lower himself (as he considered it) to the
level of the music-hall pariah, and mouth and mow to amuse the mob, or
else accept the alternative which even the bravest of men might well
shrink from in dismay.
His travel through the black heart of this black continent may have been
paralleled by that of other obscure heroes who voyaged from grim
necessity and not for advertisement, but the history of it, as it was
told me in his simple log-book style, far surpasses the wonder of any of
those travels which find a place in published volumes. He had started, a
completely destitute man, from a spot far up on the Haut Congo, amidst
treacherous hostile population. He had not a friend in Africa, black or
white. He had no resources save his tongue, his thews, an empty
revolver, and his mother wit, and yet he had won a slow way down to the
western seaboard through a hundred hostile tribes, where an army would
have been eaten up, and a Marco Polo might well have failed.
It would suit my pleasure finely to write of this terrific journey, with
its dangers, its finesses, and its infinite escapes; it would gratify me
to the quick if I might belaud to the full of my appreciation the
endurance, and the grand resourcefulness, of this little sailor cast so
desperately out of his more native element; but the account of the
travel is reserved for the pen of Captain Kettle himself, and so the
more professional scribe may not poach upon his territory.
I had it from his own lips that the perils of the way made him see the
poetry of it all, and he said to himself that here was the theme for
that great epic, which would be the _chef d'oeuvre_ of his literary
life. It is to be written in blank verse, with the hymns and secular
songs he sang at each stop given in an appendix, and he confidently
hopes that it will stand out as something conspicuous and distinct
against the sombre background of prosaic travel books.
His arrival at the coast was an achievement that made him almost faint
with joy. Xenophon and his ten thousand Greeks hailed the sea, we are
told, with a mighty shout. But to them Thalassa was merely a way-mark, a
sign that they were nearing home. To Kettle it was more, far more,
although he could not define the relationship. He had dwelt upon the sea
the greater part of his days; he had got his meagre living from her; and
although at all times she had been infinitely hard and cruel to him, and
he had cursed her day in and day out with all a seaman's point and
fluency, she had wrapped herself into his being in a way he little
guessed, till separation showed him the truth.
He had seen the glint of her through the trees as he entered this last
village of his march, but the air was too dull with heat for him to
catch so much as a whiff of her refreshing saltness, and for the present
he could not go down to greet her. He was still the lonely troubadour,
dressed in a native cloth around the loins, with a turban of rags upon
his head, and a battered accordion slung from his back, come in from
afar to sing and pull faces for a dinner.
The meal, for reasons which have been stated, was not a success, but
payment had to be rendered all the same. He sang with noise, and made
antics such as experience had taught him would be acceptable; and the
audience, to whom a concert of this kind was a rarity, howled to him to
go on. There was no escape. He had to sing till he could sing no more.
It was far on into the night when a couple of native _tom-tom_ players
rescued him. The musical appetites of the village had been whetted
rather than appeased, and as no more could be got out of this wandering
minstrel, why then they were quite ready to listen to local instruments
and melody.
Dancing commenced, and the heat and the noise grew, and presently Kettle
managed to slip away and walk out through the yam and manioc gardens,
and the banana groves, to the uproarious beach beyond. He threw himself
wearily down on the warm white sand, and when the great rollers swept in
and crashed into noisy bellowing surf, the spindrift from it drove on
him, and refreshed him luxuriously. It was almost worth going through
all he had suffered to enjoy the pleasures of that greeting.
For long-enough he filled his eye on the creaming fringes of the surf,
and then he glanced over it at the purple plain of ocean which lay level
and unruffled beyond. A great African moon glowed above it in the night,
and the lonely vastness of it all gratified him like the presence of a
friend. "You are a decent old puddle," he murmured to himself, "though I
say it that's got precious little from you beyond mud and slashing.
It's good to be back in reach of the stink of you again."
He lay on where he was deep into the night, revelling in the
companionship of the sea, till the many-colored land-crabs began to
regard him as mere jetsam. He was not consciously thinking. He was
letting his mind rest in an easy torpor; but from time to time he let
his eyes range through the purple dark with a seaman's mechanical
watchfulness. The noise of the _tom-toms_ and the dancing from the
village behind him had died away, and nothing but the sounds from the
bush, and the din of the surf, remained to show that the world was
alive. The moon, too, had been smothered by a cloud bank, and night lay
huddled close round him, with a texture like black velvet.
