A Master of Fortune Part 10

CHAPTER IV

THE NEW REPUBLIC

The fighting ended, and promptly both the invaders and the invaded settled down to the new course of things without further exultation or regret. An hour after it had happened, the capture of the village was already regarded as ancient history, and the two white men had got a long way on in their discussion on its ultimate fate.

"No," Captain Kettle was saying, "no being king for me, Doctor, thank you. I've been offered a king's ticket once, and that sickened me of the job for good and always. The world's evidently been going on too long to start a new kingdom nowadays, and I'm too much of a conservative to try and break the rule. No, a republic's the thing, and, as you say, I'm the stronger man of the two of us. Doc, you may sign me on as President."

Dr. Clay turned away his face, and relieved his feelings with a grin.

But he very carefully concealed his merriment. He liked Kettle, liked him vastly; but at the same time he was more than a little scared of him, and he had a very accurate notion that the man who failed to take him seriously about this new scheme, would come in contact with trouble.

The scheme was a big one; it purposed setting up a new state in the heart of the etat du Congo, on territory filched from that power; but the little sailor was in deadly earnest over the project, and already he had met with extraordinary luck in the initial stages. Central Africa is a country where determined _coups de main_ can sometimes yield surprising results.

The recent history of these two vagabond white men cannot be given in this place with any web of detail. They had gone through their apprenticeship amongst these African inlands as officers of the Congo Free State; they had been divorced from that service with something of suddenness; and a purist might have held that the severance of their ties was complicated with something very near akin to piracy. I know that they had been abominably oppressed; I know that Kettle chose running away with his steamer to the alternative of handcuffs and disgrace, and a possible hanging to follow; but there was no getting over the fact that the stern-wheeler was Free State property, and that these two had alienated it to their own uses.

The black crew of the launch and the black soldiers on board, some seventy head all told, they had little trouble in dragooning into obedience. The Central African native never troubles himself much about niceties of loyalty, and as the sway of the Congo Free State (or "Buli Matdi," as it is named by the woolly aboriginal), had been brutally tyrannous, the change of allegiance had worried them little. Besides, they had been in contact with Captain Kettle before, and knew him to be that admirable thing, a Man, and worthy of being served; while Clay, whom they also knew, amused them with his banjo, and held powerful _ju-ju_ in the shape of drugs; and so they went blithely enough where they were led or driven, and described themselves as soldiers or slaves, whichever word happened to come handiest. The African of the interior never worries his head about the terms of his service. So long as he has plenty of food, and a master to do all the thinking for him, he is quite content to work, or steal, or fight, or be killed, as that master sees fit to direct.

The progress of the little stern-wheel steamer on her return journey up the Haut Congo might also give rise to misapprehension here at home, if it were described exactly as it happened. There are no ship's chandlers in Central Africa, and it is the custom there, when you lack stores, to go to a village on the bank and requisition anything that is available.

The Arab slave-traders who once held the country did this; the prehistoric people before them founded the custom; and the Free State authorities, their lineal descendants, have not seen fit to change the policy. At least, they may have done so in theory at Brussels, but out there, in practice, they have left this matter _in statu quo_.

There is a ma.s.sive conservatism about the heart of Africa with which it is dangerous to tamper. If you rob a man in that region, he merely respects your superior power. If you offer him payments, he promptly suspects you of weakness, and sets his clumsy mind at work to find the method by which you may be robbed of whatever you have not voluntarily surrendered.

"Of course," said Kettle, taking up the thread of his tale again, "it's understood that we run this country for our own advantage first."

"What other object should white men have up-country in Africa?" said Clay. "We don't come here merely for our health."

"But I've got a great notion of treating the people well besides. When we have made a sufficient pile--and, mark you, it must be all in ivory, as there's nothing else of value that can be easy enough handled--we shall clear out for the Coast, one-time. And then we must realize on the ivory, and then we can go home and live as Christians again." He stared through the doorway of the hut at the aching sunshine beyond. "Oh, Lord!

Think of it, Doc--Home! England! Decent clothes! Regular attendance in chapel on Sundays, and your soul well cared for and put into safe going order again!"

"Oh, my soul doesn't bother me. But England! that's fine to think about, old man, isn't it? England!" he repeated dreamily. "Yes, I suppose I should have to change my name if I did go back. I don't know, though.

It'd have blown over by now, perhaps; things do blow over, and if I went to a new part of the country I expect I could still stick to the old name, and not be known from Adam. Yes, things do blow over with time, and if you don't make too much stir when you go back. I should have to keep pretty quiet; but I bet I'd have a good time for all that. Fancy the luxury of having good Glenlivet in a cask again, with a tap half-way up, after the beastly stuff one got on the coast, or, worse still, what one gets up here--and that's no whiskey at all!"

"Well, you needn't worry about choosing your home drinks just now," said Kettle. "'Palaver no set' here by a very long chalk yet, and till it is you'll have to go sober, my lad, and keep a very clear head."

Clay came to earth again. "Sorry, Skipper," he said, "but you set me off. 'Tisn't often I look across at either to-morrow or yesterday. As you say, it's a very dry shop this, and so the sooner we get what we want and quit, the sooner we shall hit on a good time again. And the sooner we clear out, too, the less chance we have of those beastly Belgians coming in here to meddle. You know we've had luck so far, and they haven't interfered with us. But we can't expect that for always.

The Congo Free State's a trading corporation, with dividends to make for the firm of Leopold and Co., in Brussels, and they don't like trade rivals. What stealing can be done in the country, they prefer to do themselves."

