CHAPTER XI

AGAIN PRESENTS THE HEAD OF THE FIRM

"Fire's the only thing we have to be frightened of for the present," said Carter, "and this soft, soggy wet timber of which the fort is built wouldn't burn without a lot of persuasion. Still, all the same I wish I could think of something that would make it absolutely fireproof."

"The ancients," said Miss O'Neill, "used to cover their works with raw bull's hide to ward off fire arrows. That wise remark comes from some school-book, but I've forgotten where. Laura can quote?"

"No," said Laura shortly.

"Not having bulls," said Carter, "we can't have their hide, but I'll just let word ooze out that if the Okky-men attack, we'll skin those we bag and nail up their pelts----"

"Mr. Carter!"

"Well, I beg your pardon for being horrible, but I tell you frankly that if I thought for a moment that a message like that would be believed, I'd send it in a moment. You know, Miss Head, we're in an uncommon tight place, and as acting commander-in-chief, I tell you flatly it will be a case of 'all-in' if it comes to a scrap."

"Oh, Missy, dem Carter mean he fit for use ju-ju besides guns," White-Man's-Trouble explained.

"It couldn't have been put more neatly. We must call in even the powers of darkness, as far as they'll answer to a whistle, if it comes to open fighting. But in the meanwhile, as some solemn idiot said in a text-book, 'preparedness for war is the best insurance for peace,' and I ask you to observe this tramway which the boys have laid down during the night. Trouble here was ganger, and I've only had to bang him for letting the gauge spread in two places."

"Is it to show sightseers quickly round the works?" Kate asked.

"No, madam. I shall mount on trucks those two tinpot brass muzzle-loading signal guns that you bamboozled out of old Image, have embrasures (if that's the word for holes to shoot through) at all the corners, and I can rush those guns round to fire at all points of the compass at a pace that will surprise friend Kwaka, if he is in command of the enemy. I am pleased to say Kwaka looks for the supernatural when he is dealing with me, and I make a point of conscience in seeing that he gets it. I found some sheets of yellow tissue-paper in the feteesh here, all mottled with black mildew, and they gave me an idea. I cut out a leopard and pasted him together, and left a hole in him underneath, and fitted that with a wire carrier and a cotton wool burner that will hold spirit."

"What, a fire balloon?"

"Just that. With a dose of trade gin on the cotton wool, and a match and a little careful manipulation, we'll have a portent sailing up into the sky that will astonish the Okky-men's weak nerves in most disastrous style."

"You are really a most ingenious person," said Miss O'Neill. "Isn't he, Laura?"

"I suppose so," said Laura.

"It's that blessed Cascaes that's the weak spot in the defence. I suppose I've the usual West Coast prejudice against Portuguese; you know even the natives divide creation up into white men, black men, and Portuguese, and the particular specimen we've taken over here with the factory just bristles with bad points."

"I think he's rather nice," said Laura. "You were fighting with him this morning and I hated to see it."

"Well," said Carter, judicially, "I shouldn't define it as fighting exactly, but I'll admit, if you like, that I was kicking him. You see, Miss Head here has given most strict orders that not more than six strangers were ever to be admitted into the fort together at one time. He'd fourteen actually in the feteesh. Now, supposing those gallant fourteen suddenly produced weapons and held the gate whilst friends they'd ambushed outside ran across the clearing and rushed us, where'd we be?"

"Oh," said Laura, "I'm sorry I interfered if it was Kate's orders you were carrying out."

"So, Miss Head, with your permission I'll run up a chimbeque for the fellow outside the walls."

"Where did you get that word chimbeque from?" Kate asked. "It's Fiote, not Oil Rivers talk."

Carter's brown eyes twinkled. "I say, what a marvel you are to know things! I bet Laura didn't spot that. Why did I use the word? Well, we had a Portuguee linguister down at Malla-Nulla who had worked in the Congo, and he imported that and a lot more Congolese words as part of his baggage, and we absorbed them. Observe now. Trouble! I say, Trouble, come in here, and keep away from that sugar bowl in case you are tempted. Just stand there by the door. Now, tell me. You fit for savvy what a chimbeque is?"

The Krooboy's flat nose perceptibly lifted with contempt. "Dem bushman's word for hut. I fit for learn English on steamah. You can tell Missy I once was stand-by-at-crane boy on black funnel boat. I no say chimbeque; I say 'house.'"

