THE KING WHO STOPPED THE ROADS
Mr. Smith was unsteady neither of speech nor foot, but an expert could
have diagnosed that he had been dining. The expert, however, unless he
had acquired his expertness near Malla-Nulla factory, would hardly have
guessed that Mr. Smith was the better (or worse) for at least half a
case of German champagne, generously laced with Angostura bitters.
He limped into Carter's bedroom, put his lamp down on the table, sat on
the chair beside the mosquito bar, and very carefully eased up the
knees of his shrunk pyjamas.
"I say, Mr. Assistant, wake up."
Carter woke, and blinked at the glare of Mr. Smith's eyeglass.
"Don't get up, please. I apologize for waking you, my dear follow, but
since you turned in, you've been made a pawn in the great game of
diplomacy. The fate of empires trembles on your nod."
Carter roused up onto his elbow. "Don't you think the empires would
tremble no more if we left them over till to-morrow morning?"
"It would be most undiplomatic to leave them trembling too long. I can
tell you I have had a devilish hard time of it putting his Majesty to
sleep. He can carry his liquor like a man, and he'd a most royal way
of seeing I drank level with him. But he may wake up any minute. Put
not your trust in the sleep of kings, Mr. Carter."
"All right, sir. I'll make a note of that. I'll brew the gasolene,
and when the King wakes I'll stand by with soda-water and fusel oil,
which I should think will heal the breach between us."
"Don't you believe it for one instant. The King of Okky's a seasoned
vessel with a copper tummy, and you could no more thaw the wickedness
out of him with soda-water than you could bring the devil to a reformed
temperature in an ice machine. You must recognize, Mr. Carter, that
both the King of Okky and the devil have their little ways, and it's
above your art to change either of them very much. Question is, how
much allegiance do you think you owe to O'Neill and Craven?"
This was a change of front with a vengeance. But Carter took it coolly
enough. "That's an interesting point, sir. I hadn't reckoned it up
before. But I shouldn't like to give you an answer to so important a
question about the firm on the spur of the moment. So by your leave,
I'll sleep over it, and tell you in the morning."
"Sorry, but can't allow you the time, and as you don't seem to grasp
the fact, I must point out that the fate of this factory of O'Neill and
Craven's at Malla-Nulla depends on the august will of the King of Okky.
His Portliness also threatens to stop the roads which feed our other
factories at Monktown and Smooth River, though I don't think when it
comes to the point he'll do that. However, Burgoyne and Slade must see
to those themselves. After the way this new K. O'Neill's been treating
me on paper, I'm not going to concern myself with the general welfare
of all the firm's factories on this coast. But I am in charge of
Malla-Nulla, and I'm going to preserve the trade here from extinction
if it can be managed."
Carter lifted the mosquito bar and got out of bed. "I'm afraid, sir, I
must ask you to come down to my level, and speak rather more plainly."
Swizzle-Stick Smith sat back resignedly in his chair, and dropped his
eyeglass to the end of its black watered silk ribbon. "_Dulce et
decorum est pro factoria mori_, though I don't suppose it will come to
dying if you play your cards right." Mr. Smith closed his eyes and
evidently imagined that he was uttering his next thought silently.
"Keep the young beggar out of the way of Slade's girl, too. By Gad,
I'd no idea Laura would grow up such a pretty child. If he'd been an
ordinary clerk I wouldn't have minded, but the lad's a gentleman by
birth, and now he's done the gallant rescue business as a start, he's
just the sort of quixotic young ass to think he ought to go and marry
the girl as a proper capping for the romance. And that of course would
be the end of him socially."
"I say," Carter called out loudly, "Mr. Smith, do you know it's four
o'clock in the morning, and there are some dangerous chills about just
now? Don't you think you had better have a cigarette paper full of
quinine by way of a night cap, and then go to bed? It will be
turning-out time in another hour or so."
