EXHIBITS ANTISEPTICS
The night was hot, and steamy, and still. Even the insect hum was
pitched on a drowsy note. The darkness seemed almost fat in its greasy
heaviness. Two of the sweating factory boys were playing tom-tom on
upturned kerosene cans, and a third was throwing in an erratic obligato
with two pieces of scrap iron for an instrument. And from the river
behind a pair of crocodiles made unpleasant noises with irritating
persistency. Carter thought, too, that above the decay smell of the
factory rubber store, the stable smell of the Krooboys, the
crushed-marigold smell of the river, he could also catch the musky odor
of the crocodiles, and felt vaguely sickened thereby.
"... Those last-a bags of kernels I have not got-a weighed, senhor. I
was weary, and so I go-a to change and shave for dinner."
"Why don't you shave in the morning, instead of carrying a chin like a
besom all through the day? I suppose, as usual, you were going to
weigh up those kernels to-morrow?"
"You are most indulgent, senhor."
"I am nothing of the kind. Sufficient for the day is the work thereof,
and the man that puts it off till to-morrow gets out of here. Like to
hand in your resignation?"
"No, senhor, no."
"Then go and weigh those kernels, one-time. Then come back here and
make up your books. D'ye think I'm going to have my whole machinery of
commerce held up because you want to go and shave, and oil your head,
and put on clean whites and a crimson belly-band and otherwise make
yourself fetching for the benefit of Miss O'Neill?"
"Miss-a O'Neill?" said the Portuguese in surprise. "I do not care a
banana-skin----"
"Here, don't try and fill me up," said Carter bluntly. "And don't put
on time. Take a lamp and go out and weigh those kernels, and see you
don't set the shed on fire, and when you're through, and have posted
your books, come out and fetch me. I'm going to smoke a cigar out in
the open."
"The dew-a is heavy. There is fever about."
"Take your advice to the devil."
"Which fever," said Cascaes, "I should have added, if you had-a not
interrupted me--which fever I hope you will get."
"That's all right. I like you dagos better when you spit venom openly.
Now, you hurry up and go through those kernels, and see you get the
weights right."
The dew was thick on the grass in the clearing and stood in sleek
greasy drops on all the patches of bare stamped earth. Moon and stars
were all eclipsed. Even the fireflies, although the dark would have
given full value to their manoeuvres, were absent. The unhealthy
phosphorence of rotting dead wood here and there was the only
illumination, except here and there a glow from a window in the factory.
Carter went out through a gate of the fort and walked up and down with
restless energy. He was wet to the knees with dew; the damp Canary
cigar between his teeth had long since gone out; but he cared for no
small things like these. He kept repeating to himself that "a man must
play the game." "A man must play the game."
And presently, when the tom-toms and the jangling iron suggested some
tune to his ear, he changed this to a jangle which stated "I could--not
love--thee dear--so much--loved I--not hon--or more." And as the tune
beat out into the hot steamy night, so did the words keep time to them
with irritating repetition.
Once he stopped and shook a fist at the invisible sky above. "I am
going to marry Laura," he declared, "if she was ten times as black. I
am going to marry her though I know my father will never speak to me
again, and I can't take her home. I am going to marry her though the
heaven's fall. I am going to marry her for one reason that can't be
got over, and that is because I said I would. A man must play the
game. But my God! why did I never guess that Kate was on earth
somewhere?"
There was an old cotton-wood stump in the clearing, and he stood
against it so thoughtful and still that he became the object of
attention of bats. He hit at them angrily and recommenced his prowl.
Hour after hour he tramped through the dripping grass, biting against
fate. Cascaes, who did not work unless he was driven, had long since
checked his tally of kernels, and gone to bed. The factory lamps had
one by one gone out. The night noises of the forest that hemmed them
in were in full swing. His thin clothes were sodden with the damp, and
by every law of Africa he was gathering unto himself the seeds of
disease. But still he tramped on, in and out amongst the huts and
litter, wrestling with his misery.
The thing which in the end lifted him out of this unhealthy pit of
self-pity was commonplace enough in its way. As he was passing a small
rude shelter of boughs and thatch, there came to his ears a very
unmistakable human groan.
It was a temporary hut run up by some trader who was waiting his turn
to do business at the factory, and the groan was of that timbre which
told that it was wrenched from a strong man by deadly pain. At another
time Carter would probably have passed on. One grows callous to
suffering in West Africa, and to interfere with a sick native seldom
brings thanks and very frequently produces complications. But
something just then moved him to play the Samaritan.
He put his head through the entrance and peered into the darkness.
"Well," he said, "who's here, and what's the matter?"
A voice replied in stately Haûsa, "O, Effendi, I am close upon death,
and it is hard to die far from one's own lands and people."
