INTRODUCES MISS LAURA SLADE
If a white man in a West African factory volunteers details of his
previous history, all hearers are quite at liberty to believe or
disbelieve, as suits their whim; but if, on the other hand, no word
about previous record is offered, Coast etiquette strictly rules that
none shall be asked for.
George Carter found even upon the surface of his superior officer at
Malla-Nulla factory much that was mysterious. There were moments when
Mr. Smith exhibited an unmistakable gentility; but these were rare; and
they usually occurred when the pair of them lunched _en tête-à-tête_ at
11 o'clock, and Smith had worked off his morning qualm, and had not
commenced his afternoon refreshment. With a larger audience he was one
part cynic and six parts ruffian; he was admitted to be the most
skilful compounder of cocktails on all that section of the West African
seaboard; and he sampled his own brews in such quantities, and with
such impunity, as gave the lie to all text-books on topical medicine.
His head was bald, and the gray hair on his face and above his ears was
either as short as clippers could make it, or else bristled with a two
weeks' growth. Day and night he wore more or less shrunken pyjamas,
from the neck buttonhole of which a single eyeglass dangled at the end
of a piece of new black silk ribbon. Carter guessed his age as
somewhere between fifty and fifty-five, and wondered why on earth
Messrs. O'Neill and Craven kept such a disreputable old person as the
head of what might have been a very prosperous factory.
Indeed, theories on this very point were already lodged in the older
man's brain. "It's this new partner, K. O'Neill, that I don't like the
sound of," he explained to Carter one day. "By the way, who is he?"
"Don't know. As I told you I was staying with my father at the
vicarage, and I was engaged by wire the day before the _M'poso_ sailed,
and only caught her by the skin of my teeth. There was nobody there to
see me off, and on the boat all they could tell me was that 'K.' came
into the business when the late head died."
"Old Godfrey, that was"--Swizzle-Stick Smith sighed--"poor old Godfrey
O'Neill! He was one of the best fellows going in the old days, not a
bit like the usual cut of palm-oil ruffian as we used to call the
traders then. And, my God! to think of my coming down to the grade of
one of them myself."
Again the subject cropped up when one of their rare mails came in.
"Here's expense!" grumbled Swizzle-Stick Smith. "Letters landed at our
Monk River factory, and sent on to Mulla-Nulla by special runner. K.
O'Neill's orders, the Monk River agent says. In the old days you could
always bet on the beach being too bad for the steamer to call twice out
of three times, and you weren't pestered with a mail more than once in
six months. That's mainly why I've stuck by O'Neill and Craven all
these years. Now this new man wants our output of kernels to be
doubled by this time next year, and hopes I'll take steps to work up
the rubber connection. If I can't see my way to do all this, will I
kindly give my reasons in writing, and if necessary forward same by
runner to a steamer's calling point, so that reply may be in Liverpool
within six weeks at latest. What do you think of that?"
"Oh, I should say it was reasonable enough from the Liverpool point of
view."
"Bah! There's not much of the Coast about you." He tore the letters
into shreds, and folded these carefully into pipe-lights. "Dear old
Godfrey trusted me up to the hilt, and this new fellow's got to learn
to do the same, or I shall resign my commission. If he understood
anything about running the office, he might know I should do all the
work that was good for me."
"I'm sure you do," said Carter civilly. "I'm afraid I'm the slacker.
You let me have such an easy time of it whilst my arm was getting well,
that I've slid off into lazy ways. I must buck up, and if you'll load
the work onto me, Mr. Smith, you'll find I can do a lot more."
Swizzle-Stick Smith dried the perspiration from his eye socket, fixed
his glass into a firmer hold, and stared. "Well," he said at last,
"you _are_ a d--d fool." And there the talk ended.
It was that same day that Carter had his first introduction to Royalty.
He was in the retail store--"feteesh," they call it on the
Coast--weighing out baskets of palm kernels, measuring calabashes of
orange-colored palm oil, judging as best he could the amount of
adulterants the simple negro had added to increase the bulk, and
apportioning the value in cotton cloth, powder, flintlock guns at
twelve and six-pence apiece, and green cubical boxes of Holland gin.