"Matches, please. My pipe's out. Ah, thank you, Mr. Carter. Well, as
I was saying, the King's awfully taken with that punkah you rigged for
the mess-room, and the water wheel you set up in the river to run it,
and when I showed him the native arrowheads, and the spears, and the
execution axes you'd made to sell to the curiosity shops at home, he
began to change his tune. By the time we'd got to the fifth bottle
he'd given up asking for your head in a calabash to take home with him,
and before we'd finished the case he'd offered you the post of Chief
Commissioner of Works in Okky City, with a salary in produce and quills
of gold that'll work out to £1,000 a year."
"That's very flattering."
"Yes, isn't it, when you remember how he started. The only question
is, will he keep his royal word when he's sober?"
"It's a nice point. Among other things I believe they're cannibals up
in Okky City."
"Oh, come now, Mr. Assistant, you mustn't malign my friend, the King,
too much. You need have no fears on that score. The Okky men have
never been known to eat anybody with a red head. The only thing you'd
have to funk would be sacrifice--with, of course, a most full and
impressive ceremony. So I think you'll go, eh? All for the sake of K.
O'Neill, whom you admire so much? And then the King won't stop the
roads."
"No," said Carter shortly. "I have no intention of committing suicide
at present. But if I'm an embarrassment at Malla-Nulla, you may fire
me, or I'll resign if you wish it."
Swizzle-Stick Smith screwed his eyeglass into place and examined his
assistant with thoughtful care. "Shouldn't dream of letting you go, my
dear fellow. Always make a point of sticking by my officers. Just
thought I'd let you know of the King's offer in case his Majesty refers
to it to-morrow. There now, go to bed again, and don't dream the
fighting's begun. You'll see plenty of service over this affair
without dreaming over it on ahead."
When Carter set out for the West Coast of Africa from the Upper
Wharfedale Vicarage, the one article in his kit which he thought
suitable for the Coast was a small-bore nickel-plated revolver, which
he had picked up second hand in Skipton for ten and six. It had been
smuggled in without his mother's knowledge, as there was no reason to
add to her already great anxiety. His father had provided half a
sovereign towards the cost, had advised him not to use the wretched
thing except in case of necessity, but if need arose, to take heed that
he held it straight.
Of course on arrival he found, firstly, that the weapon was too small
to be of effective use; secondly, that he could not hit a mark six feet
square at more than a twelve-yard rise; and, thirdly, that revolvers
are not really articles of fashionable wear for clerks in West Coast
factories, whatever they may be in story-books. So the weapon lay in
his mouldy portmanteau, and the moist Coast climate changed its nickel
dress for a good coat of bright red rust.
But the morning after the King of Okky's arrival, while that bulky
potentate was still asleep in the factory, Carter went in, cleaned the
revolver as well as he could, and jammed cartridges into its reluctant
chambers. He carried it pirate-fashion for the remainder of that day
inside the band of his trousers, to his great personal discomfort, and
to the vast enjoyment of Mr. Smith. However, the truculent Okky
soldiers who had deliberately shaken weapons at him in the morning were
reduced by the sight of it to a certain surly civility, and work in the
feteesh went on without any open rupture.
Mr. Smith was distinctly irritable when dawn came in with the morning
tea, but presently, when the swizzle-stick began its merry swishing in
the cocktail pitcher, he thawed into a pleasing geniality, which, by
frequent application of the same remedy, endured throughout the day.
Laura Slade had returned in her hammock by the beach road in the cool
of the preceding night, and Carter's thoughts followed her to Smooth
River factory, to the detriment of his work down in the feteesh. He
gave no mental attention whatever to the King of Okky who sat
cross-legged in a long chair in the factory veranda above him, but that
bulky potentate kept returning with a dogged persistency to the subject
of George Carter.
"Oh, Smith," he kept on saying, "I savvy champagne palaver, n' I savvy
cocktail palaver, n' I fit for chop when chop-time lib. But I ask you
for tell me, one-time, if you fit for dash me dem Red-head that savvies
machine-palaver. If you no fit, I stop dem road, an' no more trade lib
for Malla-Nulla."
