NAVIGATION OF DOG'S-LEG CREEK
Captain Image yapped out his commands to the third mate and a
quartermaster in the wheelhouse in tones that supplied many missing
adjectives:
"... Starboard your helm. Starboard. Hard-a-starboard, you bung-eyed
son of perdition--stop her. Crumbs! but we sliced off a thumping big
chunk of Africa there, and broke half the tumblers in the steward's
pantry by the sound of it. I bet something big it's another case of
going home on what's left of the double bottom, and Old Horny to pay in
Water Street, Liverpool. Give her full ahead now, and steady your
helm, quartermaster. My holy whiskers, who wouldn't sell a farm and go
to sea? Starboard your helm, six points. There, steady on that. Half
speed the engines." And so on over and over again for every hour since
the sun rose to blister the swamps, and call forth the full volume of
their earth and crushed-marigold smell.
There is a proverb bandied about amongst the sons of men which states
that the unknown has always its charm, and harassed shipmasters often
wonder why it is not publicly contradicted in Norie's Epitome of
Navigation. Carter either forgot or never realized this, and
furthermore made the fatal blunder of going up onto the sacred upper
bridge without direct invitation.
For half an hour he had stood there silent, and unspoken to, listening
to Captain Image's tirade against the creeks that led to Mokki, and
then catching for a moment the mariner's eye, ventured on an
observation. He suggested that at any rate Captain Image would have
the amusement of feeling that he was an explorer; and there was the
opportunity the peppery Welshman really needed.
He had not been able to say what he wished to Miss Kate O'Neill, for
many reasons; but here was her whipping-boy; and on him Captain Image
turned loose one of the most powerful vocabularies that has ever been
carried up and down the West African seaboard. He neglected both
quartermaster and third mate--and these two experts, being only too
glad of the breathing space, kept the _M'poso_ accurately out of the
mangroves, whilst their commander gave an undivided attention to the
very highly qualified passenger who had dared to sully the unblemished
deck plants of the upper bridge.
Now, under ordinary conditions, Carter would have recognized the
circumstances, and have remembered his service, and swallowed the dose
with a smile and a shrug. But things had gone woefully awry with him
during the last score of hours. The strain of the fight, the discovery
that the man K. O'Neill of the letters was Miss Kate in the flesh, the
uncertain future of two Coast factories, the way in which everybody
received his engagement to Laura Slade; all these things piled up on
one another had set his usually steady nerves jangling in a way to
which he was unaccustomed, and he felt himself forced by a rather
insane impulse to do something startling. He had successive
inclinations to throw up his berth altogether and go home; to marry
Laura Slade out of hand by the kind assistance of Captain Image and the
_M'poso's_ log-book, which occurred to him as the local equivalent of
Gretna Green; to violently abuse Miss Kate O'Neill for being herself.
Finally, when the premonitory symptoms of a well-earned dose of fever
gripped him with a stab and a shudder, he had the usual malarial
depression, which put the usual question as to whether life were really
worth living.
Over and above all these things, since the first moment of seeing Kate,
it had been borne in upon him that he had made a mistake over his
engagement. He did not for a moment think of getting free; he was
doggedly determined to see it through, or in other words to marry
Laura, whatever the cost and result might be. But from that date
onward he began to ask himself inconvenient questions. He demanded of
his inner conscience a definition of that impalpable thing, love. He
wished to be informed (from the same source and at the shortest notice)
if he was exactly in love with Miss Slade at that particular moment,
and when the phenomenon commenced, and how long it was likely to
endure. And when Laura, who saw into a good deal more of all this than
he expected, offered to release him from his promise, he abused her for
the suggestion, and protested his affection for her with such warmth
that he feared very much after the interview that he had hopelessly
overdone it.
As a consequence, when Captain Image explained in a two-minute speech
that Mr. Flame-tipped Carter was violating the etiquette of nations in
daring to pollute that upper bridge with his undesirable feet, without
direct invitation, he rather welcomed the opportunity and retorted in
kind.
