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A Master of Fortune, 1898,
with "A Quick Way With Rebels"
ANOTHER bullet came silently up out of the distance, and the nigger second engineer of the launch gave a queer little whimper and fell down flop, and lay with his flat nose nuzzling the still warm boiler. A hole, which showed up red and angry against the black wool just underneath his grass cap, made the diagnosis of his injury an easy matter.
The noise of the shot came to them quite a long time afterward, when the little puff of smoke which had spurted up from the distant sandbank had already begun to thin under the sunshine; but it was that gun-crack, and not the sight of the dead engineer, which gave the working negroes their final scare. With loud children's cries, and queer dodgings of fear, they pitched down their working tools, and fled to where the other black soldiers and passengers were lying on the iron floor-plates of the launch, in security below her water-line.
The Belgian Commandant, from his shelter at the other side of the boiler, swore volubly, and Clay, the English doctor, laughed and twanged out a music-hall tune on his banjo. Kettle, intent on getting his vessel once more under command, was for driving the negro crew back to their work by the simple methods peculiar to the British merchant officer. But this Commandant Balliot forbade, and, as he was Kettle's superior in the Congo Free State service, that small mariner had (very much against his grain) to obey.
"We shall have these fellows rebelling next," said the Commandant, "if you push them too hard; and if they join the rest, where shall we be?"
"There are a thousand of your troops in the mutiny already, according to your tally," said Kettle stiffly, "and I don't see that if this hundred joined them it would make much difference to us, one way or the other. Besides," he added, almost persuasively, "if I had the handling of them they would not join the others. They would stay here and do as they were told."
"Captain Kettle," snapped the Commandant, "You have heard my orders. If I have any more of this hectoring spirit from you, I shall report your conduct when we get back to Stanley Pool."
"You may report till you're black in the face," said Kettle truculently; "but if you don't put a bit more backbone into things, you'll do it as a ghost and not as a live man. Look at your record up to date. You come up here at the head of a fine expedition; you set your soldiers to squeeze the tribes for rubber and ivory; they don't bring in enough niggers' ears to show that they've used their cartridges successfully, and so you shoot them down in batches; and then you aren't man enough to keep your grip on them, but when they've had enough of your treatment, they just start in and rebel."
"One man can't fight a thousand."
"You can't, anyway. If the Doc and I had turned up with this launch half an hour later, your excellent troops would have knocked you on the head and chopped you afterward. But I'd like to remind you that we ran in-shore and took you away in spite of their teeth."
"You are very brave," sneered the Commandant, "you and Monsieur le Docteur."
"Well, you see," said Kettle with cheerful insult, "our grandfathers didn't run away at Waterloo, and that gives us something to go upon."
"I put you under arrest," screamed the Belgian. "I will have satisfaction for this later. I—"
"Steady on," said Clay, with a yawn. He put down his banjo, stretched, and stood up. Behind him the bullets pattered merrily against the iron plating. "Why on earth do you two keep on nagging? Look at me—I'm half drunk as usual, and I'm as happy as a lord. Take a peg, each of you, and sweeten your tempers."
They glared at him from each side.
"Now it's not the least use either of you two trying to quarrel with me. We might as well all be friends together for the little time we've got. We've a good deal in common: we're all bad eggs, and we're none of us fit for our billets. Monsieur le Commandant, you were a sous-officier in Belgium who made Brussels too hot to hold you; you come out here, and you're sent to govern a district the size of Russia, which is a lot beyond your weight.
"Friend Kettle, you put a steamer on the ground in the lower Congo; you probably had a bad record elsewhere, or you'd never have drifted to the Congo service at all; and now you're up here on the Haut Congo skippering a rubbishy fourpenny stern- wheel launch, which of course is a lot beneath your precious dignity.
"And I—well, I once had a practice at home; and got into a row over a woman; and when the row was through, well, where was the practice? I came out here because no one will look at me in any other quarter of the globe. I get wretched pay, and I do as little as I possibly can for it. I'm half-seas over every day of the week, and I'm liked because I can play the banjo."
"I don't see what good you're getting by abuse like this," said Kettle.
"I'm trying to make you both forget your silly Haggling. We may just as well be cheerful for the bit of time we've got."
"Bit of time!"