To which Mr. Smith, who knew his West Africa from a twenty-five years'
study of its men and customs, would reply with an unruffled geniality
that he was sure the King was far too good a heathen to try any such
dirty game as putting ju-ju on the factory of an old friend. "You're
pulling my leg, old Cockiwax," Mr. Smith would say. "I pray you cease,
and you shall have the best cocktail this pagan Coast has seen or
sniffed."
"Oh, Smith," the King would say, "I fit," and thereafter there would be
truce till the houseboy brought the ingredients, and Mr. Smith with his
far-famed skill compounded them, and the pink cocktails went their
appointed journey to perform their accustomed work. After which the
African would once more repeat his unwearied demand.
From the rising of the King from his mat, to the hour of the midday
meal, this demand and reply went on, and Swizzle-Stick Smith parried it
with unruffled serenity. But an open rupture very nearly came at the
meal time. As a king, the visitor was invited to sit at meat with the
white men in their mess-room. He said little during the meal, but he
appraised Carter's head so persistently with his eyes that that
irritated young man, with the pride of race bubbling within him, would
have openly resented the performance if he had not given a promise to
Mr. Smith on this very point only a short half-hour before.
Such a state of things could not last long without bringing about an
open breach, and Swizzle-Stick Smith, with his vast experience, saw
this earlier than anybody, and made his arrangements accordingly.
He tried hard to write a letter, but his pen was not in the mood for
intelligent calligraphy. So he had to fall back on verbal instructions
and a verbal message.
"Mr. Assistant," he said, when at last he put down his knife and fork,
and the houseboy handed him his pipe and a match, "Mr. Assistant, I
intended to make you a bearer of dispatches, but the gout's got into my
confounded fingers this morning, and I doubt if even Slade could read
my writing. So we'll just have to do the thing informally. We must
have some more of that spot-white-on-blue cloth, and you must post off
to the Smooth River factory and bring it back with you. It seems to be
in heavy demand just now, though why, I can't imagine. I've been on
the Coast twenty-five years now, and I can no more foretell the run of
native fashions than I could the day I landed. But there it is, and
though I'm sure Slade won't want to part, you must just make him. Say
we'll pay him back in salt. He's sure to be short of salt. I never
yet knew Slade to indent for half as many bags of salt as his trade
required. You needn't hurry. If you're back here in three days' time
that will be quite soon enough. You can take a hammock, of course."
"Thanks, very much, but I'd rather walk."
"Well, just as you please. You must commandeer what carriers you want
from Slade."
So it came to pass that when the sun had dropped to a point whence it
could throw a decent shadow, and the sea breeze mingled a bracing chill
even into a temperature of eighty, Carter set off along the beach, with
White-Man's-Trouble balancing a mildew-mottled Gladstone bag on his
smartly-shaved cranium, in attendance. On one side of him Africa was
fenced off by a wall of impenetrable greenery; on the other the
Atlantic bumped and roared and creamed along the glaring sand. On the
horizon the smoke of a Liverpool palm oil tank called from him the
usual Coaster's sigh.
"Oh, Carter," said his valet when they had left the factory buildings
well out of earshot, "you plenty-much fine, and you no lib for steamah."
"It was about time I tidied up. When we get back to the factory I'll
teach you how to pipe-clay shoes."
The Krooboy thought over this proposition for some minutes. Then said
he: "I fit for tell you, Carter, dem last white man I pipe-clay shoes
for, he lib for cemetery in two week. Savvy, Carter? Two week."
"All right, don't get so emphatic. I wasn't doubting you. But I'm
going to risk the cemetery all the same. You may start by providing me
with one pair of clean shoes a day, and when I get the taste of
cleanliness again, maybe I'll run to two. Savvy?"
