CHAPTER IX

NAVIGATION OF DOG'S-LEG CREEK

Captain Image yapped out his commands to the third mate and a quartermaster in the wheelhouse in tones that supplied many missing adjectives:

"... Starboard your helm. Starboard. Hard-a-starboard, you bung-eyed son of perdition--stop her. Crumbs! but we sliced off a thumping big chunk of Africa there, and broke half the tumblers in the steward's pantry by the sound of it. I bet something big it's another case of going home on what's left of the double bottom, and Old Horny to pay in Water Street, Liverpool. Give her full ahead now, and steady your helm, quartermaster. My holy whiskers, who wouldn't sell a farm and go to sea? Starboard your helm, six points. There, steady on that. Half speed the engines." And so on over and over again for every hour since the sun rose to blister the swamps, and call forth the full volume of their earth and crushed-marigold smell.

There is a proverb bandied about amongst the sons of men which states that the unknown has always its charm, and harassed shipmasters often wonder why it is not publicly contradicted in Norie's Epitome of Navigation. Carter either forgot or never realized this, and furthermore made the fatal blunder of going up onto the sacred upper bridge without direct invitation.

For half an hour he had stood there silent, and unspoken to, listening to Captain Image's tirade against the creeks that led to Mokki, and then catching for a moment the mariner's eye, ventured on an observation. He suggested that at any rate Captain Image would have the amusement of feeling that he was an explorer; and there was the opportunity the peppery Welshman really needed.

He had not been able to say what he wished to Miss Kate O'Neill, for many reasons; but here was her whipping-boy; and on him Captain Image turned loose one of the most powerful vocabularies that has ever been carried up and down the West African seaboard. He neglected both quartermaster and third mate--and these two experts, being only too glad of the breathing space, kept the _M'poso_ accurately out of the mangroves, whilst their commander gave an undivided attention to the very highly qualified passenger who had dared to sully the unblemished deck plants of the upper bridge.

Now, under ordinary conditions, Carter would have recognized the circumstances, and have remembered his service, and swallowed the dose with a smile and a shrug. But things had gone woefully awry with him during the last score of hours. The strain of the fight, the discovery that the man K. O'Neill of the letters was Miss Kate in the flesh, the uncertain future of two Coast factories, the way in which everybody received his engagement to Laura Slade; all these things piled up on one another had set his usually steady nerves jangling in a way to which he was unaccustomed, and he felt himself forced by a rather insane impulse to do something startling. He had successive inclinations to throw up his berth altogether and go home; to marry Laura Slade out of hand by the kind assistance of Captain Image and the _M'poso's_ log-book, which occurred to him as the local equivalent of Gretna Green; to violently abuse Miss Kate O'Neill for being herself. Finally, when the premonitory symptoms of a well-earned dose of fever gripped him with a stab and a shudder, he had the usual malarial depression, which put the usual question as to whether life were really worth living.

Over and above all these things, since the first moment of seeing Kate, it had been borne in upon him that he had made a mistake over his engagement. He did not for a moment think of getting free; he was doggedly determined to see it through, or in other words to marry Laura, whatever the cost and result might be. But from that date onward he began to ask himself inconvenient questions. He demanded of his inner conscience a definition of that impalpable thing, love. He wished to be informed (from the same source and at the shortest notice) if he was exactly in love with Miss Slade at that particular moment, and when the phenomenon commenced, and how long it was likely to endure. And when Laura, who saw into a good deal more of all this than he expected, offered to release him from his promise, he abused her for the suggestion, and protested his affection for her with such warmth that he feared very much after the interview that he had hopelessly overdone it.

As a consequence, when Captain Image explained in a two-minute speech that Mr. Flame-tipped Carter was violating the etiquette of nations in daring to pollute that upper bridge with his undesirable feet, without direct invitation, he rather welcomed the opportunity and retorted in kind.

Now, Captain Image, as has been hinted, had made the most of the years he had spent sea-going in the matter of picking up a vocabulary; he has to this day brothers in Wales who are local preachers and revivalist leaders, and there is no doubt that he was the inheritor of some ancestral strain of burning eloquence. Carter, on the other hand, though not as a rule a man of much speech, had not lived with Swizzle-Stick Smith all those long months without taking lessons in the art of vituperation, and though he was not conscious of it at the time, the education soaked in, and when the moment of stress arrived his memory served him faithfully.