"Well, it won't be much anyway. Here's the launch with a hole shot in her boiler, and no steam, drifted hard and fast on to a sandbank. On another bank, eight hundred yards away, are half a regiment of rebel troops with plenty of good rifles and plenty of cartridges, browning us for all they're worth. Their friends are off up stream to collect canoes from those villages which have been raided, and canoes they'll get—likewise help from the recently raided. When dark comes, away they'll attack us, and personally, I mean to see it out fighting, and they'll probably chop me afterward, and the odds are I give some of them bad dyspepsia. About that I don't care two pins. But I don't intend to be caught alive. That means torture, and no error about it." He shivered. "I've seen their subjects after they've played their torture games on them. My aunt, but they were a beastly sight."
"I should blow up the launch with every soul on board of her," he said, "if I thought there was any chance of their boarding with canoes."
"Well, you can bet your life they'll try it," said Kettle, "if we stay here."
"But how can we move? We can't make steam. And if we do push off this bank, we shall drift on to the next bank down stream."
"That's your idea," said Kettle. "Haven't you got a better?"
"You must not speak to me like that," said Balliot, with another little snap of dignity and passion. "I'm your senior officer."
"At the present rate you'll continue to be that till about nightfall," said Kettle unpleasantly, "after which time we shall be killed, one way or another, and our ranks sorted out afresh."
"Now, you two," said Clay, "don't start wrangling again." He took a bottle out of a square green case, and passed it. "Here, have some gin."
"Now, you two," said Clay, "don't start wrangling again."
"For God's sake, Doc, dry up," said Kettle, "and pull yourself together, and remember you're a blooming Englishman."
Clay's thin yellow cheeks flushed. "What's the use?" he said with a forced laugh. "'Tisn't as if anybody wanted to see any of us home again."
"I'm wanted," said Kettle, sharply, "by my wife and kids. I've got them to provide for, and I'm not going to shirk doing it. Let me have my own way, and I can get out of this mess; yes, and out of a dozen worse messes on beyond it. The thing's nothing if only it's tackled the right way."
"How shall you set about it," asked the Commandant.
"By giving orders, and taking mighty big care that everybody on this ship carries them out."
Commandant Balliot rubbed at his close, scrubby beard, and bared his teeth viciously. Behind him, from the distant sandbank, the rebel bullets rapped unceasingly at the launch's iron plating. "But I am the senior in rank," he repeated again. "Officially I could not resign the command in your favor."
Commandant Balliot
"Yes, I know. But here's the situation packed small: if you climb up, and do the large, and perch on your blessed rank, we shall probably see this day out, but we certainly sha'n't see another in. You're at the end of your string, and you can't deny it."
"But if you've a suggestion to make which will save us, make it, and I will act."
"No," snapped Kettle. "I'll either be boss and carry out my schemes my own way; or else, if we stay on as we are, I hold my tongue, and you can go on and arrange the funeral."
"If you can get us out of this mess—"
"I've said I can."
"Then I will let you take the command."
"Well and good. In the first place—"
"Wait a minute. I resign to you temporarily; but, understand, even if I wished to, I could not do this officially. When we get down to Leopoldville—when we get down to the next post even—"
"Oh, you can collar the blooming credit," said Kettle contemptuously, "when we do get clear away to any of your own headquarters. I'm not looking for gratitude either from a Belgian or from the Congo Free State. They don't like Englishmen."
"You are not a lovable nation," said Commandant Balliot spitefully.
"Now," said Kettle, thrusting his fierce little face close up to the other, "understand once and for all that I will not have England abused, neither do I take any more of your lip for myself. I'm Captain of the whole of this show now, by your making, and I intend to be respected as such, and hold a full captain's ticket. You'll call me 'sir' when you speak, and you'll take orders civilly and carry them out quick, or, by James! you'll find your teeth rammed down your throat in two twinkles of a handspike. Savvy that?"
The man of the weaker nation subsided. There was no law and order here to fall back upon. There was nothing but unnerving savagery and vastness. The sandbar where their wrecked launch lay was out in the middle of the Congo, perhaps eight miles from the park- like lands which stretched indefinitely beyond either bank. The great river astern of her glared like a mirror under the intolerable sunshine; came up and swirled around her flanks in yellow, marigold-smelling waves; and then joined up into mirror shape again till the eye ached in regarding it. The baking sky above was desolate even of clouds; there was no help anywhere; and on another distant sandbank, where here and there little bushes of powder smoke sprouted up like a gauzy foliage, a horde of barbarous blacks lusted to tear out his life.
In Commandant Balliot's own heart hope was dead. But it seemed that this detestable Englishman had schemes in his head by which their lives might yet be saved.
He had been given a sample of the Englishmen's brazen daring already. After his troops mutinied, and pandemonium reigned in the village where he was quartered, the Englishman had steamed up with his paltry stem-wheel launch, and by sheer dash and recklessness had carried him and his last parcel of faithful men away in spite of the mutineers' teeth.
