A Master of Fortune Part 9

He pretended flight when the canoes first came out, standing across toward the further bank of the river, which was some dozen miles away.

The rebels fell into the lure, and paddled frantically after him. Canoe after canoe put out, as fast as they could be manned. The white men on the steamer were running away; they were frightened; there was spoil and revenge to be got for the taking. And from unseen villages on the islands and on the bank other canoes shot out to get their share.

In the mean while Kettle consolidated his defences. Frantically he worked, and like Trojans Clay and the negroes labored under him. All that drunken doctor's limp _laissez faire_ was gone now. The blood of some fighting ancestor had warmed up inside him. He might be physically weak and unhandy, but the l.u.s.t of battle filled him up like new drink, and he forgot his disgraceful past, and lived only for the thrill of the present moment.

The log barricades had to be lashed and strutted so that no collision could unship them, and all hands sweated and strained in that tropical heat, till the job could not be bettered. And at the after part of the lower deck, Commandant Balliot, driven on also by the strong-willed man whom n.o.body on board could resist, tended the engines with all his brain and nerve, and did his best to make the fighting machine perfect.

"Now," said Kettle at last, "as we have got those fool Tommies nicely tailed out about the river, we'll quit this running-away game, and get to business. Mr. Chief Engineer, open that throttle all it'll go, and let her rip, and mind you're standing by for my next order. Doc, you keep your musketry cla.s.s well in hand. Don't waste shots. But when you see me going to run down a canoe, stand by to give them eternal ginger when they're ten yards from the stern. I'll whistle when you're to fire."

Captain Kettle went on to the upper deck and took over the wheel, and screwed it over hard-a-port. The little top-heavy steamer swung round in a quick circle, lurching over dangerously to the outside edge. She ran for half a mile up stream, and then turned again and came back at the top of her gait. She was aiming at one particular canoe, which for a while came on pluckily enough to meet her.

But African nerve has its limits, and the sight of this strange uncouth steamer, which followed so unflinchingly their every movement, was too much for the sweating paddlers. They turned their ponderous dug-out's head, and tried to escape.

Kettle watched them like a cat. He had the whistle string in his teeth, so as to leave him both hands free for the steering wheel, and when the moment came he threw back his head, and drew the string. The scream of the steam whistle was swamped instantly in the roar of a blasting volley. Not many of the shots. .h.i.t--for the African is not a marksman--but the right effect was gained. The blacks in the canoe ducked and flinched; they were for the moment quite demoralized; and before they could man their paddles again, the stern-wheeler's stem had crushed into their vessel, had cut a great gash from one side, had rolled it over, and then mounted the wreck, and drove down stream across the top of it.

A few more angry shots snapped out at the black bodies swimming in the yellow water. "Hold up, there," Kettle ordered, "and let them swim if they can, and chance the crocodiles. They've got their gruel. Load up now, and get ready for the next."

He turned the launch again, and stood across the stream down the strung-out line of canoes, occasionally making feints at them, but ramming no more for the present. They all fired at him as he pa.s.sed them; indeed, a wild, scattered fire was general from all the fleet; but his log armor protected him from this, and he steamed grimly on, without returning a shot.

At the furthermost end of the line he turned sharply again, and ran down the last canoe, just as he had run down the other; and then he deliberately started to drive the whole fleet together into one solid flock. He had the speed of them, and with rifle fire they could not damage him, but for all that it was not easy work. They expected the worst, and made desperate efforts to scatter and escape; finally, he drove them altogether in one hopeless huddle--cowed, scared, and tired out; and then he brought the stern-wheeler to a sudden stop just above them, and made Clay shout out terms in the native tongue.

They were to throw all their weapons overboard into the river. They did it without question.

They were to throw their paddles overboard. They did that also.

They were to tie all their canoes together into one big raft. They obeyed him there, too, with frenzied quickness.