"You fairly overflow with education at times. There, run away outside, and play again. So you see, Miss Head, if Cascaes runs a sort of extra feteesh away out in the clearing, he can't land us into much danger however careless and indiscreet he may be. Of course it will entail a little extra labor below in handling both produce and trade goods, but now we've got the fort practically built, I've a lot more boys I can set free for the ordinary work. Which reminds me that I forgot to ask if this new boy you've got for butterfly hunter is any better than the last?"

"I'm afraid he isn't much. He doesn't tear the net all to bits, but he's rubbed every specimen fatally before he pinned it into the collecting box."

"I was afraid there was friction. I saw White-Man's-Trouble call up that boy and look into the collecting box when he thought I was safely siestaing. They had a little excited conversation, and then Trouble grabbed him by a handful of wool and lammed into him with a chiquot."

"Ugh," said Kate, "it is very flattering to have Trouble's kind approval, but I do wish there was not such a local popularity for the methods of--what shall I say?"

"Primitive man. They rather grow on one. Perhaps I'm prejudiced in their favor, though. Even when I was at school I always preferred a licking to an imposition. By the way, you never showed me the butterflies you've collected here since you took them out of splints and pinned them in their case."

"Then come at once and admire," said Kate, and the pair of them left the veranda and went into the factory's living room.

Laura Slade looked after them wistfully. There was something between these two that she could not fathom, and vaguely feared. At Smooth River, and on the _M'poso_, their talk had been on the chilliest details of business, and only the most bare civilities passed beyond. It had seemed to her then that at any moment a word might bring a permanent rupture, and she had pleaded with each to accept the other in a more reasonable spirit. She was engaged to Carter; he kept reminding her of the tie in twenty different ways each day. She had lived under the ægis of the O'Neill and Craven firm all her life, and exaggerated its importance, and she begged Carter not to throw away what was his livelihood now and what would be hers when she married him.

Kate, too, was her friend, and together they had been the closest of confidants. She had known the secret of the firm's "Mr. K. O'Neill" almost as long as old Crewdson had known it, and she had kept that secret loyally in spite of the keenest temptation.

"Kate, I even kept it from George," she had said, and Kate had replied, "George being Mr. Carter, I suppose?"

Up to the time that they left the _M'poso_, it seemed hopeless to bring them even into the most stiff agreement. And then the first morning she woke up at Mokki, there was Kate in a Madeira chair on the veranda, with George Carter sitting on the rail beside her, and the pair of them were laughing and chatting as easily as though they had known one another a year.

She had never got what she thought any satisfactory explanation of how this relief of the tension had been brought about. She asked Carter, and he said he had arrived at the conclusion he had "merely been a rude ass," and it was time to be ashamed of himself and try ordinary human civility. She had attempted to sound Kate, and was merely congratulated on being engaged to a really nice man. And thereafter she had watched an intimacy grow between them, in which somehow or other, in spite of their obviously labored efforts to include her, she had no part.

She turned away from the door now, and sat down in one of the veranda chairs which the thrifty German had made for himself out of a palm-oil puncheon. Behind her the white man and the white woman talked butterflies. Before her was Africa, and night. No moon had risen, a few of the stars were lit. Fireflies blinked in and out at unexpected places in the velvety blackness, uncannily vanishing when their spasm of light was over. The night breeze sang gently through the trees and gave sharpness to the air, and the drone of insects kept to one low insistent note like the distant murmur of the river. The factory boys, tired with their merciless work, slept. But from the bush beyond the clearing there came ever and again a groan, or a roar, or a shriek, as often as not dimmed to a mere murmur by distance, to keep her aware of the axiom that Africa never sleeps and always carries pain.

The land breeze blew strong and her dress was thin. She shivered a little and called for Carter, as he had taught her, to bring a wrap. He came running out with it at once and covered her shoulders, as she was pleased to think, tenderly. He even stopped and talked to her for a minute or so. Then he said he must go and see Miss Head's last case, and once more went into the living room. She strained her ears to listen, and she heard the butterfly talk begin again where it had broken off.

They had an alarm that night that the Okky-men were coming. Into the blank silence of sleep there came the roar of a heavy charge of black trade powder as a sentry discharged his dew-filled flintlock. The whites, the Portuguese, and the tired factory boys roused into instant wakefulness. Their nerves were too nicely set to need a second shaking.

Laura met Carter in pyjamas as he was in the act of thumping upon her bedroom door. "Oh, you have got up," he said. "That's good. Well, don't show a light whilst you dress, and keep under shelter. I must just wake Miss O'Neill before I go down."

