THE INVISIBLE FIRE
In the factories which dot the West African seaboard and rivers, death
is such a constant visitor that much of his grimness had faded. At
home, in England, or America, or Hamburg, we shiver with apprehension
whenever our relative who is "out on the West Coast" comes up into the
mind; but the relative himself takes his doses of fever when they fall
due with a certain callous philosophy, and on his emergence shattered
and shrunken from the attack, congratulates himself on not being a
candidate for a gun-case and a top hat that time. Those who go up in
the bush and are there engulfed, those who get drowned in the
ever-grinding surf, those who go out by the thousand and one
opportunities which the climate and the surroundings offer, slip off
their human garb with an easy nonchalance; and those who are left
pronounce some pithy epitaph over the deceased, and go on with their
quicker interests.
With the native African, death is an event of even smaller moment
still; and in the event of a quarrel, one competitor will often sit
down, cuddle his knees, shut his eyes, and there and then deliberately
suspend his vital processes, merely to cause temporary annoyance to his
rival.
Now, the above paragraphs are somewhat of the nature of a footnote
elevated to the text. But they are necessary at this point in these
memoirs to explain the coolness with which Laura and Carter viewed the
near prospect of extinction. Neither of them of course in the least
wished to die, but it never occurred to them to face death with
anything beyond the usual Coast philosophy.
"I shall stick Mr. K. for a rise in screw if we get through this," said
Carter.
"If I hadn't made a promise," said the girl, "I could tell you
something about your Mr. K. that would startle you."
"You're a tantalizing baggage, and I've a good mind to pick you up and
shake it out of you. Gad! Here they come. Now, I'll shoot, and you
get a box of matches and light those bombs for White-Man's-Trouble to
throw."
"Bombs! Do you mean the cigarette-tins?"
"Yes. You'd a big brazing-lamp in the factory. Remember it? Well,
you had. And that meant benzoline, I guessed. I found a drum full of
it, anyway, and I've loaded up those tins with benzoline. It'll burn
like winking in this sun, and the niggers'll never see the flame. Only
thing to take care of, is not to set light to the factory. Now, do you
understand?"
"Yes, dear."
"And d'you savvy, Trouble?"
"Savvy plenty. Oh, Carter, I burn my leg plenty-too-much with dem
damhot lamp once on steamah. No can see flame when sun lib for shine.
I fit for serve as stand-by-at-crane boy once, sar, on steamah."
"Well, Mr. Engineer, throw straight and don't get hoist by your own
petard. By the living Jink we're in for it now. Throw, Trouble, for
all you're worth, right into the blue of them."
The four-fifty repeater yap-yapped its messages, and the man who had
learned to shoot quick and straight amongst the rabbits and grouse of
Upper Wharfedale, made deadly practice at this bigger game. But two
eight-shot Winchesters are of very little more value than catapults in
stopping the rush of two hundred fighting black pagans officered by
Moslemin Haûsas. Beforehand the fire of the Portuguese and the factory
Krooboys had held them off, much more by its noise than its deadliness.
The one solitary shooter who remained, they held in scorn; he was
firing white powder in the Winchester, and the smallness of the noise
and the absence of smoke encouraged them. They scorned to shoot at him
with their flintlocks. They would rush in and put this man to the
matchet, and save the girl alive. And thereafter, when they rolled the
red head at King Kallee's feet, and made the girl stand up before him,
many and fine presents would be given to gladden them and their women.
So they gave the Okky yell, and sprang out of the bush into the open,
and rushed across the clearing.
But lo, presently the white man called out, "Behold, I put ju-ju on you
blighters," and a black man who carried between his brows the Kroo
tribal mark began throwing green tins which contained some liquid
distilled by witchcraft. And thereupon the clinging fires of hell
broke out amongst them, and burned the skin on their bodies till they
screamed and danced in their frenzy of pain, and the air was rich with
the smell of their cooking. Even Kwaka, who led them, though he was
the boldest fighting man in all King Kallee's armies, showed by the
grayness that grew upon his face that he that day learned the lesson of
fear. And when presently they broke and fled for the bush (the flames,
be it understood, still sticking to them), it was Kwaka who led that
disordered retreat, and held a sleeve of his jelab before his eyes lest
the white man might bring further witchcraft to bear, which would make
his face a derision for the houris in Paradise.
