CHAPTER XIV

TIN HILL: THE JOURNEY

Now, lead-mining has been stopped in Upper Wharfedale these thirty years, but still a boy who has been brought up in a village there may well have some general knowledge of ores and the methods of getting them. The mining first began in those dim British days before the Romans came, and it has continued on down through the centuries till the influx of foreign lead brought prices below £25 a ton, and the mines could not be worked at a profit.

Raw dumps and grass-covered dumps are traceable on every hand, and though the older tunnels are obliterated, there are still enough shafts and drifts and adits to be found in the gray stone hills to occupy many months' exploration.

George Carter had heard of the past glories of lead from his earliest years, and old residents pointed to the ruined cottages that were filled and flourishing when the village held 500 people who lived by the mines, instead of the 200 who dwelt there now and made a lean living out of a little limp farming. With pockets stuffed with candle-ends he had splashed into the old levels and wandered for miles in the heart of the limestone hills and hacked with rusty pickheads at forgotten working faces; he had raked amongst the old ruined machinery beside the dumps; he had studied the run of the water races, and as far as a man with a natural engineering bent may reconstruct these things from memorials of the past, he had done so most thoroughly, and, in the old unscientific way, was as good a miner as any of those blue-gummed ruffians of the past, and that without even having seen a lead mine in real work.

Tin-stone he had seen in a not very well-equipped school museum; a tin mine he knew only from an old book on Cornwall, which treated that country more from the picturesque point of view than the mechanical or the scientific.

But the thing that had fired his mind one baking day at Malla-Nulla was a newspaper paragraph which spoke of the price of tin. Up till then, like the majority of the human race, he had not troubled his head as to whether tin was £5 a ton or £50. But here he saw that it had gone up to no less a figure than £207 10s. per ton. He wished he could find a tin mine, but concluding he might as well search that particular part of steamy West Africa for great auk's eggs, went no further than framing the wish.

Then came the happenings at Mokki, and Ali ben Hossein's parting gift of the little gray stone duck which had unmistakable brown tin crystals for its head, its wings and its feet, and on the top of all arrived Kate's cablegram. A sweating operator had read that message from under sea, as it winked out in a darkened cable hut; runners had carried the curt words along roaring beaches, paddlers had borne them by canoe up muddy creeks, a great bank in far-off Hamburg had pledged the performance of their promise. A day later the slatternly S.S. _Frau Pobst_ lurched untidily up the muddy creeks, and commenced to ease the factory buildings of their overflowing wealth of West African produce.

Carter itched to be off. It had come to this; he could not trust himself in Kate's neighborhood. Laura Slade saw, or fancied she saw how things were, and bravely asked him one day to break their engagement.

But Carter drew her down onto the office chair beside him and put an arm round her and kissed her. "Now," he said, "tell out frankly who it is that you like better than you like me?"

"It isn't that, George."

"Well, as Cascaes is the only alternative, I didn't suppose it was. Come now, out with it, what's the trouble? I suppose you're just going to be a woman and tell me it's my fault? I don't agree with you. I'm the same me as always was--red hair, large feet, and as big an appetite as the Coast will allow."

She put her face against his shoulder. "It's Kate, George."

"You must let me refer to her as Miss O'Neill," said Carter dryly. "You see, she's my employer--or was--and we're naturally not on intimate terms-- Well, what's Miss O'Neill got to do with my marrying you?"

"She's always been opposed to it."

"Twaddle! Now, look here, my dear, you've been nervy and upset ever since that bit of a scrap at Smooth River. Now, haven't you?"

"I suppose I have."

"I'm sure of it. And it's not surprising. That was a pretty tough time for any girl to go through. Well, as I've told you, I've got my nose onto a fortune that's tucked away up in the bush, and I'm going to look for it. In the meanwhile, as I managed to screw sixty golden sovereigns out of that greedy old Balgarnie for curios that he'll sell for at least a hundred and forty, there's just that amount of cash to take you on a jaunt to Grand Canary for rose growing."

"Rose growing?"

"To put color in your cheeks, then, you pale young person."

"But I couldn't take the money from you."

