CHAPTER I_Kate Meredith, Financier

[Frontispiece: They explained in bold, clear tones that they were the

chief ju-ju men of all Africa. Page 224.]

Kate Meredith

_FINANCIER_

C. J. CUTCLIFFE HYNE

Author of

"Captain Kettle, K.C.S.," "McTodd,"

"The Filibuster," "Adventures of Captain Kettle,"

"The Trials of Commander McTurk."

Illustrated in Water-Colors by FRANK PARKER

A. HAMBURGER & SONS, INC.,

SPECIAL EDITION,

LOS ANGELES, CAL.

NEW YORK AND LONDON

THE AUTHORS AND NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION

1906

_Entered at Stationers' Hall_

_All rights reserved_

Composition and Electrotyping by

J. J. Little & Co.

Printed and bound by the

Plimpton Press, Norwood, Mass

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. A West Coast Welcome

II. Introduces Miss Laura Slade

III. The King who Stopped the Roads

IV. The Beach by Moonlight

V. Events at Malla-Nulla

VI. The Coming of the Okky-Men

VII. The Invisible Fire

VIII. Presents the Head of the Firm

IX. Navigation of Dog's-Leg Creek

X. Envoys in Council

XI. Again Presents the Head of the Firm

XII. Exhibits Antiseptics

XIII. At the Liverpool End

XIV. Tin Hill: The Journey

XV. Tin Hill: The Mine

XVI. The King's Bounty

XVII. Kate Sends a Cablegram

XVIII. Carter Makes A Purchase

XIX. Senhor Cascaes

XX. Major Meredith

XXI. The Feeling on the Coast

XXII. A Fisherman and his Catch

XXIII. The Song of Speed

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

These explained, in bold, clear tones that they were the chief ju-ju

men of all Africa . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

He fired on and on with deadly speed and accuracy, till the heated

barrels of the repeaters burned Laura Slade's hands

Then, as the crocodile jumped once more, he threw up the rifle and shot

it under the left foreleg, where the protective plates are absent

She gazed her fill on this very crude presentment of George Carter

[Illustration: (Facsimile Page of Manuscript from KATE MEREDITH

FINANCIER)]

KATE MEREDITH, FINANCIER

CHAPTER I

A WEST COAST WELCOME

"Mighty beach to-day!" grumbled Captain Image, and handed binoculars

across to the purser.

Mr. Balgarnie tossed his cigarette over the lee rail and tucked a sheaf

of papers into his mouth so as to have two spare hands. Day had ten

minutes before glared up over an oily swell-writhing sea of

bottle-green; dew lay in fat greasy gouts on the deck planks and the

skylight frames, foretelling in clear prophecy another spell of

scalding West African sunshine; and a mile out from the crashing,

bellowing surf that smoked along the beach, the S.S. _M'poso_ buttocked

sullenly over the swells, with engines rung off, and sweating firemen

on the top of the fiddley, slewing ventilators to catch a flavor of the

breeze.

"They've seen us, sir, at the factory," said Mr. Balgarnie. "All the

boys are out working cargo, and there's old Swizzle-Stick Smith sucking

his eternal pipe and hustling them with a chiquot. I can catch the

glint of his eyeglass. Wonder how long that man's been out on the

Coast? Must be a matter of twenty years now by all accounts since he

had his last run home. He's found the right kind of ju-ju to dodge

fever-palaver, anyhow. They say he's a lazy old beach-comber as a

general thing, but he's up bright and early this morning."

"Wouldn't you rouse out in a hurry if you only saw a Christian

steamboat once in three months at the oftenest? I told the second mate

to make fast the whistle string to the bridge rail when he judged he

was five miles off the old sinner's beach, and I guess Swizzle-Stick

Smith jumped slap through his mosquito bar at the first toot. See

those pyjamas he's wearing? He bought them at the forecastle shop

aboard here just six months ago."

"Blue, with a pink stripe, so they are. This is a rare good glass of

yours, sir. Yes, I remember Chips telling me. Three pairs he got at

nine bob a pair. Wouldn't pay a sixpence more. And tried to get a

bottle of Eno thrown in as a make-weight. Phew! but this day's going

to be a ringtailed scorcher. Look at the mist clearing away from those

hills at the back already."

Captain Image stuffed a pipe and lit it. "It's a murdering bad beach

to-day," he repeated. "Always is when there's a few tons of cargo

waiting for me to get commission on."