Trade proceeded slowly. The interior of the feteesh was a stew of heat
and odors, and the white man's elaborate calculations were none of the
most glib. To knock some idea of the fairness of these into the black
man's skull was a work that required not only eloquence, but also
athletic power. The simple savage who did only one day's shopping per
annum was willing always to let the delights of it linger out as long
as possible, and all the white man's hustling could not drive the
business along at more than a snail's pace.
By Coast custom, work for Europeans starts in those cool hours that
know the daybreak, and switches off between eleven and twelve for
breakfast; and thereafter siesta is the rule till the sun once more
begins to throw a shadow. But on this particular day, when
Swizzle-Stick Smith had knocked out his pipe and turned in under his
mosquito bar, Carter sluiced a parrafin-can full of water over his red
head by way of a final refreshment, and went down once more from the
living rooms of the factory to the heat and the odors of the feteesh
below.
The sweating customers saw him come and roused up out of the purple
shadows, and presently the game of haggle was once more in full swing.
Carter had a natural gift for tongues, and was picking up the difficult
Coast languages to the best of his ability, but his vocabulary was of
necessity small, and a Krooboy stood by to translate intricate passages
into idiom more likely to penetrate the harder skulls. The Krooboy
wore trousers and singlet in token of his advanced civilization, and
bore with pride the name of White-Man's-Trouble.
There was a glut of customers that baking afternoon. High-scented
trade stuffs poured into the factory in pleasing abundance, and bundles
of European produce were balanced upon woolly craniums for
transportation through bush paths to that wild unknown Africa beyond
the hinterland. The new law of K. O'Neill allowed no lingering in the
feteesh. Once a customer had been delivered of his goods, and had
accepted payment, White-Man's-Trouble decanted him into the scalding
sunshine outside, and bade him hasten upon his ways. K. O'Neill had
stated very plainly, in a typewritten letter, that the leakage by theft
was unpleasing to the directorate in Liverpool, and must be stopped.
K. O'Neill understood that the thefts took place after a customer had
spent all his cash on legitimate purchase, as then all his savage
intelligence was turned to pilfering. Carter, as the man on the spot,
recognized the truth of all this, and carried out the instructions to
the foot of the letter.
Mr. Smith warned him he would have trouble over it. "Ever since the
first factory came down to blight this Coast," Smith explained, "the
boys have been allowed to hang around the feteesh and steal what wasn't
nailed down. They look upon it in the light of a legitimate discount,
and it's grown up into a custom. Now in West Africa you may burn a
forest, or blot out a nation, or start a new volcano, and nobody will
say very much to you, but if you interfere with a recognized custom,
you come in contact with the biggest kind of trouble."
"Still," Carter pointed out, "these orders are definite."
"And you are the kind of fool that goes on the principle of 'obeying
orders if you break owners.' Well, go ahead and carry out
instructions. I won't interfere with you. I'd rather like to see this
cocksure K. O'Neill get a smack in the eye to cure his meddling. And
for yourself, keep your weather eye lifting, or some indignant nigger
will ram a foot of iron into you. It's the Okky-men I'd take especial
care of if I were you. They've got their tails up a good deal more
than's healthy just now. I'm told, too, that their head witch doctor
wants his war drum redecorated." Mr. Smith grinned--"I don't want to
be personal, of course."
"Oh, don't mind me. So far I rather fail to understand what I've got
to do with the Okky City war drum."
"You see you carry round with you something that would make the very
best kind of heap-too-good ju-ju."
"Still I don't understand."
Swizzle-Stick Smith got up and stretched, and limped across to the
door. "It's that red head of yours, my lad," he said over his shoulder
as he went out. "Every witch doctor in West Africa that sees it will
just itch to have it amongst his ornaments. I'd dye it sky-blue if I
were you, just for safety sake."
This of course might be Mr. Smith's delicate irony, or again it might
be literally true. Carter had already been long enough in West Africa
to know that very unusual and unpleasant things can happen there; but
that made no change in his determination. K. O'Neill was perfectly
right about the matter; this pilfering ought to be stopped; and he felt
convinced that White-Man's-Trouble would help to see that justice was
done. That particular Krooboy was thievish himself, certainly, but he
had a short way with any fellow African who dared to be light-fingered.