"And pray who has a greater right to take care of you, and prescribe what's best for you, and look after you generally? D'you think I want to marry a wife who isn't in the pink of condition?"

"I like to look nice for you, dear, but I couldn't take that money from you now of all times."

"How do you mean?"

"When you are just going off on some desperate expedition into the bush, and want every penny that can be scraped together."

Carter laughed. "There you go, wanting to lead me into temptation. Wanting me to take money in my pocket to buy (presumably) kid gloves and fire-escapes in the shops of the bush villages, and spend my nights in local music halls. Fie on you that will one of these days have to turn into a thrifty wife! I shall avoid these temptations. I shall travel as unostentatiously as possible, and so ensure getting through. I shall take with me White-Man's-Trouble only, if the beggar will condescend to go and live on native chop, for the best of all possible reasons that it wouldn't be possible to take a lot of carriers. Can't you see, my dear, that the choice lies between a three-thousand-pound expedition, with carriers, and all the rest of it, and going quietly, and being too obviously poor to rob?"

"I suppose there is something in that. Father went quietly."

"Of course he did, and so shall I. Some day, if things pan out as I hope, I may march up country at the tail end of a brass band, and do the thing in style; but not to-morrow, thank you. So if you won't take charge of our superfluous £60 and decorate Grand Canary with it, I'm hanged if I don't dash it amongst the factory boys here, and have one flaring jamboree before we part company."

"Oh, George, you are good!"

"Don't you fret about my goodness, old lady. I'm a pretty bad fellow at the bottom, only I try and keep my worst points out of your sight. Man has to, you know, with the girl he's engaged to. It's only playing the game. Now, you let me go, and I'll just slip across to the _Frau_ and blarney her old Dutch skipper into giving you the best room he's got to fight the cockroaches in."

It was on a Thursday that the _Frau Pobst_ steamed away back down the muddy creeks laden with one of the richest cargoes that one single factory had ever collected in West Africa, and on that same day Carter set off into the bush. Kate and Laura were to brave the terrors of the steamer together as far as the Islands, and they found the boat even more unspeakable than they had imagined her from the outrageous descriptions of Captain Image and Mr. Balgarnie.

* * * * *

Now, as regards the matter of that £60, Carter, to put the matter bluntly, had lied. With the King of Okky doing what he could to keep the country side in a ferment, to go up into the bush even with a strong party, and well provided, was risky. To go with empty pockets, and with no following, seemed very little short of suicide.

But Carter refused to see it in this light. "I'm tough," he told himself, "and I've worked up a certain reputation for ju-ju. If I use my wits I shall get through, and be successful. I absolutely refuse to die here in Africa. I've promised to marry Laura, and, let it cost what it may, I'm going to do it. I must; I've promised; and, besides, she's absolutely no other prospect before her. But I do wish to goodness I'd a decent shotgun. I'm no kind of hand with this badly balanced Winchester."

So, with a high courage, he addressed himself to departure, and invited White-Man's-Trouble with the promise of goods, lands, goats, wives, guns, and the other things that go to make up a Krooboy competency, to accompany him. It was without surprise that he received a flat refusal.

"O Carter," said his servant, "I no fit for lib for bush. I got 'nother palaver too-much-important here at factory. Dem headman of factory boys say to me, 'Sar, you been stand-by-at-crane boy on steamah? An' I say, 'Sar, I plenty-much-too-good educate.' And he say to me, 'Sar, you fit for lib here an' take dem job of second headman?' An' I say to him, 'Sar, I fit.' O Carter, if I lib for bush with you, an' let Okky-men spear me, an' leopards chop me, I dam fool."

"You're a cheerful animal. If you think you are more likely to get an archbishopric by staying here, by all means stay. Hope you'll like the Dutchmen when they come."

White-Man's-Trouble crooked a bunch of fingers, and scratched his ribs. "O Carter, dem Dutchman all-e-same bush-Englishmen?"

"You've got it in once. I've no doubt they're a most degraded lot."

"Dem Dutchman he no have as much savvy as an Englishman?"

"Nowhere near. They wouldn't have chucked up the factory in the first instance if they had, and in the second no Englishman would have bought it back again at such an absurd figure as they were fools enough to pay Missy Kate."

