CHAPTER VIII

A couple of afternoons later, Norah's fingers playing in his hair roused Dick, somnolent from the heat.

'What's wrong with the engines?' she asked. Dick, who knew nothing of machinery, went through the motions of intelligent auscultation.

'They are banging and clattering worse than yesterday,' she persisted, with her head on one side; 'hurry, miss a beat, hurry. And I'm sure we're going slower.'

'The _Mimi_ was never an ocean greyhound,' said Dick.

Now Norah mentioned it, the engines did sound odd. Why didn't he know more about the damn things? It was monstrous running a British boat with black officers and crew. Anything might happen. It would be deuced awkward if they broke down; it might make them ridiculous. But the odd noises he thought he noticed might be imaginary.

'She'll get us there before she sinks,' he said.

Norah pulled his hair a trifle harder. 'Nothing like an optimist,' she remarked.

'It wouldn't be the first time.'

'What do you mean? Has she sunk before?'

'Been sunk. Before the war she was a deep-sea boat, carrying Hun officials and mails between Dar-es-Salaam and Tanga. One day in 1915 she ran into a British light cruiser. The next two years she spent at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.'

'Are you inventing this?' said Norah, taking a firmer grip on a handful of hair.

'Not a word; you can see the shell-marks amidships.'

'I love you when you talk nautical, Dick!'

Dick dragged her to him and kissed her mocking lips.

'Don't, Dick, you'll distract the man at the wheel. Go on telling me! How do you know all this?'

'One of the Boma men told me. Well, eventually our people raised her, buried the bones of her captain and crew, and railed her in sections to the lake. And here she's the only boat we've got.'

'No wonder her engines knock a bit.'

'They're good enough engines, I'm told, though they run red hot. But they're too big for her hull. There's a sweepstake among the half-dozen people who use the lake whether she goes up in flames or the engines drop through her bottom first.'

'Go on, Dick, don't mind me.'

'Yes, I thought you'd like to know,' Dick put his arm round her shoulders. 'Early this morning when you were sleeping like a lamb, I was lying awake watching the metal work going a nice cherry red, and selecting that flat bit of iron to beat off the crew from your place in the dinghy when the ship burst into flames.'

Norah laughed. 'You think of everything,' she said. 'Why don't they put on a new boat?'

'Money.' Dick got up and took a turn aft, where he could hear the engines more clearly. He stood with his head cocked, listening. At last he shrugged his shoulders and came back to Norah.

'The territory's about bankrupt, and all the cash there is goes in building a new governor's palace to impress the noble savage.'

He sat down on his bed and fidgeted with the sheet.

'I believe you're right,' he said, 'the engines are about worn out. They say that at the end of every trip Alibaba reports to the Railway Workshops at Kigoma, something like this:--(he imitated the genial obsequiousness and urbane gesticulation of the Arab skipper)--'Yes, sir, thank you, sir, good run, sir. Boilers finish, sir. Want new one. No, sir? Very good, sir, start Wednesday, sir.'

Norah's deep laugh rang out. Dick's Irish blood made him a good