Then, with a jump he was on his feet, and trembling violently. Another
old friend was in his neighborhood--a steamer. Her masthead light had
just twinkled into view. He got up and began walking nervously toward
her along the hard, white sands. He saw her first in the northwest,
coming from some port in the Bight of Biafra probably, and the odds were
she was heading south along the Coast.
Presently he picked up her red port light. Yes, he admitted to himself
with a sigh, she was making for one of the ports to southward, for Sette
Camma perhaps, or Loango, or Landana, or Kabenda, and he calmed himself
down with the discovery. Had she been heading north, he had it in him to
have swum out to her through the surf and the sharks, and chanced being
picked up. He was sick of this savage Africa which lay behind him. The
sight of those two lights, the bright white, and the duller red, let him
know how ravenous was his hunger to see once more a white man and a
white man's ship, and to feel the sway of a deck, and to smell the
smells of oil, and paint, and Christian cookery, from which he had been
for such a weary tale of days divorced.
The steamer drew on till she came a-beam, and the red port light was
eclipsed, and "carrying no stern light," was Captain Kettle's comment.
There was a small glow from her deck and two or three of her ports were
lit, but for the most part she crept along as a mysterious black ship
voyaging into a region of blackness. It was too dark to make out more
than her bare existence, but Kettle took a squint at the Southern Cross,
which hung low in the sky like an ill-made kite, to get her bearings,
and so made note of her course, and from that tried to deduce her
nationality.
From the way she was steering he reckoned she came from Batanga or
Cameroons, which are in German territory, and so set her down as sailing
originally from Marseilles or Hamburg, and anyway decided that she was
not one of the Liverpool boats which carry all the West Coast trade to
England. But as he watched, she seemed to slew out of her course. She
lengthened out before him across the night, as her bows sheered in
toward the land, till he saw her broadside on, and then she hung
motionless as a black blot against the greater blackness beyond.
Captain Kettle summed the situation: "Rounded up and come to an anchor.
There'll be a factory somewhere on the beach there. But I don't know,
though. That one-eyed head-man said nothing about a factory, and if
there was one, why doesn't she whistle to raise 'em up so's they'd be
ready to bring off their bit o' trade in the surf-boats when
day breaks?"
A cloud slid away in the sky, and the moon shone out like the suddenly
opened bulb of a dark lantern. The oily surface of the sea flashed up
into sight, and on it sat the steamer--a picture in black and silver.
She lay there motionless as the trees on the beach, and the reason for
her state was clear. Her forefoot soared stiffly aloft till it was
almost clear of the water; her stern was depressed; her decks listed to
port till it was an acrobatic feat to make passageway along them.
Captain Kettle whistled to himself long and dismally. "Piled her up," he
muttered, "that's what her old man has done. Hit a half-ebb reef, and
fairly taken root there. He's not shoved on his engines astern either,
and that means she's ripped away half her bottom, and he thinks she'll
founder in deep water if he backs her off the ground." A tiny spit of
flame, pale against the moonlight, jerked out from under the awnings of
the steamer's upper bridge. The noise of the shot came some time
afterward, no louder than the cracking of a knuckle. "By James!
somebody's getting his gun into use pretty quick. Well, it's some one
else's trouble, and not mine, and I guess I'm going to stay on the
beach, and watch, and not meddle." He frowned angrily as though some one
had made a suggestion to him. "No, by James! I'm not one of those that
seeks trouble unnecessarily."
But all the same he walked off briskly along the sand, keeping his eyes
fixed on the stranded steamer. That some sort of a scuffle was going on
aboard of her was clear from the shouts and the occasional pistol shots,
which became louder as he drew more near; and Captain Kettle,
connoisseur as he was of differences of this sort on the high seas,
became instinctively more and more interested. And at last when he came
to a small canoe drawn up on the beach above high-water mark, he paused
beside it with a mind loaded with temptation as deep as it would carry.
The canoe was a dug-out, a thing of light cotton-wood, with washboards
forward to carry it through a surf. A couple of paddles and a calabash
formed its furniture, and its owner probably lived in the village where
he had sung for his dinner over-night. Of course, to borrow her--merely
to borrow her, of course--without permission was--
Another splatter of pistol shots came from the steamer, and a yelping of
negro voices. Captain Kettle hesitated no longer. He laid hands on the
canoe's gunwale, and ran her down into the edge of the surf. He had
barely patience to wait for a smooth, but, after three rollers had
roared themselves into yeast and quietude, he ran his little craft out
till the water was arm-pit deep, and then scrambled on board and paddled
furiously.
