PRESENTS THE HEAD OF THE FIRM
"I don't care what you say, Purser, me lad," Captain Image repeated,
"but I call Miss O'Neill pretty."
"Well," admitted Mr. Balgarnie, who prided himself on being a bit of a
judge, "she may be that as well, but I still stick to it that her face
is what I call strong."
"I hate the word 'strong.' When a she-missionary is too homely looking
to be anything else, she prides herself on wearing a strong face."
"No, sir. 'Intense' for lady missionary," Mr. Balgarnie corrected.
"Strong," snapped his superior officer. Captain Image was of Welsh
extraction and disliked contradiction.
The purser shifted his ground. "Well, at any rate, sir, you'll own
she's mighty standoffish. I used to call good old Godfrey O'Neill,
Godfrey, and therefore naturally I called his daughter Kate, and told
her why. She didn't seem to hear me."
"She wasn't Godfrey's daughter, anyway. Godfrey never married, but I
believe he'd nieces. Probably Miss Kate is one of them. The old man
must have left her the business. Thing that amazes me is the way she's
taken her grip of the concern, and made it hum."
"And kept it dark even in Liverpool that she was a woman. That old
head clerk of hers, that people thought was the manager, must be a rare
close-lipped one."
"He is, blight him!" said Captain Image with emphasis. "I called in
there two or three times after I'd got some of those please-buck-up
letters from O'Neill and Craven, that I didn't care about, and the
cauliflower-headed old humbug clean took me in. He was Mr. Crewdson,
to be sure; no, he was not Mr. K. O'Neill; no, I couldn't see Mr. K.
just then; no, he couldn't make an appointment for me with the
gentleman; anything I wanted he would attend to personally. If I
re-read the letters he was sure I should find that they were not
unreasonable, but, on the other hand, would put me in the way of
earning extra commission on cargo for myself. So it ended in my being
civil to him, and he was really nothing more than a clerk. You can
just picture to yourself, Purser, what I felt when I found out that I'd
been civil to a clerk by mistake."
"It was pretty hard lines, sir."
"Of course a West African merchant's business is a rum contract for a
young girl to catch hold of, and I don't say Miss Kate was wrong in
keeping in the background to start with. In fact I'll own up straight
that she was right, and the proof's plain in the way that firm's come
back to life. Why, Purser, I'll bet you a bottle of Eno that O'Neill
and Craven are doing just double the turn-over now they did twelve
months ago."
"You'll know best about that, sir," said Mr. Balgarnie with a sigh, as
he remembered that only Captain Image touched commission on the cargo
which the _M'poso_ collected on the Coast. "But I will own up that she
has got the knack of making all the smarter men in the firm both on the
Coast and at Liverpool keen on her when they thought she was a man. Of
course it was a bit unlikely that the old-timer palm-oil ruffians like
Swizzle-Stick Smith and Owe-it-Slade would take to new ways that meant
more work, all at once, though for that matter I'll bet Slade put off
making up his mind for so long as to whether he liked hustling or he
didn't, that finally he dropped into the new ways without knowing it."
"Slade's gone off up-country to find the firm a rubber property,
Purser, me lad. Laura told me about it last night. She hasn't heard
of him once since he pulled out of Smooth River, and she's very anxious
about him. I hope none of those up-country bushmen have chopped Slade.
I should be sorry to lose that man. He owes me a matter of three
sovereigns, and that old Holland gun of mine that he borrowed for half
an hour eighteen months ago has gone up-country with him. I believe
he's in the ribs of the fo'c'sle shop, too, for the thick end of a
fiver."
"Four-seventeen-nine. I've given both Chips and the bo's'n a rare
dressing down about it. They've no business to let anyone with Slade's
reputation have as much tick as that. The bo's'n's new to the
Coast--our bo's'ns always do seem to die, sir--but old Chips ought to
know that's no way to run a fo'c'sle shop. They can chuck away their
own money as they choose, but I told them both plainly that I can't
afford to drop my share in a sum like that."