So during all that hot morning, and all that sweltering afternoon,
merchant after merchant was shown out into the sunshine, and those who
chattered and would not go willingly were assisted by the strong right
arm of White-Man's-Trouble.
Just upon the time when siestas generally ended, that is, about four
o'clock, there came a burly Okky trader who swaggered up to the factory
with five carriers in his train laden down with bags of rubber.
Carter examined the evil smelling stuff, and cut open two or three of
the larger round lumps. The gentle savage had put in quite thirty per
cent. of sticks, and sand, and alien gum by way of makeweight, and was
as petulant as a child at having this simple fraud discovered. He
still further disliked the price that was offered; and when it came to
making his purchases, and he found that the particular
spot-white-on-blue cotton cloth on which he had built up his fancy was
out of stock, the remaining rags of his temper were frayed completely.
For an unbroken ten minutes he cursed Carter, and Malla-Nulla factory,
and an unknown Manchester skipper in fluent Okky, here and there
embroidered with a few words of that slave-trader's Arabic, which is
specially designed as a comfort for the impatient, and when he had
accepted a roll of blue cloth spotted in another pattern, and was
invited to leave the feteesh, he held himself to be one of the worst
used Africans on the Dark Continent.
Carter, who was tired and hot, signed to his henchman. "Here, fire
that ruffian out," he said.
But White-Man's-Trouble affected to hear a summons from outside. "Dat
you, Smith? Yessar, I come one-time," said he, and bolted out through
the doorway.
"Here you," said Carter to the big Okky-man, "you follow that Krooboy
out of here. If I have to tell you a second time, there'll be trouble.
Come, now, git."
Carter's command of the native might be faulty, but the grammar of his
gestures was correct enough. What, go out of the feteesh before he
chose? The Okky-man had no idea of doing such a thing. He lifted his
walking spear threateningly, and snarled.
Simultaneously Carter put his right hand on the greasy counter and
vaulted. He caught the upraised spear with his other hand before his
feet had touched ground, and broke the blade close off by the socket;
and a short instant later, when he had found a footing, he carried his
weight forward in the same leap, and drove his right against the
negro's left carotid, just beneath the ear. The man went down as if he
had been pole-axed.
Carter went outside and beckoned to the Okky-man's carriers. "Here,
you, come and carry your master outdoors"--the men hesitated--"or I'll
start in to handle you next." They did as they were bidden. And
thereupon Carter, with his blood now well warmed up, was left free to
attend to another matter elsewhere.
A noise of voices in disagreement, and the intermittent sounds of
scuffling had made themselves heard from the south side of the factory
buildings, and now there were added to these a woman's voice calling in
English for some one to help her, and then a sharp, shrill scream of
unmistakable distress.
Now, Carter was no knight-errant. He had set up the unknown K. O'Neill
as his model, and had told himself daily that he intended to meddle
with nothing in West Africa, philanthropic or otherwise, which would
not directly tend to the advancement of George Carter; but at the first
moment when they were put to the test, all these academic resolutions
broke to pieces. He picked up his feet and ran at speed through the
sunshine, and as he went a mist seemed to rise up before his eyes which
tinged everything red.
He felt somehow as he had never felt before; strangely exhilarated and
strangely savage; and when he arrived on the scene of the disturbance,
he was little inclined to weigh the consequences of interference.
There was a woman, white-faced and terror-stricken--he could not for
the life of him tell whether she was handsome or hideous. Negroes were
handling her. On the ground lay a pole hammock, in which presumably
she had arrived. In front of her was a fat negro, over whose head a
slave held a gaudy gold and red umbrella, and grouped around this fat
one were eight or ten negro soldiers, with swords slung over their
shoulders, and long flintlock trade guns in their hands.