But it is not given to the European to equal the skill of the black on
African surf beaches, and, as might be expected, the next roller that
swooped in overended the canoe, and sent it spinning like a toy through
the broken water. But Captain Kettle had gained some way; and if he
could not paddle the little craft to sea, he could at least swim her
out; and this he proceeded to do. He was as handy as an otter in the
water, and besides, there was something here which was dragging him to
seaward very strongly. His soul lusted for touch with a steamer again
with a fierceness which he did not own even to himself. Even a wrecked
steamer was a thing of kinship to him then.
He swam the dug-out through the last drench and backtow of the surf,
rocked her clear from part of her watery load, and then, with a feeling
of relief, clambered gingerly on board and baled the rest over the
gunwale with his hands. It is not good to stay over-long in these seas
which fringe the West African beaches, by reason of the ground shark
which makes them his hunting-ground. And then he manned the paddle,
knelt in the stern, and went the shortest way to the steamer which
perched on the rock.
The moon was still riding in the sky, but burnt with a pale light now,
as dawn had jumped up from behind the shore forests. All things were
shown clearly. Among other matters, Kettle noted from trifles in her
garnishing, which read clear as print to a seaman's eye, that the
steamer was not French or German as he had guessed before, but hailed
from his own native islands. Moreover, her funnel told him that she was
not one of the two regular lines from Liverpool, which do all the
commerce of the coast. But he had no time for fresh speculations just
then as to her business. The scuffling on board had been growing more
and more serious, and it was clear that the blacks of her complement
were giving the whites more than they cared about.
Kettle knew enough of the custom of the Coast to be able to sum the
situation. "Her Krooboys have broken out of hand," he commented. "That's
what's the trouble. You come down here from England with just enough
white men to handle your vessel to Sierra Leone, and then you ship
Krooboys to work cargo and surf-boats, and do everything except steer,
and as long as nothing happens, your Krooboy is a first-class hand. Two
cupfuls of rice and a bit offish is all the grub he wants; he'll work
sixteen hours a day without a grunt; and he'll handle a winch or a steam
crane with any Geordie donkey-man that has been grounded in the shops.
But just put your steamboat on the ground where he thinks she can't get
off, and there's a different tune to play. He's got a notion that the
ship's his, and the cargo's his, to loot as he likes, and if he doesn't
get 'em both, he's equal to making trouble. Seems to me he's making bad
trouble now."
By this time it was plain that the black men had got entire possession
of the lower parts of the ship. The small handful of whites were on the
top of the fiddley, and while most were fighting to keep the Africans
back, a couple were frenziedly working to get a pair of davits swung
outboard, and a lifeboat which hung from them lowered into the water. It
was clear they had given up all hope of standing by the ship; and
presently they got the boat afloat, and slid down to her in hurried
clusters by the davit falls, and then unhooked and rowed away from the
steamer's side in a skelter of haste. Coals and any other missile that
came handy were showered upon them by the Krooboys who manned the rail,
to which they replied with a few vicious revolver shots; and then the
boat drew out of range.
Captain Kettle, in his clumsy canoe, paddled up close to her and nodded,
and gave the boat's people a "good-morning." The greeting was quaintly
enough out of place, but nobody seemed to notice that. Each party was
too occupied in staring at the other. Those in the lifeboat saw a little
lean European, naked to the waist, clad only in a turban and native
cloth, and evidently (from the color of his skin) long inured to that
state. Kettle saw a huddle of fugitives, all of them scared, and many of
them bloody with wounds.
The man who was steering the white boat, the steamer's mate he was,
according to the gold lace on his cuff, spoke first.
"Well," he said, "you're a funny enough looking beachcomber. What do you
want, anyway?"
Captain Kettle felt himself to redden all over under the tan of his
skin. Neatness in clothes was always a strong point with him, and he
resented the barbarism of his present get-up acutely. "If I wanted a job
at teaching manners, I could find one in your boat, that's certain," was
his prompt retort. "And when I'd finished with that, I could give some
of you a lesson in pluck without much harm being done. I wonder if you
call yourselves white men to let a crowd of niggers clear you out of
your ship like that?"