"O Carter?"

"Well?"

"I fit for steal small-small sometimes from Englishmen?"

"I can guarantee that, you scamp."

"Then," said White-Man's-Trouble triumphantly, "I fit for steal plenty-much-big from Dutchman, an' he no savvy."

"You'll taste abundance of chiquot, my lad."

The Krooboy snapped a piebald thumb and finger. "I take chiquot from Englishman, not from bush-Englishman. If he flog me with chiquot, I put ju-ju on him--" He picked up an empty bottle and handled it thoughtfully. "Ju-ju, if dem Dutchmen give me chiquot."

"Of the powdered-glass variety in his morning sausage," said Carter thoughtfully. "Well, it would be no use warning the poor devils, because, in the first place, they wouldn't believe me, and in the second they'd get it all the same. I guess these new colonizers must worry out the methods of dealing with the natives for themselves, as their betters did before them. And for myself, I fancy a knapsack will be the wear. Thank the Lord, I've tramped a good many hundred miles with one before."

* * * * *

Now, Carter was strong, and he carried, moreover, a high courage and a fierce energy, which even the steamy atmosphere of the West Coast could not damp. Malaria he had with a certain regular periodicity, but he was one of those rare men who threw off the attacks with speed, and suffered little from their after effects. He was essentially moderate in his habits of life, carrying a healthy hunger but never overeating, being neither a drunkard nor a teetotaller through fear of drink. Moreover, he did not abuse quinine, coffee, tobacco or drugs. As a consequence, in that much-anathematized climate he preserved a very level health and energy, and owned a normal mind where most men were either hysterical or morbid.

He had come ashore at Malla-Nulla, when he first landed on that ugly beach from the _M'poso_, with two Gladstone bags. One of these had been looted by some light-fingered merchant of the interior. The other still remained with him, and had journeyed to Mokki. Its notable tint of yellow had long since vanished. In places it was mottled black with mildew, and the rest of the surface was a good mulatto brown. The fastenings had burst, and been replaced by rope.

He looked at it with a moment's indecision. It would make a vastly ugly knapsack--but--it represented one of his few remaining possessions in the world. (The £60, or, to be precise, the sum of £57 6s. 10d., which he had forced Laura to carry off, had emptied his purse to the dregs.) And as he could not make up his mind to desert the bag, he packed what things he thought essential within its leaky leather sides, arranged rope beckets for his shoulders, slung it on his back, tucked the Winchester aforesaid under his arm, and set off down the narrow forest road which ben Hossein had indicated, without further word of farewell with anybody.

The heat of noon had just faded, but the eighteen-inch wide road was walled in with dense high bush, and the air down in that narrow cut was breathless and stagnant. When the road curved away from the sun and the high walls threw a shadow, Carter waited for a moment and panted; when the sun teemed rays of molten brass directly down on him from overhead, he hurried; and so moved on at an average gait of three miles to the hour, which is good travelling for West Africa.

It is curious how the brain works in these hours of discomfort and abnormal stress. The one thing that occupied Carter's mind was a rather good specimen of Okky war horn. It had been of ivory, massive, well-carved, and with a mouthpiece of more than usual elaboration. In fact, it was the finest specimen he had come across, and he was a judge. He had purchased it from its native owner to copy for Mr. Balgarnie's markets. But he had seen Kate's eye upon it just before the _Frau Pobst_ took her away, and with the impulse of the moment had given it to her. She took it at once, and thanked him lightly enough, and he told himself, forgot it a moment later. A thousand times he called himself an ass for trying to keep in her memory. What was he, a factory clerk, to Miss O'Neill? And what, indeed, was Miss O'Neill to him--an engaged man?

The bush rustled back at him: "Laura is--well, what you know. Laura's got a lick of the tar brush. Laura is probably the identical person a certain reverend gentleman in Upper Wharfedale especially warned you against. Laura may pass muster in Grand Canary, but she won't do further North. Fancy Laura in Wharfedale!" Good God, in Wharfedale! Now he came to think of it, he had never talked to Laura about home, and the moors, and the grouse, and the roses.

