TIN HILL: THE MINE
Tin Hill, when they got to it, carried riches that lay in full view of
the sky. The mountain of country rock which held the veins reared up
out of the dark green bush, red-streaked and barren, and the last day's
march towards it lay through a heavy growth of rubber vines. Even the
Krooboy could not help noticing these.
"O Carter," he said, "rubber lib for here. Dem Missy Kate she say
rubber-palaver beat oil-palaver, an' kernels, an' gum, all-e-same
cocked hat."
"She didn't. Those are my words of wisdom you've got hold of. Still I
admit the sentiments are Miss O'Neill's. But the main thing is,
Trouble, that rubber takes capital and labor to handle, and this firm's
short of both at the moment. We'll leave rubber to Miss O'Neill for
the present."
"O Carter, dem Missy Kate, she no fit for love you now?"
"She no fit," said Carter, with a sigh, "because you savvy I fit for do
wife-palaver with dem Miss Laura."
The last marches of Ali ben Hoosein's road had been little travelled
during these latter months of political upheaval, and this meant that
the ever-growing bush had encroached, and passage was difficult.
Moreover, food was painfully scarce. Swizzle-Stick Smith, out of his
scanty store, had given them what he could, but this was soon eaten,
and once more they had been forced to fall back on that marvellous
thing, the kola nut. But though nibbling kola puts off the desire for
a meal, and makes one able to endure prolonged strains, it does not
fill gaps in the inside.
Both Carter and the Krooboy were very gaunt, and tattered, and
savage-looking when at last they arrived at the rock and the river; but
the omens seemed to change from that moment.
To begin with, Carter had a snap-shot at a gazelle and brought it down.
They lit a fire where they were, ate, and felt the blessedness of being
full for the first time for a fortnight. Then, whilst hunting for a
site for a hut, they came across a clump of plantains, wild certainly,
and coarse, but filling enough to men who had long outgrown any
niceties of palate. And at the farther side of the plantains, what
appeared to be a mere cubical mound of greenery disclosed itself upon
inspection to be a house.
"Ghosts," whimpered White-Man's-Trouble, and shrank back.
"I hope so," said Carter. "They'd give us local news, anyway, and
might be amusing to talk to. But I never met ghosts outside a
story-book, and I'm afraid there'll be none here. I wonder who lived
on this spot? Stone house, with limed walls three feet six thick, and
a flat cement roof. Inside area--phew! it smells musty--twenty feet by
twelve. No, by Christopher! there's another room on beyond. Storeroom
that--oh, beg pardon, Mr. Snake. My mistake. Good-afternoon!"
He shot out into the open again by the doorway, and several snakes who
resided in the farther room made exit by the window.
"When in doubt as to the authorship of any West African monument, one
always puts it down to the early Portuguese," Carter mused, "and we'll
leave it at that for the present. Original occupants have been gone
any time these last two hundred years. Well, if we strip off these
vines and creepers from the outside, and light fires inside to sweeten
the air a bit, we shall have the most palatial quarters. The question
now is whether there is a mine and whether it is worth working."
But that last point very quickly answered itself. Three great veins of
tin-stone sliced vertically into the mother rock. Two of them were
forty feet wide, the third was sixty. The face ran up at a steep
angle, and a great beer-colored river swilled away at its foot, and
undermined it, and with the help of the sun, kept chattering screes
always cascading down the slope.
"This isn't a mine," Carter shouted exultantly, "it's a quarry! Bring
a steamer up alongside here, and every man that works could shovel two
hundred sovereigns' worth of ore into her from these dumps each hour
without so much as putting a pick in. Why, the outcrops are scarcely
leached at all. When we've worked twenty yards or so into the veins
I'll rig a temperley transporter and guy it to these rocks above, and
run the stuff straight from where it grew into a steamer's holds.
Great Christopher! Kate had better look out: I'm not going to let her
be the only millionaire on earth."
"Dem stones with yellow glass on him worth money?" asked
White-Man's-Trouble.