"Now, look here, Robinson Crusoe," said the man at the steering oar,
"our tempers are all filed up on the raw edge just now, and if you give
much lip, this boat will be rowed over the top of your Noah's ark before
you know what's hit it. You paddle back to your squaw and piccaninnies
on the beach, Robinson, and don't you come out here to mock your betters
when they're down on their luck. We've nothing to give you except ugly
words, and you'll get them cheap."
"Well, Mr. Mate," said Kettle, "I haven't heard white man's English for
a year, but if you can teach me anything new, I'm here to learn. I've
come across most kinds of failure in my time, but a white man who lets
himself be kicked off his ship by a parcel of Krooboys, and who
disgraces Great Britain by being a blooming Englishman, is a specimen
that's new to me. But perhaps I'm making a mistake? Perhaps you're a
Dutchman or a Dago that's learnt the language? Or perhaps, to judge from
that cauliflower nose of yours, you're something that's escaped out of a
freak museum? You haven't a photo about you by any chance? I'd like to
send one home to South Shields. My Missis is a great hand at collecting
curiosities which you only see in foreign parts."
The mate bent on the steering gear with sudden violence, turned the
lifeboat's head with a swirl, and began sculling her toward the canoe.
But a tall, thin man sitting beside him in the stern-sheets said
something to him in an undertone, and the Mate reluctantly let the oar
drag limp in the water, and sat himself down, and ostentatiously made
ready to roll a cigarette.
"Now, look here," said the tall man, "I don't suppose you want to
quarrel."
"I've been in quarrels before for the sheer fun of the thing," said
Kettle, who was determined that at any rate no apology should come
from his side.
"So have I," said the tall man, "but I've no time for empty amusement
just now. I'm down here on business. I'm trying to start a new steamer
line to work this Coast and get away the monopoly from the other
companies. That boat stuck yonder--the _Indian Sheriff_ she's called--is
my venture, and she represents about all I've got, and she isn't
underwritten for a sixpence. I've been going nap or nothing on this
scheme, and at present it looks uncommon like nothing. What I'm anxious
about now, is to see if I can't make some arrangement for salvage."
"I can understand it would be useful to you."
"It might be useful to others besides me. Now, there's you, for
instance. I dare say you've got a nice little establishment ashore, and
some simple comforts, and a bit of influence in your village. But you
spoke about your wife at home in South Shields just now, and I make no
doubt that if you'd got a tidy sum of money in your pocket you'd be as
pleased as not to get home to her again?"
Captain Kettle was on the point of breaking out into explanations and
disavowals, but a thought came to him, and he refrained.
"Well," he said, "I'm waiting to hear your offer."
"Here it is, then. You go ashore now, raise your village, bring off
every nigger you can scare up, swamp the Krooboys on that steamboat and
keep her from being looted, and I solemnly promise you 25 per cent. of
her value and the value of what she has in her."
"Yes," said Kettle thoughtfully. "That's a square enough offer, and it's
made before witnesses, and I believe the courts would make you stick
to it."
"Ho!" grunted the Mate, "Robinson's a sea lawyer, is he? Courts, he
talks about."
Kettle ignored the suggestion. "Should I know your name, sir?" he asked
of the tall man.
"I'm Nicholson Sheriff. If you know Liverpool, you'll have heard of me."
"You were with Kevendales?"
"That's me. I left there two years ago, to start on my own."
"H'm," said the little sailor in the canoe. "I was master of one of
Kevendale's ships once. It was me that had misfortune with the
_Armenia_."
"By gum! are you Captain Kettle that piled up the old _Atrocity_ on
that iceberg? I'm sorry to see you come down to this, Captain."
"Captain Kettle," said the sulky Mate, "that was in the Congo Pilot
Service?"
"Yes," said Kettle.
"Then, Captain," said the Mate, "I take back what I said about you being
Robinson Crusoe. You may have met with misfortune, but, by the Lord,
you're a man all the way through. You've made the ports down there on
the Congo just ring with the way you kept your end up with those beastly
Belgians. And now when any Englishman goes ashore at Boma or Matadi or
any place on the river, they're fit to eat him."
The compliment had its doubtful side, but Kettle bowed with pleasure.