Miss Kate O'Neill heard the discussion and retired to her room below. Stewards popped their heads round doorways and listened appreciatively; deck hands took cover round the angle of the houses and strained their ears, and the second engineer, who was bred on Tyneside and openly claimed to be a connoisseur, came out brazenly onto the top of the fiddley three yards from the speakers and did nothing to an unoffending ventilator cowl with a three-quarter inch spanner.

From the present writer's point of view the remarks on both sides had the fatal drawback that their point lay far more in artistic delivery than in their subject matter, and so to report them here verbatim would give a totally unjust idea of their weight and influence. But it must be understood that Captain Image, who never till now had met a foeman so worthy of his tongue, surpassed himself; and Carter, who now for the first time used these winged words in hard vicious earnest, felt all a sportsman's pride in seeing his verbal missiles land and rankle.

It is hard to award the victory; and, in plain truth, each orator was so warmed with the effort of his own tongue that in another second the British blood would have reached fisticuff temperature, and they would have clinched. But luckily an interruption arrived to break the tension. The third mate, that terribly abused young man who was gaining a breathing space whilst Carter stood up against Captain Image's tongue, at first conned the _M'poso_ up the winding channel with a sigh of relief, and was ably seconded by the quartermaster at the wheel, who had also been suffering. But by degrees their sporting instincts drew them from the matter immediately in hand, and made them interested spectators of the duel. In fact their interest absorbed them, and, well, the steamer got the smallest bit out of hand.

When it was too late the third mate turned attention to his duties again, and had just time to give four frenzied orders; there was a fine jangling of the engine-room telegraph; the quartermaster did frantic windmill work on the steering wheel, to the accompaniment of a rattling chorus from the wheel engines below; but the _M'poso_ took a sheer and rammed her nose firmly into the mangroves. And in she slid. Weight and speed made sufficient momentum to put her into the mud and shrubbery well up to the forerigging, and the jar sent the stiff-set Captain Image flying onto the top of the fiddley gratings.

Carter shot up against the white painted rail of the upper bridge and held his balance there, and then with that blind instinct for interfering for the welfare of others which distinguishes the Anglo-Saxon, he vaulted the rail, picked up Captain Image and set him on his feet.

It is perhaps typical also of the peppery Welshman that he forgot the enjoyable quarrel so promptly that he said, "Thank you, me lad," with ready cordiality before he turned to do full justice to the third mate, his ancestry, and his probable future in this world and the next.

"By Jove," broke in Carter, "I wish I'd a gun. There's a monkey on the foredeck. I'd like that little beggar's skin. I wonder if I could catch him."

"Don't you try, me lad," said Image. "The odds are that the front end of this packet's a menagerie of red mangrove ants that could gnaw chunks off a tin-covered crusader." He jammed the engine-room telegraph with a vicious whirr to Full Speed Astern, and turned to the unfortunate third mate. "Here, you, if you think you know enough to tell the difference between land and water, lower a boat and take out a kedge astern. Wait a minute. Now, you're not to drop that kedge in the mud. It'll draw through that like pulling a hairpin out of a pot of marmalade. You're to get ashore and hook it among those mangrove roots. Just try and get it into your intelligent head that I don't want that kedge to come home directly we put a strain on the wire. When you've done that you can come back and go to your room and read Shakespeare. I guess that's about all you blooming brass-bound Conway sailors are fit for, except sparking the girls and drawing your pay. By Crumbs! if we hadn't Miss Kate on board, and for anything I know within earshot, I could just give you an opinion of your looks that would make you want to cry."

But with the tide in the muddy river ebbing under her, the _M'poso_ stuck in the dock she had made, in spite of reversed propeller, and winches straining on the kedge wire till they threatened to heave themselves bodily from the decks. The insect torments of Africa boarded her from the mangroves and bit all live things they came against; obscene land crabs dressed in raw and startling colors waddled up onto the slime of the banks as the water left them and blew impotent froth bubbles at the tough steamboat which even they could not eat. Parrots crowed at them from the shining green foliage of the mangroves alongside; slimy things gazed at them from the mud beneath the arches of the wire-like roots.

The sun crawled up into the aching blue overhead till it forgot how to cast a shadow, and the wet steam heat grew so oppressive that even Laura Slade, country-born though she was, felt sick with its violence. But Miss Kate O'Neill on the awning deck did elaborate calculations on sheets of paper, which she tore up and threw into the beer-colored river when she had entered the results in her pocket-book; and down in the purser's room, Carter carved images on Okky calabashes for the English curiosity market.