The whole scene was, as I say, dished up to Carter's eyes in a red
mist, and this thinned and thickened spasmodically so that sometimes he
could see clearly what he was doing, and at other times he acted like a
man bewitched. But presently the red cleared away altogether, and he
found himself clutching the fat negro by a twist of the shoulder cloth,
and threatening to split his skull with a sword recently carried by one
of the man's own escort. The girl sat limp and white on a green case
before them, clearly on the edge of a faint, and round them all stood
negro carriers and Haûsa soldiery, frozen to inaction by the fat man's
danger.
All human noises had ceased. Only the hot insect hum and the cool
diapason of the Atlantic surf droned through the silence. From the
dull upraised sword blade outrageous sunrays winked and flickered.
Upon this impasse came Swizzle-Stick Smith from the bush side of the
white factory buildings, polishing his eyeglass, and limping along at
his usual pace, and no faster. He removed his pipe, and wagged it at
them.
"Upon my soul a most interesting picture! Just like a kid's fairy tale
book. Gallant young knight rescuing distressed damosel from the
clutches of wicked ogre, who incidentally happens to be the King of
Okky as anyone but a born fool could have guessed from his state
umbrella, and one of the firm's best customers. Kindly observe that
I'm the good fairy who always comes in on the last page to put things
safe. Carter, I prithee sheath thy virgin sword, and then for God's
sake run away and drown yourself."
He had reached the group by this time, and took up in his own the damp
black hand of offended majesty, and shook it heartily. He broke out in
a stream of fluent Okky, and gradually the potentate's wrath melted.
The King still gesticulated violently, and apparently demanded Carter's
red head upon a charger as a prelude to truce, but Swizzle-Stick Smith
was an old Coaster and knew his man.
"Champagne," Mr. Smith kept on suggesting, "bubbly champagne with
plenty of Angostura bitters in it to make it bite. I call attention to
your Majesty's historic thirst. Come up into the factory, old
Tintacks, and we'll break up a case in honor of the day."
Finally the King, who being a West African king was necessarily a
shrewd man, decided that though vengeance would keep till another day,
Mr. Smith's champagne might not; and he let himself be led back to the
factory, and up the stair. He graciously accepted the most
solid-looking of the long chairs in the veranda, sat in it carefully,
kicked off his slippers, and tucked his feet beneath him. He waved
away Mr. Smith's further speech. "Oh, Smith," he said, "I fit for
champagne-palaver, one-time," and loosened the tuck of his ample
waist-cloth to give space for the expected cargo. "No damn use more
talk-palaver now."
Outside in the sunlight the Haûsa soldiers had taken the cue from their
master, and dissolved away unobtrusively; the carriers were dismissed
to the Krooboys' quarters under the charge of White-Man's-Trouble, who,
now that the disturbance was over, bustled up with many protestations
of sorrow for his unavoidable absence, and Carter was left for further
attendance on his distressed damsel.
For the first time he found himself able to regard her critically; and
he was somehow rather disturbed to find before him a girl who was
undeniably beautiful. When he had rushed blindly in to the rescue, he
had taken it for granted that the person he saw so vaguely through that
red mist was an English or an American missionary woman in distress,
and (to himself) excused his mad lust for battle by picturing himself
as the champion of the Christian martyr beset by pagans.
The white missionary women of that strip of the Coast occasionally
quartered themselves at Malla-Nulla factory on their journeyings, in
spite of the very niggardly civility of Mr. Smith, and Carter had been
much impressed in the way beneficent Nature had safeguarded them by
homely features and unattractive mien from attack by the other sex. He
could have taken off his hat to one of these, and said:
"Most happy to have been of service to you, madam. Won't you come into
the factory and have a cup of tea?"
But this slim beauty in the frilled white muslins sent speech further
and further away from him the more that he looked at her. For the
first time since landing in Africa six months before he was ashamed of
mildew-stained pyjamas for afternoon wear, and disgusted with the
yellow smears of palm oil which bedaubed them. He was hatefully aware
too that he had let his razors rust in the moist Coast climate, and
White-Man's-Trouble's fortnightly efforts with the clippers had merely
left his chin and head covered with an obscene red bristle.
"... It would be ridiculous," the girl was murmuring, "merely to say
'thank you' for what you did, Mr. Carter. You see I know your name.