Now, Captain Image, as has been hinted, had made the most of the years
he had spent sea-going in the matter of picking up a vocabulary; he has
to this day brothers in Wales who are local preachers and revivalist
leaders, and there is no doubt that he was the inheritor of some
ancestral strain of burning eloquence. Carter, on the other hand,
though not as a rule a man of much speech, had not lived with
Swizzle-Stick Smith all those long months without taking lessons in the
art of vituperation, and though he was not conscious of it at the time,
the education soaked in, and when the moment of stress arrived his
memory served him faithfully.
Miss Kate O'Neill heard the discussion and retired to her room below.
Stewards popped their heads round doorways and listened appreciatively;
deck hands took cover round the angle of the houses and strained their
ears, and the second engineer, who was bred on Tyneside and openly
claimed to be a connoisseur, came out brazenly onto the top of the
fiddley three yards from the speakers and did nothing to an unoffending
ventilator cowl with a three-quarter inch spanner.
From the present writer's point of view the remarks on both sides had
the fatal drawback that their point lay far more in artistic delivery
than in their subject matter, and so to report them here verbatim would
give a totally unjust idea of their weight and influence. But it must
be understood that Captain Image, who never till now had met a foeman
so worthy of his tongue, surpassed himself; and Carter, who now for the
first time used these winged words in hard vicious earnest, felt all a
sportsman's pride in seeing his verbal missiles land and rankle.
It is hard to award the victory; and, in plain truth, each orator was
so warmed with the effort of his own tongue that in another second the
British blood would have reached fisticuff temperature, and they would
have clinched. But luckily an interruption arrived to break the
tension. The third mate, that terribly abused young man who was
gaining a breathing space whilst Carter stood up against Captain
Image's tongue, at first conned the _M'poso_ up the winding channel
with a sigh of relief, and was ably seconded by the quartermaster at
the wheel, who had also been suffering. But by degrees their sporting
instincts drew them from the matter immediately in hand, and made them
interested spectators of the duel. In fact their interest absorbed
them, and, well, the steamer got the smallest bit out of hand.
When it was too late the third mate turned attention to his duties
again, and had just time to give four frenzied orders; there was a fine
jangling of the engine-room telegraph; the quartermaster did frantic
windmill work on the steering wheel, to the accompaniment of a rattling
chorus from the wheel engines below; but the _M'poso_ took a sheer and
rammed her nose firmly into the mangroves. And in she slid. Weight
and speed made sufficient momentum to put her into the mud and
shrubbery well up to the forerigging, and the jar sent the stiff-set
Captain Image flying onto the top of the fiddley gratings.
Carter shot up against the white painted rail of the upper bridge and
held his balance there, and then with that blind instinct for
interfering for the welfare of others which distinguishes the
Anglo-Saxon, he vaulted the rail, picked up Captain Image and set him
on his feet.
It is perhaps typical also of the peppery Welshman that he forgot the
enjoyable quarrel so promptly that he said, "Thank you, me lad," with
ready cordiality before he turned to do full justice to the third mate,
his ancestry, and his probable future in this world and the next.
"By Jove," broke in Carter, "I wish I'd a gun. There's a monkey on the
foredeck. I'd like that little beggar's skin. I wonder if I could
catch him."
"Don't you try, me lad," said Image. "The odds are that the front end
of this packet's a menagerie of red mangrove ants that could gnaw
chunks off a tin-covered crusader." He jammed the engine-room
telegraph with a vicious whirr to Full Speed Astern, and turned to the
unfortunate third mate. "Here, you, if you think you know enough to
tell the difference between land and water, lower a boat and take out a
kedge astern. Wait a minute. Now, you're not to drop that kedge in
the mud. It'll draw through that like pulling a hairpin out of a pot
of marmalade. You're to get ashore and hook it among those mangrove
roots. Just try and get it into your intelligent head that I don't
want that kedge to come home directly we put a strain on the wire.