"My Christian Aunt!" said Carter up on the factory veranda, "but
benzoline is filthy stuff to fight with. The place stinks like a
cookshop, and I feel like a beastly Russian anarchist. Don't throw any
more tins, Trouble. We've saved our bacon, Laura, I do believe, but I
hate being unsportsmanlike. It's worse than netting your neighbor's
grouse moor, this. But they came up to the gun too quick for me to
stop them alone. White-Man's-Trouble, if you throw another of those
infernal bombs, I'll slip a shot into you."
Laura was crouched in behind the mattress casemate, her face tucked
away into the crook of an elbow, and her shoulders heaving with sobs.
"Hullo, old lady, what's the row with you? You're not hit? Good God,
don't tell me you're hit. What a careless hound I am to let you get
out of cover. I could have sworn there wasn't a shot being fired.
What a miserably incompetent brute I am to get rattled and not see
after you better."
"Oh, George, I'm not hit. I almost wish I were. That would be fairer."
Carter stared. "What's the matter, then?"
She pulled herself together with an effort. "I suppose I must feel
very much as you do about the matter, only more so. You see I lit the
matches for each bomb Trouble held out to me. It was I who am really
responsible----"
Carter tackled the situation with ready wit. "Now, look here. I'm not
going to have you presuming on being my sweetheart. I know you'd like
to have the credit of routing the enemy, but you're not going to have
it. I want all the kudos I can get in that line for business purposes
myself. I'm going to point out in my report to Mr. K. that it was my
brilliant genius alone that rootled out that drum of benzoline, and put
it to a new and unpleasant use, and that any idea of refusing me the
ten-pound a year rise in screw that I ask as a reward would be bang
against all O'Neill and Craven's most cherished traditions of fairness.
So just you remember that, Miss Slade, and don't go off and brag about
doing one single thing that wasn't ordered by your superior officer in
this Service (as old Swizzle-Stick Smith would say), and that's me."
"You're a dear, good boy."
"I am," said Carter cheerfully. "I'm rather surprised people don't see
it oftener. You're the first person in Africa who's made the discovery
so far. Now I can't have you eating the bread of idleness out here any
longer. Indoors you go, and tidy up." He took her by the arm and led
her gently to the living room. "Hasn't that breeze made hay of the
place? Sorry the houseboys have left this desirable situation without
warning, and I can't lend you White-Man's-Trouble just now. So I want
you to wade in, if you please, my dear, and show me what an extremely
domesticated person the future Mrs. G. Carter can be when she tries.
'We wish to make a point,' said Mr. K. in one of his typewritten
letters, 'of having all our factories neat and comfortable.'"
Laura shivered. "If I were to marry you, I wonder what K. would say."
"Say nothing. We should absolutely draw the line at interference
there, eh? But in the meanwhile there is no harm in following out the
gentleman's advice, which is invariably sound, on the other points."
"When you see Mr. K. I'm very much afraid you'll change your mind about
me."
Carter drew the girl to him and kissed her on the lips. "Don't you be
jealous of K., sweetheart. Mine's only a business admiration in that
direction."
"At present," she persisted. "Wait till you meet."
"When we meet, I shall say, 'Sir, this very lovely and desirable young
person here is my wife,' and then we shall go on to commercial topics.
There's nothing romantic about the boss. If you'd studied the Epistles
of K. to the Coasters as closely as I have, you'd know that off by
heart."
Laura still shook her head. "I love you," she said, "more than
anything else in life, and I can think of no greater happiness than to
be your wife. But I would never marry you if I thought you could
repent of it afterwards. You can't deny that you are wrapped up in K.
You must see K. before you marry me, George."
"If K. comes along before the parson, well and good, you shall have
your own way of it. But if a missionary of the right complexion (if
there is such a thing down here) casts up at this factory, there'll be
a wedding cake put on the festive board, Miss Slade, and you'll be the
bride that'll cut it. Don't you try and wriggle out of your solemn
promises with me. Hullo, what's that?"
"Thunder. Is the tornado coming again?"
"No, listen. It isn't thunder. It's people thumping monkey-skin
drums. I've made dozens of those tuneful instruments for the curiosity
dealers at home, so I know the note. Well, you get on with your
dusting, there's a nice girl, and I'll go out and have a cigarette."
