A Master of Fortune Part 14

"That's me. I left there two years ago, to start on my own."

"H'm," said the little sailor in the canoe. "I was master of one of Kevendale's ships once. It was me that had misfortune with the _Armenia_."

"By gum! are you Captain Kettle that piled up the old _Atrocity_ on that iceberg? I'm sorry to see you come down to this, Captain."

"Captain Kettle," said the sulky Mate, "that was in the Congo Pilot Service?"

"Yes," said Kettle.

"Then, Captain," said the Mate, "I take back what I said about you being Robinson Crusoe. You may have met with misfortune, but, by the Lord, you're a man all the way through. You've made the ports down there on the Congo just ring with the way you kept your end up with those beastly Belgians. And now when any Englishman goes ash.o.r.e at Boma or Matadi or any place on the river, they're fit to eat him."

The compliment had its doubtful side, but Kettle bowed with pleasure.

"Mr. Mate," he said, "I should have been more polite to you. I forgot you were a man who had just come through an anxious time."

"Anxious time! My holy grandmother! You should have just seen. It was my watch below when she took the ground, and I give you my word for it, there's deep water marked in the chart where she struck. Third mate had the bridge, and he rang for engines hard astern. Nothing happened. From the first moment she hit, the Krooboys got the notion she was their ship by all the rules of the Coast, and they played up to that tune like men.

They bashed in the heads of the two engineers who tried to handle the reversing gear, and fairly took the ship below; and when the old man came out in his pyjamas and started his fancy shooting on deck, they just ran in on him and pulled him into kybobs.

"The second mate pegged out a week ago with black-water fever. So there was only me and Mr. Sheriff here, and the third left that were worth counting." He wagged a stubby finger contemptuously at the rest of his boat's crew. "Half this crowd don't know enough English to take a wheel, and the rest of them come from happy Dutchland, where they don't make soldiers, bless their silly eyes. I can tell you I'm not feeling sweet about it myself. I left a bran new suit of clothes and an Accra finger-ring on that blame' ship."

"Well, never mind the rest of the tale now," said Sheriff. "Here we are kicked overboard, and glad enough to save our bare skins, I'll own. We won't go into the question of manning British ships with foreigners just now. What's interesting me is the fact that those Krooboys have got hatches off already, and are standing by the cranes and winches. I've seen them work cargo before all up and down the coast, and know the pace they can put into it, and if we don't move quick they'll scoff that ship clear down to the ceilings of her holds." A winch chain rattled, and a sling load of cloth bales swung up to one of her derrick sheaves. "My faith, look at that! They've begun to broach cargo by now, and there are some of the beggars setting to lower the surf-boats to ferry it on to the beach."

The Mate rapped out sulphurous wishes for the Krooboys' future state.

"Yes, yes," said Sheriff, "but we're wasting time. Come now, Captain, you heard my offer, and you seemed to like it. I'm waiting for you to fill your part of the bargain. Away with you ash.o.r.e, and bring off your army and take possession."

"I'm afraid, sir," said Kettle honestly, "you've been taking a little too much for granted. I've got no establishment ash.o.r.e. I'm just what you see--a common tramp, or worse, seeing that I've been play-acting for my dinners of late. And as for any help those n.i.g.g.e.rs ash.o.r.e could give, why, I shouldn't recommend it. The one-eyed old son of a dog who's head-man, has served on ships according to his own telling, and he'll have the same notions about loot as your own Krooboys. The Coast n.i.g.g.e.r hereabouts has got a fancy that any ship on the beach is c.u.mshaw for himself, and you'll not knock it out of him without some hard teaching.

No, Mr. Sheriff, to call in that one-eyed head-man and his friends--who it makes me hot to think I had to sing and dance to not six hours back--would only pile up the work ahead of us. Much best tackle the ship as she is."

"What!" said Sheriff. "Do you mean to say we can retake her? You don't know what those boys are like. I tell you they were fair demons when we left, and they'll be worse now, because they are certain to have got liquor inside them by this. It's not a bit of use your counting on these deckhands and stokers in the boat. They're not a penn'oth of use, the whole lot of them."

"Well," said Kettle diffidently, "I'd got my eye on that packet of cartridge beside you on the thwart. If they were four-fiftys--"

"They are--let's look--four--five--nought. Yes, well?"