When you've done that you can come back and go to your room and read
Shakespeare. I guess that's about all you blooming brass-bound Conway
sailors are fit for, except sparking the girls and drawing your pay.
By Crumbs! if we hadn't Miss Kate on board, and for anything I know
within earshot, I could just give you an opinion of your looks that
would make you want to cry."
But with the tide in the muddy river ebbing under her, the _M'poso_
stuck in the dock she had made, in spite of reversed propeller, and
winches straining on the kedge wire till they threatened to heave
themselves bodily from the decks. The insect torments of Africa
boarded her from the mangroves and bit all live things they came
against; obscene land crabs dressed in raw and startling colors waddled
up onto the slime of the banks as the water left them and blew impotent
froth bubbles at the tough steamboat which even they could not eat.
Parrots crowed at them from the shining green foliage of the mangroves
alongside; slimy things gazed at them from the mud beneath the arches
of the wire-like roots.
The sun crawled up into the aching blue overhead till it forgot how to
cast a shadow, and the wet steam heat grew so oppressive that even
Laura Slade, country-born though she was, felt sick with its violence.
But Miss Kate O'Neill on the awning deck did elaborate calculations on
sheets of paper, which she tore up and threw into the beer-colored
river when she had entered the results in her pocket-book; and down in
the purser's room, Carter carved images on Okky calabashes for the
English curiosity market.
To him came Mr. Balgarnie, dripping and fuming. "Great whiskers! man,
why did you shut the port-hole? You're lean; but if I stay in this
atmosphere I shall peg out of heat apoplexy in half an hour. Here, let
me open the port and stick out the wind scoop."
"Wind scoop's no good; there isn't a breath. And if you open the port
you'll be devoured. I tried it. I'm a Dalesman and I like a draught
of air, but it's no go here. Red ants, I think they are. Look at the
way they've been eating the insides out of your domestic cockroaches.
Now gaze on this chop bowl? Isn't it a gem? Any stay-at-home
Englishman would spot it as genuine native workmanship in a moment.
All done with a blunt knife; that's the great tip in this sort of
carving."
"Have a drop of whiskey? You fit for dash me dem bowl?"
"No, Purser, I'm not going to give away anything just now. I want five
shillings spot cash for this specimen, and it's dirt cheap at that.
When you've weathered it a bit, and given it a dressing of good yellow
palm oil, it will fetch a golden sovereign from a Las Palmas tripper,
easy."
"They're a hard-up lot, the people who come to the Islands these days,
and they're inclined to get too familiar if you offer as a favor to
sell them anything they may see in your room. I've chucked showing
them things. But I might get three half-crowns for that bowl in
Liverpool. Of course, I don't want any commission from you, old
fellow. I'll hand over every penny I'm paid for it."
Carter stuck out a dogged chin. "Look here, Purser, it's too hot for
frills, and we know one another a bit too well for them to go down.
Potter out five bob and the thing's yours to make what you can of. If
you don't, I've another customer who'll give more. I'm hard up."
"Oh, of course, yes. You want to set up housekeeping, don't you?
Well, old fellow, here are the two half-crowns towards the mangle or
the grand piano or whatever you've set your mind on getting first.
Sorry I ragged you about being engaged to Laura last night at Smooth
River. But, you see, I know Owe-it Slade, and I've known Laura all her
life, and of course I was a bit surprised to be told, you know--well,
to be told that you, of all people, had made it up with her. But, as I
say, I'm sorry I ragged you."
"Please don't apologize on a hot day like this," Carter snapped. "As I
don't value your opinion on a matter like that one jot, I naturally
didn't let anything you said disturb my sleep. Good-afternoon. If
you're going to occupy your room, I'll go out on deck and enjoy the
infernal crushed-marigold stink of this drain from a different point."