"Let's have a look at you," said Carter, in what he knew of the same
tongue, eked out with Kroo and Okky. He scraped a damp and reluctant
match. "Holy Christopher! What have you been doing to your thigh?"
"As I marched along the road to here, a leopard sprang and seized me,
but the men that were with me speared him, and so I escaped with my
life. They made a litter, and on it carried me to this place. And
here they left me in the hands of Allah, whilst they followed up their
own private affairs."
"But, man, the wound's alive. Why didn't you have it dressed?"
"It was written that the wound should be as it is."
"Rot. You stay here another ten minutes or so till I get the tackle,
and then I will clean it out for you."
"Effendi, it is written that Allah sent the things that are in the
wound, and with due submission I will not have them touched."
"Hum," said Carter, "now this requires argument. You savvy
Constantinople? I mean I'Stamboul?"
"There lives the Kaleef, the chief of the Faithful of Islam."
"You've got it in once. Now, are you keeping yourself posted in the
Sultan's--that is the Kaleef's latest readings of the Koran? You are
not. I can see you have let yourself get thoroughly behind the times.
What's your name?"
"Ali ben Hossein."
"Well, Ali, I know what's the matter with you spiritually. You've been
thinking too much of the things of this life--fighting, trading and so
on. You've spread your mat and faced Mecca, and said your daily prayer
in a formal sort of way, but you've been neglecting the moolah. You
have been lax in your attendance at mosque, and for a fiver you aren't
half the man at the Koran you used to be."
"The Effendi is very wise."
"I am. I can't help it."
"He has hit upon this Believer's sin."
"Dead on the spot. So now let's get to the point. In your ignorance,
you believe that Allah sent all those crawling horrors that are in your
wound?"
"For His own wise purposes He sent them. Allah can do no wrong."
"You are mixing up theological facts. Allah can do no wrong. But what
about Sheitan?"
"I spit upon his name, O Effendi," said Ali ben Hossein, and did it.
"Hear now then the pronouncement of the Kaleef Abdul Hamed of
I'Stamboul. The unclean things that haunt the wounds of the Faithful
are no longer sent by Allah as a test of Faith. They are sent now by
Sheitan as a torment to True Believers, and as an antidote, the
Prophet, through the Kaleef, has sent a liquid of his own devising, of
which by a happy chance I have a portion in the factory."
"Is it green in color?"
"Green as the skirts of the houris of Paradise," said Carter, and
thanked heaven for a small parcel of aniline dyes (green amongst them)
which had been sent by an enterprising Bradford dyeware merchant, to
the order of a dyer in far off Kano.
"Then," said Ali ben Hossein simply, "if you, O Effendi, can relieve me
from the torments of Sheitan, from which I am suffering, I and my sons
will remember your name in the fullest gratitude. Have you the holy
liquid here?"
"Not in my pocket, O Ali ben Hossein, for I am not a djinn. But there
is a medicine chest up at the factory, and within it is a bottle of
crystal, blue in color, in which are tabloids which bear the giaour
name of perchloride of mercury. They and the aniline green may take a
bit of finding, but presently when I've got a solution made, and tinted
to a True Believer's taste, I will return here and work upon you that
cure of which I am sure that the Kaleef Abdul would approve if he'd a
thigh as bad as yours, and had ever heard of an antiseptic dressing.
So see to it that you don't slip through the gates of Paradise whilst I
am gone. D'you understand? The houris won't look twice at a Haûsa
with a leg as worm-eaten as yours."
Now, Carter gathered from a casual inspection by two damp matches that
ben Hossein's thigh was pretty bad, but he had not made allowance for
the toughness of a water-drinking, spare-eating Moslem. When he came
back with a parrafin lamp, followed by White-Man's-Trouble, who carried
a bowl of warm water and other things, and commenced his amateur
surgery, he was amazed, and he was sickened. Like most traders in the
West Coast factories, he had acquired through almost daily practice a
certain deftness in cleansing and repairing wounds; but here in the
thigh of this great muscular Haûsa was a grid of gashes whose untended
horrors went far beyond all his previous experience.
The fact that the man had not bled to death, or died of shock at the
first impact, and the further fact that he had withstood the attacks of
all the abominable live things that preyed thereafter upon his open
flesh, were a wonderful testimonial to his constitutional toughness;
and the detail that in spite of his fortitude he went clammy and limp
when Carter commenced dressing the wounds, was only what could be
expected. But it seemed that five days had elapsed since the man had
been brought in and left, and during that time the other merchants
outside the fort, with the ordinary callousness of Africans for one
another, had neither brought him food nor reported his calamity. On
the other hand, they had stolen his goods and gone their ways,
otherwise non-interferent. And as a consequence the man was three
parts starved when Carter found him and had his vitality perilously
lowered.