"Mr. Mate," he said, "I should have been more polite to you. I forgot
you were a man who had just come through an anxious time."
"Anxious time! My holy grandmother! You should have just seen. It was my
watch below when she took the ground, and I give you my word for it,
there's deep water marked in the chart where she struck. Third mate had
the bridge, and he rang for engines hard astern. Nothing happened. From
the first moment she hit, the Krooboys got the notion she was their ship
by all the rules of the Coast, and they played up to that tune like men.
They bashed in the heads of the two engineers who tried to handle the
reversing gear, and fairly took the ship below; and when the old man
came out in his pyjamas and started his fancy shooting on deck, they
just ran in on him and pulled him into kybobs.
"The second mate pegged out a week ago with black-water fever. So there
was only me and Mr. Sheriff here, and the third left that were worth
counting." He wagged a stubby finger contemptuously at the rest of his
boat's crew. "Half this crowd don't know enough English to take a wheel,
and the rest of them come from happy Dutchland, where they don't make
soldiers, bless their silly eyes. I can tell you I'm not feeling sweet
about it myself. I left a bran new suit of clothes and an Accra
finger-ring on that blame' ship."
"Well, never mind the rest of the tale now," said Sheriff. "Here we are
kicked overboard, and glad enough to save our bare skins, I'll own. We
won't go into the question of manning British ships with foreigners just
now. What's interesting me is the fact that those Krooboys have got
hatches off already, and are standing by the cranes and winches. I've
seen them work cargo before all up and down the coast, and know the pace
they can put into it, and if we don't move quick they'll scoff that ship
clear down to the ceilings of her holds." A winch chain rattled, and a
sling load of cloth bales swung up to one of her derrick sheaves. "My
faith, look at that! They've begun to broach cargo by now, and there are
some of the beggars setting to lower the surf-boats to ferry it on to
the beach."
The Mate rapped out sulphurous wishes for the Krooboys' future state.
"Yes, yes," said Sheriff, "but we're wasting time. Come now, Captain,
you heard my offer, and you seemed to like it. I'm waiting for you to
fill your part of the bargain. Away with you ashore, and bring off your
army and take possession."
"I'm afraid, sir," said Kettle honestly, "you've been taking a little
too much for granted. I've got no establishment ashore. I'm just what
you see--a common tramp, or worse, seeing that I've been play-acting for
my dinners of late. And as for any help those niggers ashore could give,
why, I shouldn't recommend it. The one-eyed old son of a dog who's
head-man, has served on ships according to his own telling, and he'll
have the same notions about loot as your own Krooboys. The Coast nigger
hereabouts has got a fancy that any ship on the beach is cumshaw for
himself, and you'll not knock it out of him without some hard teaching.
No, Mr. Sheriff, to call in that one-eyed head-man and his friends--who
it makes me hot to think I had to sing and dance to not six hours
back--would only pile up the work ahead of us. Much best tackle the ship
as she is."
"What!" said Sheriff. "Do you mean to say we can retake her? You don't
know what those boys are like. I tell you they were fair demons when we
left, and they'll be worse now, because they are certain to have got
liquor inside them by this. It's not a bit of use your counting on these
deckhands and stokers in the boat. They're not a penn'oth of use, the
whole lot of them."
"Well," said Kettle diffidently, "I'd got my eye on that packet of
cartridge beside you on the thwart. If they were four-fiftys--"
"They are--let's look--four--five--nought. Yes, well?"
Captain Kettle pulled a well-cleaned revolver out of his waist-cloth.
"I've carried this empty for a whole year now, sir, but I don't think
I've forgot my shooting."
"I can speak here," said the Mate. "I've heard of his usefulness that
way on the Congo. When Captain Kettle lets off his gun, Mr. Sheriff,
it's a funeral. By gum, if he's a way of getting the ship again, I'm on
for helping. Look! There's that steward's boy, Tins, going into my room
this minute. I've a suit of clothes there that have never been put on,
and he'll have them for a cert if we don't look quick."
"Now then, Captain," said Sheriff, "if there's anything going to be
done, get a move on you."
Kettle paddled the dug-out alongside, and stepped into the lifeboat. His
eye glittered as he tore open the wrapping of the cartridges and
reloaded his revolver. It was long since he had known the complacent
feel of the armed man.
"Now," he said, "there's one more thing. I'm not in uniform, but I hold
a master's ticket, and I've got to be skipper."