News about new-comers soon spreads amongst the other factories on the
Coast here. If you only knew how I dread that fearful King, you would
understand my gratitude. You see this isn't the first time he's tried
to carry me off."
"I wish you'd mentioned it earlier," Carter blurted out, "and I'd have
split his dirty skull, trade or no trade."
She shook her head. "No, that wouldn't have done. There's the law to
be thought of even here. Besides, he's a King, and could let loose, so
they say, twenty thousand fighting men against the Coast factories, and
wipe them out. If only I could get away to some place he couldn't
reach!" She shivered. "If I stay on here at my father's factory, I'm
bound to be caught and taken to Okky City."
Carter's brown eyes opened in sheer surprise. "You speak of your
father's factory. Do you mean to say that you live here on the Coast?"
"At the Smooth River factory."
"What, Slade's place?"
"Yes, I'm Laura Slade. Couldn't you guess?"
"How could I?" Carter blurted out. "Mr. Smith told me that Slade's
girl--" And there he stopped, and could have bitten off his tongue for
having said so much.
She finished his sentence quietly, and, as it appeared, without
resentment. "Mr. Smith, I suppose, described me as a nigger."
Carter made no reply. His brown eyes hung upon her pretty face
intently.
"Mr. Smith, of course, knew my father, and my mother, too, for that
matter, before I was born. My mother was a quadroon, and that makes
me, you see, one-eighth African."
"You did not arrange your pedigree any more than I did mine. If you
hadn't told me, I should never have guessed you weren't a full-blooded
European. And after all, what does it matter?"
"There speaks the man who has only been out on the Coast six months."
"Six months or six years," said Carter stoutly, "makes no difference so
far as I am concerned. We're neighbors, it appears, and I hope you
will let me be one of your friends. Miss Slade, will you take
compassion on a very lonely man and let him come over to Smooth River
occasionally and see you? I can't tell you how ghastly the loneliness
has been with only the Krooboys and Mr.--er--Swizzle-Stick Smith to
talk to, though perhaps you can guess at it by the way I've let my
outward man run to seed."
She gave him her slim brown hand. "I take frankly what you offer," she
said. "If you let me become your friend, I shall count myself
fortunate; you see, after what you have done for me to-day we can
hardly start from the ordinary basis."
From there onwards their talk flowed easily. She had come over on a
business errand for her father, and Carter settled that quickly and
promptly. She went presently into the factory to rest after her long
hammock ride, and Carter seized upon the chance to dive into his own
room. Therefrom he emerged an hour later with a chin half-raw from
recent shaving with a rusty razor, and wearing creased white drill
clothes and a linen collar that sawed his neck abominably.
"I've arranged," he said, when next he saw her, "that you and I dine
_tête-à-tête_, if you don't mind, down under those palm trees yonder.
The mosquitos don't trouble down there just at sunset, and my boy,
White-Man's-Trouble, only tastes things when they're going back to the
cook house. It's mere prejudice to say he's had his filthy paw in
every dish before it comes to me. Oh, by the way, Mr. Smith and his
Majesty of Okky ask you to excuse them, as they have still more
business to discuss before they can break up their meeting."
She laughed and understood him to a nicety. They slipped off into
light easy talk as though they had known one another all their lives,
and there was neither that narrow escape from tragedy behind them, nor
Africa and possible tragedy ahead. The girl was good comrade. The man
was hardly that. He too frankly devoured her with his eyes. And
certainly, in her cool, frilled muslin dress, and her big green sun hat
she was pretty enough to paint. Her hair was black assuredly, but her
pale olive face was moulded in curves of the most delicious. In
England, and as an Englishwoman, she would have been dark perhaps,
though not noticeably so. Nine hundred and ninety-nine English people
out of the thousand would have commented on her beauty only. In
America--well, in America, she would at once have been placed in that
class apart.
But Carter, the recently imported Englishman, saw nothing save only her
beauty and her charm, and he behaved towards her as the English
gentleman behaves towards his equal. A man who had been longer in
Africa would have had the wisdom of one who had lived in the Southern
States, and have picked out the African blood at a glance, and, as is
the way of men who have eaten of the tree of that wisdom, would have
ordered his civilities accordingly.