To him came Mr. Balgarnie, dripping and fuming. "Great whiskers! man, why did you shut the port-hole? You're lean; but if I stay in this atmosphere I shall peg out of heat apoplexy in half an hour. Here, let me open the port and stick out the wind scoop."

"Wind scoop's no good; there isn't a breath. And if you open the port you'll be devoured. I tried it. I'm a Dalesman and I like a draught of air, but it's no go here. Red ants, I think they are. Look at the way they've been eating the insides out of your domestic cockroaches. Now gaze on this chop bowl? Isn't it a gem? Any stay-at-home Englishman would spot it as genuine native workmanship in a moment. All done with a blunt knife; that's the great tip in this sort of carving."

"Have a drop of whiskey? You fit for dash me dem bowl?"

"No, Purser, I'm not going to give away anything just now. I want five shillings spot cash for this specimen, and it's dirt cheap at that. When you've weathered it a bit, and given it a dressing of good yellow palm oil, it will fetch a golden sovereign from a Las Palmas tripper, easy."

"They're a hard-up lot, the people who come to the Islands these days, and they're inclined to get too familiar if you offer as a favor to sell them anything they may see in your room. I've chucked showing them things. But I might get three half-crowns for that bowl in Liverpool. Of course, I don't want any commission from you, old fellow. I'll hand over every penny I'm paid for it."

Carter stuck out a dogged chin. "Look here, Purser, it's too hot for frills, and we know one another a bit too well for them to go down. Potter out five bob and the thing's yours to make what you can of. If you don't, I've another customer who'll give more. I'm hard up."

"Oh, of course, yes. You want to set up housekeeping, don't you? Well, old fellow, here are the two half-crowns towards the mangle or the grand piano or whatever you've set your mind on getting first. Sorry I ragged you about being engaged to Laura last night at Smooth River. But, you see, I know Owe-it Slade, and I've known Laura all her life, and of course I was a bit surprised to be told, you know--well, to be told that you, of all people, had made it up with her. But, as I say, I'm sorry I ragged you."

"Please don't apologize on a hot day like this," Carter snapped. "As I don't value your opinion on a matter like that one jot, I naturally didn't let anything you said disturb my sleep. Good-afternoon. If you're going to occupy your room, I'll go out on deck and enjoy the infernal crushed-marigold stink of this drain from a different point."

"That young man knows he's made a fool of himself," commented the Purser sagely, "and he's as sore and uneasy as a skinned eel in a tub of sand. Well, if he wants to furnish a lil' log hut for his dusky Laura, so much the better for trade. He's the neatest trick of making native curios in all West Africa, and I've got all his home business in my hand. It's all rot about his trading with another purser; there isn't one on the Coast that works this line, or I should have heard about it. If the output's increased, I shall try and work up a connection with America. My Whiskers! why not? What's wrong with enriching the United States with some good broad-bladed Okky spears, and a war horn or two just as a-- Hullo, yes, who's that? Ah, come in."

There was a knock at the Purser's door, and White-Man's-Trouble entered in reply to the invitation. "Oh, Purser," he said, "dem bug," and opened a black fist and showed three electric-blue butterflies in his white palm.

The Purser took them one by one in his plump fingers and dropped them gingerly into an empty cardboard cigarette box. "I don't think they'll be much use, boy. You've rubbed too much fluff off with those delicate paws of yours. Savvy?"

"I savvy I fit for dash," said the Krooboy pointedly.

"Pooh, these are worth nothing. What do you take me for? A tripper, or the Bank of England? Ah, would you, you infernal thieving monkey?" Mr. Balgarnie had turned his back and had glanced in a shaving mirror which hung by the port and saw White-Man's-Trouble helping himself to a Tauchnitz novel, which he promptly tucked underneath his coat.

The Krooboy put the book down. He did not waste time in apologizing for the theft of something that was entirely useless to him. He went straight to a matter of far graver interest.

"Oh, Purser, how you seen me take dem thing? You no see with you eyes. You eyes lib for look out of window."

"Attend," said Mr. Balgarnie, and struck an attitude. "I am the man known to science as the Freak-who-has-eyes-at-the-back-of-his-head. Observe, I have my back to you and yet I can see that you are picking your nose with your strong left hand, and scratching the floor with your starboard toe."

"I no fit for see you back eyes."

"That is because they are ju-ju eyes. Oh, White-Man's-Trouble, I bid you fear the Powers of Darkness and steal no more anything that is mine. You savvy?"