"You can take the berth for me," said the Mate. "I'll say outright it's
a lot above my weight."
"And I've offered it to you already," said Sheriff. "Go on, man, and
give your orders."
Captain Kettle's first desire was to get back to the steamer whence the
boat had come, and this the mixed crew of foreigners at the oars had
scruples about carrying out. But Kettle and the Mate got furiously at
work on them with their hands, and in less than a minute the men were
doing as they were bidden, except, that is, a trio who were too badly
wounded to sit up, and who were allowed to wallow on the floor gratings.
The Mate straddled in the stern and steered her with an oar, and the
white painted boat pulled heavily toward the stranded vessel. The
Krooboys in possession were quick to see her coming. A mob of them
gathered on the bridge deck, gibbering and shouting, and threatening
with their hands; and even before the boat drew within range, they
commenced a vigorous fusilade of coal lumps. Kettle had all a cleanly
man's dislike for these dirty missiles, and he halted the boat just
beyond the limit of their fire, and stood up himself, and sighted the
revolver over the crook of his left elbow.
He dropped one man, and the others raged at him. He dropped a second,
and still with an impotent courage they stood their ground. He brought a
third shrieking to the deck, and then, and not before, did the others
turn to run, and he shot a fourth to hurry their going. Then he turned
to the rowers in the lifeboat. "Give way, you thieves," he shouted at
them; "set me aboard whilst the coast is clear.--Mr. Mate, round her up
under those davit tackles."
Again the Krooboys tried to prevent the boarding, but again the fire of
that terrible revolver drove them yelping to shelter, and the boat drew
up with a bump and a swirl under the dangling ropes. Kettle clambered
forward along the thwarts, and swarmed up one fall with a monkey's
quickness, and the Mate, a man of wooden courage, raced him up the
other. Sheriff could not climb; they had to haul him up the ship's side
by brute force in a bowline; and providentially they were allowed to do
this uninterrupted. The foreign crew of the lifeboat, limp with scare,
would have been mere slaughter-pigs on board even if they could have
been lured there, which was improbable, and so they were bidden to haul
off out of shot, and wait till they were needed.
Now there was no question here of risking a hand-to-hand encounter. The
Krooboys on board mustered quite fifty head, and most of them were men
of enormous physical strength. So the three invaders went into the
chart-house, from the ports of which they could command the bridge deck
and the main fore deck, and shot the door-bolts by way of making
themselves secure. The walls were of iron, and the roof was of iron; the
place was a perfect stronghold in its way; and as there was no chance of
its being stormed without due notice, they tacitly called a halt to
recover breath.
"Here," said Sheriff, "is the poor old skipper's whisky. I guess a
second mate's nip all round will do us no harm."
"Here," said Kettle, "are the old man's Canary cigars, nice and black
and flavory, and I guess one of them's more in my line, sir, thanking
you all the same. I haven't come across a Christian smoke for more
dreary months than I care to think about."
The Mate was peering through one of the forward ports. "There's the door
of my room wide open," he grunted. "I bet those new clothes of mine are
gone. They're just the thing to take a nigger's eye--good thick blue
broadcloth."
Captain Kettle wiped the perspiration from his forehead with a bare,
sinewy arm. "Now," he said, "enough time's been wasted. We must keep
those toughs on the move, or they'll find leisure to think, and be
starting some fresh wickedness."
"If we go out of this chart-house," said Sheriff doubtfully, "they'll
swamp us by sheer weight. You must remember we've only got two pistols,
yours and mine. The poor old skipper's is lost."
"I'm going to try what a little quiet talking-to will do first, sir. I
used to be a bit useful with my tongue, if I haven't lost the trick. But
before that, I'm going to borrow this white drill coat and pants of
your late old man's, if you don't mind. You'd hardly think it, sir, if
you knew the trials I've gone through in that beastly Africa, but I
believe it's the want of a decent pair of trousers that's hurt me more
than anything."
Captain Kettle dressed himself with care, and put on a white-covered
uniform cap; and then, happening to see a pair of scissors, he took them
up and trimmed his beard before the glass. Sheriff looked on at these
preparations with fidgeting impatience, and from without there was a
clamor of negro voices taking counsel. But the little sailor was not to
be hurried. He went through his toilet with solemn deliberation, and
then he opened the chart-house door and went out beneath the baking
sunshine of the bridge-deck beyond.