"Savvy plenty," grumbled White-Man's-Trouble, and then presently. "You
no fit for steamah palaver? You no lib for home?"
"No, I'm not going home yet awhile."
"But you plenty-much fine."
"Yes," admitted Carter, "I caught sight of myself in mildewed pyjamas
and a fortnight's beard, and was struck with the general filthiness of
my personal appearance. Savvy?"
"Savvy plenty. Oh, Carter, you lib for wife-palaver? Dem plenty-much
fine clothes always one of the customs before wife-palaver."
The Krooboy pondered over this discovery during the next two miles of
the march, and then said he, "Oh, Carter?"
"Well?"
"Dem Slade. You savvy seegar?"
"I suppose so. Why?"
"I see Smith dash dem Slade one box seegar an' he got what Slade said
'no fit' for before. Oh, Carter, you dash dem Slade one box seegar,"
said White-Man's-Trouble, and he treated his employer to a knowing wink.
"Whatever for?"
"Because then, after he got dem seegar, he sell you Laura for half dem
price he ask before."
"You're an impertinent savage," said Carter half tickled, half annoyed.
But White-Man's-Trouble stopped, put down the yellow Gladstone bag on
the baking sand, and pointed to the blue parallel tribal tattoo marks
between his brows. "I Krooboy, sar. I no bushboy, sar! I lib for
educate as deckboy an' stan'-by-at-crane boy on steamah, sar. I no fit
for stay with you, sar, if you call me impertinent savage."
Carter stared. "Good heavens, man! I didn't intend to hurt your
feelings."
White-Man's-Trouble waved the bleached inside of his paw towards his
master. "Oh, Carter, you apologize. Palaver set." He bowed a head
which was quaintly shaved into garden patches, replaced the Gladstone
bag on its central bed of wool, and once more strode cheerfully ahead.
Carter followed moodily. How had they all guessed at his admiration
for Laura? He had thought it the most intimate of secrets, a delicate
confidence that he had no more than dared breathe even to his own inner
consciousness. But first old Smith had blurted it out, and now even
his servant talked about it openly. He had no doubt whatever that the
whole thing had been fully discussed over the cooking fires of the
native compound at Malla-Nulla the night before.
Then somehow his eyes swung round to the dancing horizon, and the
Liverpool steamer's smoke, boring up towards the North, easily ferried
his thoughts across the gap which lay between that baking African
beach, and the cool village tucked snugly in beneath the Upper
Wharfedale moors. He tried to concentrate his mind on the roses in the
vicarage garden. His mother liked abundance of blooms, and cared
little about the size. The Vicar admired big blooms and snipped off
superfluous buds when his wife was out of the way, and during summer a
gentle wrangle over the roses was quite one of the features of their
quiet life.
But the roses refused to stay in the centre of the picture. Laura
insisted on taking their place. Suppose he took Laura back to
Wharfedale--as Mrs. George Carter. His mother, blessed woman, might be
sorry, but she would accept her. He was sure of that. But his father?
Almost the last piece of advice the Vicar had given on parting was:
"Now, lad, remember always you're a white man, and don't get mixed up
with any woman who owns a single drop of blood darker than your own.
If you do, you can never come back here, and you'll hate yourself all
the rest of your life. Remember I held an Indian chaplaincy before I
got this living, and I know what I'm talking about."
Carter shook a sudden fist at the steamer's smoke for supplying him
with such a distasteful train of thought, and turned for light
conversation to White-Man's-Trouble. That garrulous person was quite
ready to humor him in the matter.
The sea breeze died away a little after six, and they marched in
breathless heat till the cool land breeze took its place, and brought
them spicy odors of the inland trees. And always on one side of them
the surf roared, and crashed, and creamed along the beaches.
The sun drooped to the horizon and hurried beneath it in visible inches
of fall. Daylight went out. The colors were blotted from the sky, and
the stars lit up, one racing another to be first. The noises from the
forest changed in correspondence. From close at hand a leopard roared
a greeting to the darkness.