"Savvy plenty!"

"And as a further punishment, I bid you catch me ten more butterflies, and take care you don't rub the feathers off, or they'll be no use to Miss Kate."

"Missy Kate! What for she want dem bug? Dem no fit for chop."

"To make ju-ju of."

White-Man's-Trouble grinned. "Missy Kate no savvy ju-ju palaver. Dem Carter, he show her dem god with talk-pipe, an' she say, 'Well, dere no ju-ju about him.' Oh, Purser, I say dem god with talk-pipe plenty-too-much-fine ju-ju. Okky-men savvy plenty him ju-ju."

"Your theology's a bit above my head, but I don't mind telling you in confidence that butterfly collecting's the lady's habit, just the same as--let me see--just the same as stealing things that are no use to you is yours, and spear making's Mr. Carter's. Savvy?"

"Savvy some," said the Krooboy doubtfully. "Does Missy sell dem bugs to steamah pursers, an' come ashore an' say dem dam' greedy hounds?"

"If you've got that idea in your aboriginal mind," said Mr. Balgarnie with a yawn, "don't let me crowd it with anything nearer the truth. You bring Miss Kate plenty of butterflies without the pretty rubbed off, and presently she dash you a new top hat with a gold band to it."

"I no fit for take dash from Missy," said White-Man's-Trouble with dignity. "I bring her plenty-too-many bugs for nix. I fit for know my job."

The purser stared with tired eyes. "So you honor her with your respectful admiration, too, do you? I wish I could get her knack. There, clear out with you, and put the door on the hook. Take your dirty hands away from that tooth-brush, confound you, and get out. It's my time for siesta."

In the meanwhile Laura Slade had gone out on the bridge deck, had found a chair without a card on it, and had dragged it up alongside her friend. She waited patiently till one of the long calculations had been worked out and the result entered up in the pocket-book, and then, when the figures were torn small, she jumped up and took the scraps of paper from the other girl's hand.

"Please let me do something, Kate. At least I can throw them overboard for you."

Miss O'Neill laughed, and plied her palm leaf fan. "My dear girl, I'm most pleased to be tempted away from work. In school days, as you will remember, I was worse than you were at sums. I've had to grind at them since, but it's not made me love them any the more. Why can't I be a rich woman without working for it?"

"Do you want so very much to be rich?"

Kate turned to her friend and opened her eyes wide. They were brown eyes, and someone once described them as talkative. But people who knew her better were very conscious of the fact that Miss Kate O'Neill's eyes only expressed things when she willed that they should do so.

"Do I want to be rich? Well, of course. One can't have things or do things unless one has money. And if I don't get money, no one will for me; or, at least, I'd rather they wouldn't. Of course, you have got Mr. Carter to work for you, Laura; but I am sure, when you put it into cold words, you'd like him to make money, too. You don't want to live all your days on the Coast here, the pair of you. You look forward to going home, and having a house and a garden, and a motor car, and a man to drive it. And you'd like to have good servants and nice frocks. Yes, especially nice frocks."

"Like yours. Yes, I should like a nice frock like that one, Kate, if you won't mind my copying it."

"What, this rag? My dear, sweet child, with your eyes, and your figure, and the complexion you'd grow in England, you'd pay to dress far more than ever I should. Mr. Carter will work hard and earn a big income, just for the satisfaction of seeing you decently clad."

There was a minute's silence, and then, "Why do you dislike my engagement so much, Kate?"

"Me dislike it? What rubbish. I think it's a most excellent thing for you, if only Mr. Carter goes on as he has begun."

"Then I'll word it differently. Why do you dislike George so much?"

"Whatever gave you that idea? Mr. Carter, considering the short time he has been on the Coast, has done most excellently for the firm, and--well--_l'état c'est moi_. I know you condemn me for being abominably commercial, but what nearer way do you think there can be to my heart than through my pocket?"

"Your heart!" Laura repeated, and stared large-eyed at the yellow river that swirled past the steamer's rusty flanks. An alligator, that looked very much like a half submerged log, drifted down with the tide, and a bird that rode upon him dug vigorously between the rows of his plates with his beak. She watched them till they passed away down the stream and were lost in the glare of the sunshine. "I wonder," she said in a half-whisper, "if your heart wants something which it will break my heart for you to get?"