"That young man knows he's made a fool of himself," commented the
Purser sagely, "and he's as sore and uneasy as a skinned eel in a tub
of sand. Well, if he wants to furnish a lil' log hut for his dusky
Laura, so much the better for trade. He's the neatest trick of making
native curios in all West Africa, and I've got all his home business in
my hand. It's all rot about his trading with another purser; there
isn't one on the Coast that works this line, or I should have heard
about it. If the output's increased, I shall try and work up a
connection with America. My Whiskers! why not? What's wrong with
enriching the United States with some good broad-bladed Okky spears,
and a war horn or two just as a-- Hullo, yes, who's that? Ah, come
in."
There was a knock at the Purser's door, and White-Man's-Trouble entered
in reply to the invitation. "Oh, Purser," he said, "dem bug," and
opened a black fist and showed three electric-blue butterflies in his
white palm.
The Purser took them one by one in his plump fingers and dropped them
gingerly into an empty cardboard cigarette box. "I don't think they'll
be much use, boy. You've rubbed too much fluff off with those delicate
paws of yours. Savvy?"
"I savvy I fit for dash," said the Krooboy pointedly.
"Pooh, these are worth nothing. What do you take me for? A tripper,
or the Bank of England? Ah, would you, you infernal thieving monkey?"
Mr. Balgarnie had turned his back and had glanced in a shaving mirror
which hung by the port and saw White-Man's-Trouble helping himself to a
Tauchnitz novel, which he promptly tucked underneath his coat.
The Krooboy put the book down. He did not waste time in apologizing
for the theft of something that was entirely useless to him. He went
straight to a matter of far graver interest.
"Oh, Purser, how you seen me take dem thing? You no see with you eyes.
You eyes lib for look out of window."
"Attend," said Mr. Balgarnie, and struck an attitude. "I am the man
known to science as the Freak-who-has-eyes-at-the-back-of-his-head.
Observe, I have my back to you and yet I can see that you are picking
your nose with your strong left hand, and scratching the floor with
your starboard toe."
"I no fit for see you back eyes."
"That is because they are ju-ju eyes. Oh, White-Man's-Trouble, I bid
you fear the Powers of Darkness and steal no more anything that is
mine. You savvy?"
"Savvy plenty!"
"And as a further punishment, I bid you catch me ten more butterflies,
and take care you don't rub the feathers off, or they'll be no use to
Miss Kate."
"Missy Kate! What for she want dem bug? Dem no fit for chop."
"To make ju-ju of."
White-Man's-Trouble grinned. "Missy Kate no savvy ju-ju palaver. Dem
Carter, he show her dem god with talk-pipe, an' she say, 'Well, dere no
ju-ju about him.' Oh, Purser, I say dem god with talk-pipe
plenty-too-much-fine ju-ju. Okky-men savvy plenty him ju-ju."
"Your theology's a bit above my head, but I don't mind telling you in
confidence that butterfly collecting's the lady's habit, just the same
as--let me see--just the same as stealing things that are no use to you
is yours, and spear making's Mr. Carter's. Savvy?"
"Savvy some," said the Krooboy doubtfully. "Does Missy sell dem bugs
to steamah pursers, an' come ashore an' say dem dam' greedy hounds?"
"If you've got that idea in your aboriginal mind," said Mr. Balgarnie
with a yawn, "don't let me crowd it with anything nearer the truth.
You bring Miss Kate plenty of butterflies without the pretty rubbed
off, and presently she dash you a new top hat with a gold band to it."
"I no fit for take dash from Missy," said White-Man's-Trouble with
dignity. "I bring her plenty-too-many bugs for nix. I fit for know my
job."
The purser stared with tired eyes. "So you honor her with your
respectful admiration, too, do you? I wish I could get her knack.
There, clear out with you, and put the door on the hook. Take your
dirty hands away from that tooth-brush, confound you, and get out.
It's my time for siesta."
In the meanwhile Laura Slade had gone out on the bridge deck, had found
a chair without a card on it, and had dragged it up alongside her
friend. She waited patiently till one of the long calculations had
been worked out and the result entered up in the pocket-book, and then,
when the figures were torn small, she jumped up and took the scraps of
paper from the other girl's hand.