She put her arms round his neck and pulled him to her and kissed him violently. "You came for me first then, after all?"

"You little goose, of course I did. Wives first, employers next. Here, I must go, or the battle will be over before I'm down. The odds are those heroes are blazing away at nothing."

They were. Each black man as he came up to the palisade poked the muzzle of his gun through a loophole, pulled trigger, and drew comfort from the din. Presently Carter came up to the breastwork, climbed to the banquette, and leaned over, and then peered long and hard through the night. He could see nothing. He got down, and with trouble found the sentry who had fired first. When he had thumped the man into calmness, it turned out that he had seen nothing also. He had "thought ju-ju" and then his gun "lib for shoot by himself." Or in plainer English, the man had dozed with his hand round his gun lock to keep the damp from the priming; he had been struck by a nightmare and had pulled the trigger. He had aimed at nothing. His gun muzzle had been upright, and he "lib for shoot dem moon."

Cascaes, the Portuguese, came up with a Winchester under his arm in time to hear the end of this explanation. "The negro like-a some noise, eh, senhor?"

"What about yourself?" asked Carter uncivilly. "Haven't you been joining in? I suppose you're first cousin to these fellows, anyway."

Cascaes put a little finger down the muzzle of his rifle, wiped it round, lit a match, and showed that the finger was clean.

"Oh, I beg pardon," said Carter. "I thought you were likely to share in the local revels."

"Well," said the Portuguese thoughtfully, "I suppose I must count that an apology. Otherwise I should have shot you. Good-night, senhor."

Carter waited till the man turned, ran in quickly, and plucked away his rifle. "And now," said he, "just let us understand one another exactly before we go any further. I'm standing quite all the risks from outside that I've any use for just at present. If there's any shooting to be done amongst ourselves, I prefer to do it myself. So first of all let's hear your trouble."

"In the first-a place I am not negro. I am European of blood-a as pure as your own, an' far-a-more ancient."

"If the apology I gave you just now doesn't cover that, I'll apologize some more for calling you a nigger. Furthermore, I didn't know that you claimed to be a gentleman, not that gentility is any excuse for not carrying out one's job here on the Coast."

"Senhor, you are handsome. And I agree with you that here in Africa we are all-a workmen, and must suffer if the work-a is not well done."

"Well," said Carter impatiently, "is that the lot? To my simple British mind your reasons for wanting to shoot me seem pretty thin so far. I suppose you are mad at my basting you this morning, but if you think the circumstances out coolly, I'm sure you'll see that we've women's lives to think of here as well as our own, and by letting the niggers you were overseeing scamp their work whilst you were dreaming over a cigarette, you were risking the safety of the fort."

"Senhor, do you know of what-a I was dreaming?"

"Private affairs probably, but anyway of something immaterial."

"Pardon, but I must tell-a you my dreaming. It was of a woman's life I dreamed."

Carter laughed shortly. "I think you had better leave it at that. It sticks in my mind that the three Portuguese ladies in this factory at Mokki are all officially protected by their lawful husbands, and I don't want to hear any embarrassing confidences."

"And may not a Portuguese gentleman, poor-a I grant you, but still of good blood, give-a his affection to a lady of another race?"

A moon had lit up in the sky above, and under it Cartels jaw looked of a sudden more square and grim than usual--at least the other thought so. His tone, too, changed from banter to something hard. "I decline to hear another word on the matter. We will confine our dealings with one another entirely to details of business, if you please, Cascaes, and leave matters of sentiment alone. Here is your gun. You say you are a gentleman, and I believe you. That means you won't shoot me from behind, or when I'm not armed equally with yourself. If the necessity arrives for a turn-up on level terms, I'm your man. Good-night."

And so for that night they parted, each very much misunderstanding the other. Once more the tired sentries yawned at their posts, and the Europeans of the factory retired to their beds, and the blacks to their sleeping mats; but sleep for the rest of that hot, damp night was broken, and no half-hour passed without a cry from some dreamer which woke restless echoes from his neighbors.

But with daylight the steady stream of merchandise, which the factory was beginning to attract, recommenced. The native traders of the hinterland had their hands full of the stock that had been pouring in upon them ever since the King of Okky had closed the roads to the old Coast factories with which they were accustomed to deal, and when the news spread, as it does spread in that mysterious West Africa, that the white woman of Mokki bought and sold in spite of the King's teeth, they were only too ready to back her with their custom. The merchants of that unknown back country are some of the keenest traders on earth.