Carter had, perhaps, as has been stated, much of the West Coast
trader's callousness for the native, but he certainly had all of the
surgeon's interest in a patient. After he had dressed the wounds he
tried his best to bring his patient back to consciousness, and then for
the first time only did he realize how near to the Borderland the man
had crept. He sent White-Man's-Trouble flying this way and that on his
errands, and with all the limited knowledge in his power fought Death
for the Haûsa's life till the fatal hour of dawn was well past.
And so he was found by Miss O'Neill at 5 A.M., white, shaken and
black-eyed, attired in stained and sodden clothes, squatting in a
miserable hutch that reeked of iodoform, and welcoming with joy Ali ben
Hossein's ungracious return to a world he had so nearly left.
Miss O'Neill regarded him for awhile with a pinched lip, and then "I
think you are perfectly disgraceful," said she. "At least you might
have let me know what you were doing, so that I could have come to help
part of the time."
Carter blinked at her for a moment with tired brown eyes and then
pulled himself together. "I beg your pardon for not doing as you
wished. But I didn't know that you were interested in niggers, if
there was no chance of making a dividend out of them. I rather looked
upon this as an out-of-office-hours job; as a piece of private
amusement of my own, in fact, and so I did not dare to repeat it."
"Well," said Kate, seating herself beside the sick man, "perhaps I was
hateful to you after supper, indeed I'll admit that I was. But you are
being far more hateful to me now, and as that should tickle your vanity
as a man, perhaps you'll be generous enough to call it quits. Trouble,
will you kindly take Mr. Carter back to the factory and give him a
large dose of quinine and all the hot, scalding tea he will drink, and
then put him to bed, and see to it that there are no insects inside his
mosquito bar."
"I fit," said the Krooboy. "An' I got bottle of White man's medicine
dat I pinch from dem Cappie Image. I give dem Carter a drink of him."
"You will do nothing of the sort. Dem Cappie Image patent medicine
plenty bad ju-ju for Mr. Carter. So you will do exactly as I ordered
you. Ah, and here's Laura. Now, my dear, if you don't want the man to
whom you're engaged to die before you marry him, you'd better look
after him and his health very narrowly. There, get away out of this,
the pair of you, and make up your silly quarrel, whatever it may be."
"But, Kate, George and I have no quarrel. Why, it was you----"
"If you haven't a quarrel, my dear, invent one, if it's only for the
amusement of making it up. I'm told it's one of the chief luxuries of
an engagement. Now, please go, or you'll disturb Hossein. Hossein's
the man who wants attention here, and I can't have you bothering about
the place till he's better."
Hossein was in fact the lucky man. Miss O'Neill, for reasons best
known to herself, nursed him in person; Carter retained his interest as
original discoverer; White-Man's-Trouble fussed round him because it
was the popular thing to do, and Laura was also diligent in her
attendance on the sick room for reasons well-known to herself.
But Ali ben Hossein had all a Moslem gentleman's diffidence with women,
and he said little enough to either Laura or Kate; the Krooboy was his
caste inferior, and he spoke to him only to give curt orders; and it
was to Carter alone that he was communicative.
His native tongue was Haûsa, of course, but he had been a trader all
his life, and that in West Africa entails a knowledge of languages.
Carter knew little enough of Haûsa, but he was handy with Okky and
sound on Kroo, and so when one vocabulary failed him, he passed on to
another, and was generally understood. Thus, by very rapid degrees an
intimacy grew between them, to as far an extent as the color barrier
would permit.
They talked on weapons and they talked on war; they talked of sport as
each of them understood it; they talked on horse-breeding as it was
practised in Kano and Sokoto, and also of horse-breeding as it was
carried on in the Craven district and the Yorkshire dales.
Carter tried without any success whatever to make Hossein understand
the humor of the battle of the roses as it was waged between his father
and mother in the Yorkshire vicarage; the Haûsa in his turn gave the
light side of a slave-hunting raid, and made Carter's flesh creep.
They had abundant interests in common, too, in the romance of commerce,
and discussed regretfully the decay of ivory and the sensational rise
of rubber. Carter as the paid servant of O'Neill and Craven tried to
hear of rubber lands which could be bought and resold to an English
company, but Ali ben Hossein was emphatic in his refusal to help a
white immigration onto the acres of his fatherland.
"Let us talk as traders, oh Effendi. Do not ask me to be the traitor
who will make smooth the path for the invader. And for the present I
bid you to consider this shortage in the supply of pink kola nuts.
Now, the white kola nuts, which have not that dryness which is demanded
by the palates of the Western Soudan, we can get from Lagos and the
Coast factories in larger quantities than ever. But the growers
declare the crop of pink nuts to be practically a failure this year,
and therein I say they lie."
And so on, with matter which had too technical a flavor to carry
general interest.