The purser touched no cargo commission, and so had but small sympathy

for cargo gathering. "I see old Swizzle-Stick's making his boys run

down the oil casks into the surf. They'll never swim them through.

Rather a pity, isn't it, sir, to stay on here and let them try?

They're bound to get half of them stove at the very least."

"That's his palaver. I missed calling here last round. There was a

swell like a cliff that day; but then there always is a bad beach along

this run of the Coast; and so he should have double lot of cargo ready

for me. There'll be oil and there'll be rubber, and I shouldn't wonder

but what he's a few bags of kernels as well. I bet that factory on the

beach there is just bulging with cargo. It ought to tally up to quite

fifty tons, and I'm not going to have some other captain snapping up

old Swizzle-Stick Smith's trade if I know it. Balgarnie, my lad, I'd

the straight tip given me from O'Neill and Craven's in Liverpool when I

was home. If we don't make it handy to call at their factories along

this Coast, the Hamburg boats will. They've shipped a new director or

something at O'Neill and Craven's--K. O'Neill he signs himself--and

that man intends to make things hum."

"My Whiskers!" said the Purser. "I clean forgot. We've a new clerk

for O'Neill and Craven's here at Malla-Nulla. It's that red-haired

young chap, Carter, in the second class."

"Last three red-haired passengers I knew all pegged out within three

months of being put ashore. Color of the hair seems to counteract the

effects of drugs. Purser, I'll bet you just two cocktails Carter's

planted before we're here again next trip."

"It's on," said Mr. Balgarnie, "and I shall remember it. The young

chap's made me a picture frame for my room as good as you could buy in

a shop, and he's built the Doc some barbed arrows just like those Kasai

ones the old chief brought along from the Congo when he was on the

Antwerp run. He's a handy young fellow."

"That doesn't get over the red hair, Purser. You'll lose that

cocktail. Bet you another cocktail, if you like, he gets spilt in the

surf getting ashore."

Mr. Balgarnie winked pleasantly. "Then we'll consider that last one

lost already." He put his head inside the chart-house and called out

the captain's Krooboy steward--"Brass-Pan?"

"Yessar."

"We fit for two cocktail."

"Savvy."

"You lib for my room, you fetch dem gin-bottle, an' give him to bar

steward."

"Savvy."

"Well, what are you waiting for? Get along, you bush-man, one-time ...

That's a poor boy I'm afraid you've got, Captain."

"Pipe-clays shoes very neatly," said Captain Image. "Oh, you've

brought those papers for me to sign. Well, come into the chart-house,

Purser, and we'll get them through. Hope that fool of a boy will bring

the cocktails quick. These early morning chills are dangerous unless

you take the proper preventives."

Meanwhile the brazen day had grown, and work proceeded at a forced

speed both on the steamer and on the beach. Ashore, the lonely factory

bustled with evil-scented negroes, who strained at huge white-ended

palm oil puncheons. On the _M'poso_ a crew of chattering Krooboys

busied themselves aft, and presently under the guidance of a profane

third mate a brace of surf-boats jerked down towards the water, the

tackles squealing like a parcel of angry cats as they rendered through

the blocks. The boats spurned away into the clear sea before the

steamer's rusty iron side crashed down onto them: the Krooboys perched

themselves ape-like on the gunwales, paddle in hand: and in the stern

of each straddled a noisy headman, in billycock and trousers, straining

and swaying at the steering oar.

The headman was in charge, and the well-spiced official English of

ship-board ceased. The speech in the boats was one of the barbaric

tongues of savage Africa. But the work they got through and the skill

they showed exceeded by far that which could have been put forth by any

crew of white men. Indeed, in his more pious moments, Captain Image,

in common with other mariners of his kind, firmly believed that God had

invented certain of the West African Coast tribes for the sole purpose

of handling the boats of the Liverpool oil tanks on surf-smitten

beaches.

Now, Captain Image was not in the least degree a snob, and he did not

take even first-class passengers on their face value. As he would

explain to intimates, he was not out on the Coast for his health; he

very much wished to be able some day to retire on a competency, and

grow cabbages outside of Cardiff; and so he dispensed his affability on

a nicely regulated scale. If a man could influence cargo in the

direction of the _M'poso_, Captain Image was ready at all times to

extend to him the rough red hand of friendship, and to supply gin

cocktails and German champagne till conversation flowed into the

desired commercial channel. He called this casting bread upon the

waters, and could always rely on getting the prime cost back in

commission. But he was no man to waste either his good liquor or his

pearls of speech on a mere fifty-pound-a-year clerk, with a red head,

who would very possibly be dead before the _M'poso's_ next call, and

who certainly could influence no cargo for the next two years to come.