"You are going--to----"
"What, clean up the mess outside? No, we'll leave that for the
present. Now, don't be scared, there's a sweetheart. But, to tell the
truth, those drums interest me. The natives signal through the bush
with them, you know, in a sort of dot-dash-dot style; and so far their
local Morse alphabet has been a bit beyond me. Perhaps
White-Man's-Trouble may be able to decipher it. Now, don't you try and
shirk that dusting one moment longer."
He went out then onto the veranda, shutting the door behind him, and
questioned the Krooboy sharply about the drummings. Did he understand
them?
"Savvy plenty," said White-Man's-Trouble gloomily. "Dem Okky-man's
drums."
"Well, I didn't suppose it was a Chinaman's, you patent idiot. You fit
for understand dem tune?"
"Savvy plenty. Dem tune say Okky-men fit for make custom."
"That means 'ceremony,' I suppose. Now, what sort of a ceremony will
suit the occasion? Dirge of defeat by the ju-ju men, presumably, and
then they'll crucify some wretched slave so that his spirit can go into
the Beyond and arrange to have the luck changed. I wish Mr. Smith were
here, or Slade. No, I'm hanged if I do, though. I've worked this
thing off my own bat so far, and I'll see it onto the finish. Dem
Okky-men make crucify palaver?" he asked, and translated the hard word
by standing up himself spread-eagled against the factory wall.
White-Man's-Trouble nodded a dismal assent. "Then, by an' by they grow
plenty-too-much more brave, an' they come back one-time an' fight some
more."
"Then you bet your woolly whiskers it won't do for us to sit quietly
taking the air here. Ju-ju's the correct card to play in this country
anyway."
The Krooboy shivered. "Oh, Carter, I no fit for touch ju-ju."
"Well, I am. With thought and care, I believe I should develop into a
very good ju-ju practitioner. Besides, the subject fascinates me. No
white men seem to know anything very definite about it, above the fact
that it is beyond their comprehension, and it would be rather fine, if
the unlikely happened, and one chanced to survive, to be known as the
one authority on West African magic."
"Oh, Carter, if you meddle with dem ju-ju palaver you lib for die
plenty soon. If you walk in bush, tree fall on you; if you ride in
canoe, arrow jump on you; if you chop,[*] dem chop he fill with
powdered glass, and presently you lib for die of tear-tear-belly. Oh,
Carter, you lib for Coast now one year; I lib for Coast all my life; I
savvy plenty; you alle-same damfool."
[*] In West Coast English to chop is to take food. Chop is food.
"My dear Trouble, I've admitted already that I know meddling with ju-ju
isn't altogether an insurance proposition. Much obliged to you for the
fresh warning all the same. But I'm afraid your constitutional
nervousness rather clouds that massive brain of yours at times, or
you'd see that Smooth River factory and its three occupants are in the
devil of a fix just now. You say the Okky-men when they've rubbed up
their courage will presently return; and I don't dispute your reading
of the omens. If they do come, we can't shoot them off, and that's a
certain thing. As I'm sure Mr. Smith would say, it's a case of _Aut
ju-ju aut nullus_, and to follow his rather objectionable knack of
translating for a man who happened to have been at a different school
to his own, that means we've either got to play the ju-ju card or be
scuppered. White-Man's-Trouble, you are hereby made conjurer's
confederate."
"I no fit."
"Am I to hurt your feelings with this piece of packing-case lid?"
"Oh, Carter, you look see. There's a nail in him there."
"I know there's a nail in it. The occasion demands a nail, and I
picked the weapon for that reason. Now, then, are you going to obey
orders, or will you take a first-class licking?"
"Oh, Carter, I fit for do what you say."
"Good. You're an excellent boy when you're handled the right way. Now
go to the feteesh and bring the biggest coil of that inch lead piping
you can stagger under."
Carter himself went to Slade's room and brought from there one of those
crude carved wooden figures which the natives make and the traders pick
up as curiosities. At home they are sold for stiff prices as the gods
of the heathen; but the negroes that make them are not idolaters, and
what they exactly are for the present writer knoweth not, save only
that they are not articles of worship. Locally they come under that
all-embracing term ju-ju, which includes so much and explains so little.