"Nor can I," said the other sleeping partner. "You can let both Chips
and the bo's'n understand that unless I see a good round sum in hard
cash as my share of profits when we get back to Liverpool, they don't
ride in the old _M'poso_ next trip. They can put their book debts
where the monkey put the nuts. They don't pay me out with those. No,
by Crumbs!"
"Miss Kate, by the way, was mighty anxious to know what profits there
were in fo'c'sle shops. Of course I said I'd heard of them on other
boats, but we'd never allow such a thing on the _M'poso_."
"Um," said Captain Image thoughtfully, "that tale's all right for most
passengers, but I don't think I'd have risked it with Miss Kate. She
strikes me as being a young woman who likes to hear one's opinion on
things, but generally has her own information on the matter already cut
and packed beforehand. I told her last night how sorry I was to see
all that cargo waiting at the factory with no Krooboys to work it out
of their creek to the steamboat. By Crumbs! Balgarnie, me lad, she'd
nipped off back to the _M'poso_ here, and had hired our own blessed
deck passenger boys for the job before you could say 'gin.' You know
what an independent lot they are, going home with money in their
pockets. I bet you a box of oranges you couldn't name me two white men
on the Coast who could have persuaded them. But she did it, one-time,
and only paid regular wages, too. Dressed for dinner in the evening
when she'd finished, just as if she was merely a tripper going home
from the Islands, and hadn't an object in life outside trying to tickle
the boys with her looks. I tell you, Miss Kate's a very remarkable
young woman, Balgarnie, me lad, and if she doesn't peg out here on the
Coast, or go broke over floating a rubber swindle, or get married and
chuck it, I shall feather my nest very nicely over the cargo she gets
shipped."
"I say, Captain, what's between her and Laura? They seem to know one
another pretty intimately."
"Met in Las Palmas when they were kiddies. Pass me the compasses off
the chart table. My pipe's jammed. Thank you, me lad. Owe-it-Slade
got two years' tick at that convent school out on the Telde road for
Laura, and Miss Kate was running about the islands a good deal then
with old Godfrey. Godfrey had a tomato farm out past Santa Brigida,
and they used to have Laura up there for all her holidays. By Crumbs,
Purser, me lad, how that little girl's shot up. It's a dashed pity
she's a nigger."
"D'you suppose Carter knows it?"
"If he doesn't I shan't tell him, and don't you; for two reasons.
First, there's Miss Kate to be thought of. I watched the way that girl
eyed him, and by Crumbs, I tell you, me lad, I was glad he was booked.
She's going to stay out here on the Coast for a good spell, and he'll
be close and handy, and somehow I've got the opinion that red-headed
chap is just the sort of man she'll marry. He's not a beauty, but he's
a good, tough, wholesome face on him; he's a lot struck on her; and
he's a gentleman. I can do with her bossing; she's a nice way of
wrapping up her pill and ramming it home with a smile. But I'd not
like to see a red-haired youngster I brought out here as a clerk
eighteen months ago, head of the O'Neill and Craven concern and
expecting me to knuckle under. I'd do it, of course; I'd be civil to
old Harry himself, me lad, if he could bring cargo to the _M'poso_; but
I'll not deny to you it would stick if I had to start ladling out
champagne in this chart house to Carter, and sit and listen whilst he
strutted out his views on the decay of British influence in West
Africa."
"It would be pretty tough," Mr. Balgarnie admitted. "But you said
there was another reason you wanted him to marry Laura."