So from the day they left Liverpool to the day when the steamer's

forefoot scraped at her cable off Malla-Nulla beach, Captain Image had

not condescended to offer that particular second-class passenger so

much as a morning nod.

But Captain Image was kindly enough in the West African way, and when

he had drunk his morning cocktail and gone through the Purser's papers,

he came out of the chart-house again and produced from his pyjama

pocket a half-filled box of pills.

"There, my lad," he said to Carter, as he made the presentation, "you

take one of those according to the directions on the lid, when

required, and you'll have your health kept in a repair that will

surprise you. Now, mark me well; you'll be tempted with other brands

of pills; old Swiz--I mean Mr. Smith, your boss, is a regular crank on

drugs; but as sure as you tip other medicines down into your inside, my

pills will get hindered at their proper work, and you'll be knocked

over."

"Thanks," said Carter. "But I always understood----"

"I'm sure you did. Now there's one other thing I want to impress on

you, my lad. Your duty is to get on, and the way to do that is to

scratch up cargo and send it home by the _M'poso_. You see, my lad,

I've got more influence with O'Neill and Craven than any other captain

on the Coast (though you needn't go and stir up mischief by spreading

that about), and if you keep yourself in my memory by the way

Malla-Nulla ships cargo by me, I'll let them fully understand at the

home office that services like yours want a big raise in salary.

There, don't you bother to thank me, my lad, and just you stow that box

of pills where they won't get lost if you're spilt going ashore through

that surf. It's a mighty bad beach to-day."

"Ah, morning, Carter," said Mr. Balgarnie as he bustled up. "Got all

your things up on deck? It's no concern of mine, of course, but if

there are any little odds and ends you want, such as socks, or Florida

water, or a mosquito bar, I believe Chips and the bos'n keep a sort of

surreptitious shop somewhere in the forecastle where you could fill up

your stores."

"Much obliged," said the passenger, "but I think I've got all I want,

or rather all I can afford."

"Remembered to bring donkey-clippers for hair-cutting? No? Well, just

as you please. What I really wished to mention to you was this: when

your pay comes in, you'll naturally want little comforts sent out from

home, and you won't care to worry any of your friends to get them for

you. Now don't you have any qualms about making use of me. Just say

what you want, and I'll get it and bring it out." Mr. Balgarnie winked

most pleasantly. "I'm purser here, of course, and have to back up the

Company's charges, but I can always make the rates reasonable to oblige

a friend. There, good-by, old fellow. The boat's ready to take you

off."

A surf boat swung dizzily up and down at the guess-warp alongside and

the two yellow gladstone bags on its floor seemed ludicrously out of

place beside the savage paddlers. Carter was conscious that his heart

worked up to an unpleasant activity; but he carried a serene face,

dropped to his knees in the gangway, and began with unaccustomed feet

to clamber down the Jacob's ladder. He noted without disturbance that

he was daubing coal dust and orange-colored palm oil onto his hands and

white drill clothes in the process; but he had a mind now which

entirely disregarded the trivial; all his interest was fixed upon the

boat.

"Don't jump too soon."

"Take care you don't drop that new pith hat."

"Mind, don't let the boat come up and squash you."

"Don't flurry the man so. Put your feet in your pocket if you see a

shark."

A stream of advice, much of it satirical, pelted him from above.

Looking over his shoulder, he saw beneath him the leaping boat and a

ring of negro grins. It was these last that stiffened him into action.

The surf-boat swooped up sideways, and when it seemed to him that she

had reached the zenith of her leap, he let go the Jacob's ladder and

sprang for her.

It is a matter of nice judgment, this determination of the

psychological moment for a jump; and the amateur has it not. As a

consequence Carter's foot slid on the wet gunwale; he buttocked

painfully onto a thwart; and was saved from spinning overboard by rough

and ready black fingers. The new pith helmet received its first crack,

the white drill clothes were further soiled, and he was left to gather

himself out of the slop of water on the bottom of the boat as best he

pleased. Already the Krooboy crew were perched ape-like on the

gunwales, and stabbing strenuously at the water with trident-headed

paddles. The headman straddled in the stern with the muscles standing

out in him like nuts, as he sculled with the steering oar.