Carter found a brace and bit--an inch twist bit, which for a wonder was
in a calabash of yellow palm oil, and so not rusty--and he worked on
these carved men till the sweat ran from him. Laura came out and told
him that he was inviting an attack of fever, which was obvious, since
by then it was high noon, and violent exertion for a white man with the
thermometer above par always has to be paid for on the Coast. But he
drove her back again into the house and out of the heat with a volley
of chaff, and went gaspingly on with his tremendous work.
The mouths of the figures were wide, but with knife and drill he
splayed them wider, but was careful always not to distort them beyond
the canons of local art; and in a couple of hours' time he was ready
for White-Man's-Trouble and the heavy coils of lead piping.
"Regard," he said, "O thou assistant to the great white ju-ju man. We
will place one of these graven images opposite the entrance of each
road which comes from the bush into this factory clearing. We'll hoist
it up onto a green gin box, so, and give it a bit more height and
dignity. And we'll add a necklace of these green cigarette tins, which
have already advertised themselves into an ugly notoriety. Then, into
this hole you see in the back of each image, we will fit an end of lead
piping, and as the holes are tapered, the unions will make themselves
good. Then, O helper of dark schemes, we'll pay out the coil, as far
as possible in swamp where it will sink out of sight, and bring all the
ends into the house here. Any piping that shows, you must throw earth
over. Savvy? And the inside ends we'll splay out with this hardwood
cone that I've made, till a man can get his mouth well into them and
shout down the tube comfortably. I'm sure you catch the idea?"
"Oh, Carter, I plenty-too-much afraid. Presently I lib for die."
"Not you. If I see any signs of your starting to fade away, I'll whack
you into life again with a piece of board with two nails in it.
Wherefore, O feared of the uninitiated, buck up, and get a shovel, and
cover that lead out of sight where it shows. Afterwards I'll show you
the working of that early British contrivance, an office speaking-tube.
That is, if we have time for a rehearsal, but by the extra big
dot-dashing of those monkey-skin drums just now, it rather looks as if
we shall have the next act of this play crowding down on us without
much more interval."
The burned warriors had not, it appeared, retreated very far. Their
spiritual advisers, the ju-ju men, had by King Kallee's orders been
waiting not very far away down the several bush roads; and when
presently fugitives began to come trotting in through the steamy forest
shades, these ecclesiastics rallied them, and when enough were
collected, they commenced a "custom" for the renewal of the soldier's
bravery.
Savage superstitions, savage terrors, savage thrill at the raw smell of
blood were all worked upon with a high dexterity. King Kallee had made
a fine art of these incitements; he had gained a throne by their
practice, and had handed them on to chosen ministers, who practised the
cult of ju-ju with a single eye to advancing the interests of their
king.
The black soldiers were wearily tired, and many of them carried wounds.
They listened at first with a sullen torpor. They heard without
interest that the white man's bullets were non-consecrate, and
therefore the wounds they made would soon heal. They learned, with a
little thrill of wonder, that the green tins which poured burning flame
were not true ju-ju, since the King of Kallee's ju-ju men declared them
unorthodox. And by degrees their dull nerves were worked up till at
the proper moment sacrifice was made, and the screams and smells of the
victim maddened them. Even the Haûsa officers, who were Moslem, and
therefore contemptuous disbelievers in all pagan ceremony, were stirred
up almost equally with their men, and when as a final exhortation they
were bidden to return once more to the factory, and bring the red head
and the white girl as presents for the King, they forgot their qualms
and their burns, and led on with a new, fierce courage.
But whether the African be savage bushman or cultivated Moslem
gentleman, superstition is part of the very marrow in his backbone.
These men had felt the bullets, they had felt the infernal burnings of
the benzoline, but they were wound up now to a pitch above dreading
either. Orders were given to concentrate in the edge of the bush, as
near to the clearing as they could get without being sighted from the
factory, and then when all was ready the monkey-skin drums would beat
the charge.
The first comers peered through the outer fringe of the cover, and saw
the clearing desolate, and the factory buildings to all appearance
tenantless. The dead that they had left in their hurried retreat still
lay where they had dropped, and glared up glassy stares at the
outrageous sun. But with eyes keen to pick up any hint at ju-ju charm,
the gaze of all this vanguard fell on five little wooden mannikins set
opposite the points where the several bush roads cut into the open.