It was an insane thing to do, and when he had (as senior officer) complimented Kettle on the achievement, the little sailor had coldly replied that he was only carrying out his duty and earning his pay. And he had further mentioned that it was lucky for Commandant Balliot that he was a common, low-down Britisher, and not a fancy Belgian, or he would have thought of his own skin first, and steamed on comfortably down river and just contented himself with making a report. The white engineer of the launch—a drunken Scot—had, it seemed, been killed in the sortie, which, of course, was regrettable; but Balliot (who disliked the Scot personally) had omitted to make the proper condolences; and it was at this that Kettle had taken umbrage and turned the nasty edge of his tongue outward.
"Now," said Captain Kettle, "enough time's been wasted. We will start business at once, please. That boiler's got to be mended, first."
"But," said Balliot, "it's under fire all the time."
"I can see that for myself," said the little sailor, "without being reminded by a subordinate who wasn't asked to speak. We take things as we find them, and so it's got to be mended under fire. Moreover, as the chief engineer of this vessel was killed ashore, and the second engineer was shot overboard, there's others that will have to take rating as engine-room officers. Commandant Balliot, have you any mechanics amongst your lot?"
"I have one man who acted as armorer-sergeant. He is very inefficient."
"He must do his best. Can you handle a drill or a monkey wrench, yourself?"
"No."
"Then I shall find you a laborer's job. Doc, are you handy with tools?"
"Only with those of my own trade," said Clay. "I'm pretty inefficient all round," he added, with a shrug, "or else I shouldn't be here."
"Very well," said Kettle, "then I'll rate myself chief engineer." He got up, and walked round to where the black second engineer, the last man shot, still nuzzled the boiler plates exactly in the same position where he had first fallen. He lifted one of the man's arms, and let it go. It jerked back again like a spring.
"Well, Daddy," he said, "you didn't take long to get stiff. They shot you nice and clean, anyway. I guess we'll let the river and the crocodiles bury you." With a sharp heave, he jerked the rigid body on to the rail, and even for the short second it poised there the poor dead clay managed to stop another of those bullets which flew up in such deadly silence from that distant sandbank.
"Good-by," said Kettle, as he toppled the corpse over, and it fell with a splash, stiff-limbed into the yellow water. He watched the body as it bobbed up again to the surface, and floated with the stream out into the silvery sunshine. "Good-by, cocky," said he. "You've been a good nigger, and, as you were shot doing your duty, they'll set you on at the place where you've gone to, one of the lightest jobs they've got suitable for a black pagan. That's a theological fact. You'll probable turn to and stoke; I'll be sending you down presently another batch of heathen to shovel on the fire. I've got a biggish bill against those beggars on that sandbank yonder for the mischief they've done."
But it was no place there to waste much time on sentiment. The woodwork of the shabby little steamer was riddled with splintered holes; the rusted iron plating was starred with gray lead- splashes; and every minute more bullets ploughed furrows in the yellow waters of the river, or whisped through the air overhead, or hit the vessel herself with peremptory knocks. It is all very well to affect a contempt for a straggling ill-aimed fire such as this; but, given a long enough exposure to it, one is bound to be hit; and so, if the work was to be attempted, the quicker it was set about the more chance there was of getting it finished.
They use wood fuel on these small, ungainly steamers which do their business up in the savage heart of Africa on the waters of the Haut Congo, and because every man with a gun for many reasons feels himself to be an enemy of the Free State, the steamers carry their firing logs stacked in ramparts round their boilers and other vital parts. But wood, as compared with coal, is bulky stuff to carry, and as the stowage capacity of these stern-wheelers is small, they have to make frequent calls to rebunker.
Indeed, it was for this purpose that Kettle had originally put in at the village where Commandant Balliot had his headquarters; and, as other events happened there which he had not calculated upon, he had steamed out into the broad river again without a chance of taking any logs on board, and, in fact, with his stock of fuel down very near to the vanishing-point.
On this account, therefore, after the fatal shot into the boiler, and the subsequent disablement and drifting on to the sandbank, all repairing work had to be done under full exposure to the fire of the mutineers. The Central African negro is a fairly stolid person, and as the sight of a little slaughter does not in the least upset his nerves, he can stand bullet hail for a good long time without emotion, especially if there is no noise and bustle attached to it. But once let a scare get rubbed home into his stupid brain, and let him get started off on the run, and he is an awkward person to stop.