Miss Kate O'Neill got up and gave a very healthy laugh. "Don't mutter," she said, "and don't be ridiculous. To begin with, I'm not of the marrying sort; to go on with, your taste (as typified in Mr. Carter) and mine don't agree one little bit; and to wind up with, Laura dear, don't let's pose like a pair of school-girls. I don't know whether there's a slight natural antipathy between two red-haired people----"

"Your hair's not red in the least, Kate. It's a very dark auburn."

"I should call it warmish. Anyhow, Mr. Carter's is red enough. And as you will drag the subject up, I must really point out to you that he's been hardly civil in the way he's avoided me. I haven't got smallpox."

"You're his employer. When you call him I'm sure he's glad enough to talk to you about what you want. But you must see his position; he wouldn't like to risk a snub by coming up when you might not happen to want him."

"I see. The idea that all communications should be conducted in a cold business footing. Am I to understand that Mr. Carter wished you to convey that view to me, Laura?"

"You know quite well he didn't. Kate, we used to be friends. I wish you'd answer me honestly what I asked you just now."

"Don't be tragic and ridiculous. You're half sick with the heat, and I really believe you want to quarrel with me by way of safety valve. Well, my dear, I shan't quarrel with you, that's all. I hate quarrelling. I've been dodging the excellent Captain Image all the day, as I know he wants to ease off his temper on me just because his silly old steamer has stuck her nose on the bank and got left by the tide. By the way, I candidly believe the accident happened just because he was amusing himself just at that precise moment with having a turn-up with--oh, well, we're getting onto touchy ground again. And--here is Mr. Carter. You seem in a hurry."

Carter came up the ladder to the bridge deck in two strides, and it was noteworthy that he addressed his first remark to his employer, and not to his fiancée. "Do you mind going below? There are half a dozen big Okky war canoes round that point ahead there. I've been forrad there, and could see them quite plainly through the mangrove roots."

"Have you told the Captain?"

"No. I'll tell him next. But will you go below, or into one of these deck houses? They are probably covering us this minute, and it's pot-leg they fire, not bullets. Pot-leg spreads and can make ghastly wounds."

"I don't like running away."

"If you could do any good staying out in the open I wouldn't ask you to move. Laura, will you persuade Miss O'Neill to go into cover, as she won't take any notice of me?"

"Thank you," said Kate sharply, "but Laura need not interfere. I am accustomed to making up my own mind, Mr. Carter, without help from anyone. I am much obliged to you for your care, and as I can't be of any use at present, and as I have no insane wish to be shot, I shall certainly go into shelter."

"Very good," said Carter; "then I'll go and carry the news to old Image. It's a lucky thing I brought along that Winchester of Slade's. We shall keep them off all right."

It turned out that Captain Image already had tidings of the war canoes, and was red with wrath at the idea of any qualified black savages having the unmentionable impudence to make a something naval demonstration against a sacred Liverpool oil tank. His language was quite unprintable, but his disposition of the steamer's forces was remarkably sound. Tackles squeaked as a Krooboy gang hoisted the ladder which hung alongside. The boatswain loaded the two brass signal guns on the bridge deck with their usual noisy charge of blank, and rammed a three-pound parcel of four-inch cut nails down the muzzle of each on the top of the powder bags. The carpenter replaced the gangways which are always unshipped when steamers are in the rivers working cargo. And the winches chattered as they each hove up a ponderous palm oil puncheon to the top of a derrick, which was then swung outboard so that the puncheon could be let go by the run, and smash any canoe made of hands that happened to be underneath.

When these pious duties had been fulfilled, the crew lined out along each of the lower deck rails armed with spanners, firebars, handspikes, and in fact any other weapon which a modern steamer could provide, which in lusty hands might be called upon to break a human head.

On the upper bridge Captain Image oversaw the only two mates who were not down with fever as they directed and assisted these operations, and when all was ready he laid his own hands on the siren string and let loose a hoarse throaty blast of defiance across the creeks and the steamy forest.

"There, Carter, me lad," said he, "that's to show the blighters we're here and waiting. I'm glad you've brought that Winchester. It's the only gun in the ship since Owe-it Slade borrowed my Holland and forgot to bring it back. They tell me you're a nailing fine shot, too."

"Couldn't hit a haystack with anything except a scatter gun."

"Well," said Image dryly, "as I saw some of your patients spread about in the clearing outside Smooth River Factory, I shall believe just as much of that as I choose. It's not my affair to mention it, of course, but I do know that Miss Kate was very considerably struck by the way you kept those niggers off, and if you hadn't been engaged to Slade's girl----"

"Which I am, Captain. So, therefore, it's no use going into useless possibilities. By the way, isn't that stern wire slackening?"