There was nothing new about the mannikins themselves. They were merely
the things that their own uncles and their grandfathers carved for a
purpose which they themselves knew better than did that tricky white
man with the red head who had doubtless put them there. But then each
of these mannikins was perched on a pedestal made of one or more green
gin cases, and that in itself looked suspicious--or, in other words,
smacked of ju-ju. And, moreover, each was garlanded with those
infernal green cylinders which they had just been informed officially
were in truth not orthodox ju-ju, but which they knew from their own
painful experience could, upon occasion, vomit forth the most horrible
flames.
They crouched in the edge of the cover once more thoroughly shaken, and
it only required the final portent to fray their courage utterly.
In the factory, tucked snugly out of sight in the mess-room, Laura
Slade, Carter and White-Man's Trouble lay stretched out wearily upon
the floor. A length of match boarding had been stripped away from the
wall, and only a paling of vertical bamboos stood between them and the
external world.
It was the code message of the monkey-skin drums, as read by
White-Man's-Trouble, that first gave them the news that the Okky-men
had rewound up their courage and were returning once more to the
attack; and so they promptly retired out of sight. Guns and defenders
would have been a reassuring touch to the enemy, who had seen such
things before. But for them to find no guns, and no human beings in
view, would accentuate the effect of the graven images which gazed
woodenly upon them from the green gin-box pedestals.
For long enough they lay there in the sickly heat, staring out over the
litter of the morning's battlefield, which danced up and down in the
shimmering sunlight. The factory lizards came out in full numbers for
their daily sun-baths, and most of the flies of Africa seemed to be
congregated in the clearing.
Laura caught the first note of invasion. "Do you see," she asked,
"those two swallow-tailed butterflies flittering about by that big silk
cotton-wood that lost his top in the tornado? They were feeding
contentedly enough on that stuff like meadow-sweet, but someone or
something disturbed them, and they flew up. If you notice, they dare
not go back, so that rather hints that the someone is still hidden in
the meadow-sweet."
"Which said clump," observed Carter, "is just two yards off the graven
image which commands bush road number three. Oh, assistant conjurer,
canst thou swear?"
"Oh, Carter," said the Krooboy with simple dignity, "I no bush-boy. I
speak English. I learn him on steamah. I work up to position of
stand-by-at-crane boy before I lib for come ashore to work at factory.
Ah, Carter, I savvy swear-palaver plenty-much-too-good. You fit for
hear me?"
"Not for one instant. I want you to make all your remarks in Kroo, or
preferably Okky, if you aren't too rattled to remember any of that
fashionable tongue. Here, put your sweet lips to the tube, and just
say in the thickest language you can think of 'Get away back to Okky
City, you bushmen. If you hesitate, your noses shall drop off, and
your great fat lips shall follow, and red ants shall spring up out of
the earth to eat them whilst you wait.' Savvy the idea?"
"Savvy plenty," said White-Man's-Trouble, and rattled venom into the
tube with a savage gusto.
The result was sufficiently surprising. Spear-heads and gun-barrels
bristled suddenly upwards from the clump of meadow-sweet, as ambushed
Okky-men scrambled to their feet. For a full two minutes they stood
there listening to the abuse which they heard pouring from the lips of
the wooden mannikin close beside them, with eyes goggling, and mouths
gaping, and knees chattering, the worst scared blacks in all the Oil
Rivers.
For the moment they were mesmerized by fright. But then the two
mannikins which were nearest on either side began cackling with uncanny
laughter, and a ju-ju man who was with them recognized an art higher
than his own, and allowed the superstition that was native to him to
rub away the thin veneer of his education. "Let us begone from here,"
he moaned, "even if it be to meet the curved execution axe of King
Kallee in Okky City. Better the sharp edge of that, yes, better even
lingering days on the crucifixion tree than the neighborhood of these
devils. Wood they are now, I do believe. But they can talk as no
thing of wood ever could talk; and presently they will come to life,
and hurl at us those green tins of liquid fire with which they are
garlanded. If there are any that wish to see more, let them stay. For
myself I return to Okky City, even if it means impalement."
The other wooden mannikins broke out into words, and immediately the
bush around each of them rippled with men. Carter, whose knowledge of
the native was growing, used every syllable of his vocabulary down two
tubes alternately.