"Heaps."
"In Liverpool?"
"Well, say Swansea or Cardiff; practically the same thing."
"No worth money here?"
"I'd sell you a ton for a fill of tobacco."
"How you get it to coast? You no fit to pay carriers."
"By water, my pagan friend. We make steamah lib for here."
"Steamah no fit," said the Krooboy, and spat contemptuously into the
yellow stream. "Dem cappies no savvy way here. Dem ribber no savvy
way to Coast."
"That's a bit beyond my linguistic powers. You must translate some
more."
"Dem ribber," the Krooboy explained patiently, "no fit for run to dem
sea."
"Then where the deuce does it run to? Does a Ju-ju drink it?"
"Ju-ju no fit for touch dem ribber," said White-Man's-Trouble, taking
the question literally. "But dem ribber run into dem squidge-squidge,
an' lib for die!"
"Runs into a swamp and gets lost! My great Christopher, the odds are
you're right. But why in the name of thunder didn't you tell me that
before?"
"I no savvy," said the Krooboy simply, "where you come. O Carter, I
come after you from Mokki because I think you no fit for carry dem bag."
Carter swung round and picked up White-Man's-Trouble's hand and shook
it heartily. "You've got a very white inside to you," he said.
But the African was not flattered. He pulled away his limp hand as
soon as it was set free, and rubbed his abdomen nervously. "O Carter,
I no fit for white inside. I no ju-ju boy. I dam common Krooboy."
Thence onwards there was impressed on Carter's mind these three great
facts--One: He had found a mine of immense potential value. Two: He
could never turn his minerals into cash unless he could find a water
channel down to the Coast. And three: If he couldn't discover that
channel himself no one else would, at any rate for his benefit.
He thought these matters over during one torrid night, and resolved to
devote the next day to exploration. He had had predecessors on the
place, house building predecessors who had left a series of
rust-streaks which he translated into mining tools. Presumably they
were Europeans. How did they propose to deal with this ore? Smelt it
on the spot, or bag it and get it to the Coast?
If they were West African Portuguese of the olden time, he was fully
aware that they would be using slave labor for everything, and he tried
to figure out if it was possible, even with slave porters, to carry
concentrates down to the Coast and leave a sufficient margin for
profit. Even with the most liberal estimates he could not make it so,
taking into account the slow-sailing ships, the crude smelting methods,
and the lower prices of the old days. Remained then the passage of the
creek and river channels, and if these old Portuguese had found a
waterway, why, then, so could he.
So next day he set out to hunt for a quay, or any other traces of
shipping ore, or perhaps some evidences of boat-building, and he
pressed his way through vine and bush, and over crag and scree, till
the scorching heat had drained his lean body of moisture, and his knees
zigzagged beneath him through sheer weakness and weariness.
Then he made a discovery, and sat down, and for the moment felt faint
and discouraged.
He had nearly walked in onto the top of a native village.
He had been going down-wind, or the smoke of their fires would have
warned him earlier. As it was, the bark of a scavenger dog gave him
the first hint of the village's nearness, or he would have descended
onto its roofs. It lay beneath a small bluff, and its houses so
assimilated with the rest of the forest that even close at hand it was
hard to pick out the human dwellings.
It was the hour of heat, when only Englishmen and dogs (according to
the old libel) are wont to be abroad, and the village slept. Even the
dogs found the heat too great for wakefulness, so that only the
Englishman carried an open eye. But the smell of the place advertised
it as a village of fishers, and a closer scrutiny showed the harvest of
the river, gutted, and strung up upon the stripped boughs of trees to
dry in the outrageous sun-heat. There are always markets for these
dried river fish throughout all West Africa.
Carter backed into thicker cover, and waited till the sun began once
more to cast a shadow, and the village woke. First the dogs opened
their eyes and began their endless scavengers' prowl. Then the
children came out to play in the dust. Next the women roused to do the
village work. And last of all, the men emerged from the clumps of
bush, which one had to accept as huts, spear-armed all of them, and sat
in the patches of purple shade, and oversaw all, to approve and direct.