"When the time comes," said the little sailor grimly, "we shall be ready for them, and if they interfere with me, I shall make the Congo Free State people sit up. But in the mean while they are not here, and I don't see that they need be expected. They can trace us up the Congo from Leopoldville, if you like, by the villages we stopped at--one, we'll say, every two hundred miles--but then we find this new river, and where are we? The river's not charted; it's not known to any of the Free State people, or I, being in their steamboat service, would have been told of it; and the entrance is so well masked at its Congo end by islands, that no one would guess it was there. The Congo's twenty miles wide where our river comes in, and very shallow, and the steamer-channel's right at the further bank. If they'd another Englishman in their service up here, I'd not say; but don't you tell me that the half-baked Dutchmen and Dagos who skipper their launches would risk hunting out a new channel, and blunder on it that way."

"No," said Clay, "I'm with you there. But word travels amongst the natives. You can't get over that."

"That's where the risk comes in. But I've done my best to make it travel slow. I've got hold of that beast of a witch-doctor, who deserves hanging anyway for all the poor wretches he's killed, and I've told him that as soon as word slips out downriver of our being here, he'll get shot, one-time. He's a man of influence, that witch-doctor, and I shouldn't wonder but what he makes the natives keep their heads shut for quite a long time."

"It may be professional prejudice, but I rather hope that local pract.i.tioner gets his gruel somehow before we clear out." Clay shivered.

"He's a cruel devil. Remember the remains of those two poor sacrificed wretches we found when we got here?"

Kettle shrugged his shoulders. "I know. But what could one do? n.i.g.g.e.rs always are like that when they're left to play about alone--as these here have been, I suppose, since Creation Day. We couldn't pin the sacrifices on to the witch-doctor, or else, of course, we'd have strung him up. We could only just give him an order for these customs to stop one-time, and stand by to see it carried out. But we start the thing from now, on fresh, sensible lines. We're going to have no foolery about the n.i.g.g.e.r being as good as a white man. He isn't, and no man that ever saw him where he grows ever thought so."

"Speaking scientifically," said Clay, "it has always struck me that a n.i.g.g.e.r is an animal placed by the scheme of creation somewhere between a monkey and a white man. You might bracket him, say, with a Portugee."

"About that," said Kettle; "and if you treat him as more, you make him into a bad failure, whereas if he's left alone, he's a bit nasty and cruel. Now I think, Doc, there's a middle course, and that's what I'm going to try here whilst we're making our pile. We've grabbed four tidy villages already, and that makes a good beginning for this new republic; and when we've got things organized a bit more, and have a trifle of time, we can grab some others. And, by James! Doc, there's a name for you--the New Republic!"

"I seem to think it's been used in a book somewhere."

"The New Republic!" Kettle repeated relishingly. "It goes well. It's certain to have been used before, but it's good enough to be used again.

Some day, perhaps, it'll have railways, and public-houses, and a postal service, and some day it may even issue stamps of its own."

"With your mug in the middle!"

Captain Kettle reddened. "I don't see why not," he said stiffly. "I started the show, and by James! whilst I'm running it, the New Republic's got to hum; and when I'm gone, I shall be remembered as some one out of the common. I'm a man, Doctor Clay, that's got a high sense of duty. I should think it wrong to stay here sweating ivory out of these people, if I didn't put something into them in return."

"Well, you do seem to have got a hold over them, and that's a fact, and I guess you will be able to make them--" he broke off, and burst into a cackle of laughter. "Oh, my Christian aunt, look there!"

A mob of natives were reverently approaching the hut, two of them carrying skinny chickens. The witch-doctor led the advance. Kettle guessed what was intended, and got up from his seat to interfere.

"Oh, look here, Skipper," Clay pleaded, "don't spoil the show. Let's do the traveller for once, and observe the 'interesting native customs.'

You needn't be afraid; they're going to sacrifice the bigger hen to you, right enough."

Captain Kettle allowed himself to be persuaded, and sat back again. The mob of negroes came up to the doorway of the hut, and the witch-doctor, with many prostrations to the little sailor, made a long speech. Then the larger of the two fowls entered into the ceremony, and was slain with a sword, and the witch-doctor, squatting on the ground, read the omens.

Kettle accepted the homage with glum silence, evidently restraining himself, but when Clay's turn came, and the smaller and scraggier of the chickens yielded up life in his honor, he hitched up his feet, and squatted cross-legged on the chair, and held up his hand palm outward, after the manner of some grotesque Chinese idol. A sense of the absurd was one of the many things which had hampered this disreputable doctor all through his unlucky career.

The negroes, however, took it all in good part, and in time they departed, well satisfied. But Kettle wore a gloomy face.

"Funny, wasn't it?" said Clay.

"I call it beastly," Kettle snapped. "This sort of thing's got to stop.

I'm not going to have my new Republic dirtied by shows like that."

"Well," said Clay flippantly, "if you will set up as a little tin G.o.d on wheels, you must expect them to say their prayers to you."

"I didn't do anything of the kind. I merely stepped in and conquered them."

"Put it as you please, old man. But there's no getting over it that that's what they take you for."

"Then, by James! it comes to this: they shall be taught the real thing!"

"What, you'll import a missionary?"

"I shall wade in and teach them myself."

"Phew!" whistled Clay. "If you're going to start the New Jerusalem game on the top of the New Republic, I should say you'll have your hands full."

"Probably," said Kettle grimly; "but I am equal to that."

"And you'll not have much time left to see after ivory palaver."

"I shall go on collecting the ivory just the same. I shall combine business with duty. And"--here he flushed somewhat--"I'm going to take the bits of souls these n.i.g.g.e.rs have got, and turn them into the straight path."