He laughed noisily at his fancies, and a flock of red and gray parrots came on to the tree tops above and cawed at him. Well, after all, there were plenty of Englishmen who lived out of England. He might initiate a new era. He might be one of the first English colonists who looked upon West Africa as a home, not a place of exile. He rubbed the sweat from his face with a long forefinger and plodded on-- Why not? He seemed to have the knack of health. Why should not he and Laura become powers in the Oil Rivers? They might well rise to the rule of cities and territories.

Then a voice brought him to earth again. Someone hailed him from the rear. "Carter, O Carter!"

It was the excellent White-Man's-Trouble, who came up sullen, frightened and abusive. His cheek-bones were whitened with lime, in token of some ju-ju charm. He took over the battered Gladstone bag, and balanced it on the centre plot of his own elaborately shaven cranium.

"I no fit for lib at dem factory an' know you carry dem load in dem dam-fool way," said the Krooboy crustily.

They pulled up that night at a small terror-shivering village, and quartered themselves on the headman. He made no secret of his displeasure at their visit. Carter talked of the glories of Mokki, and the advantages of having a steady stream of trade pouring through one's territory. The headman pointed out with peevish annoyance that the King of Okky frowned upon Mokki in particular and trade in general, and that the King's displeasure was generally fatal to those on whom it fell, even though they had the happiness to live beyond his marches. But in spite of his gloomy reception, he set before his guests a portly bowl of kanki, when his women had cooked it, and himself ate a pawful from the calabash as a testimonial to its freedom from poison.

They spread their sleeping mats that night in the dark hut from which the headman's fowls had been driven to make room for them, and next morning Carter collected some wing feathers and some bits of wood, and made a windmill to amuse the children who swarmed about the compound. Presently there arrived the headman, who saw the toy spinning in the breeze, and annexed it. He and White-Man's-Trouble harangued one another with much noise and gesture, and then there was a bustle in the village, and the cooking fires burned strongly. The headman's gloom had dropped from him like a discarded cloth; he wore in its place an air of oily obsequiousness that showed he could be quite the courtier upon occasion.

They breakfasted that morning on no mere kanki.

"Dem," said White-Man's-Trouble, pointing to the three great bowls, "dem hen-chop, dem monkey-chop, an' dem dug-chop."

"Quack-quack dug?"

"No, bow-wow dug."

"Ugh!" said Carter, "I'll leave these rich dainties to you and His Nibs there. Let me have a go at the stewed fowl. Great Christopher! No wonder rubber's so hard to collect in this country when they use up so much to make legs for their chickens. Well, thank heaven for sound teeth and a tough inside!"

"I tell dem headman," said the Krooboy when they had started their day's march, "that dem windmill will be fine ju-ju. I say to him, 'You savvy dem fight at Smooth River factory?' An' he savvy plenty. All the bush savvy of dem fight. So I tell him me an' you, we keep dem Okky-men away by ourselves, an' shoot most of them, an' kill more by dem talking-god. So dem headman savvy we plenty-big ju-ju men, an' we no fit eat kanki for breakfast."

"My dear Trouble, your powers of diplomacy are only equalled by your personal appearance. Keep it up. If your eloquence can carry us through the country on the free hotel list it will save a lot of trouble both for us and for everybody else we come near. I like to think of myself as an adventurous knight exploring the black heart of Africa, but I suppose in the States they'd call us a pair of hoboes, and set the watch-dogs at us-- Gee! Look at that!"

The rifle dropped to Carter's shoulder and cracked. A herd of small deer were crossing the narrow road ahead of them, and one of them tripped and fell, and there was payment for their next night's lodging.

Thirteen days' march Ali ben Hossein had called it to the hill where an unnamed river scoured the foot of a red-streaked bluff, and Carter, who was lean and strong and wiry, flattered himself on being able to walk as well as any Moslem in Haûsaland. But the fact remained that more than three times thirteen days passed before they reached the place, and the perils of the way proved many and glaring. In some of the villages the headmen proved hospitable; in others they would have neither truck nor dealing with any callers whatever.