Laura, who had grown up bilingual, commenced at first timidly. But the
desperate peril of their surroundings, the excitement of battle, the
thrill of seeing men run, the drop of negro blood that colored her
veins, were all circumstances that presently whirled her into a
resistless torrent of words. Never had she spoken with such a fluency;
never had she framed such sentences. It was all in the Okky tongue,
accurate, biting, glib, telling. Carter broke off from his own halting
speech to listen. He could not speak the language yet with any great
ease, but he could understand almost every word. He chilled as he
listened to her. He coughed a warning. He called sharply that she
should stop. But that drop of negro blood held her to her speech. The
Krooboy, thoroughly warmed up to his work, was yelling infamies down a
tube at the other end of the mess-room. Laura, with eyes glinting and
hands clinched, was growing almost beside herself with speech....
Carter gripped her arm and plucked her almost savagely away.
"You had better shut up. The Okky men have gone, minutes ago, and I do
not think you know what you are saying. Laura, do you hear me?"
She stared at him, and then spoke with a dry throat. "I said only what
you told me. It was to save our lives. And you--you could not
understand what I said. It was Okky talk; you surely could not follow
it. Why do you look at me like that? George, what is it?" She
laughed rather wildly, and plucked herself away from him. "Oh, I see.
Well, I warned you before that I was black, and now I suppose you
believe me."
He returned her look steadily enough. "My dear girl, you've gone
through more than you can stand, and you've just worn yourself to rags.
I never quite knew what hysterics meant before, but I fancy that in
about two minutes more you would show me. Now the trouble's over;
we've fixed 'em tight this time, and you needn't worry yourself any
more. Just you go to your room and lie down and sleep."
"Sleep! You think I could sleep?"
"Very well," he said coolly, "then Trouble and I must wait till you
can. But please understand, my sweetheart, that until you have put in
a four-hours' spell of sleep, and can get up rested to stand a watch,
neither the boy nor I must close an eye. So you see it's up to you to
arrange whether we shall all have a dose of overwork or not."
She came to him and put her slim brown hands on his shoulders and
looked him in the face. There were black rings under her eyes, and her
cheeks were white and drawn, but somehow with her delicious curves she
appealed to him more than ever, and he let her see it in his glance.
"You still call me by that name," she said, "you still call me
sweetheart even after what you have seen and heard?"
"Of course. Don't be stupid. A man doesn't change towards a girl just
because she happened to get a bit excited when she was doing her best
to save his life. I'm half sorry now I stopped you, only the myrmidons
of my rival, his Majesty of Okky, had run away, and you really were
rather working yourself up." He drew her to him and kissed her on the
forehead. "And now you will go and turn in, won't you, like a good
girl?"
"I'll do anything my lord wishes. But you will look after yourself,
promise me?"
"Rather."
"Let your boy get you a meal. You've not had a crumb all day, and you
must be starving. It was horribly careless of me not to have thought
of it before."
"That is rather a bright idea. Had anything yourself? No, I see you
haven't. Well, we'll sup, Laura, before you're packed off to bed.
It's five o'clock in the afternoon, but we'll call it supper. Trouble?"
"Oh, Carter?"
"We fit for chop. You kill two tin, one-time."
"Oh, Carter, three tin. Me one, Missy two----"
_Bang_ went a gun, as it seemed to their jangled nerves, close at their
elbows. They all started violently, and the girl clutched convulsively
at Carter's sleeve.
"Dem Okky cannon," wailed the Krooboy, and burrowed forthwith into the
casemate of bedding.
"Not it," said Carter. "It's all right, Laura. It's a steamer's mail
gun. I never heard the roar of a loaded cannon till this morning, but
once heard, you can't mistake it for blank cartridge."
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely. I jumped when the thing went off, but then I suppose
we're all a bit fagged. Here, Trouble, you shirker, get dem chop
one-time, and then find some limes. We shall have the steamer people
ashore in ten minutes, and when they hear the yarn they'll want about
five cocktails apiece to congratulate us in. Lord! Laura, but I'd
give a tooth and two finger nails to have Mr. K. dropping in on us
during the next hour or so to see the fine way we've saved O'Neill and
Craven's factory from a total loss. I believe he'd raise my screw with
such a jump that you and I might get married out of hand. Let's see,
what boat's due? I've hardly got your time-table in my head; one gets
rusty at Malla-Nulla."