"Please let me do something, Kate. At least I can throw them overboard
for you."
Miss O'Neill laughed, and plied her palm leaf fan. "My dear girl, I'm
most pleased to be tempted away from work. In school days, as you will
remember, I was worse than you were at sums. I've had to grind at them
since, but it's not made me love them any the more. Why can't I be a
rich woman without working for it?"
"Do you want so very much to be rich?"
Kate turned to her friend and opened her eyes wide. They were brown
eyes, and someone once described them as talkative. But people who
knew her better were very conscious of the fact that Miss Kate
O'Neill's eyes only expressed things when she willed that they should
do so.
"Do I want to be rich? Well, of course. One can't have things or do
things unless one has money. And if I don't get money, no one will for
me; or, at least, I'd rather they wouldn't. Of course, you have got
Mr. Carter to work for you, Laura; but I am sure, when you put it into
cold words, you'd like him to make money, too. You don't want to live
all your days on the Coast here, the pair of you. You look forward to
going home, and having a house and a garden, and a motor car, and a man
to drive it. And you'd like to have good servants and nice frocks.
Yes, especially nice frocks."
"Like yours. Yes, I should like a nice frock like that one, Kate, if
you won't mind my copying it."
"What, this rag? My dear, sweet child, with your eyes, and your
figure, and the complexion you'd grow in England, you'd pay to dress
far more than ever I should. Mr. Carter will work hard and earn a big
income, just for the satisfaction of seeing you decently clad."
There was a minute's silence, and then, "Why do you dislike my
engagement so much, Kate?"
"Me dislike it? What rubbish. I think it's a most excellent thing for
you, if only Mr. Carter goes on as he has begun."
"Then I'll word it differently. Why do you dislike George so much?"
"Whatever gave you that idea? Mr. Carter, considering the short time
he has been on the Coast, has done most excellently for the firm,
and--well--_l'état c'est moi_. I know you condemn me for being
abominably commercial, but what nearer way do you think there can be to
my heart than through my pocket?"
"Your heart!" Laura repeated, and stared large-eyed at the yellow river
that swirled past the steamer's rusty flanks. An alligator, that
looked very much like a half submerged log, drifted down with the tide,
and a bird that rode upon him dug vigorously between the rows of his
plates with his beak. She watched them till they passed away down the
stream and were lost in the glare of the sunshine. "I wonder," she
said in a half-whisper, "if your heart wants something which it will
break my heart for you to get?"
Miss Kate O'Neill got up and gave a very healthy laugh. "Don't
mutter," she said, "and don't be ridiculous. To begin with, I'm not of
the marrying sort; to go on with, your taste (as typified in Mr.
Carter) and mine don't agree one little bit; and to wind up with, Laura
dear, don't let's pose like a pair of school-girls. I don't know
whether there's a slight natural antipathy between two red-haired
people----"
"Your hair's not red in the least, Kate. It's a very dark auburn."
"I should call it warmish. Anyhow, Mr. Carter's is red enough. And as
you will drag the subject up, I must really point out to you that he's
been hardly civil in the way he's avoided me. I haven't got smallpox."
"You're his employer. When you call him I'm sure he's glad enough to
talk to you about what you want. But you must see his position; he
wouldn't like to risk a snub by coming up when you might not happen to
want him."
"I see. The idea that all communications should be conducted in a cold
business footing. Am I to understand that Mr. Carter wished you to
convey that view to me, Laura?"
"You know quite well he didn't. Kate, we used to be friends. I wish
you'd answer me honestly what I asked you just now."
"Don't be tragic and ridiculous. You're half sick with the heat, and I
really believe you want to quarrel with me by way of safety valve.
Well, my dear, I shan't quarrel with you, that's all. I hate
quarrelling. I've been dodging the excellent Captain Image all the
day, as I know he wants to ease off his temper on me just because his
silly old steamer has stuck her nose on the bank and got left by the
tide. By the way, I candidly believe the accident happened just
because he was amusing himself just at that precise moment with having
a turn-up with--oh, well, we're getting onto touchy ground again.