But Kettle did not start to hustle his black laborers back to work at once. He knew that there would be heavy mortality amongst them once they were exposed to fire, and he wanted to lose as few of them as possible. He had got use for them afterward. So for long enough he worked alone, and the bullets spattered around him gayly. He hammered out a lead templet to cover the wound in the boiler, which, of course, as bad luck would have it, was situated at a place where three plates met; and then whilst Balliot's armorer with fire and hammer beat out a plate of iron the exact counterpart of this, he rigged a ratchet drill and bored holes through the boiler's skin to carry the necessary bolts.
Clay volunteered assistance once, but as he was told he would be asked for help when it was needed, he squatted down under the sheltered side of the boiler again, and smoked, and played more music-hall ditties on the banjo. Commandant Balliot held to a sullen silence. He was growing to have a poisonous hatred for this contemptuous little Englishman who by sheer superiority had made him give up his treasured dictatorship, and he formed schemes for the Englishman's discomfiture in the near future.
But for the present he hoped very much that the man would not be killed; he recognized, with fresh spasms of anger every time he thought about it, that without Captain Kettle there would be no future—at any rate on this earth—for any of them.
And meanwhile Captain Owen Kettle, stripped to shoes and trousers, sweated over his work in the baking heat. Twice had a bullet grazed him, once on the neck, and once on the round of a shoulder, and red stains grew over the white satin of his skin. The work was strange to him certainly, but he set about it with more than an amateur's skill. All sailors have been handy with their fingers from time immemorial, but the modern steamer- sailor, during his apprenticeship as mate, has to turn his hand to a vast variety of trades. He is painter, carpenter, stevedore, crew-driver, all in one day; and on the next he is doctor, navigator, clerk, tailor, and engineer. And especially he is engineer. He must be able to drive winch, windlass, or crane, like an artist; he must have a good aptitude for using hand tools; and if he can work machine tools also, it is so much the better for him.
Yes, Captain Kettle put the patch on that boiler like a workman. He fitted his bolts, and made his joints; then luted the manhole and bolted that back in place; and then stepped down while a couple of negroes sluiced him with water from gourds, and rubbed him clean and dry with handfuls of wild cotton waste. So far, although the incessant hail of bullets had pitted the boiler's skin in a hundred places, no second shot had found a spot sufficiently soft to make a puncture. The range of the bombardment was long, perhaps, and though a bullet at seven hundred yards may, with convenience, kill a man, it will not pierce seven-eighths boiler plate. And so, theoretically, the boiler was safe for the time being.
But practically it was otherwise. The boiler was by no means new. It was corroded with years, and incapacity, and neglect, as is the custom with all parts of boats and machinery on the Haut Congo. But it had been brought up to that waterway by carriers at vast expense from Matadi, the highest steamer port on the Lower Congo, probably costing three months and a dozen lives in transit, so that it was debited in the books of the Free State as being worth its weight in silver, and destined to be used on without replacement till it saw fit to burst.
So Kettle knew that in places it would be not much thicker than stout brown paper, and was quite aware that if any of the pattering bullets investigated one of these patches, he would have to do his work over again. He had a strong—and, I think, natural—disinclination for this. He had come through terrific risks during the last four hours, and could not expect to do so a second time with equal immunity; his two wounds smarted; and (although it sounds ludicrous that such a thing should have weight) the dirt inseparable from such employment jarred against his neat and cleanly habits, and filled him with unutterable disgust.
The moment, he conceived, was one for hurry. He told off four of the negroes as trimmers and stokers, and set Commandant Balliot over them to see that they pressed on with their work; he sent Clay with a huge gang of helpers overboard on the lee side to risk the crocodiles, and dig away the sand; and he himself, with a dozen paddlers, got into the dug-out canoe, which was his only boat, and set to carrying out a kedge and line astern. All of these occupations took time, and when at last steam had mounted to a working pressure in the battered gauge, and they got on board again, two of his canoe-men had been shot, and one of Clay's party had been dragged away into deep water by a prowling crocodile.
As no one else was competent, Kettle himself took charge of the engines, and roared his commands with one hand on the throttle, and the other on the reversing gear; Clay, for the moment, was quartermaster, and stood to the wheel on the upper deck; and Balliot, under the tuition of curses and revilings, drove the winch, which heaved and slacked on the line made fast to the kedge.
The little steamer rolled and squeaked and coughed, and the paddle-wheel at her stern kicked up a compost of sand and mud and yellow water that almost choked them with its crushed marigold scent. The helm swung over alternately from hard-a-starboard to hard-a-port; the stern-wheel ground savagely into the sand, first one way and then the other; and the gutter, which she had delved for herself in the bank, grew gradually wider and more deep. Then slowly she began to make real progress astern.