"Well, I do. I like that girl. I knew her when I first came down the
Coast as mate. I remember the first time I saw her as if it was
yesterday. I was standing up against the tally desk beside number
three hatch, ticking off the cargo list as they hove stuff up and
dropped it in the surf boats. It was on the old _Fernando Po_, that
beat her bottom out afterwards when Williams tried to drive her over
Monk bar at half ebb. There was a case marked with double-diamond that
was O'Neill and Craven's consigning all right, but with no name of
factory. I knew old Swizzle-Stick Smith and Malla-Nulla well enough
already, and I didn't know Slade, and so naturally I thought Smith
should have it, and ordered the case back again into the hold. But
just then up came a little nipper of about eight or ten years old, as
self-possessed as you like, and says, 'Are you Mr. Image?' 'That's
me,' says I. 'What's the message?' 'Oh, no message,' says she, 'only
Daddy says that if I can find you and stand by your heels and not
bother I may stay aboard, but if not I'm to go ashore by the next boat
and get on with my lessons.' Well, it didn't take much seeing through
what was meant there."
"No, sir," said Mr. Balgarnie heartily. "By all accounts old Cappie
Williams was the hardest case they ever knew even on the West Coast,
and that's saying a lot. I only knew him for a year, and I wasn't
particular in those days, but he was more than even I could stand."
"He was the limit. Well, me lad, that was the first time I saw Laura,
and she stood beside me half the day at the tally desk there, and
thanked me for the entertainment when Slade sent off a boy to take her
ashore. She gave me a kiss when she turned to go down the side--well,
you see, I've--I've never quite forgotten that kiss, Balgarnie, me lad."
"I know, skipper," said Mr. Balgarnie rather thickly. "A kid once
kissed me, of her own blessed accord, too, like that. It sort of burnt
in. I beg your pardon, sir, for interrupting."
"Not at all, me lad. Here you, steward. Hi, Brass-Pan."
A Krooboy ran up.
"We fit for two cocktail, plenty-long ones. Well, as I was saying,
Balgarnie, me lad, I've always had a bit of soft place for Laura,
though I suppose she rightly is snuff and butter, by Crumbs you'd never
guess it from her looks unless you went over her with a lens, and I'd
just feel all broken up if she was to go the way that lot usually do
go. So if this young Carter, who seems a nice clean-run sort of lad,
will marry her with a ring, I'm going to weigh in with at least a best
silver-plate teapot for a wedding present."
"You can put me down for the ditto sugar and cream," said the purser
with emotion. "It was a kiddie just like Laura I was fond of myself.
Only--only-- Well, Skipper, I suppose a good many of us are
blackguards down here on the Coast. Why the sulphur doesn't your boy
bring those cocktails?"
But at this point Captain Image broke off the conversation. "By
Crumbs!" said he, "here's Miss Kate." And then he did a thing that
made Mr. Balgarnie whistle with sheer surprise. He went down the
ladder to help his passenger on board.
"Now, if I had done that," the Purser mused to himself, "it would have
meant a lot. But my Whiskers! I never thought I should live to see
old Cappie Image trotting down onto the front doorsteps to receive a
mere female passenger. The Old Man must see enough solid dollars in
that girl to buy himself that hen farm outside Cardiff he hopes to
retire upon."
Captain Image stood on the grating at the foot of the ladder and waved
his panama in respectful salutation. The beer-colored river swirled
along the steamer's rusty flank a foot beneath him, and the pungent
smell of crushed marigolds which it carried made him cough. The sun
shimmered exactly overhead in a sky of the most extravagant blue, and
the greenery which fenced in the slimy mud banks hung in the breathless
heat without so much as a twitter.
Miss Kate O'Neill was seated in a Madeira chair which stood on the
floor of a big green surf boat, and the gleaming Krooboys perched on
the gunwales paddled with more than their usual industry. The headman,
who straddled at the steering oar in the stern, wore a tail-coat of an
extremely sporting cut and pattern and a woven grass skullcap in honor
of the occasion. And all this pomp and circumstance was uninvited.
But somehow people had the knack of offering special service and
deference to Miss O'Neill.
The only other woman on the _M'poso_, the austere wife of a Benin
trader, looked over the steamer's rail in gloomy disapproval. These
were no modes for Coast wear. A billowy grass-green muslin dress that
no Krooboy laundry-man could wash twice without spoiling; neat, narrow
pipe-clayed shoes with no thickness of sole, and ridiculous heels; a
pale green felt hat, actually insulted by a feather in its band; and
final absurdity of all, a parasol, a flimsy thing of silk, and ribbon,
and effervescent chiffon, which would be absolutely ruined by a splash
of rain, instead of the big sensible white cotton affair, with the dark
green lining, which all ordinary people know is the standard wear on
that torrid Coast.