Night was fully dressed ten minutes after the sun had vanished. It was
after nine o'clock, and in the chill of a wet gray mist, that they
reached O'Neill and Craven's factory on the banks of Smooth River.
Now nine o'clock in the lonely factories of the Coast is usually bed
time, and Carter was a good deal surprised to hear the hum of a great
activity pulsing out into the night; and presently, when they came
within eye-range, to see the buildings aglow with lights. But there
was a further surprise packed and ready for him. As they came close, a
black man leaned over the end of an upraised wall of palm oil
puncheons, and deliberately pointed a gun squarely at Carter's chest.
A good deal of discussion took place afterward as to what would have
been the proper procedure under the circumstances, but that may
conveniently be omitted from this record, which deals only with
immediate history; and the fact is that Carter rushed the sentry,
clipped him under the ear, skinned his own knuckles, and captured the
gun. White-Man's-Trouble in the meanwhile had with much presence of
mind thrown himself on his face to avoid any discharge of pot-leg from
the concealed marksmen, and was bawling lustily for "Slade, oh Slade,"
to "Stop dem dam gun-palaver." Which noisy request presently had its
wished for result.
Slade himself came out to meet them, and even then his reception was
sufficiently startling. "Good God!" he rapped out, "then you've
escaped, too, Carter, as well as the Krooboy. What liars these niggers
are! I imagined that your--that parts of you were up at Okky City by
now. I supposed they've scuppered poor old Swizzle-Stick Smith all
right, though? Did he have a bad time of it? Why?" he said as he came
nearer, and saw his caller's spruce getup, "you don't look as if you'd
been scrapping much. Or bolting very hard, either," he added as an
afterthought.
"Unless," said Carter, "you're referring to an invasion by the Turks,
or the French, or the Men in the Moon, I haven't a notion what you're
talking about."
"Haven't you come from Malla-Nulla?"
"Left there about a quarter to four."
"And hasn't it been sacked?"
"It was sitting down by the beach, looking just as white hot as usual,
and no more, when I left."
"What about the King of Okky, then?"
"He was there at Malla-Nulla, filling a very big chair on the veranda."
"And there has been no raid? I don't understand."
"The King of Okky," said Carter patiently, "has raided our factory to
the extent of one case of fizz, of which Mr. Smith says he drank half,
but barring that, and about six gallons of other mixed drinks, I didn't
see him get much out of us. He certainly was threatening to stop the
roads when I left, but I think that was all gas. He only wanted to
stick Mr. Smith for more drinks."
"He's stopped the roads right enough."
"Not he," said Carter cheerfully.
The older man thought a minute and then, "Come along with me," he said.
"I guess ocular demonstration is about the only thing that will
convince you that there is mischief in the air, and that that crafty
old devil of a king is at the bottom of it." He led to a factory
outbuilding, threw open a door, and scraped a match. "Look in there."
Carter did so, and promptly felt sick, and came out. But he got
another light and returned resolutely to the inspection. "Two, four,
seven. And all killed the same way. I say that's pretty ghastly."
"Isn't it? They were all fine healthy Krooboys when they marched out
of here this morning, carrying up some salt bags to our sub-factory on
the Okky road. There were some bits of feathers and a rag or two
strung up alongside the path, and they didn't notice them, or didn't
tumble to it that they were ju-ju. Consequently they are now what you
see. This is the King of Okky's way of hinting that the road is
stopped. That pot-leg must have been fired at not more than a two-yard
range. Some of the poor devils are regularly blown inside out. Here,
come into the open again."
"Thanks, you needn't give me the details over again. I saw all that
for myself."