"Now, heave on that kedge," Kettle yelled, and the winch bucked and clattered under a greater head of steam, and the warp sung to the strain; and presently the little vessel slid off the bank, picked up her anchor, and was free to go where she pleased.
"Hurrah," cried Balliot, "we are saved. You are a brave man, Captain."
"I didn't ask you to speak," retorted Kettle. "We aren't out of the wood by a long chalk yet."
"But we are out of their fire now. We shall be disturbed no further."
"No, my lad, but we've got a precious heap of disturbing to do on our own account before we've squared up for this tea party. I'm going to drop down stream to somewhere quiet where we can fill up with wood, and then I'm coming back again to give your late Tommies bad fits."
"But I don't authorize this. I didn't foresee—"
"Very likely not. But a fat lot I care for that. Fact remains that I'm skipper here, and I'm going to do as I think best. I've got it in mind that my two engineers and a lot of good niggers have been shot by those disgusting savages over yonder, and I don't permit that sort of thing without making somebody pay a pretty steep bill for the amusement. So I'm going down stream to wood up, and then we'll come back and make them pay for the tea party."
"You are exceeding your powers. I warn you."
"If any of my inferiors on board ship don't keep their heads shut when they aren't spoken to," said Kettle unpleasantly, "I always disarrange their front teeth. If I have any more palaver from you, you'll get to know what it feels like." He shouted up the companion way—"On top there, quartermaster?"
"Hullo?" said Clay.
"Keep her down river to M'barri-m'barri. That's a twelve-mile run from here. There are two big cotton woods in a line which will bring you to the landing. You know the channel?"
"I ought to. I've been up and down it times enough. But I guess I don't—at least, not now."
"Fuddled again, are you? Then I'll con you from here. You see three trees growing on that island bang ahead? Keep her on those." He turned to a couple of stalwart niggers at his side—"Say, you boys, you lib for top, one-time. You take dem Doctor's gin-bottle, and you throw him overboard, one-time. If dem Doctor he make palaver, you throw him overboard too. Away with you now. By James! we got to get discipline in this ship somehow, and I'm a man that can teach it. Here, you black swine at that furnace, go slow with those logs, or we won't be able to steam her half-way."
He bustled about the little vessel, turning every soul on board to some employment or other; and those of the newcomers who did not know his wishes, and were not quick enough for his taste, received instruction in a manner which is understood by men all the world over, be their skins black, or white, or yellow.
The process might not be very pleasant for those who came in contact with it, but it was very effective for the purpose aimed at. In sea parlance Kettle had to "break up" some half-dozen of them before all hands acquiesced to his dictatorship; but they were quick to see there was a Man over them this time, and involuntarily they admired his virility even while they rubbed ruefully at their bumps; and during the times of stress that came afterward, none of these Africans were so smart to obey as those on whom their taskmaster's hand had originally come heaviest.
The period of instruction was short. It began when the little stern-wheeler slipped off the bank and got under weigh. It was completed satisfactorily during the twelve miles run down the river. The boat was steered into M'barri-m'barri creek, made hastily fast to trees on the bank, and exuded her people in an armed rush. They had possession of the place almost before the villagers knew of their arrival, and proceeded to the object of their call. There was no especial show of violence.
The women and the children were imprisoned in the huts; the men were given axes, and sent off into the forest to cut and gather fuel; and, meanwhile, the landing party set themselves to eat what they fancied and to carry off any store of ivory and rubber that they might chance upon. There was nothing remarkable in the manoeuvre. It is the authorized course of proceedings when a Free State launch goes into the bank for wood and supplies.
The villagers brought down the logs smartly enough, and waxed quite friendly on finding that none of the hostage women and children had been killed or maltreated during their absence. They duly gave up the German axes which had been loaned to them, and carried the wood aboard. Kettle arranged its disposition. He had solid defences built up all round the vulnerable boiler and engines. He had a stout breastwork built all round inside the rail of the lower deck, quite stout enough to absorb a bullet even if fired at point-blank range. And he had another breastwork built on the third deck, above the cabins, so that he turned the flimsy little steamer into a very staunch, if somewhat ungainly, floating fort.
He got on board the rubber and ivory he had collected, and had it struck down below—the dividends of the State have to be remembered first, even at moments of trouble like these—and then he gave orders, and the vessel set off again up stream. On the lower deck he stayed himself during the journey back, and gave instructions to Commander Balliot in the art of engine- driving.