"It's the _M'poso_, George. She's straight out from home. Just think,
you may really have K. descending on you in half an hour's time."
"No such luck. It will be Cappie Image-me-lad, with his green umbrella
and his best thirst, and that hearty ruffian Balgarnie, who'll rob
every corpse in the clearing if he thinks he can collect one Aggry bead
and a good slave dagger. By Gad, I wonder if I can screw some money
out of Balgarnie. I sent at least eighty sovereigns' worth of most
carefully made curios home with him last time the _M'poso_ tried to
roll herself over off our beach at Malla-Nulla."
"I think," said the girl, "I'll just go to my room for a minute."
Carter pointed the finger of derision at her. "O vanity," said he.
"You're going to tidy your hair, and smarten your frock just for the
sake of old Cappie Image and the plump Balgarnie. By the way, now that
you are an engaged young woman, are you going to let those genial old
ruffians take you on their knees and kiss you, just in the old sweet
way? Of course, don't mind me if you'd like it so."
"Pouf!" said Laura, "they've both known me ever since I was a baby, but
I'll be as distant with them as you like if you feel jealous, sir."
"I think I'll wash off some of the battle scars myself," said Carter.
"One looks a bit melodramatic in this filthy, smeary mess. Not to
mention uncomfortable. I suppose, by the way, somebody will turn up to
pay a polite call. They'll judge that something's wrong when they see
that all the factory boats and canoes have been cleared out of the
creek."
Even White-Man's-Trouble stole palm oil and attended to his toilette in
honor of the expected visit, and it was a very gleaming and oily
Krooboy in some clean (stolen) pyjama trousers of Slade's that showed
Captain Image, and his passenger, and purser up the stair.
Laura and Carter were there, spruce and smart, to receive them, and
Laura said, "Kate! I knew you'd come," and ran forward and shook the
passenger by the hand. "There, you see, George," she said over her
shoulder, "how accurately I can keep a secret."
"Hullo, Carter, me lad!" said Captain Image. "Glad to see you looking
so fit. You're a fine advertisement for those pills of mine, and I'm
sure you're glad now you kept away from old Swizzle-Stick Smith's
nostrums. You seem to have been having a bit of a scrap round the
factory here. However, we will hear about that, and have your tally of
the cargo you want to ship from here and Malla-Nulla afterwards. But
for the present I want to introduce my passenger and your boss, Miss
O'Neill."
Carter swallowed with a dry throat. "Mr. K. O'Neill's sister?"
"Miss Kate O'Neill, who is head of O'Neill and Craven."
Carter blinked tired eyes, and saw a girl of three-and-twenty, half a
head shorter than Laura Slade, dressed as simply, but with that
something that somehow speaks of Europe, and money, and taste. Her eye
was brown and her hair was the color of his own--nearly. No, it was
darker. She was holding out a hand to him--a neat, plump hand that
looked white, and firm, and cool, and capable, and which somehow or
other he found in his own.
"Laura calls you George, I notice," he heard her saying.
"Yes, of course she would. We are engaged, you know."
He felt his hand dropped with suddenness, and up till then he had never
known how thoroughly objectionable a laugh could be when it came from
the lips of Mr. Balgarnie. Everything swam before him, and he lurched
against the messroom wall. But with an effort he pulled himself
together. "Miss Slade and I are engaged. We are to be married as soon
as we can afford it. When you look round, and see how we've saved the
factory from the Okky-men, we hope you'll raise my salary."
"Yes, I think I can promise to do that," said Kate O'Neill. "I had my
eyes open when I came across the clearing. But do you think you are
wise to marry?"
"Ha, ha, Carter, old fellow," laughed little Captain Image, "got you
there! Get dollars first. Find connubial bliss later."
"But," continued Miss O'Neill, "you and I and Laura will talk over that
later when we are alone."
Captain Image felt that he cleared away an awkward situation with all
the savoir faire of a shipmaster. "Well, Carter, me lad," said he, "we
know you've had a lot of lessons from old Swizzle-Stick Smith, but what
about a cocktail? My Christian Aunt, look out, Balgarnie, there's
Laura fainting."
Carter stared at them dully but did not try to help. "My God," he
muttered, "to think I never guessed that K. could stand for Kate."