"That infernal King must have sent off his messengers the very moment
after you had that turn-up with him about Laura--which, by the way, is
a thing that I personally shall never forget, so you can draw on me
over that down to the last breeches button. You see Okky City is
closer in at the back here, but it's quite five hours' march further
from Malla-Nulla. So the treacherous old brute stayed where he was,
tippling with Smith, in the pious hope of keeping you all quiet till
his men could come down and blot you all out. How you got through is a
marvel to me. They must have reckoned on getting you as you walked
here along the beach or they'd never have let you slip away. You and
your boy have certainly escaped by the skin of your teeth. It's a
moral certainty that they've got old Smith."
"I don't think so. But I shall go back and see."
"Rubbish! We may be able to hold out here, and perhaps will not be
attacked at all when they find out we're ready for them. But it's
perfectly impossible for you to get back along the beach to
Malla-Nulla. Come up into the house, and we'll find you a bite of
something to eat, and Laura shall mix you a whiskey and soda. We've a
bit of the last steamer's ice still left, and you shall have it."
"Thanks. I'll come up and see Miss Slade, but I shall start back for
Malla-Nulla in half an hour from now. And if, as you prophesy, I don't
land, well, at any rate, I shall have done my best to get there."
"It's very nice of you, and all that, but do you think old Smith is
worth it?"
Carter laughed. "Mr. Smith's a rough handful, but he's a good sort,
and I like him. Besides he happens to be a gentleman."
"Or was one once. A lot of us on the Coast were gentlemen originally.
I come of good people myself, and was at Eaton and Jesus, although I
don't suppose you'd have guessed it if I hadn't told you. But you see
Nature built me with a cutaway chin, and I couldn't hold down a job at
home. However, come in, and we'll scratch you up some chop. Here,
Laura, I've brought a caller."
"I feel this dreadful trouble is all my fault," said the girl as they
came into the lamplit room. "If you had been killed, Mr. Carter, I
should have looked upon myself as a murderess."
"My dear Miss Slade, you really mustn't worry about a matter you've no
concern in whatever. The whole thing's a 'regrettable incident'--I
believe that's the proper term--that Mr. Smith told me has been brewing
for years. It's all due to the drop in the price of palm oil on the
Liverpool market, which means that we white traders pay less for it on
the Coast here, and the black traders get less, and so there's less for
the King of Okky to squeeze out of them as they march through his
territory from the hinterland. That's what's put his fat back up. The
only great mistake that's been made is that I didn't split the old
brute's iniquitous skull when I had the chance. I say, do you mind my
commenting on those flowers you've got on the table? I haven't seen a
cut flower since I left England."
He turned to his host. "You do the thing rather palatially here, Mr.
Slade. Board walls and real glass in the windows! We've bamboo walls
at Malla-Nulla that let in the dust and the mosquitoes and the
Krooboys' stares just as they occur. It felt rather like living in a
bird-cage till one got used to it."
"The walls are Laura's doing. You know she was at school in a convent
in Las Palmas, and came home with all sorts of extravagant notions.
Why, she actually insisted on a tablecloth for meals, and napkins.
I'll trouble you, napkins! And yet they still call us palm oil
ruffians in Liverpool, and firmly believe that we live on
orange-colored palm oil chop, which we pick out of calabashes with our
fingers. I sent K. O'Neill a photograph of this room by the last mail,
with the table laid for chop, and flowers as you see in a china bowl,
in the hope he'd be impressed by it, and raise my screw."
"He's quite likely to do it, too," said Carter, "if I understand Mr. K.
right. He's always insisting in his letters to Malla-Nulla that if we
make ourselves comfortable, and adapt ourselves to the climate, we
shall be able to do more and better work. By the way, do you know Mr.
K. O'Neill at all? At Malla-Nulla we only know him on paper."
"I'm in the same box," Slade confessed. "Godfrey, his predecessor, of
course I knew well enough. But this new chap I only know from his
letters, and they're a deal too rousing for my easy-going tastes. Ah,
here's the boy with a tray of chop for you. Observe the parsley;
that's Laura's latest triumph in Coast gardening. Boy, Mr. Carter will
sleep in the spare bed in my room. See that there are no live things
inside the mosquito bar."
