A Master of Fortune Part 8

"No."

"Then I shall find you a laborer's job. Doc, are you handy with tools?"

"Only with those of my own trade," said Clay. "I'm pretty inefficient all round," he added, with a shrug, "or else I shouldn't be here."

"Very well," said Kettle, "then I'll rate myself chief engineer." He got up, and walked round to where the black second engineer, the last man shot, still nuzzled the boiler plates exactly in the same position where he had first fallen. He lifted one of the man's arms, and let it go. It jerked back again like a spring.

"Well, Daddy," he said, "you didn't take long to get stiff. They shot you nice and clean, anyway. I guess we'll let the river and the crocodiles bury you." With a sharp heave, he jerked the rigid body on to the rail, and even for the short second it poised there the poor dead clay managed to stop another of those bullets which flew up in such deadly silence from that distant sandbank.

"Good-by," said Kettle, as he toppled the corpse over, and it fell with a splash, stiff-limbed into the yellow water. He watched the body as it bobbed up again to the surface, and floated with the stream out into the silvery sunshine. "Good-by, c.o.c.ky," said he. "You've been a good n.i.g.g.e.r, and, as you were shot doing your duty, they'll set you on at the place where you've gone to, one of the lightest jobs they've got suitable for a black pagan. That's a theological fact. You'll probable turn to and stoke; I'll be sending you down presently another batch of heathen to shovel on the fire. I've got a biggish bill against those beggars on that sandbank yonder for the mischief they've done."

But it was no place there to waste much time on sentiment. The woodwork of the shabby little steamer was riddled with splintered holes; the rusted iron plating was starred with gray lead-splashes; and every minute more bullets ploughed furrows in the yellow waters of the river, or whisped through the air overhead, or hit the vessel herself with peremptory knocks. It is all very well to affect a contempt for a straggling ill-aimed fire such as this; but, given a long enough exposure to it, one is bound to be hit; and so, if the work was to be attempted, the quicker it was set about the more chance there was of getting it finished.

They use wood fuel on these small, ungainly steamers which do their business up in the savage heart of Africa on the waters of the Haut Congo, and because every man with a gun for many reasons feels himself to be an enemy of the Free State, the steamers carry their firing logs stacked in ramparts round their boilers and other vital parts. But wood, as compared with coal, is bulky stuff to carry, and as the stowage capacity of these stern-wheelers is small, they have to make frequent calls to rebunker.

Indeed, it was for this purpose that Kettle had originally put in at the village where Commandant Balliot had his headquarters; and, as other events happened there which he had not calculated upon, he had steamed out into the broad river again without a chance of taking any logs on board, and, in fact, with his stock of fuel down very near to the vanishing-point.

On this account, therefore, after the fatal shot into the boiler, and the subsequent disablement and drifting on to the sandbank, all repairing work had to be done under full exposure to the fire of the mutineers. The Central African negro is a fairly stolid person, and as the sight of a little slaughter does not in the least upset his nerves, he can stand bullet hail for a good long time without emotion, especially if there is no noise and bustle attached to it. But once let a scare get rubbed home into his stupid brain, and let him get started off on the run, and he is an awkward person to stop.

But Kettle did not start to hustle his black laborers back to work at once. He knew that there would be heavy mortality amongst them once they were exposed to fire, and he wanted to lose as few of them as possible.

He had got use for them afterward. So for long enough he worked alone, and the bullets spattered around him gayly. He hammered out a lead templet to cover the wound in the boiler, which, of course, as bad luck would have it, was situated at a place where three plates met; and then whilst Balliot's armorer with fire and hammer beat out a plate of iron the exact counterpart of this, he rigged a ratchet drill and bored holes through the boiler's skin to carry the necessary bolts.

Clay volunteered a.s.sistance once, but as he was told he would be asked for help when it was needed, he squatted down under the sheltered side of the boiler again, and smoked, and played more music-hall ditties on the banjo. Commandant Balliot held to a sullen silence. He was growing to have a poisonous hatred for this contemptuous little Englishman who by sheer superiority had made him give up his treasured dictatorship, and he formed schemes for the Englishman's discomfiture in the near future.