The country was full of war and unrest, and there was no doubt that it was desperately poor. The cassava grounds were unplanted, the millet was unsown, the banana gardens were wantonly slashed and ruined. The small bush farmer is a creature of nerves, and he stands adversity badly. Put him under a strong over-lord, and he will serve gladly and efficiently. Leave him to himself, and when things go awry with him for too many weeks together he is apt to suddenly give up the struggle, and sit down with chin on his knees, and quietly starve to death. One cannot reckon far upon the moods of a man who is ridiculously unenthusiastic over his own life or his neighbors'.

But at one place they marched in upon red war.

The village lay amongst its farm lands in a break of the forest, and the gaps between the houses had been filled with thorns. Shots came from it at intervals, and were answered by the shots of invisible marksmen who lay within the edge of the forest. The sun glared high overhead in a fleckless sky. The air was salt with the smoke of the crude trade powder.

White-Man's-Trouble counselled retreat.

"Yes, that's all right," said Carter irritably. "No one wants to ram his head into a scrap less than I do. But where the deuce can we go to? There's been no single branch to this road we've come along, and the bush on each side is about the thickest in Africa. Nothing short of a regiment of men with matchets would make a path through it anywhere. Going back to that last village means getting skewered. All the way along I've been wondering how on earth we got out of it without having at least ten spears rammed into each of us."

"O Carter, I no fit to go get mixed in dem fight palaver."

"You're so beastly unoriginal. Why go on repeating the same thing? I'd like further to point out that we've not had a bite to eat for twenty-four hours, and I personally can't go on living on my own fat without inconvenience, as you seem to do."

"No savvy."

"Well, to translate, I say I plenty-much fit for chop."

White-Man's-Trouble rubbed the waistband of his trousers tenderly. "Me, too," he admitted.

"Then, as there is only starvation and other unpleasant things behind, I'm going ahead to prospect. Gee! There's somebody on this side with a rifle. And, by Christopher, there's another rifle in the village shooting back!"

The flintlock trade guns roared out at intervals, and every now and again there came the sharp bark of smokeless powder, and its clean whop-whop of a bullet from a modern rifle. By careful watching Carter decided that there was only one rifle on each side, and he further made out that one was bombarding the other to the exclusion of all lesser interests.

Now when a man has hunger gnawing at the inside of his ribs, and knows, moreover, that any movement in retreat will be fatal, it does not take much to spur him on to an advance. So Carter went cautiously ahead, keeping well under the fringe of the cover, and White-Man's-Trouble, who was copiously afraid, and who muttered evil things under his breath in Kroo, hung on to the remains of the Gladstone bag and crouched along at his heels.

Carter took a step at a time, and was cautious always not to rustle a leaf or tread on a dead branch. So he pushed his way ahead, and when the Krooboy, with less dexterity, blundered and made the shadow of a noise, he turned upon him with such a look of ferocity that it awed even so cross-grained a person as White-Man's-Trouble. A dozen times Carter nearly walked on to the heels of one or other of the attacking force, and as often drew off unnoticed; and at last he made his way to the place where he had located the rifle fire, and was closing in on it from behind, when of a sudden he was confronted with a rifle muzzle which suddenly spirted up from the middle of a clump of bush.

It swung up till it covered the left side of his chest, and hung steady there for an appreciable number of seconds, and then a very well-known voice said, "Well, Mr. Carter, I congratulate you on keeping your nerve in spite of the climate."

"Gee!" said Carter under his breath. "That's old Swizzle-Stick Smith."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I said I'm sure that's Mr. Smith."

A bald head, garnished with an eyeglass, shaggy gray hair and a shaggy beard, came forth. "May I ask what you are doing here? Thrown up your commission by any chance?"

"Exactly that."

"On your own?"

"Well, sir, starvation's my master at present."

"Oh, I beg pardon. Go into the mess and order what you'll have. Or look here, I've shot my man, so I'm free for the moment, and I'll come with you. Whiskey we're out of, but I can recommend gin and soda. We looted a sparklet machine, by the way, from the Frenchman."