"Faugh," said the trader's wife, "and Captain Image says she's one of
the smartest business women in the world to-day, and that fat, greedy
purser would propose to her in the next five minutes if he thought he'd
a cat's chance of being accepted. They think her good-looking, too,
I'll be bound, just because she wears those unsuitable clothes, and has
pink color in her cheeks. Well, the clothes will be whisps of rag by
this day week and"--the poor woman sighed here--"the Coast will get the
color and the plumpness out of her face, and make her as lean and
yellow as the rest of us in a month."
"You're a good, kind man," Miss O'Neill was saying to a very smiling
Captain Image, "and I know I did tell the bedroom steward to have my
big trunks got up on deck; but, you see, I'm a woman, and therefore
it's my prerogative to be able to change my mind without being openly
abused for it. So I want you, please, to be very nice and let me stay
on the _M'poso_ a little longer."
"Miss Kate, I was sure you'd find that what I said was true, and that
Smooth River factory was no place for a lady like you. You see those
dead niggers are fresh now, but when the sun gets on 'em--er--I mean
there's no trade coming into this section of the Coast just now till
that blessed old King of Okky opens the roads again, and he won't do
that yet awhile on his own dirty account, and neither you nor I have
got the ju-ju that will make him. My dear Miss, I'm just as pleased as
a monkey with green--er--with a green tail to hear you're going to take
the round trip home with me, and if my clean collars do run out, you
must remember that we all wear panjammers when we're south of the
Islands and the trippers. If only I'd thought of shipping a jack-wash
when I got my Krooboys at Sarry Leone. Well, one can't be prepared for
everything."
The girl laughed. "I wouldn't strain the supply of collars for worlds.
I only want you to take me two days on from here and drop me at this
factory again on the way back."
The tint of Captain Image's vermilion face deepened to plum color. He
scented irony, and his touchy Welsh temper bubbled up into view.
"Miss," he said, "when I pull my anchors out of Smooth River mud in ten
hours from now, I go out on the flood across the bar, and as you must
know I walk in and do the civil in Water Street, Liverpool, before I
smell the stink of these particular mud banks again."
She slipped a plump firm hand on his white drill sleeve. "Won't you
ask me into the chart house, Captain, and send Brass-Pan for some tea?
I'm absolutely dying for tea. And you can have a cocktail. I've got a
long story I want to tell you. There's cargo waiting for you, Captain,
up a creek that opens off Smooth River which you've never been up, and
which I think will pretty well fill the _M'poso_ without your troubling
to call anywhere else."
Captain Image's face cooled to vermilion again, and puckered into a
smile in spite of himself. He even went so far as to pat the fingers
that rested on his arm. "By Crumbs, Miss, I'd ordered them to boil up
that tea when I saw you shoot out of the factory creek in your surf
boat, and till you reminded me, I'd clean forgotten it. And here
you've been standing and yarning to me on the front door step all the
time. They'll call the _M'poso_ a dry boat with a vengeance if this
tale gets about. I shall be chaffed to death over it. Come up on top."
Mr. Balgarnie saw them ascending the ladder, and rushed into the chart
house and pulled down three photographs that had been fastened on the
wall with drawing pins since Miss Kate O'Neill's departure. He was
thumped on the back by his grateful skipper who caught him in the act
of pocketing them.
"Balgarnie, me lad," said Captain Image, "you'll have to keep that hard
collar of yours bent for two days longer. You'll be pleased to hear
that Miss Kate's not going to throw us over yet. Just you go and see
the chief steward and the cook and ask them what they've got left in
the refrigerator. And I want you to break the rule of the ship, and
make all the other passengers jealous, and dine at my table in honor of
the occasion. Come in, Miss, and please take the settee. You'll find
this cushion soft and free from mildew."