Captain Kettle pulled a well-cleaned revolver out of his waist-cloth.

"I've carried this empty for a whole year now, sir, but I don't think I've forgot my shooting."

"I can speak here," said the Mate. "I've heard of his usefulness that way on the Congo. When Captain Kettle lets off his gun, Mr. Sheriff, it's a funeral. By gum, if he's a way of getting the ship again, I'm on for helping. Look! There's that steward's boy, Tins, going into my room this minute. I've a suit of clothes there that have never been put on, and he'll have them for a cert if we don't look quick."

"Now then, Captain," said Sheriff, "if there's anything going to be done, get a move on you."

Kettle paddled the dug-out alongside, and stepped into the lifeboat. His eye glittered as he tore open the wrapping of the cartridges and reloaded his revolver. It was long since he had known the complacent feel of the armed man.

"Now," he said, "there's one more thing. I'm not in uniform, but I hold a master's ticket, and I've got to be skipper."

"You can take the berth for me," said the Mate. "I'll say outright it's a lot above my weight."

"And I've offered it to you already," said Sheriff. "Go on, man, and give your orders."

Captain Kettle's first desire was to get back to the steamer whence the boat had come, and this the mixed crew of foreigners at the oars had scruples about carrying out. But Kettle and the Mate got furiously at work on them with their hands, and in less than a minute the men were doing as they were bidden, except, that is, a trio who were too badly wounded to sit up, and who were allowed to wallow on the floor gratings.

The Mate straddled in the stern and steered her with an oar, and the white painted boat pulled heavily toward the stranded vessel. The Krooboys in possession were quick to see her coming. A mob of them gathered on the bridge deck, gibbering and shouting, and threatening with their hands; and even before the boat drew within range, they commenced a vigorous fusilade of coal lumps. Kettle had all a cleanly man's dislike for these dirty missiles, and he halted the boat just beyond the limit of their fire, and stood up himself, and sighted the revolver over the crook of his left elbow.

He dropped one man, and the others raged at him. He dropped a second, and still with an impotent courage they stood their ground. He brought a third shrieking to the deck, and then, and not before, did the others turn to run, and he shot a fourth to hurry their going. Then he turned to the rowers in the lifeboat. "Give way, you thieves," he shouted at them; "set me aboard whilst the coast is clear.--Mr. Mate, round her up under those davit tackles."

Again the Krooboys tried to prevent the boarding, but again the fire of that terrible revolver drove them yelping to shelter, and the boat drew up with a b.u.mp and a swirl under the dangling ropes. Kettle clambered forward along the thwarts, and swarmed up one fall with a monkey's quickness, and the Mate, a man of wooden courage, raced him up the other. Sheriff could not climb; they had to haul him up the ship's side by brute force in a bowline; and providentially they were allowed to do this uninterrupted. The foreign crew of the lifeboat, limp with scare, would have been mere slaughter-pigs on board even if they could have been lured there, which was improbable, and so they were bidden to haul off out of shot, and wait till they were needed.

Now there was no question here of risking a hand-to-hand encounter. The Krooboys on board mustered quite fifty head, and most of them were men of enormous physical strength. So the three invaders went into the chart-house, from the ports of which they could command the bridge deck and the main fore deck, and shot the door-bolts by way of making themselves secure. The walls were of iron, and the roof was of iron; the place was a perfect stronghold in its way; and as there was no chance of its being stormed without due notice, they tacitly called a halt to recover breath.

"Here," said Sheriff, "is the poor old skipper's whisky. I guess a second mate's nip all round will do us no harm."

"Here," said Kettle, "are the old man's Canary cigars, nice and black and flavory, and I guess one of them's more in my line, sir, thanking you all the same. I haven't come across a Christian smoke for more dreary months than I care to think about."

The Mate was peering through one of the forward ports. "There's the door of my room wide open," he grunted. "I bet those new clothes of mine are gone. They're just the thing to take a n.i.g.g.e.r's eye--good thick blue broadcloth."

Captain Kettle wiped the perspiration from his forehead with a bare, sinewy arm. "Now," he said, "enough time's been wasted. We must keep those toughs on the move, or they'll find leisure to think, and be starting some fresh wickedness."