A cluster of Krooboys stood at the further end of it, cackling with
talk, and at sight of him they called their friends on the main deck
below, who began to come up as fast as they could get foot on the
ladders. They showed inclinations for a rush, but Kettle held up his
left hand for them to keep back, and they obeyed the order. They saw
that vicious revolver gripped in his right fingers, and they respected
its powers.
He addressed them with a fine fluency of language. He had a good command
of sailor's English, and also of Coast English, both of which are
specially designed for forcible comment; and he knew, moreover, scraps
from a score of native dialects, which, having Arabic for a groundwork,
are especially rich in those parts of speech-which have the highest
vituperative value. The black man is proverbially tough, and a whip,
moral or physical, which will cut the most hardened of whites to
ribbons, will leave him unmoved. An artist in words may rail at him for
an hour without making him flicker an eyelash, or a Yankee mate might
hammer him with a packing-case lid (always supposing there was no nail
in it) for a like period without jolting from him so much as a cry or a
groan. And so I think it speaks highly for Captain Kettle's powers when,
at the end of three minutes' talk, he caused many of those Krooboys to
visibly wince.
You cannot touch a Krooboy's feelings by referring insultingly to his
mother, because he has probably very dim recollections of the lady; you
can not rile him by gibing comments on his personal appearance; but
still there are ways of getting home to him, and Kettle knew the secret.
"You make fight-palaver," he said, "you steal, you take ship, you drink
cargo gin, and you think your _ju-ju_ fine _ju-ju._ But my _ju-ju_
too-plenty-much better, and I fit for show it you again if dis
steal-palaver no stop one-time."
They began to move threateningly toward him. "Very well," he said, "then
I tell you straight; you no fit to be called black boys. You bushmen.
Bah! you be bushmen."
The maddened Krooboys ran in, and the wicked revolver spoke out, and
then Kettle nipped into the deck-house and slammed the door to on his
heels. The black ape-like faces jabbered and mowed at the window ports,
and brawny arms were thrust in, grappling viciously, but the Mate drew
out camp-stools from a locker, and with these the three white men
stabbed and hit at every face or arm which showed itself. There was no
more shooting, and there was no need for it. By sheer weight of blows
the whites kept the enemy from climbing through the windows, and so long
as the windows were not stormed, the iron house was safe to them. And
presently one of the head-men blew his boatswain's whistle, and the
attack drew off.
Promptly Kettle reloaded his revolver and stepped out into the open.
"Now," he said, "you seen my _ju-ju?_ You savvy him too-big _ju-ju_? You
want any more of it? No. Then get away aft with you. You hear? You lib
for bottom deck back there, one-time." He rushed at them, one slight,
slim, white-clad white man against all that reeking, shining mob, and
they struggled away before him in grotesque tumblings and jostlings,
like a flock of sheep.
But at the break of the deck he paused and looked below him, and the
fight all dropped away from his face. No. 3 hatch lay open before him,
with the covers thrown here and there. From it was creeping up a thin
blue smoke, with now and then a scarlet trail of flame. Here was a
complication.
"So you gluttonous, careless brutes have set fire to her, have you?
Here, who was in the engine room?"
Discipline was coming back. A man in black trousers, with a clout round
his neck, stepped out.
"You? Well, slip below, and turn steam into the donkey."
"Steam no lib, sar. Cranes die when we try to work him just now."
"Oh, you holy crowd of savages! Well, if we can't use the hose, you must
hand buckets--and sharp, too. That fire's gaining. Now then, head-men,
step out."
"I second head-man, sar."
"I head-man, sar."
"Get buckets, tubs, tins--anything that'll hold water, and look sharp.
If you boys work well now, I'll overlook a lot that's been done. If you
don't, I'll give you fits. Try and get below, some of you, and pull away
what's burning. Probably you'll find some of your dear relations down
there, drunk on gin and smoking pipes. You may knock them on the head if
you like, and want to do a bit more murder. They deserve it."
But though half a dozen of the Krooboys, who were now thoroughly tamed,
tried to get down the hatch, the fire was too strong for them. Even the
water when it came did little to check the burning, for though it sent
up great billows of steam, the flames shot out fiercer and higher every
moment. In that sweltering climate it does not take very much inducement
to make a fire settle down thoroughly to work, once it gets anything
like a tolerable start.