"You lazy hounds," said the Englishman to himself, "I should like to
set you to shoveling ore all day, and signing checks all night for your
women's bonnet bills. But then," he reminded himself with a sigh,
"there are some women these days who insist on working themselves,
however hard you may press your services."
He reported his find to White-Man's-Trouble on his return to the old
Portuguese house that evening, and that worthy was seized with his
usual tremors. "O Carter," said he, "dem bushmen that live by
fish-palaver fit for be worst kind of bushmen. They come here one day
soon, an' they throw spear till we lib for die, an' they chop us
afterwards. You savvy?" said the Krooboy, with a whimper and a
shudder--"chop us after?"
"Don't try and work up my feelings over the post-mortem, because you
can't do it. Once dead, what happens to my vile corpse doesn't
interest me. But I don't intend to peg out yet, especially at the
hands of a pack of ignorant cannibals like these. Observe, Trouble.
You have seen me practise ju-ju already?"
"I fit."
"And you have been my assistant in the black art?"
The Krooboy shuddered, but he said sturdily enough, "I fit."
"Well and good. Then to-morrow we will weave infernal charms over this
pleasing spot, till no mere black man, be he cannibal or be he simple
fisherman, will dare to press his sacrilegious toes upon it."
A stream of water poured over one part of the cliffs, that Carter
designed hereafter for a power-plant to handle his ores. But in the
meanwhile he turned it to a more immediate use. He cut wide bamboos,
and fitting them into one another, formed a great pipe which would
receive water and air together. With stones, and clay, and grasses he
built a box to receive the air and water, and made a cunningly devised
trap through which the water could escape, but not the air. Then with
more bamboos he built him organ pipes and set the mouths of these in
the box, so that the air should drive through them and blow a dismal
note. And next, with further ingenuity he fashioned a commutating
valve, also worked automatically by the water, which for a time would
shut off the water, and then set it going again to thrill the air with
the notes boo-paa-bumm, in ascending scale, and a minute later to reply
bumm-paa-boo.
It was all extremely simple when one knew how it was done, and
extremely startling to walk in upon from the depths of a primeval
African forest, and the fishers of the village, when the sounds first
broke in upon their nervous ears, threw themselves down upon the dust,
and waited for the end of the world, which they felt sure was at hand.
To them then appeared a white man who was clothed from head to foot
with garlands of dark green leaves of the rubber vine, and had on his
head hair which was of the sacred color of red. He was followed by a
Krooboy bearing the blue tribal mark between his brows, and having a
sheaf of feathers stuck above his right ear, where the ordinary
tooth-cleaning stick should have been carried. These explained in
bold, clear tones that they were the chief ju-ju men of all Africa, and
that the portent which was even then _boo-paa-bumm-ing_ behind them was
sent by powers unseen to herald their coming. But they did not
represent the evil, the harmful ju-ju. If only they were treated with
the profound respect which was their due they would be a beneficent
influence, with a special protective eye to that village of fishers.
The catch should increase, the markets widen, and peace should hem in
the roads through which the villagers travelled.
"But each morning we must have an offering of fresh-caught fish,"
White-Man's-Trouble proclaimed, "together with the wood necessary for
their cooking. (O Carter, I no fit for gather cook-wood when I ju-ju
man," he explained to his companion.)
The scheme took; there was no doubt about that. Never were villagers
so pleased at securing the supernatural protection, which all Africans
desire, at so meagre a cost. Men, women and children, they got up from
the dust, and they slobbered over the Krooboy's toes, and over the
remains of Carter's canvas shoes, and to show their willingness, the
men went down to the marigold-smelling river then and there to procure
the wherewithal to make their initial offering.