But for the present he hoped very much that the man would not be killed; he recognized, with fresh spasms of anger every time he thought about it, that without Captain Kettle there would be no future--at any rate on this earth--for any of them.

And meanwhile Captain Owen Kettle, stripped to shoes and trousers, sweated over his work in the baking heat. Twice had a bullet grazed him, once on the neck, and once on the round of a shoulder, and red stains grew over the white satin of his skin. The work was strange to him certainly, but he set about it with more than an amateur's skill. All sailors have been handy with their fingers from time immemorial, but the modern steamer-sailor, during his apprenticeship as mate, has to turn his hand to a vast variety of trades. He is painter, carpenter, stevedore, crew-driver, all in one day; and on the next he is doctor, navigator, clerk, tailor, and engineer. And especially he is engineer.

He must be able to drive winch, windla.s.s, or crane, like an artist; he must have a good apt.i.tude for using hand tools; and if he can work machine tools also, it is so much the better for him.

Yes, Captain Kettle put the patch on that boiler like a workman. He fitted his bolts, and made his joints; then luted the manhole and bolted that back in place; and then stepped down while a couple of negroes sluiced him with water from gourds, and rubbed him clean and dry with handfuls of wild cotton waste. So far, although the incessant hail of bullets had pitted the boiler's skin in a hundred places, no second shot had found a spot sufficiently soft to make a puncture. The range of the bombardment was long, perhaps, and though a bullet at seven hundred yards may, with convenience, kill a man, it will not pierce seven-eighths boiler plate. And so, theoretically, the boiler was safe for the time being.

But practically it was otherwise. The boiler was by no means new. It was corroded with years, and incapacity, and neglect, as is the custom with all parts of boats and machinery on the Haut Congo. But it had been brought up to that waterway by carriers at vast expense from Matadi, the highest steamer port on the Lower Congo, probably costing three months and a dozen lives in transit, so that it was debited in the books of the Free State as being worth its weight in silver, and destined to be used on without replacement till it saw fit to burst.

So Kettle knew that in places it would be not much thicker than stout brown paper, and was quite aware that if any of the pattering bullets investigated one of these patches, he would have to do his work over again. He had a strong--and, I think, natural--disinclination for this.

He had come through terrific risks during the last four hours, and could not expect to do so a second time with equal immunity; his two wounds smarted; and (although it sounds ludicrous that such a thing should have weight) the dirt inseparable from such employment jarred against his neat and cleanly habits, and filled him with unutterable disgust.

The moment, he conceived, was one for hurry. He told off four of the negroes as trimmers and stokers, and set Commandant Balliot over them to see that they pressed on with their work; he sent Clay with a huge gang of helpers overboard on the lee side to risk the crocodiles, and dig away the sand; and he himself, with a dozen paddlers, got into the dug-out canoe, which was his only boat, and set to carrying out a kedge and line astern. All of these occupations took time, and when at last steam had mounted to a working pressure in the battered gauge, and they got on board again, two of his canoe-men had been shot, and one of Clay's party had been dragged away into deep water by a prowling crocodile.

As no one else was competent, Kettle himself took charge of the engines, and roared his commands with one hand on the throttle, and the other on the reversing gear; Clay, for the moment, was quartermaster, and stood to the wheel on the upper deck; and Balliot, under the tuition of curses and revilings, drove the winch, which heaved and slacked on the line made fast to the kedge.

The little steamer rolled and squeaked and coughed, and the paddle-wheel at her stern kicked up a compost of sand and mud and yellow water that almost choked them with its crushed marigold scent. The helm swung over alternately from hard-a-starboard to hard-a-port; the stern-wheel ground savagely into the sand, first one way and then the other; and the gutter, which she had delved for herself in the bank, grew gradually wider and more deep. Then slowly she began to make real progress astern.