It had all passed so quickly that the steamer had only accomplished

one-half of a roll. The white faces that he had seen last beside him

were now small and far away at the top of an enormously high iron wall,

and to their shouts of farewell and fluttering of handkerchiefs he

could not bring himself to return more than a curt hand-wave. It

seemed to him that he was cut off entirely from white men and white

man's territory, and was launched beyond release into West Africa with

all its smells and accoutrements.

He settled himself in the mid thwart of the surf-boat with the water on

the floor flowing merrily in and out of his pipe-clayed shoes.

Whatever a white man may feel, he always assumes coolness and

indifference before the black, and Carter picked up the instinct of his

race.

His progress shoreward had two distinct phases. At one time he and the

boat lay in a watery ravine with high sides towering above him, and no

view save of sleek bottle-green water and cobalt sky overhead. The

next moment he was expressed upwards on to an eminence and there before

him lay landscape and seascape of most pleasant qualities. At these

last moments of exaltation, he saw a glaring beach set along the sea's

edge, carrying white factory buildings, and backed in by an orderly

wall of green.

He saw also palm-oil puncheons being brought off, and an interest in

the work bit him immediately. Here was the commodity which (bar death)

would for years to come be his chiefest intimate. Between eclipses of

the rollers, he watched every stage of the work--the great white-ended

barrels rolled down the glaring beach, naked savages swimming them

through the surf with unimaginable skill, a green painted surf-boat at

anchor outside the breakers making them fast to a buoyed hawser. He

saw another hawser-load being heaved out to the steamer's winch, with

the great casks popping about like a string of gigantic cherries.

Already on the _M'poso_ he had seen other puncheons howked on board by

a steam-crane which was driven by a one-eared Krooboy.

He had grasped this much of his new trade when sight seemed to grow

misty to him, and his body was chilled with an unpleasant perspiration.

It is one thing to take one's regular meals on a fine-sized steamboat,

whatever weather may befall; it is quite another to do one's voyaging

in a leaping, lancing, dancing, wallowing surf-boat. Few men take

their first surf-boat ride over a bad roll without being violently

seasick, and Carter was no exception to the normal law.

In a hazy sort of way he noted that the paddlers had stopped their song

and their monotonous effort, and he was seized with a tremendous desire

to hurry them forward and get himself and his gladstone bags planted on

the stable beach. Ahead of them were roaring, spouting breakers, which

it seemed impossible for any boat to live through; but waiting outside

their fringe was even more intolerable.

"Oh, get on! For Heaven's sake, get on!" he wanted to shout, but

almost to his astonishment pride of race kept him grimly silent. He

had never felt before the whole debt that is owing to a white skin.

The headman in the stern-sheets sculled now and again with his oar to

keep the boat head on to the roll, and between whiles chattered

nervously. The Krooboy paddlers on the gunwales rested on their

paddles and scratched themselves. Roller after roller went by,

flinging the boat up towards heaven, sucking her back again to the sea

grass below, with a rocking motion that was horrible beyond belief.

Carter felt the color ebb from his cheeks; he wondered with a grisly

humor if his head was paling also.

But at last the headman delivered himself of a shriek, and a galvanic

activity seized the paddlers. They stabbed the water with their

trident-shaped blades, and stabbed and stabbed again. The surf-boat

was poised on the crest of a great mound of water, and they were

straining every sinew to keep her there. But the water motion

travelled more swiftly than the clumsy boat. She slid down the slope,

still paddling frantically, and the following wave lifted her rudely by

the tail. She reared dizzily almost to the vertical, the headman at

the apex of the whole structure keeping his perch with an ape's

dexterity.

She just missed being upset that time, and part of the water which she

had shipped was flung over the gunwales as she righted. But she

floated there half swamped: labor with what frenzy they choose, the

iron-muscled Krooboys could not keep her under command; and the next

roller sent the whole company of them flying.

There is one piece of advice constantly dinned into a white man's ear

on the West Coast. "If in a surf-boat you see the boat boys jump

overboard, jump yourself also if you do not wish to have the boat on

top of you." Profoundly sound advice it is. But it has the

disadvantage of presupposing capability for obedience, and if (as

frequently happens) the passenger is dizzy and weak from sudden

seasickness, then the leap may be neither prompt nor well-aimed.

As to where Carter's fault occurred, I have no certain information.

The headman shrieked an order in his own barbarous tongue; the boat

boys took to water on either side like so many black frogs; the boat

spilt, flinging far two yellow gladstone bags and one limp passenger in

soiled white ducks; and, look how one would into that boiling hell of

broken water, no red head appeared.