White-Man's-Trouble scratched himself thoughtfully and looked over
those that were left. "O Carter," he said, "I no fit for cook dem food
when I ju-ju man. We take with us two-three, all-e-same slaves, to be
house-boy an' do dem work."
"No," said Carter shortly, "we shall do nothing of the kind."
The Krooboy stared. "Why you no fit?"
"I know what you're after, and I've got my reasons, though you wouldn't
appreciate them. However, I suppose I must invent something that will
appeal to you. If dem bushmen lib for house with us they soon see we
no real ju-ju men, an' they tell their friends. Then their friends
come up some dark night and chop us. Savvy?"
"O Carter," said White-Man's-Trouble, "you plenty-great man!"
Now there are two ways of working a mine. One is to sell it to a
limited company which in return for certain concessions kindly puts up
the necessary capital for development; the other way is to find the
capital out of one's own private resources, and annex all the resultant
profits.
But Carter had a poor opinion of the size of his own share if the first
of these methods were carried out. To begin with, he knew nothing of
company promoting. He would have to employ an expert, who would want
the lion's share of the plunder; and indeed he quite realized that a
tin mine up an unknown river in the territory of no man's land would
take a powerful lot of selling even to that gullible body of
mining-share purchasers of the British public. The more he thought
over the limited company idea, the less chance of profits did he see in
it for himself. And he wanted those profits badly. He had not risked
life and health to study African scenery and customs.
On the other hand, he was at the moment absolutely penniless. If he
did discover a waterway down to the coast--or rather when he had
discovered that waterway, for he was fully determined to do it--how
much forwarder would he be? What steamer could he charter? None. By
no means could he get one without giving up a large slice of his
precious mine to the man who ran the risk. He did not blame them. He
put himself in the traders' places. If he were running a down-river
factory, and had a launch, and some tattered red-headed fellow came
down out of the back of beyond with a wild tale about a tin mine, and
asked for the loan of the launch, and promised to pay when a cargo was
brought down, and sent to a smelter in England and realized upon, what
would he say to such a preposterous offer? Why, he would laugh at it.
The proposition was not one that any business man would entertain.
No, he must get some capital, and buy that launch. And then came the
question of where was the capital to come from.
His father? Well, he was engaged to Laura, and he did not feel like
going near his father.
Slade?--Smith? Neither of them had a penny.
O'Neill and Craven? That meant Kate. He started as if he had been
stung at the idea of going to Kate and asking her for money. Kate was
successful, and she could loan it easily. Granted, and if she had been
successful so would he be, and without her help. He shook an angry
fist at Africa. "Curse you, if you've given her a fortune you've got
to give me one too, or I'll take it in spite of you!"
He had a touch of fever that night, and White-Man's-Trouble plied him
with decoctions of herbs of such appalling nastiness that (in his own
phrase) he decided to get well quickly, merely to avoid the drugs. But
it was a fancy built of that fever which put him on the path of success.
He imagined that the shades of the old Portuguese, who had built the
strong stone house in those far-off days, came in that night to visit
him. They were miners, too, or metal workers, he could not make out
which, and they strutted about in long patched cotton stockings which
reached to mid-thigh, and a combination garment of thick cloth that
covered all the rest of them. Even in that stifling room, and in that
baking climate, they wore metal helmets and metal body armor, and
Carter wondered how they could go abroad into the sunshine and not be
cooked alive in their shells.
But he did not content himself for long with this idle observation.
There was a method even in his fevered dreaming. He put the question:
Did they get their stuff down to the Coast on the heads of carriers?
The ghosts laughed at the idea of such a thing. "Why should we go
against our nature? We Portuguese--in the days when we lived, who
speak to you now--we were seamen and rivermen always. So we built
great flat boats and swam our goods down the rivers."
"Christopher!" said the Englishman, "there's just the tip I've been
waiting for. A sort of raft. By Gee! I'm going to shake hands with
you for bringing the news."
But in that hospitable attempt he was stopped by the burly
White-Man's-Trouble, who sat on his chest, till he promised to lie
still again.