Kate smiled gratefully on them both. "What dear, good people you are.
And I made sure you would detest me, Captain, when I tell you I want
you to change from your usual routine."
Captain Image's face stiffened.
"Even though it is to get all your holds full of cargo which you would
never have touched if it had not been for a hint that just came to me
an hour ago."
"We carry mails, you know," said Image doubtfully, "and there's a
scheduled time for call at the various points, and a bad time for being
late. Bad----"
"But cargo. Let me suggest to you again, cargo?"
"Well, Miss Kate, there's no other lady on earth I'd say the same to,
but I'll not deny the fact--to you, mind, and quite between
ourselves--that cargo interests me. And letting you further into
what's considered one of the deadest of secrets, there are times when
cargo commission can just out-balance fines for being late with mails.
You see I guess what you have in your mind, Miss. You want me to run
back and take off the cargo that's waiting at Malla-Nulla before those
Okky-men come down and raid it."
Miss O'Neill lay back against the cushion and sipped composedly at her
hard-boiled tea. "There," she said, "I knew you'd consent. There's
only one little detail you've made a mistake about. How soon can you
be off? Judging from the music of the winches, you're working in the
cargo here at a famous speed."
"The mate reported to me just before you came on board that he'd have
the lot shipped by five o'clock. Those passenger boys of ours that
you've made factory boys for the time being were working splendidly, so
Mr. Mate said. But what's this little mistake, Miss Kate? I can't go
right away back to O'Neill and Craven's factory at Monk River, if
that's what you mean."
"Oh, my dear Captain Image, don't think me unreasonable. I shouldn't
dream of asking you to do such a thing as that. I don't even want you
to go out over Smooth River bar for the present. But I'd better tell
you just what's happened. You see all afternoon the Krooboys who had
run away have been coming back, and some of the clerks have turned up,
and then came Mr. and Mrs. da Silva. We had quite a gathering of it,
and as Mr. Carter set them all on to digging holes and tidying things
away as they arrived, by this time all the--well, you wouldn't know
there'd been fighting.
"But the first to turn up at the factory after you'd left me there was
not one of our own people, but a caller. He was the agent in charge of
the German factory at Mokki. He turned up in a dug-out, and he gave us
to understand that he was the most frightened man in Africa. He said
his voyage down the creeks was one series of miraculous escapes. He
said he'd come to take shelter under the British flag; but when he
found that by an oversight we hadn't got such a piece of furniture
about the place, and when he saw the holes in the walls and the roof
and the--the--what there was lying about under that blazing sun in the
clearing, he was quite of opinion that he hadn't run far enough."
"The blighted Dutchman," said Captain Image contemptuously.
"Well, you see," said the head of O'Neill and Craven confidentially, "a
chance like that suited me uncommonly well. To let you into a secret
of our Liverpool office, I had reckoned on increasing the output of all
our factories, and found I was doing it even more than I had calculated
upon. Consequently when there was a big price bid for palm oil and
kernels for autumn delivery, I sold heavily."
"And now the King of Okky has put ju-ju on you, stopped the roads, and
there you are caught short, me lad--I beg pardon, Miss Kate, I should
have said."
"Of course it only worried me for the moment. These tight places are
never really tight if you take the trouble to think out a way through
to the other side. In this case it's shown itself to be delightfully
simple. I've bought out the German."
Captain Image grunted. "Then I wish you'd asked me for advice first.
But perhaps you haven't clinched the deal, and can back out of it
still. If you'll take the tip from an old Coaster like me, you have
nothing to do with it. His old Dutch factory's only worth scrap price."
"That's all I've given for it."
"And when you do get the oil out of it that's stored there, if it
hasn't been looted whilst he's been away pleasuring down the creeks in
his canoe, where are you? No better than here. Your trade will be
dead. The King of Okky's stopped all the roads."