"Now, heave on that kedge," Kettle yelled, and the winch bucked and clattered under a greater head of steam, and the warp sung to the strain; and presently the little vessel slid off the bank, picked up her anchor, and was free to go where she pleased.

"Hurrah," cried Balliot, "we are saved. You are a brave man, Captain."

"I didn't ask you to speak," retorted Kettle. "We aren't out of the wood by a long chalk yet."

"But we are out of their fire now. We shall be disturbed no further."

"No, my lad, but we've got a precious heap of disturbing to do on our own account before we've squared up for this tea party. I'm going to drop down stream to somewhere quiet where we can fill up with wood, and then I'm coming back again to give your late Tommies bad fits."

"But I don't authorize this. I didn't foresee--"

"Very likely not. But a fat lot I care for that. Fact remains that I'm skipper here, and I'm going to do as I think best. I've got it in mind that my two engineers and a lot of good n.i.g.g.e.rs have been shot by those disgusting savages over yonder, and I don't permit that sort of thing without making somebody pay a pretty steep bill for the amus.e.m.e.nt. So I'm going down stream to wood up, and then we'll come back and make them pay for the tea party."

"You are exceeding your powers. I warn you."

"If any of my inferiors on board ship don't keep their heads shut when they aren't spoken to," said Kettle unpleasantly, "I always disarrange their front teeth. If I have any more palaver from you, you'll get to know what it feels like." He shouted up the companion way--"On top there, quartermaster?"

"Hullo?" said Clay.

"Keep her down river to M'barri-m'barri. That's a twelve-mile run from here. There are two big cotton woods in a line which will bring you to the landing. You know the channel?"

"I ought to. I've been up and down it times enough. But I guess I don't--at least, not now."

"Fuddled again, are you? Then I'll con you from here. You see three trees growing on that island bang ahead? Keep her on those." He turned to a couple of stalwart n.i.g.g.e.rs at his side--"Say, you boys, you lib for top, one-time. You take dem Doctor's gin-bottle, and you throw him overboard, one-time. If dem Doctor he make palaver, you throw him overboard too. Away with you now. By James! we got to get discipline in this ship somehow, and I'm a man that can teach it. Here, you black swine at that furnace, go slow with those logs, or we won't be able to steam her half-way."

He bustled about the little vessel, turning every soul on board to some employment or other; and those of the newcomers who did not know his wishes, and were not quick enough for his taste, received instruction in a manner which is understood by men all the world over, be their skins black, or white, or yellow.

The process might not be very pleasant for those who came in contact with it, but it was very effective for the purpose aimed at. In sea parlance Kettle had to "break up" some half-dozen of them before all hands acquiesced to his dictatorship; but they were quick to see there was a Man over them this time, and involuntarily they admired his virility even while they rubbed ruefully at their b.u.mps; and during the times of stress that came afterward, none of these Africans were so smart to obey as those on whom their taskmaster's hand had originally come heaviest.

The period of instruction was short. It began when the little stern-wheeler slipped off the bank and got under weigh. It was completed satisfactorily during the twelve miles run down the river. The boat was steered into M'barri-m'barri creek, made hastily fast to trees on the bank, and exuded her people in an armed rush. They had possession of the place almost before the villagers knew of their arrival, and proceeded to the object of their call. There was no especial show of violence.

The women and the children were imprisoned in the huts; the men were given axes, and sent off into the forest to cut and gather fuel; and, meanwhile, the landing party set themselves to eat what they fancied and to carry off any store of ivory and rubber that they might chance upon.

There was nothing remarkable in the manoeuvre. It is the authorized course of proceedings when a Free State launch goes into the bank for wood and supplies.