"I thank you," said Carter firmly, "but I am going to do as I said."
"He wants to go back to Malla-Nulla," Slade explained to his daughter,
"and I tell him it is suicide to think of such a thing. Here, you have
a go at him, Laura." Slade always put off onto someone else anything
which he found hard to do himself.
But Laura Slade read a certain doggedness in Carter's face that told
her what to say. She did not join in imploring him to stay at Smooth
River when he had so obviously determined to go. But instead, her mind
flew to some scheme that might make his passage less desperately risky.
"I am sure father could spare you some men. With an escort you might
get through. I wish you were not so plucky."
Carter laughed. "Oh, I am frightened hard enough, but I should be
still more frightened at what I should think of myself if anything
happened to Mr. Smith which I could have prevented if I'd been there.
It's very kind of you to offer an escort, and I'd thought of that
before; but I'm sure I shall be able to move quicker and more quietly
without one. But if Mr. Slade could lend me a gun, I'd feel a lot more
comfortable with that."
"Certainly, my boy, certainly. You shall have my Winchester, and I
believe I can scare up a revolver somewhere."
"You are very good. I have a revolver already, but it's only useful to
me as a sort of knuckleduster. I couldn't hit a haystack with it ten
yards off. Same with the rifle; I've never used one. But where I was
brought up in Wharfedale, you see, the Governor had some glebe, and his
income was small. We mostly lived on rabbits and a few grouse in the
season, and so you see I learned to be pretty useful with a shot gun."
Slade handed a weapon. "There you are. That's a double 12-bore hammer
gun, and both barrels are cylinders. It's an early Holland and was a
swell tool in its day, which was some time ago."
"Thank you very much. I hope I shan't have to use it, but it'll feel
comfortable under my arm. When you've lived most of your life in the
country, you miss going out with a gun. Well, now, I'll say good-by."
"Wait a minute till we've called up your boy. I'll shout from the
veranda."
"Don't, please," said Carter, remembering that on all previous
occasions when trouble foreboded White-Man's-Trouble disappeared. He
did not wish to call Laura's attention more than necessary to the risks
of the journey. "I'd far rather go alone."
"Oh, Carter," said the voice of the Krooboy from the darkness outside,
"then you plenty-much dam fool. I say I lib for come with you to
Malla-Nulla. You no fit to go by your lone."
They looked out through the lit doorway and saw the yellows of
White-Man's-Trouble's eyes, and the gleam of his teeth, which latter
were eclipsed when he finished his speech, leaving the eyes alone to
tell of his whereabouts.
"Now, that's a real stout boy of yours, Carter," the trader said. "Hi
you, come in. You fit for a peg?"
"I fit for a bottle," said White-Man's-Trouble, who looked nipped and
gray when he stood up in the lamplight. Poor fellow, he thought he was
going to certain death with perhaps torture as an addition, but when it
came to a pinch, and the white man led, he screwed up his pluck to
follow.
So at last the pair of them set off quietly into the shadows. Two
handshakes were all the farewell, but there was a soft something in
Laura's eyes that sent queer thrills down George Carter's spine. Slade
himself saw them through the outer line of the sentries, and warned
those enthusiasts not to fire on them should they presently return; and
a dozen yards away from those sentries, they melted into the warm
blackness of the African night.
Up on the veranda of the factory Laura Slade leaned over the rail and
listened to the beating of her own heart. She strained her eyes and
she strained her ears along the line of mysterious phosphorescence
which marked the beach, but no trace or hint did she get of how it
fared with the man she loved. Once only during that watch did she hear
a sound which she took to be a distant gunshot, and then, _din, din,_
as though two other shots followed it. Then the roar of the surf and
the night noises of Africa closed in again, and for safety or hurt
Carter had passed beyond her reach.
"Kate will like that man," she said to herself, and then she shivered a
little. "I wonder if Kate will take him away from me?"