"Now, I'm just going to give you a little geographical surprise. Have
you got a map?"
Captain Image indicated the drawers beneath the chart table. "Coast
charts, of course, which include the river mouths, but I should pile up
the old packet in a week if I relied on them. I'm my own pilot for the
most part, Miss Kate, and that's why with God's Providence and a sound
use of drugs I've managed to work successfully on the coast all these
years."
"Well, if you haven't got a map of the back country here in your stock,
I carry a very accurate one in my head, and if you'll give me a paper
and a pencil, I'll draw out something that will surprise you."
The girl leaned over the chart table and began to draw, and Captain
Image sat back on his camp stool and nursed a knee and frankly admired
her. He did not in the least believe in this Mokki venture, and had
not the smallest intention of breaking in upon his usual routine by
going there. But he had (so he told himself) a distinct eye for the
beautiful and the romantic, and he found his ideals in these matters
very considerably filled by Miss Kate O'Neill, her dress, and her
occupations.
"There," she said at last, and handed him the sketch.
Captain Image looked at it, laughed, and shook his head. He had all of
a sailor's intolerance for the amateur map-drawer. Moreover, he had
traded in part of the Oil Rivers for twenty years, and if he did not
know the back country personally, he heard it spoken of in the
factories and in steamer smoke-rooms as matter of intimate knowledge
almost daily.
"Well, Captain, don't just shake your head and laugh. Let me have your
criticisms."
"I'm not saying, of course, that it's not a very clever map. It is
that, and the way you've put the rivers in would beat the knowledge of
many who have been on the Coast for years. You've quite the knack of
drawing a map, Miss Kate, though there's another creek here that you've
missed, and this continuation of what we call the Dog's-leg channel you
must have guessed at, because I never heard of its being navigated, and
nobody knows where it goes to."
"It leads to my new factory at Mokki."
"Well, it may do, though you can take it from me there's no water for a
steamboat that draws even eleven foot six. But the thing you're mainly
wrong in is this part you've marked as the Okky country. You haven't
carried it anywhere near far enough back."
Miss O'Neill tapped at her firm white teeth with the end of the pencil.
"You're quoting from the Royal Geographical Map," she suggested.
"Well, Miss, I am," Captain Image admitted, "and I know it's just about
as inaccurate as magazine fiction in a whole lot of places. But I
shouldn't set myself up to buck against a Royal Geographical map unless
I knew."
"Neither should I. But you see maps have always been a fad with me,
and since Mr. Godfrey died, and I had the whole weight of O'Neill and
Craven landed upon my one pair of shoulders whether I liked it or not,
I looked upon maps from a very different point of view. As everybody
on the Coast knows everybody else's business, I need hardly point out
to you that during Mr. Godfrey's latter days O'Neill and Craven had
been allowed to run down pretty badly, and when I took hold, the firm
was--well, what shall I say?"
"Dicky," suggested Captain Image kindly. "But I can quite understand
all the hard words you'd like to let out if I wasn't here."
The girl laughed. "Well, we'll put it, Captain, that the firm was
decidedly dicky, and I've had a most interesting time in pulling it
onto its feet. Incidentally I've given up drawing maps from an
amateur's point of view, and have been drawing them with an entire eye
to business in the future. You've no idea how interesting it is to a
business woman, Captain, when some special information comes to her and
she is able to go to her map and fill in a mile or so of river that
she'd had to leave a gap for, or sketch in a newly-discovered trade
route through what was thought to be hopeless swamp, or fill in part of
the boundary line of territory that up to then had merely merged off
into blank space."
"My Crumbs," said Captain Image admiringly, "but you are a daisy, Miss
Kate."
"It was only the day before I left Liverpool that I got news of where
the Okky territory ended. The French have been having some mysterious
expedition in at the back there for purposes of their own, and the
officer in command very unwisely caned the only other white man with
him, who was a Zouave, and wasn't really white at all. He wanted
revenge, so he came to me and told, and got fifty pounds, and said he'd
never enjoyed letting off spite so much in his life before."