Now, the leopard had clawed Ali ben Hossein's thigh grievously, and the
subsequent neglect of the wound had been abominable, but the man had
been a clean liver and his toughness was great. In ten days he could
hobble, and in a fortnight announced his departure.
"I am a merchant without merchandise, Effendi, and must needs be back
about my affairs. If I do not gather them into my hands again another
will."
"I'd stand you tick to the extent of a dozen loads of goods if I had
'em," said Carter cordially, "but as you've seen for yourself, the
factory's cleaned out. And Allah knows when the next steamer will
drive in."
"May your tribe increase, Effendi. I have had too much at your hands
already. But though no money may pass over what you have done, yet I
ask you to accept a gift, that is a mere token."
It was a piece of gray stone which sprouted with rich brown crystals.
It was shaped like a squat duck, some inch and a half long, and Ali ben
Hossein wore it alongside the little leather parcel which held a verse
of the Koran and hung by a thong from his neck.
"O Effendi, you are young, and that will bring you pleasure more than
could be bought with ten quills of gold. Wear that, and your grief
will fade."
"Poof!" said Carter, "I've no griefs."
Ali ben Hossein waved aside the statement with a long slim hand, the
hand of the Haûsa swordsman for whose narrow grip Central African
armorers make sword hilts that no grown Englishman can use. "O
Effendi, my sickness was of the leg. Neither my eyes nor my ears were
touched by the leopard, and since I lay here I have both seen and
heard. There is a woman that I have watched, a woman with brown hair
that has in it the glint of copper. She flaunts you now, as is the way
of women with those they love; but she is the one you desire, and
presently (having this charm) you will take her to wife. Indeed, she
will come to your house without purchase and of free will."
"You mistake," said Carter with a sigh. "It is the black-haired one
that I am contracted to marry."
Ben Hossein smiled. He was not to be turned from his idea by a small
argument like that. "You may take her as the lesser wife, but I know
who will rule your harem, Effendi."
"You polygamous old scoundrel! I beg your pardon, ben Hossein, but
you're on the wrong tack, and so please let us change the subject.
This charm, this duck, is made of what we call tin-stone. Does it come
from Haûsaland?"
"No, Effendi. It is found nearer to here than the Haûsa country.
There is a great island of red twisted stone that rears itself up out
of the bush, and this stone that the duck is made of lies amongst it.
There is no value in the charm as a stone, but only value in its shape,
which is that of a duck as you see, Effendi. Half the twisted mountain
is made of that stone, and the river that runs along its base at times
eats into it."
"How far is it from here?"
"Twelve--no, thirteen marches. Look, I will spread this sand upon the
floor and draw you the roads.... But the country is evil, Effendi, and
though you go there and spend a lifetime in search, yet will you not
find another stone formed like a duck. To get this, my grandfather
sent a hundred slaves who raked amongst the screes for a year."
"This is tin-ore," said Carter, "and I tell you frankly, ben Hossein,
that there is a fortune in what you have told me."
"I wish," said ben Hossein gravely, "that there were ten fortunes, and
so I could perhaps repay one-tithe of what I owe to you, Effendi. May
Allah be with you. I go now back towards my people, and if Allah will,
we shall meet again."
"Now, this stone and this tale must go to Kate," said Carter to
himself, and went in towards the factory and up the stairs to the
veranda. Kate came out of the mess room to meet him, and waved a
cablegram.
"I have just de-coded it," she cried exultingly. "They have accepted
my terms."
"I wish you would de-code the 'they.'"
"The German firm that owned Mokki before we came."
"What, the people you bought it from?"
She nodded.
"But why on earth sell it back to them?"
"Because, my dear Mr. Carter, they are going to give me £9,000 for the
produce we have collected, and another £8,000 for the fort and the
good-will of the business. How's that? £17,000 cash against a £1,500
outlay in three months. That's better than staying out here in West
Africa."
Carter had been carrying the duck in his hand. He put it into his
pocket. "I don't wonder you're exultant. I suppose no other girl on
earth ever made a coup like that. And as for us here at the factory,
that means our occupation's gone?"
"Oh, I hope you'll go back to Malla-Nulla, where you were, and work for
us there."
"I think not. As you're going home, and I cannot be of any immediate
use to O'Neill and Craven, I prefer to leave the firm's employ if
you'll let me?"
"We shall be really sorry to lose you. But perhaps you have something
better in view?"
"To tell the truth, I have. And it strikes me if I'm to make a
fortune, I must look out for it myself."
"I quite agree with you," said Kate. "What was that you were going to
show me? The thing you put in your pocket, I mean?"
"A keepsake that was given me. It's a charm, a ju-ju that will bring
fortune to somebody, and I was going to give it to you. But on your
own recommendation I shall keep it for myself."
"You are quite right. It will be safer for us to go our own several
ways from here."