And--here is Mr. Carter. You seem in a hurry."
Carter came up the ladder to the bridge deck in two strides, and it was
noteworthy that he addressed his first remark to his employer, and not
to his fiancée. "Do you mind going below? There are half a dozen big
Okky war canoes round that point ahead there. I've been forrad there,
and could see them quite plainly through the mangrove roots."
"Have you told the Captain?"
"No. I'll tell him next. But will you go below, or into one of these
deck houses? They are probably covering us this minute, and it's
pot-leg they fire, not bullets. Pot-leg spreads and can make ghastly
wounds."
"I don't like running away."
"If you could do any good staying out in the open I wouldn't ask you to
move. Laura, will you persuade Miss O'Neill to go into cover, as she
won't take any notice of me?"
"Thank you," said Kate sharply, "but Laura need not interfere. I am
accustomed to making up my own mind, Mr. Carter, without help from
anyone. I am much obliged to you for your care, and as I can't be of
any use at present, and as I have no insane wish to be shot, I shall
certainly go into shelter."
"Very good," said Carter; "then I'll go and carry the news to old
Image. It's a lucky thing I brought along that Winchester of Slade's.
We shall keep them off all right."
It turned out that Captain Image already had tidings of the war canoes,
and was red with wrath at the idea of any qualified black savages
having the unmentionable impudence to make a something naval
demonstration against a sacred Liverpool oil tank. His language was
quite unprintable, but his disposition of the steamer's forces was
remarkably sound. Tackles squeaked as a Krooboy gang hoisted the
ladder which hung alongside. The boatswain loaded the two brass signal
guns on the bridge deck with their usual noisy charge of blank, and
rammed a three-pound parcel of four-inch cut nails down the muzzle of
each on the top of the powder bags. The carpenter replaced the
gangways which are always unshipped when steamers are in the rivers
working cargo. And the winches chattered as they each hove up a
ponderous palm oil puncheon to the top of a derrick, which was then
swung outboard so that the puncheon could be let go by the run, and
smash any canoe made of hands that happened to be underneath.
When these pious duties had been fulfilled, the crew lined out along
each of the lower deck rails armed with spanners, firebars, handspikes,
and in fact any other weapon which a modern steamer could provide,
which in lusty hands might be called upon to break a human head.
On the upper bridge Captain Image oversaw the only two mates who were
not down with fever as they directed and assisted these operations, and
when all was ready he laid his own hands on the siren string and let
loose a hoarse throaty blast of defiance across the creeks and the
steamy forest.
"There, Carter, me lad," said he, "that's to show the blighters we're
here and waiting. I'm glad you've brought that Winchester. It's the
only gun in the ship since Owe-it Slade borrowed my Holland and forgot
to bring it back. They tell me you're a nailing fine shot, too."
"Couldn't hit a haystack with anything except a scatter gun."
"Well," said Image dryly, "as I saw some of your patients spread about
in the clearing outside Smooth River Factory, I shall believe just as
much of that as I choose. It's not my affair to mention it, of course,
but I do know that Miss Kate was very considerably struck by the way
you kept those niggers off, and if you hadn't been engaged to Slade's
girl----"
"Which I am, Captain. So, therefore, it's no use going into useless
possibilities. By the way, isn't that stern wire slackening?"
"By Crumbs, me lad, you've got a quick eye. The tide's coming up
underneath her, and she's slipping off. Here you, Mr. Third Mate, ring
those engines to full astern, and try and keep it in your head that
you'd be in your room now if I weren't short of officers."
With the lift of the yellow tide beneath her, the _M'poso_ drew out
from her muddy dock as a sword is pulled from its sheath, hung for a
dozen minutes in mid-stream whilst the stern-warp and its anchor were
got aboard, and then, gathering her boat and its crew up to davits,
turned stubbornly up the river.