Captain Image smacked his knee. "Daisy isn't the word for you, Miss,"
he affirmed, "and you can tell people I said so, if you like. A young
lady that can pull the leg of these beastly foreigners in that way is
worth going a long way to meet. You oughtn't to come out here to the
Coast. You ought to stay at home, Miss Kate, and marry a Member of
Parliament."
"Poof! I wouldn't for worlds. They're all too pompous and too dull.
They only talk, and pose for the newspapers; they never really do
anything constructive in the House. Now, I like to do things; and if
ever I marry, it will be a man who can do things that I've tried at
rather better than I can do them myself. But we're getting away from
the factory at Mokki. Now, the German agent doesn't know it, and I
didn't feel called upon to tell him, but it's quite possible to open up
trade routes to that point that don't pass through the Okky country at
all. So that upsets the old King's notion of stopping the roads at
present, and in the future, when he gets tired of cutting off his nose
to spite his face, and tries to set trade going again, he'll find the
stuff is being carried round very comfortably outside his boundary, and
that there is no more blackmail to collect. How does that strike you,
Captain? Now, am I a crazy woman who is bound to bust up O'Neill and
Craven's if I am left long enough to it?"
"I never said that," Captain Image protested violently, "and I'll wring
that pious old Crewdson's neck next time I see him. That man can't
carry corn. He evidently gets a heap too loose tongue if you offer him
just a little civility."
"Well, I really am awfully glad you're going to be nice," said Miss
O'Neill as she handed back her teacup with a sigh of relief, "and steam
off up to the creeks to Mokki when you've finished working the cargo
here."
Captain Image stood with the empty teacup in his hand, revolving in his
mind many things, and some of his muttered comments were profane. He
carried throughout all the seaboard of West Africa a reputation for a
hard obstinacy of which in his way he was not a little proud, as men
can be of assets whose value is more than doubtful; and he arrived at
the idea that this pretty young woman in the crisp grass green muslin
was twisting him round to carry out her own peculiar wishes with
ridiculous ease. "It's enough to make any man swear," declared Captain
Image, as a final summing up of his sentiments.
"I agree with you cordially," said Miss O'Neill, "and as I am sure that
you must have done tremendous violence to your feelings in letting me
have so much of my own way, I'll just let you swear as a reward."
"No, I'm damned if I do, Miss Kate," said Image politely. "I shouldn't
dream of forgetting what is due to a lady. But don't you be too sure
of having your whim gratified even now. I don't see any way of getting
the _M'poso_ to Mokki up those bits of creeks unless we put wheels
under her and pull her there through the bush."
"Have you ever seen a steamer called the _Frau Pobst_?"
"I have. She's a funny old brig-rigged relic, with sawn-off smoke
stacks and no boats."
"No boats?"
"Oh, she started with some in the year one when she was built, but as
they always got washed overboard when she found herself in a sea-way, I
guess they grew tired of replacing them. I believe she does carry some
patent folding concertinas tied up somewhere near her davits, but
they're to pass the Dutch Board of Trade. They aren't for use. Yes, I
know the old _Frau Pobst_. She generally wants two crews each voyage."
"How's that?" asked Kate, with a twinkle.
"Goes so slow, the first lot die of old age." Captain Image smacked
his lips over the pleasantry.
"What a labor it must have been to get an old tub like that up to
Mokki."
"It would take her as many days as it would take me hours in the
_M'poso_," said Image, and could have bitten out his tongue when the
words escaped. But Kate O'Neill had got up from the settee and was
shaking his hand. "I believe in reality, Captain, you're just as keen
a business man as I am a business woman. Only you're shockingly shy
about showing it. No, don't get up. I'm just going to run back ashore
again to finish things up here. I'll be back by the time you've got
steam. Please don't get up."
"By Crumbs, Miss Kate, but don't you try to dictate to me about that.
I'm going to see you off from the front doorsteps myself. By Crumbs,
there isn't another lady in Africa I admire half as much."