To add to the trouble, news of the wreck had been carried to the village
behind the beach where Captain Kettle had sung for his lodging
over-night, and the one-eyed head-man there and his friends were coming
off to share in the spoil as fast as canoes could bring them. They, too,
would have their theories as to the ownership of wrecked cargoes on the
West African Coast, and as they were possessed of trade guns, they were
not like to forego what they considered their just rights without
further fighting.
But as it happened, a period was put to the scene on the steamer with
considerable suddenness. Sheriff, who had been making sure that there
were no Krooboys lurking forward who could take them from the rear, came
up and looked upon the fire with a blanched face. "Excuse me, Skipper,"
he said, and turned and bawled for the lifeboat to come alongside.
"No hurry for that yet," said Kettle, angrily. "Don't scare the men,
sir. And don't you give orders without my sanction. You made me Captain
here, and, by James! Captain I'll be. We're handicapped for want of the
hose, but we're going to try and get this fire under without. Anyway,
there's no question of leaving the ship yet."
"Good God, man, don't niggle about that now. I know what I'm saying.
There's eight tons of powder in that hold."
"And we may be blown up against the sky as a thin kind of rain any
minute? Well, sir, you're owner, and as you seem to have acted as purser
on board, you ought to know. But hadn't we better ask the Mate for his
cargo-book first, so as to make sure?"
He turned and looked, but Sheriff had gone, and was sliding down into
the lifeboat which had come alongside. "Well, I don't like leaving the
ship, and I suppose for that matter he wouldn't either, being owner, and
being uninsured. But as Mr. Sheriff's gone in such a blazing hurry, it's
probably time for me to go too, if I'm to land home any time in South
Shields again." He hailed the lower deck with a sharp order. "You boys,
there, knock off. Knock off work, I say, and throw down your buckets.
There's powder stowed down below, and it'll be going off directly.
Gunpowder, you savvy, shoot-powder, go _fizz--boosh--bang_!"
There was a sharp clatter of understanding and explanation, but no
movement. The African is not great at making deductions. Captain Kettle
had to give a definite order. "Now, overboard with you, all hands, and
lib for beach. No time for lower boats. You all fit for swim."
They took the hint, and began leaping the bulwark rail like a swarm of
black frogs. "Good-by, boys," he said, in valediction. "You'll find it
cheaper to be good and virtuous next time. You haven't stay enough in
you for a real good fight." And then he went to where the davits dangled
over the water, and slid down to the boat, while the frightened crew
cursed him aloud for keeping them waiting.
Not much was said as they rowed away. The all-nation rowers were openly
terrified; the Mate had all his attention used up in steering to a hair;
and Sheriff sat with his shoulders humped beside his ears in the
position of a man who expects a blow. Captain Kettle held his peace. He
knew that mere words could not urge the sweating crew to heavier effort,
and he puffed at his treasured cigar as any smoker would who had been
divorced from tobacco for so many a month, and does not know when he
will meet with his next indulgence.
And in due time the powder was fired, and the steamer was turned into a
vast volcano of steam and smoke and flame, which vomited iron and human
limbs, and which sent forth an air blast which drove the boat before it
like the hurricane of a tornado. And then the _debris_ from the sky
foamed down into the water, and then there was a long, long silence.
Save for some inconsiderable flotsam, the steamer and all that was in
her had vanished eternally. The canoes from the village were paddling
for the beach again. They were alone on a lonely sea. No man seemed to
have a thought he wished to share.
The Mate was the first to speak. He patted a bundle whose outer housing
was a pillow-case, which lay on the thwart beside him. "Well," he said,
"it's been a close thing. I darn nearly lost those new clothes of mine."
"It might have been worse," said Sheriff; "we might well all have been
killed. But as it is," he added with a sigh, "we've merely got to start
fresh from the bottom again. Anyway, Kettle, I'm obliged to you for what
you have done."
The little sailor frowned. "It's kind of you, sir, to say that. But I
hate being beaten. And it's no excuse to say I did my best. I hadn't
figured on that fire and the powder, and that's a fact."
"I wonder," said the Mate thoughtfully, "which of those beggars scoffed
that gold zodiac ring of mine. That steward's boy, Tins, I expect. Took
the ring and left the new blue suit. Well, by gum, they're a funny lot,
those boys."