Balliot was sullen at first, and showed little inclination to acquire so warm and grimy a craft, and fenced himself behind his dignity. But Kettle put forth his persuasive powers; he did not hit the man, he merely talked; and under the merciless lash of that vinegary little tongue, Balliot repented him of his stubbornness, and set himself to acquire the elementary knack of engine nursing and feeding and driving.
"And now," said Kettle, cheerfully, when the pupil had mastered the vague outlines of his business, "you see what can be done by kindness. I haven't hit you once, and you know enough already not to blow her up if only you're careful. Don't you even sham stupid again; and, see here, don't you grit your teeth at me when you think I'm not looking, or I'll beat you into butcher's meat when I've hammered these rebels, and have a bit of spare time. You want to learn a lot of manners yet, Mr. Commandant Balliot, and where I come from we teach these to foreigners free of charge. Just you remember that I'm your better, my man, and give me proper respect, or I'll lead you a life a nigger's yellow dog wouldn't fancy."
Now the revolted troops, when they saw the launch wriggle off the bank where she was stuck, and steam away down stream, were filled with exasperation, because they had confidently anticipated making a barbecue out of Commandant Balliot in return for many cruelties received, and doing the same by any other Europeans whom they might catch on the steamer, because, being white, they would be presumably relatives of Balliot. It never occurred to their simple minds that the launch would return, much less that she would offer them battle; so when indeed she did appear again, they were in the midst of a big consultation about their future movements.
However, the African who owns a gun, be he revolted soldier or mere peaceful farmer, never lets that weapon go far away from his hand, for fear that his neighbor should send him away into the land of shadows in order to possess it. And so a fusillade was soon commenced. But the launch, armed with her fine rampart of logs, bore it unflinchingly, and steamed up within a hundred yards of the thick of them, and just held there in her place, with her wheel gently flapping against the stream, and opened a vicious fire from fifty muzzles.
Of modern rifles Kettle had only twenty on board, but he had an abundance of those beautiful instruments known as "trade guns," and at shot-range a man can be killed just as definitely by a dose of pot-leg out of a gas-pipe barrel as he can by a dum-dum bullet sent through scientific rifling. Indeed, for close-quarter righting pot-leg is far more comprehensive, and far less likely to miss than the lonely modern bullet. Moreover, his crew had quite as much dread for him as they had for the enemy, and as a consequence they fought with a briskness which made even their grim little chief approve.
The crowd of mutineers did not, however, offer themselves to be browned like a pack of helpless sheep for long. They were Africans who had been born in an atmosphere of scuffle and skirmish, and death had no especial terrors for them. Moreover, they had learnt certain elements of the modern art of war from white officers; and now, in the moment of trial, their dull brains worked, and the crafty knowledge came back to them. They were a thousand strong; they had friends all round—cannibal friends—who would come to help in the fight and share in the loot; and, moreover, they had canoes. Other well-manned canoes also were fast coming to their help down stream.
In the canoes then they put off, and Kettle smiled grimly as he saw the move. He had thought of this before, but it was greater luck than he had dared hope for. But now the enemy had given himself over into his hand. The one strong position of the stern- wheel launch was her forward part. The Congo is full of snags and floating logs which cannot always be avoided, and so all steamers are strengthened to stand contact with them; and he could give them the stem now without risk to himself.
He pretended flight when the canoes first came out, standing across toward the further bank of the river, which was some dozen miles away. The rebels fell into the lure, and paddled frantically after him. Canoe after canoe put out, as fast as they could be manned. The white men on the steamer were running away; they were frightened; there was spoil and revenge to be got for the taking. And from unseen villages on the islands and on the bank other canoes shot out to get their share.
In the mean while Kettle consolidated his defences. Frantically he worked, and like Trojans Clay and the negroes labored under him. All that drunken doctor's limp laissez faire was gone now. The blood of some fighting ancestor had warmed up inside him. He might be physically weak and unhandy, but the lust of battle filled him up like new drink, and he forgot his disgraceful past, and lived only for the thrill of the present moment.
The log barricades had to be lashed and strutted so that no collision could unship them, and all hands sweated and strained in that tropical heat, till the job could not be bettered. And at the after part of the lower deck, Commandant Balliot, driven on also by the strong-willed man whom nobody on board could resist, tended the engines with all his brain and nerve, and did his best to make the fighting machine perfect.
"Now," said Kettle at last, "as we have got those fool Tommies nicely tailed out about the river, we'll quit this running-away game, and get to business. Mr. Chief Engineer, open that throttle all it'll go, and let her rip, and mind you're standing by for my next order. Doc, you keep your musketry class well in hand. Don't waste shots. But when you see me going to run down a canoe, stand by to give them eternal ginger when they're ten yards from the stern. I'll whistle when you're to fire."