Some came in single canoes through the gloom and odors of uncharted muddy creeks, trusting to secrecy for safe passage; others joined forces, and brought armed flotillas of great sixty-man-power dugouts down the main stream; others clubbed together into caravans, so strong and so well-defended that even Kallee's truculent raiders dared not cross the Okky marches to hold them up. So marvellously accurate were the rumors that had spread up country, that few of these keen merchants came into Mokki without a grass basket full of spoiled specimens of butterfly as a "dash" to propitiate the new trading power.

Every day the influx of merchants increased, till at last more came than the staff of the factory could deal with, and they camped outside the fort awaiting their turn to trade. Actually, a small native food market grew there to supply them. Kate had lowered the price the factory paid for every commodity, but still the bush merchants sold, and were only too glad of the chance. Times they felt were troublous; the shadow of the King of Okky hung over the steaming forests, and they wished to get what they could in European produce and be gone. At the Malla-Nulla, the Monk, or the Smooth River factories they would not have taken such prices; but the King of Okky had closed the roads to these, and for business purposes they were extinct. Nor would they have sold at such rates to the Germans when they held Mokki. Keen business man though he may be, the West African merchant is a creature of whim; the German he defines as a "bush-Englishman," which is a term of reproach; he distrusts both him and his goods; and he will not trade with a German factory on anything like the same terms he will accept from the Briton, even though the Briton sell him German-made goods.

"We are doing such a tremendous business," said Carter one day at the evening meal, "that presently we shall strangle ourselves. We have used up all our own trade stuff, and we have stripped the Smooth River factory and Malla-Nulla, and pretty well emptied Burgoyne at Monk River. I don't know how finances are?"

"Tight," said Kate.

"And yet we've got at the very least £8,500 in kernels, palm oil, and high-grade rubber lying idle here. Moreover, we've tapped an unexpected vein of ivory. I thought at first that it was some small king's state reserve, some hoard he'd got buried, under the bed of a stream perhaps, which he wanted to realize on, and which would soon come to an end. But it's not that, it's new stuff that's been hunted within the last three years, and it's been diverted, I really believe, from the Congo market. It's a splendid line for us, but it will pinch out very promptly if we once stop buying. I verily believe these natives can telegraph a piece of commercial news half-way across Africa in the inside of a week."

"We are doing splendid business.

"Of course, we've got the firm's Miss K. O'Neill here on the spot, and hence the prosperity; but I wish we'd got our Miss K. for just half a day at the Liverpool end to diagnose that we're starving for a steamer. The fact is, that greedy old scoundrel Cappie Image-me-lad looks upon Mokki as his special private preserve, and he doesn't intend to see any of the other skippers picking up his cargo commission if he can avoid it."

"Do you blame him?" said Kate. "I don't. But at the same time I'm afraid Mokki factory can't wait each time till Captain Image brings the _M'poso_ on her round trips from Liverpool. However, I sent a canoe off this morning with a long cable which may ease matters."

"You sent off a canoe? I don't know how I shall get on without her crew."

"Oh, I remembered how shorthanded you are, Mr. Manager, but I've not piled more work onto you this time. You recollect that tall Haûsa merchant with the one eye who has been here for the last two days?"

"Yes, Rotata."

"I gave him the cable, and an order on Mr. Burgoyne for £15, to be paid on delivery. Will you O.K. the account?"

"I guess," said Carter shortly, "that you are boss. But if you'd told me you wanted to send a cable, I could have arranged it for you."

Kate looked at him steadily. "Why do you object to my working for myself, Mr. Carter?"

"Because I prefer to work for you. I'd work myself to the bone for you, if you'd let me."

"Why should you?"

"Because I--well, it's natural enough, isn't it? If you come to think of it, I am your paid employee."

Kate still looked at him with a steady eye. "Of course it is Laura that you are really working for."

Carter cleared his throat. "Of course," he said. "Well, if you and Laura will excuse me, I'll go into the other room now and post up my books." He got up and walked towards the mess-room door.

Cascaes, who had been sitting at the other end of the table with the Portuguese and their wives, got up, and went towards the vacant place. But Carter turned at the door and called him sharply. "I'm sorry to interrupt further," he said, "but I want your valuable assistance, Mr. Cascaes. So come along with me now."