They worked cautiously back from the firing line, and came upon a mean lean-to of boughs and thatch which Mr. Smith referred to as "my headquarters." As the mess-sergeant happened to be away, Mr. Smith kindly produced from under the eaves a damp slab of translucent cassava bread, which was obviously all the place contained in the way of food, and extracting a square-faced bottle from a green box of trade gin, poured out half a calabash full, added muddy water from a chattie, and offered it to his guest.

"Come to think of it, that's more healthy for you than soda, Mr. Carter. So you're not up here on O'Neill and Craven's service, you tell me?"

"No; handed in my papers, sir. I'm passing through here on urgent private affairs."

Mr. Smith put a hand inside his shabby pyjama coat and produced a piece of new black-watered silk ribbon, on the end of which was an eyeglass. He screwed this in place, and stared at his guest.

"Ah, then in that case, Mr. Carter, I shall have to hear more of your projects before I can give you permission to pass through my territory."

Carter stiffened. "Your territory? Oh, I remember. You've been buying up rubber lands, of course, for the firm."

"As a point of fact, I have not been worrying about the firm very lately. When I said 'my territory,' I meant exactly that, neither more nor less. Later I may turn it over to British protection. But recently it was no man's land, and as that infernal blackguard, the King of Okky, was after it, I seized it for myself."

"Hear, hear," said Carter. "As the King of Okky was once indecently keen on adding my head to his private collection, I can never be really fond of that man, somehow."

"Confound your head, sir! That had nothing to do with it. I didn't quarrel with the man for following out his ordinary African methods. I'm going for him for letting in the French."

Carter was clearly puzzled. "What on earth have the French to do with it?"

"Exactly what they had to do with all the British West African colonies. We hold a seaboard, and when the men on the spot try to consolidate an influence in the hinterland, our Foreign Office promptly truckles to the Anti-British party at home and tells them to drop it. The Anti-British party says, 'Oh no, we mustn't make a sphere of influence there. The Germans want it, or the French have set their minds on it, or why shouldn't poor dear Portugal have a chance there? But whatever you do, don't give it to nasty, greedy Great Britain.' And unless the hand of the Foreign Office is absolutely forced, they always do as the Anti-Britishers ask. You see the Anti-British party is noisy and hysterical, and always shrieking that it can command countless votes." Mr. Smith limped across the hut and sat on a green case and emphasized his further remarks with a powder-stained forefinger.

"Well," he said, "it's an old game with me, and after all the official kicks I've had I ought to have dropped it years ago. But somehow I couldn't resist the temptation. The King of Okky is our man by geography and agreement. I have made representations to the F.O., till I am sick of putting pen to paper, that he ought to be recognized and patted on the back. They don't even take the trouble to reply, much less carry out the suggestions. Therefore the French, who have taken hold of the hinterland, have done the obvious. They sent down a sort of fourth-rate tin-pot sous-officier, and told him that if he fixed up things all right for France they'd give him a commission and a 500 francs gratuity; and as he'd absolutely no competitors, he naturally did the trick."

"What a beastly shame!" Carter blurted out, and then felt surprised at himself. It was about the first time in his life that the Englishman that was within him had ever peeped out upon the surface.

"I know what the man's expedition cost--practically nothing. I saw the presents he gave old Kallee--£50 would have covered them. And for that, and a mouthful of empty words, he gets half a million square miles of territory, and trade of a present value of £100,000, and a potential value of £750,000, at a low estimate. Well, Mr. Carter, I'm braver than our F.O. I'm going to buck against the Anti-British party, and I'm going to see that we keep in our own hands what rightly belongs to us. I shall be called a pirate, but that doesn't disturb me. I lost all the reputation I had to lose at this same game years ago. I was doing my duty here then in West Africa. A smug little beast of a newspaper man got up in the House of Commons and demanded my dismissal. He would never have been heard of if he hadn't been consistently Anti-British on every occasion when the country was in disagreement with anyone else. But it was his dirty line, and it brought him a certain disgraceful notoriety, which was what he was after. He could command votes, or said he could, and the Government believed him. They didn't care particularly for England; their one interest was keeping their party in office; and as I was a nuisance, I had to go. It wasn't a case of being actually broke, you must understand, Mr. Carter, but they made things so awkward that I had to send in my papers all the same. They tried the same game with Rhodes, and Curzon, and Milner, the dirty little curs. They hate a man who tries to uphold Great Britain's dignity or give her another acre of territory.