Captain Kettle went on to the upper deck and took over the wheel, and screwed it over hard-a-port. The little top-heavy steamer swung round in a quick circle, lurching over dangerously to the outside edge. She ran for half a mile up stream, and then turned again and came back at the top of her gait. She was aiming at one particular canoe, which for a while came on pluckily enough to meet her.
But African nerve has its limits, and the sight of this strange, uncouth steamer, which followed so unflinchingly their every movement, was too much for the sweating paddlers. They turned their ponderous dug-out's head, and tried to escape.
The sight of this strange, uncouth steamer
was too much for the sweating paddlers.
Kettle watched them like a cat. He had the whistle string in his teeth, so as to leave him both hands free for the steering wheel, and when the moment came he threw back his head, and drew the string. The scream of the steam whistle was swamped instantly in the roar of a blasting volley. Not many of the shots hit—for the African is not a marksman—but the right effect was gained. The blacks in the canoe ducked and flinched; they were for the moment quite demoralized; and before they could man their paddles again, the stern-wheeler's stem had crushed into their vessel, had cut a great gash from one side, had rolled it over, and then mounted the wreck, and drove down stream across the top of it.
A few more angry shots snapped out at the black bodies swimming in the yellow water. "Hold up, there," Kettle ordered, "and let them swim if they can, and chance the crocodiles. They've got their gruel. Load up now, and get ready for the next."
He turned the launch again, and stood across the stream down the strung-out line of canoes, occasionally making feints at them, but ramming no more for the present. They all fired at him as he passed them; indeed, a wild, scattered fire was general from all the fleet; but his log armor protected him from this, and he steamed grimly on, without returning a shot.
At the furthermost end of the line he turned sharply again, and ran down the last canoe, just as he had run down the other; and then he deliberately started to drive the whole fleet together into one solid flock. He had the speed of them, and with rifle fire they could not damage him, but for all that it was not easy work. They expected the worst, and made desperate efforts to scatter and escape; finally, he drove them altogether in one hopeless huddle—cowed, scared, and tired out; and then he brought the stern-wheeler to a sudden stop just above them, and made Clay shout out terms in the native tongue.
They were to throw all their weapons overboard into the river. They did it without question.
They were to throw their paddles overboard. They did that also.
They were to tie all their canoes together into one big raft. They obeyed him there, too, with frenzied quickness.
He took the raft in tow and steamed off down river to the headquarters Free State post of the Upper River. He was feeling almost complacent at the time. He had shown Commandant Balliot what he was pleased to term a quick way with rebels.
But Commandant Balliot, whose life had been saved, and army disarmed and brought back from rebellion in spite of himself, was not the man to let any vague feeling of gratitude overweigh his own deep sense of injury. He was incompetent, and he knew it, but Kettle had been tactless enough to tell him so; and, moreover, Kettle had thrown out the national gibe about Waterloo, which no Belgian can ever forgive. Commandant Balliot gritted his teeth, and rubbed at his scrubby beard, and melodramatically vowed revenge.
He said nothing about it then; he even sat at meat with the two Englishmen, and shared the ship duties with them without so much as a murmur. He could not but notice, too, that Kettle said nothing more now about being supreme chief, and had, in fact, tacitly dropped back to his old position as skipper of the launch. But Balliot brooded over the injuries he had received at the hands of this truculent little sailor, and they grew none the smaller from being held in memory.
Kettle's own method of reporting his doings, too, was not calculated to endear him to the authorities. He steamed down to headquarters at Leopoldville, went ashore, and swung into the Commandant's house with easy contempt and assurance. He gave an arid account of the launch's voyage up the great river to the centre of Africa and back, and then in ten words described Balliot's disaster, his rescue, and its cost. "And so," he wound up, "as the contract was outside Mr. Balliot's size, I took it in my own hands and carried it through. I've brought back your blooming army down here. It's quite tame now."
The Commandant at Leopoldville nodded stiffly, and said he would confer with Captain Kettle's senior officer, Commandant Balliot, after which Kettle would probably hear something further.
"All right," said the little man. "I should tell you, too, that Mr. Balliot's not without his uses. With a bit of teaching I got him to handle my engines quite decent for an amateur." He turned to go, but stopped again in the glare of the doorway. "Oh, there's one other thing. I want to recommend to you Doctor Clay. He's a good man, Clay. He stood by me well in the trouble we had, after he got roused up. I'd like to recommend him for promotion."
