A Master of Fortune: Being Further Adventures of Captain Kettle. Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
damp. Behind him, in the stern of the canoe, Brass Pan scratched himself plaintively.
Dark fell and the dug-out was made fast to a mangrove root. The Africans covered their heads to ward off ghosts, and snored on the damp floor of the canoe. Kettle took quinine and dozed in the Madeira chair. Mists closed round them, white with damp, earthy-smelling with malaria. Then gleams of morning stole over the trees and made the mists visible, and Kettle woke with a seaman's promptitude. He roused Brass Pan, and Brass Pan roused the canoe-men, and the voyage proceeded.
Through more silent waterways the clumsy dug-out made her passage, where alligators basked on the mudbanks and sometimes swam up from below and nuzzled the sides of the boat, and where velvety black butterflies fluttered in dancing swarms across the shafts of sunlight; and at last her nose was driven on to a bed of slime, and Kettle was invited to "lib for beach."
Brass Pan stepped dutifully over the mud, and Captain Kettle mounted his back and rode to dry ground without as much as splashing the pipeclay on his dainty canvas shoes. A bush path opened out ahead of them, winding, narrow, uneven, and the man with the yaws went ahead and gave a lead.
As a result of exposure to the night mists of the river, Captain Kettle had an attack of fever on him which made him shake with cold and burn with heat alternately. His head was splitting, and his skin felt as though it had been made originally to suit a small boy, and had been stretched to near bursting-point to serve its present wearer.
In the forest, the path was a mere tunnel amongst solid blocks of wood and greenery; in the open beyond, it was a slim alley between grass-blades eight feet high; and the only air which nourished them as they marched was hot enough to scorch the lungs as it was inhaled. And if in addition to all this, it be remembered that the savages he was going to visit were practising cannibals, were notoriously treacherous, were violently hostile to all whites (on account of many cruelties bestowed by Belgians), and were especially exasperated against the stealer of their idol, it will be seen that from an ordinary point of view Captain Kettle's mission was far from appetizing.
The little sailor, however, carried himself as jauntily as though he were stepping out along a mere pleasure parade, and hummed an air as he marched. In ordinary moments I think his nature might be described as almost melancholy; it took times of stress like these to thoroughly brighten him.
The path wound, as all native paths do wind, like some erratic snake amongst the grasses, reaching its point with a vast disregard for distance expended on the way. It led, with a scramble, down the sides of ravines; it drew its followers up steep rock-faces that were baked almost to cooking heat by the sun; and finally, it broke up into fan-shape amongst decrepit banana groves, and presently ended amongst a squalid collection of grass and wattle huts which formed the village.
Dogs announced the arrival to the natives, and from out of the houses bolted men, women, and children, who dived out of sight in the surrounding patches of bush.
The man with the yaws explained: "Dem Belgians make war-palaver often. People plenty much frightened. People think we lib for here on war-palaver."
"Silly idiots!" said Captain Kettle. "Hullo, by James! here's a white man coming out of that chimbeque!"
"He God-man. Lib for here on gin-palaver."
"Trading missionary, is he? Bad breed that. And the worst of it is, if there's trouble, he'll hold up his cloth, and I can't hit him." He advanced toward the white man, and touched his helmet. "Bon jour, Monsieur."
"Howdy?" said the missionary. "I'm as English as yourself--or rather Amurrican. Know you quite well by sight, Captain. Seen you on the steamers when I was stationed at our headquarters in Boma. What might you be up here for?"
"I've a bit of a job on hand for Captain Nilssen of Banana."
"Old Cappie Nilssen? Know him quite well. Married him to that Bengala wife of his, the silly old fool. Well, captain, come right into my chimbeque, and chop."
"I'll have some quinine with you, and a cocktail. Chop doesn't tempt me just now. I've a dose of fever on hand."
"Got to expect that here, anyway," said the missionary. "I haven't had fever for three days now, but I'm due for another dose to-morrow afternoon. Fever's quite regular with me. It's a good thing that, because I can fit in my business accordingly."
"I suppose the people at home think you carry the Glad Tidings only?"
"The people at home are impracticable fools, and I guess when I was 'way back in Boston I was no small piece of a fool too. I was sent out here 'long with a lot more tenderfeet to plant beans for our own support, and to spread the gospel for the glory of America. Well, the other tenderfeet are planted, and I'm the only one that's got any kick left. The beans wouldn't grow, and there was no sort of living to be got out of spreading a gospel which nobody seemed to want. So I had to start in and hoe a new row for myself."
"Set up as a trader, that is?"
"You bet. It's mostly grist that comes to me: palm-oil, rubber, kernels, and ivory. Timber I haven't got the capital to tackle, and I must say the ivory's more to figure about than finger. But I've got the best connection of any trader in gin and guns and cloth in this section, and in another year I'll have made enough of a pile to go home, and I guess there are congregations in Boston that'll just jump at having a returned Congo missionary as their minister."
"I should draw the line at that, myself," said Kettle stiffly.
"Dare say. You're a Britisher, and therefore you're a bit narrow-minded. We're a vury adaptable nation, we Amurricans. Say, though, you haven't told me what you're up here for yet? I guess you haven't come just in search of health?"
Captain Kettle reflected. His gorge rose at this man, but the fellow seemed to have some sort of authority in the village, and probably he could settle the question of Nilssen's ailment with a dozen words. So he swallowed his personal resentment, and, as civilly as he could, told the complete tale as Nilssen had given it to him.
The trader missionary's face grew crafty as he listened. "Look here, you want that old sinner Nilssen cured?"
"That's what I came here for."
"Well, then, give me the ju-ju, and I'll fix it up for you."
"The ju-ju's to be my fee," said Kettle. "I suppose you know something about it? You're not the kind of man to go in for collecting valueless curiosities."
"Nop. I'm here on the make, and I guess you're about the same. But I wouldn't be in your shoes if the people in the village get to know that you've a finger in looting their idol."
"Why?"
"Oh, you'll die rather painfully, that's all. Better give the thing up, Captain, and let me take over the contract for you. It's a bit above your weight."
Kettle's face grew grim. "Is it?" he said. "Think I'm going to back down for a tribe of nasty, stinking, man-eating niggers? Not much."
"Well," said the missionary, "don't get ruffled. I've got no use for quarrelling. Go your way, and if things turn out ugly don't say I didn't give you the straight cinch, as one white man to another in a savage country. And now, it's about my usual time for siesta."
"Right," said Kettle. "I'll siesta too. My fever's gone now, and I'm feeling pretty rocky and mean. Sleep's a grand pick-me-up."
They took off their coats, and lay down then under filmy mosquito bars, and presently sleep came to them. Indeed, to Kettle came so dead an unconsciousness that he afterward had a suspicion (though it was beyond proof) that some drug had been mixed with his drink. He was a man who at all times was extraordinarily watchful and alert. Often and often during his professional life his bare existence had depended on the faculty for scenting danger from behind the curtain of sleep; and his senses in this direction were so abnormally developed as to verge at times on the uncanny. Cat-like is a poor-word to describe his powers of vigilance.
But there is no doubt that in this case his alertness was dulled. The fatigue of the march, his dose of fever, his previous night of wakefulness