"But here now, thank the Lord, I personally am unofficial, and I'm doing exactly what I know to be best without fear or favor of anybody."

"How far does your territory extend, sir?"

"As far as I can make it," said Mr. Smith dryly.

"Are you going to let it be developed by the white man?"

"Assuredly."

"Then," said Carter, "we shan't clash, and I'm sure you will give me my passports. I don't know whether the place I am making for is in your territory or the next king's, but I'm going there purely for purposes of development. I tell you frankly, I haven't a bit of ambition at present beyond making a pile. If ever I find myself a rich man I may take a hand in the thankless game you are on at here. But that's in the future. In the meanwhile, if the question is not indiscreet, might one ask if it was a Frenchman you were having that rifle duel with just now?"

"The Frenchman's down with fever. I was exchanging shots with a soldier of fortune who is, I believe, an old acquaintance of yours. Kwaka his name is."

"Great Christopher! what a small place West Africa is. Old Kallee sent Kwaka down to borrow my head for his collection, and after the way I bamboozled that man I shouldn't have been surprised if he'd been struck off the Okky army list. Did you--er--make a clean job of him?"

"Winged only, I think. He kept very well to cover."

"You were both blazing away for long enough."

"Well," chuckled Mr. Smith, "I'm afraid he hardly had a fair chance at me. You see, I'd a boy with a trade gun lying under a log a dozen yards to my right, and I'd a string from my foot to his trigger. When I loosed off the Winchester I pulled the other gun too, and Kwaka shot for the smoke every time, and made very good practice of it. That log would be worth mining for lead."

"When you take the place what shall you do with the Frenchman?"

"Just the same that he would do with me," said the old man grimly. "Now suppose we change the subject. The bush telegraphs have been persistently talking about a white woman who's been upsetting the face of Africa, especially about our factories. Heard anything of her?"

Carter laughed shortly. "Of course I've heard. In fact, she's why I'm here. She's Miss Kate O'Neill."

The old man dropped his eyeglass to the end of its ribbon, fumbled for it till he caught it again, and three times tried to screw it in place before he got it fixed. "Kate O'Neill, you say? She'd be about twenty--no, twenty-three years old?"

"I'm a bad judge, but I daresay she'd be about that. Why, do you know her, sir?"

Mr. Smith straightened himself with an obvious effort. "As I have not been to England for five-and-twenty years, is it likely? You said she was English, I think?"

"As a point of fact, I did not, though presumably she is English. She was not the late Godfrey O'Neill's real relative. She was adopted, so I heard. But he left her the business for all that, and she's making it hum. She's marvellously able. But of course you have seen for yourself more of her efforts than I have, sir."

"I have seen them?"

Carter laughed. "I'm afraid you made the same mistake that everybody else made, from Slade and old Image. She is the K. O'Neill of the kindly-buck-up-and-get-it-done letters. She is the Mr. K. that you chaffed me about at Malla-Nulla for admiring so much as a business man."

"My God!" said Swizzle-Stick Smith, and sat back limply against the wall of the hut, and then "My God!" he said again.

Carter hesitated, and then, "Did you," he ventured, "know Miss Kate's own people before the late Godfrey took her over?"

Mr. Smith, with an obvious effort, pulled himself together. "I did, Mr. Carter. Her mother--she--she died. Her father went under. He had a pretty trying time of it first, but when the pinch came he went under most thoroughly. Godfrey O'Neill, good fellow that he was, took the child then, and so she got her chance, and, thank heaven, she's used it."

Carter looked at the old man narrowly. "And is the father alive now?"

But by this time Mr. Smith was his old cool, profane self again. "How the devil should I know? Do you think I keep track of all the failures in Africa? You seem very interested in this young woman yourself. May I ask if you've any aspirations in that direction?"

"If you mean have I any wish to marry her, I can answer that best by telling you that I'm engaged to marry Laura Slade."

"Ah, I see. Well, Mr. Carter, we will drop the subject, which is a painful one to me for many reasons. Let us get on to your personal schemes. In what way can I forward them?"