"I will see if Commandant Balliot—as senior officer—adds his recommendation to yours," said the other drily. "Good-morning to you for the present."
Captain Kettle went down to the beach, and stepped along the gangway on to the stern-wheel launch. The working negroes on the lower deck stopped their chatter for the moment as he passed, and looked up at him with a queer mixture of awe and admiration. From above came the tinkle of a banjo and the roar of an English song. The doctor was free, and was amusing himself according to his fashion.
Kettle got his accordion and went up on the hurricane deck and joined him, and till near on sundown the pair of them sat there giving forth music alternately. There was a fine contrast between them. The disreputable doctor deliberately forgot everything of the past, and lived only for the reckless present; the shipmaster had got his wife and children always filling half his memory, and was in a constant agony lest he should fail to properly provide for them. And as a consequence Clay's music was always of the lighter sort, and was often more than impolite; while Kettle's was, for the most part, devotional, and all of it sober, staid, and thoughtful. They were a strong contrast, these two, but they pulled together with one another wonderfully. Kettle used sometimes to wonder why it was, and came to the conclusion that it was the tie of music which did it. But Clay never worried about the matter at all. He was not the man to fill his head with useless problems.
The pair of them sat there giving forth music alternately.
But on this afternoon their concert was cut short before its finish. Commandant Balliot came back to the launch with satisfaction on his streaming face, and two armed black soldiers plodding at his heels.
"Well," said Kettle, "have they made you a colonel yet, or are they only going to give you the Congo medal?"
"You sacred pig," said Balliot, "you talked to M. le Commandant here of rebels. What are you but a rebel? I have told him all, and he has sent me to arrest you."
"Good old Waterloo," said Kettle cheerfully. "I bet you lied, and because you are both Belgians, I suppose he believed you."
The fat man gritted his teeth. "You talked of having a short way with rebels yourself. You will find that we have a short way here, too. You are under arrest."
"So you've said."
Balliot said a couple of words in the native to one of his followers, and the man produced a pair of rusty handcuffs and held them out alluringly.
Kettle's pale cheeks flushed darkly. "No," he said, "by James! No, that's not the way for a thing like you to set about it." He jumped to his feet, and thrust his savage little face close to the black soldier's eyes. "Give me dem handcuffs." The man surrendered them limply, and Kettle flung them overboard. Balliot was trying to get a revolver from the leather holster at his waist, but Kettle, who had his weapon in a hip pocket, was ready first, and covered him.
Kettle was ready first, and covered him.
"Throw up your hands!"
Commandant Balliot did so. He knew enough about Captain Kettle to understand that he meant business.
"Tell your soldiers to drop their guns, or I'll spread their brains on the deck."
Balliot obeyed that order also.
"Now, Doc," said Kettle in a different tone, "pack your traps and go ashore."
"What for?" asked Clay.
"Because I'm going to take this steamer for a cruise up river. I don't mind getting the sack; I'd reckoned on that. But, by James! I'm not going to be arrested by these Belgian brutes, and that's final."
"Well, I suppose they would string you up, or shoot you, to soothe their precious dignity, from what His Whiskers here says."
"They're not going to get the chance," snapped Kettle. "Handcuffs, by James! Here, clear out, Doc, and let me get the ship under way."
"No," said Clay. "I fancy I've had about enough of the Congo Free State service, too. I'll come, too."
"Don't be an idiot."
Dr. Clay gave a whimsical laugh. "Have I ever been anything else all my life?"—He went across and took the revolver out of Balliot's holster—"there, I've burnt my boats. I've disarmed His Whiskers here, and defied authority, and that gives them a casus belli against me. You'll have to take me along now out of sheer pity."
"Very well," said Kettle; "help me to shove the three of them into one of the empty rooms below, and then mount guard on them to see they don't make a row. We mustn't have them giving the alarm of this new game till we've got a start on us. You're a good soul, Doc. I'll never forget this of you."
And so Captain Owen Kettle finally severed his connection with the Congo Free State service, and set off at once again as his own master. He had no trouble with the black crew of the launch. The men half adored, half dreaded him; and, anyway, were prepared to take his orders before any others. They got the little vessel under weigh again, and just before the gang-plank was pulled in, Commandant Balliot and his disarmed escort were driven on to the beach.
The Belgian was half wild with mortification and anger. "You have won now," he screamed. "But you will be fetched back, and I myself will see that you are disgracefully hanged."
"If you come after me and worry me," said Kettle, coolly, "I'll give you my men to chop. Just you remember that, Mr. Waterloo. I think you know already that I am a fellow that never lies."
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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