"I'll show these Okky blighters what trouble is," declared Captain
Image, "if they try and stop me. I've had their old king in my chart
house here with Swizzle-Stick Smith and the other traders a score of
times, and if he didn't drink the ship dry, it was only because I
wouldn't let him. And now in return for that hospitality he brings out
his infernal war canoes. I only hope he's in one of them and comes
alongside. I'll brain him with an oil puncheon if I get him in range."
But when they opened up the reach behind the point where the canoes had
been seen, there was no offer of attack. There were three craft in
view, fifty paddle-power dugouts all of them, crammed with men and
weapons, fantastic with horrible ju-ju charms; but they hung on to the
wire-like stems of the mangroves and remained so moored till the
steamer drew past and began to dance them up and down upon its wash. A
monkey-skin drum in each was beaten impressively by two drummers, but
no weapons were levelled, and there was no threat of boarding.
"Faugh!" said Image, and spat. "Did you catch the smell of those
beauties when we had them abeam? Talk of a 'bus stable struck by
lightning!"
"They aren't there just to take in the scenery," said Carter
thoughtfully.
"An Okky-man is born to mischief even as the sparks fly upward. Look,
they're casting off their shorefasts and getting under weigh down
stream. No, by Crumbs, they're turning up stream after me. Well, of
all the blighted cheek! Do you know what that means, Carter, me lad?
They're going to follow us. They think they've got some ju-ju by which
they can cut us off from the Coast. Ah, here's Miss Kate. Well, Miss,
as I've you to think of as well as my ship, I shall turn presently and
run back again for the bar. You see for yourself, I should think now,
that it isn't healthy up this river, and all the cargo in Africa is no
use to a man if he can't get it shipped when he comes to the beach
where it's stored. If any one of the war canoes get in my way, I'll
show you what those bushmen look like when they're swimming in yellow
water, for as sure as the Lord made crocodiles, I'll ram their noisy
dugouts if I can. I'll teach them to thump their nasty smelling war
drums at me."
"Poof, Captain, don't you try to take me in. I should like to hear
anyone else suggesting that you couldn't take the _M'poso_ to a spot
where the _Frau Pobst_ had made regular voyages."
Captain Image thrust forward his head and glared. "I can take this
packet anywhere that blessed Dutchman's been, Miss."
"Of course you can. And when the _Frau Pobst's_ captain has shipped
cargo from a spot----"
"And given up going there, Miss, because it's too dangerous."
"Precisely. Well, as I couldn't insult you by calling you less than
twice as brave as the German, that means that no little trouble that's
going on between here and Mokki will frighten you in the very least.
Is that good argument?"
"Oh, go on, Miss. Twist me round your finger. I like it. Besides it
isn't the first time I've played a neck-or-nothing game. But I'm
hanged if I see that it's an amusement for a pretty young lady like
you."
Captain Image was speaking in plain earnest, and he was a man who knew.
Kate O'Neill was seized with a sudden qualm. Was she right to force on
this risk? Would the Okky-men attack, or could they bring off the
cargo successfully? Nobody but herself seemed to see a shadow of
chance for success. And these others were all old Coasters against
whom she was setting up her will.
But when she thought of giving way and turning back the cost of retreat
promptly leaped up and faced her in plain figures. O'Neill and Craven
were heavily involved, how heavily no one knew but old white-haired
Crewdson and herself. The Mokki oil that she had bought so cheap would
save them. Without it there would be bankruptcy, and, what she dreaded
even more, the contemptuous finger of Liverpool pointed at the woman
who had taken upon herself a man's responsibilities and broken down
beneath them.
These thoughts dinned through her again and again, but outwardly her
face smiled and her lips spoke lightly.
"Now, it is nice of you to give me a promise like that, Captain."
"Lake what?"
"To say that you'll go on till my nerves give way. Well, let it be so.
I promise to give you news of it the moment I'm frightened. Look,
there's an omen for you to read to me. The Okky-men in that first war
canoe are all standing up and waving their spears. What does that
mean, I wonder?"