"If we go out of this chart-house," said Sheriff doubtfully, "they'll swamp us by sheer weight. You must remember we've only got two pistols, yours and mine. The poor old skipper's is lost."

"I'm going to try what a little quiet talking-to will do first, sir. I used to be a bit useful with my tongue, if I haven't lost the trick. But before that, I'm going to borrow this white drill coat and pants of your late old man's, if you don't mind. You'd hardly think it, sir, if you knew the trials I've gone through in that beastly Africa, but I believe it's the want of a decent pair of trousers that's hurt me more than anything."

Captain Kettle dressed himself with care, and put on a white-covered uniform cap; and then, happening to see a pair of scissors, he took them up and trimmed his beard before the gla.s.s. Sheriff looked on at these preparations with fidgeting impatience, and from without there was a clamor of negro voices taking counsel. But the little sailor was not to be hurried. He went through his toilet with solemn deliberation, and then he opened the chart-house door and went out beneath the baking sunshine of the bridge-deck beyond.

A cl.u.s.ter of Krooboys stood at the further end of it, cackling with talk, and at sight of him they called their friends on the main deck below, who began to come up as fast as they could get foot on the ladders. They showed inclinations for a rush, but Kettle held up his left hand for them to keep back, and they obeyed the order. They saw that vicious revolver gripped in his right fingers, and they respected its powers.

He addressed them with a fine fluency of language. He had a good command of sailor's English, and also of Coast English, both of which are specially designed for forcible comment; and he knew, moreover, sc.r.a.ps from a score of native dialects, which, having Arabic for a groundwork, are especially rich in those parts of speech-which have the highest vituperative value. The black man is proverbially tough, and a whip, moral or physical, which will cut the most hardened of whites to ribbons, will leave him unmoved. An artist in words may rail at him for an hour without making him flicker an eyelash, or a Yankee mate might hammer him with a packing-case lid (always supposing there was no nail in it) for a like period without jolting from him so much as a cry or a groan. And so I think it speaks highly for Captain Kettle's powers when, at the end of three minutes' talk, he caused many of those Krooboys to visibly wince.

You cannot touch a Krooboy's feelings by referring insultingly to his mother, because he has probably very dim recollections of the lady; you can not rile him by gibing comments on his personal appearance; but still there are ways of getting home to him, and Kettle knew the secret.

"You make fight-palaver," he said, "you steal, you take ship, you drink cargo gin, and you think your _ju-ju_ fine _ju-ju._ But my _ju-ju_ too-plenty-much better, and I fit for show it you again if dis steal-palaver no stop one-time."

They began to move threateningly toward him. "Very well," he said, "then I tell you straight; you no fit to be called black boys. You bushmen.

Bah! you be bushmen."

The maddened Krooboys ran in, and the wicked revolver spoke out, and then Kettle nipped into the deck-house and slammed the door to on his heels. The black ape-like faces jabbered and mowed at the window ports, and brawny arms were thrust in, grappling viciously, but the Mate drew out camp-stools from a locker, and with these the three white men stabbed and hit at every face or arm which showed itself. There was no more shooting, and there was no need for it. By sheer weight of blows the whites kept the enemy from climbing through the windows, and so long as the windows were not stormed, the iron house was safe to them. And presently one of the head-men blew his boatswain's whistle, and the attack drew off.

Promptly Kettle reloaded his revolver and stepped out into the open.

"Now," he said, "you seen my _ju-ju?_ You savvy him too-big _ju-ju_? You want any more of it? No. Then get away aft with you. You hear? You lib for bottom deck back there, one-time." He rushed at them, one slight, slim, white-clad white man against all that reeking, shining mob, and they struggled away before him in grotesque tumblings and jostlings, like a flock of sheep.

But at the break of the deck he paused and looked below him, and the fight all dropped away from his face. No. 3 hatch lay open before him, with the covers thrown here and there. From it was creeping up a thin blue smoke, with now and then a scarlet trail of flame. Here was a complication.

"So you gluttonous, careless brutes have set fire to her, have you?

Here, who was in the engine room?"

Discipline was coming back. A man in black trousers, with a clout round his neck, stepped out.

"You? Well, slip below, and turn steam into the donkey."

"Steam no lib, sar. Cranes die when we try to work him just now."