On the glaring beach Swizzle-Stick Smith broke off from his overseeing

for a moment, and limped down into the smoke of the surf. He had a

chiquot in his hand, which is a whip made of the most stinging part of

the hippopotamus, and with it he slashed venomously at every black form

that scrambled out of the brine.

He screamed at them in their own tongue. "Get back, you black swine!

Get back, and fetch out my clerk. If you drown my clerk, I will drown

you, too. My last clerk died a year ago, and they have got me no other

out here since. I won't lose this one. Back, you bushmen!"

The chiquot had many terrors to the Krooboys, the water few. It was as

much out of forgetfulness as anything else that they had not brought

their passenger to shore with them. Besides, how were they to know

that he could not swim as well as themselves (that is, about as well as

a seal can swim)? But they were not above striking a bargain for their

services. A black head, served upon a white pother of creamy surf,

gave tongue.

"Oh, Smith. You give cash, suppose we fit for catch 'im?"

"You lib for beach with my clerk, and I dash you one whole box of gin.

Hurry up now, you thieves, or a shark will chop him, or else he'll

drown."

Heads disappeared, and many pairs of black heels kicked upwards. The

old man hitched together his shabby pyjamas, and stared industriously

at the broken water through his eyeglass. "It's all very well for this

K. O'Neill to send out letters that the firm is going to double its

business," he grumbled, "but if they don't send me men that can get

ashore in one piece, how this factory at Malla-Nulla is going to buck

up, I can't see. By Jove, they've got him, the beggars. Red-headed

chap, too. Well, I might have saved that dash, I'm thinking. Men with

red heads never seem to stand the climate here for long. It will be a

nuisance if the beggar pegs out within the month, after I've spent a

case of gin on him."

It was a very limp and bedraggled Carter that was brought ashore

presently by the Krooboys. He was held up by the heels, _more

Africano_, to let the Atlantic drain from his inside back into its

proper place, but he did not show any sign of consciousness till he had

been lifted up and carried to the shelter of the retail store.

Swizzle-Stick Smith limped beside him, puffing at his briar. "Beggar's

got an arm broken," he commented. "Just my luck. And K. O'Neill will

expect the work to be done just the same. Oh"--he said when the

dripping Krooboys had put down his guest on the counter--"so you've

concluded to come to your senses again?"

Carter shuddered and slowly opened his eyes. A brown cockroach,

horrible with dust, dropped from the rafter above onto his face.

"I'm afraid you've had rather a rough bout of it, landing, my lad.

It's a very bad beach to-day. There, don't move. You're all right.

You'll feel a bit queer yet."

"The boat upset----"

"It did, most thoroughly. But you're now at Malla-Nulla factory in

West Africa, and I bid you welcome. I'm Mr. Smith, your commanding

officer. You'd like to lie still for a bit, perhaps?"

"Yes."

"Well, buck up, and you'll soon be all right. You needn't fancy you'll

be a candidate for a top-hat and a gun-case yet."

"For a which?"

The trader pointed with his pipe stem across the store to a wooden box

full of flintlock trade guns. "That's a gun case. Man's usually too

long to fit it comfortably, especially if he's as well-grown as you

are. So we knock out one end, and nail on an old top-hat. Then you

can plant him in style."

The patient's mouth twitched with the corner of a smile. "A most tidy

custom," he said faintly. "But I say, could you do anything for my

arm? Sorry to trouble you, but it's most abominably painful."

"Your arm's broken, worse luck. I'll set it for you when I've got off

this cargo."

"I'd rather have a doctor. Will you send off to the _M'poso_ for the

doctor there, please?"

The old man laughed and polished his eyeglass on a sleeve of his

pyjamas. "My lad, you don't understand. You've left the steamer now,

and her doctor's not the kind of fool to risk his own bones trying to

get here with the beach as bad as it is to-day. I don't suppose he

mistakes you for a millionaire. You came out in the second class, I

suppose?"

"Yes."

"Then there you are. His responsibility ended when you left the

steamer, and ship's doctors don't come ashore on this Coast unless

they're sure of touching a big fat fee. Now you must just lie quiet

where you are, and bite on your teeth till I've some time for surgery.

Trade comes first in West Africa."

With which naked truth, Swizzle-Stick Smith relit his pipe, and went

out again into the brazen sunshine, and presently was hustling on the

factory boys at their cargo work with his accustomed eloquence and

dexterity.