"By Crumbs, me lad, you've got a quick eye. The tide's coming up underneath her, and she's slipping off. Here you, Mr. Third Mate, ring those engines to full astern, and try and keep it in your head that you'd be in your room now if I weren't short of officers."

With the lift of the yellow tide beneath her, the _M'poso_ drew out from her muddy dock as a sword is pulled from its sheath, hung for a dozen minutes in mid-stream whilst the stern-warp and its anchor were got aboard, and then, gathering her boat and its crew up to davits, turned stubbornly up the river.

"I'll show these Okky blighters what trouble is," declared Captain Image, "if they try and stop me. I've had their old king in my chart house here with Swizzle-Stick Smith and the other traders a score of times, and if he didn't drink the ship dry, it was only because I wouldn't let him. And now in return for that hospitality he brings out his infernal war canoes. I only hope he's in one of them and comes alongside. I'll brain him with an oil puncheon if I get him in range."

But when they opened up the reach behind the point where the canoes had been seen, there was no offer of attack. There were three craft in view, fifty paddle-power dugouts all of them, crammed with men and weapons, fantastic with horrible ju-ju charms; but they hung on to the wire-like stems of the mangroves and remained so moored till the steamer drew past and began to dance them up and down upon its wash. A monkey-skin drum in each was beaten impressively by two drummers, but no weapons were levelled, and there was no threat of boarding.

"Faugh!" said Image, and spat. "Did you catch the smell of those beauties when we had them abeam? Talk of a 'bus stable struck by lightning!"

"They aren't there just to take in the scenery," said Carter thoughtfully.

"An Okky-man is born to mischief even as the sparks fly upward. Look, they're casting off their shorefasts and getting under weigh down stream. No, by Crumbs, they're turning up stream after me. Well, of all the blighted cheek! Do you know what that means, Carter, me lad? They're going to follow us. They think they've got some ju-ju by which they can cut us off from the Coast. Ah, here's Miss Kate. Well, Miss, as I've you to think of as well as my ship, I shall turn presently and run back again for the bar. You see for yourself, I should think now, that it isn't healthy up this river, and all the cargo in Africa is no use to a man if he can't get it shipped when he comes to the beach where it's stored. If any one of the war canoes get in my way, I'll show you what those bushmen look like when they're swimming in yellow water, for as sure as the Lord made crocodiles, I'll ram their noisy dugouts if I can. I'll teach them to thump their nasty smelling war drums at me."

"Poof, Captain, don't you try to take me in. I should like to hear anyone else suggesting that you couldn't take the _M'poso_ to a spot where the _Frau Pobst_ had made regular voyages."

Captain Image thrust forward his head and glared. "I can take this packet anywhere that blessed Dutchman's been, Miss."

"Of course you can. And when the _Frau Pobst's_ captain has shipped cargo from a spot----"

"And given up going there, Miss, because it's too dangerous."

"Precisely. Well, as I couldn't insult you by calling you less than twice as brave as the German, that means that no little trouble that's going on between here and Mokki will frighten you in the very least. Is that good argument?"

"Oh, go on, Miss. Twist me round your finger. I like it. Besides it isn't the first time I've played a neck-or-nothing game. But I'm hanged if I see that it's an amusement for a pretty young lady like you."

Captain Image was speaking in plain earnest, and he was a man who knew. Kate O'Neill was seized with a sudden qualm. Was she right to force on this risk? Would the Okky-men attack, or could they bring off the cargo successfully? Nobody but herself seemed to see a shadow of chance for success. And these others were all old Coasters against whom she was setting up her will.

But when she thought of giving way and turning back the cost of retreat promptly leaped up and faced her in plain figures. O'Neill and Craven were heavily involved, how heavily no one knew but old white-haired Crewdson and herself. The Mokki oil that she had bought so cheap would save them. Without it there would be bankruptcy, and, what she dreaded even more, the contemptuous finger of Liverpool pointed at the woman who had taken upon herself a man's responsibilities and broken down beneath them.

These thoughts dinned through her again and again, but outwardly her face smiled and her lips spoke lightly.

"Now, it is nice of you to give me a promise like that, Captain."

"Lake what?"

"To say that you'll go on till my nerves give way. Well, let it be so. I promise to give you news of it the moment I'm frightened. Look, there's an omen for you to read to me. The Okky-men in that first war canoe are all standing up and waving their spears. What does that mean, I wonder?"