The villagers brought down the logs smartly enough, and waxed quite friendly on finding that none of the hostage women and children had been killed or maltreated during their absence. They duly gave up the German axes which had been loaned to them, and carried the wood aboard. Kettle arranged its disposition. He had solid defences built up all round the vulnerable boiler and engines. He had a stout breastwork built all round inside the rail of the lower deck, quite stout enough to absorb a bullet even if fired at point-blank range. And he had another breastwork built on the third deck, above the cabins, so that he turned the flimsy little steamer into a very staunch, if somewhat ungainly, floating fort.

He got on board the rubber and ivory he had collected, and had it struck down below--the dividends of the State have to be remembered first, even at moments of trouble like these--and then he gave orders, and the vessel set off again up stream. On the lower deck he stayed himself during the journey back, and gave instructions to Commander Balliot in the art of engine-driving.

Balliot was sullen at first, and showed little inclination to acquire so warm and grimy a craft, and fenced himself behind his dignity. But Kettle put forth his persuasive powers; he did not hit the man, he merely talked; and under the merciless lash of that vinegary little tongue, Balliot repented him of his stubbornness, and set himself to acquire the elementary knack of engine nursing and feeding and driving.

"And now," said Kettle, cheerfully, when the pupil had mastered the vague outlines of his business, "you see what can be done by kindness. I haven't hit you once, and you know enough already not to blow her up if only you're careful. Don't you even sham stupid again; and, see here, don't you grit your teeth at me when you think I'm not looking, or I'll beat you into butcher's meat when I've hammered these rebels, and have a bit of spare time. You want to learn a lot of manners yet, Mr.

Commandant Balliot, and where I come from we teach these to foreigners free of charge. Just you remember that I'm your better, my man, and give me proper respect, or I'll lead you a life a n.i.g.g.e.r's yellow dog wouldn't fancy."

Now the revolted troops, when they saw the launch wriggle off the bank where she was stuck, and steam away down stream, were filled with exasperation, because they had confidently antic.i.p.ated making a barbecue out of Commandant Balliot in return for many cruelties received, and doing the same by any other Europeans whom they might catch on the steamer, because, being white, they would be presumably relatives of Balliot. It never occurred to their simple minds that the launch would return, much less that she would offer them battle; so when indeed she did appear again, they were in the midst of a big consultation about their future movements.

However, the African who owns a gun, be he revolted soldier or mere peaceful farmer, never lets that weapon go far away from his hand, for fear that his neighbor should send him away into the land of shadows in order to possess it. And so a fusillade was soon commenced. But the launch, armed with her fine rampart of logs, bore it unflinchingly, and steamed up within a hundred yards of the thick of them, and just held there in her place, with her wheel gently flapping against the stream, and opened a vicious fire from fifty muzzles.

Of modern rifles Kettle had only twenty on board, but he had an abundance of those beautiful instruments known as "trade guns," and at shot-range a man can be killed just as definitely by a dose of pot-leg out of a gas-pipe barrel as he can by a dum-dum bullet sent through scientific rifling. Indeed, for close-quarter righting pot-leg is far more comprehensive, and far less likely to miss than the lonely modern bullet. Moroever, his crew had quite as much dread for him as they had for the enemy, and as a consequence they fought with a briskness which made even their grim little chief approve.

The crowd of mutineers did not, however, offer themselves to be browned like a pack of helpless sheep for long. They were Africans who had been born in an atmosphere of scuffle and skirmish, and death had no especial terrors for them. Moreover, they had learnt certain elements of the modern art of war from white officers; and now, in the moment of trial, their dull brains worked, and the crafty knowledge came back to them.

They were a thousand strong; they had friends all round--cannibal friends--who would come to help in the fight and share in the loot; and, moreover, they had canoes. Other well-manned canoes also were fast coming to their help down stream.

In the canoes then they put off, and Kettle smiled grimly as he saw the move. He had thought of this before, but it was greater luck than he had dared hope for. But now the enemy had given himself over into his hand.

The one strong position of the stern-wheel launch was her forward part.

The Congo is full of snags and floating logs which cannot always be avoided, and so all steamers are strengthened to stand contact with them; and he could give them the stem now without risk to himself.