He took the raft in tow and steamed off down river to the headquarters Free State post of the Upper River. He was feeling almost complacent at the time. He had shown Commandant Balliot what he was pleased to term a quick way with rebels.

But Commandant Balliot, whose life had been saved, and army disarmed and brought back from rebellion in spite of himself, was not the man to let any vague feeling of grat.i.tude overweigh his own deep sense of injury.

He was incompetent, and he knew it, but Kettle had been tactless enough to tell him so; and, moreover, Kettle had thrown out the national gibe about Waterloo, which no Belgian can ever forgive. Commandant Balliot gritted his teeth, and rubbed at his scrubby beard, and melodramatically vowed revenge.

He said nothing about it then; he even sat at meat with the two Englishmen, and shared the ship duties with them without so much as a murmur. He could not but notice, too, that Kettle said nothing more now about being supreme chief, and had, in fact, tacitly dropped back to his old position as skipper of the launch. But Balliot brooded over the injuries he had received at the hands of this truculent little sailor, and they grew none the smaller from being held in memory.

Kettle's own method of reporting his doings, too, was not calculated to endear him to the authorities. He steamed down to headquarters at Leopoldville, went ash.o.r.e, and swung into the Commandant's house with easy contempt and a.s.surance. He gave an arid account of the launch's voyage up the great river to the centre of Africa and back, and then in ten words described Balliot's disaster, his rescue, and its cost. "And so," he wound up, "as the contract was outside Mr. Balliot's size, I took it in my own hands and carried it through. I've brought back your blooming army down here. It's quite tame now."

The Commandant at Leopoldville nodded stiffly, and said he would confer with Captain Kettle's senior officer, Commandant Balliot, after which Kettle would probably hear something further.

"All right," said the little man. "I should tell you, too, that Mr.

Balliot's not without his uses. With a bit of teaching I got him to handle my engines quite decent for an amateur." He turned to go, but stopped again in the glare of the doorway. "Oh, there's one other thing.

I want to recommend to you Doctor Clay. He's a good man, Clay. He stood by me well in the trouble we had, after he got roused up. I'd like to recommend him for promotion."

"I will see if Commandant Balliot--as senior officer--adds his recommendation to yours," said the other drily. "Good-morning to you for the present."

Captain Kettle went down to the beach, and stepped along the gangway on to the stern-wheel launch. The working negroes on the lower deck stopped their chatter for the moment as he pa.s.sed, and looked up at him with a queer mixture of awe and admiration. From above came the tinkle of a banjo and the roar of an English song. The doctor was free, and was amusing himself according to his fashion.

Kettle got his accordion and went up on the hurricane deck and joined him, and till near on sundown the pair of them sat there giving forth music alternately. There was a fine contrast between them. The disreputable doctor deliberately forgot everything of the past, and lived only for the reckless present; the shipmaster had got his wife and children always filling half his memory, and was in a constant agony lest he should fail to properly provide for them. And as a consequence Clay's music was always of the lighter sort, and was often more than impolite; while Kettle's was, for the most part, devotional, and all of it sober, staid, and thoughtful. They were a strong contrast, these two, but they pulled together with one another wonderfully. Kettle used sometimes to wonder why it was, and came to the conclusion that it was the tie of music which did it. But Clay never worried about the matter at all. He was not the man to fill his head with useless problems.

But on this afternoon their concert was cut short before its finish.

Commandant Balliot came back to the launch with satisfaction on his streaming face, and two armed black soldiers plodding at his heels.

"Well," said Kettle, "have they made you a colonel yet, or are they only going to give you the Congo medal?"

"You sacred pig," said Balliot, "you talked to M. le Commandant here of rebels. What are you but a rebel? I have told him all, and he has sent me to arrest you."

"Good old Waterloo," said Kettle cheerfully. "I bet you lied, and because you are both Belgians, I suppose he believed you."

The fat man gritted his teeth. "You talked of having a short way with rebels yourself. You will find that we have a short way here, too. You are under arrest."

"So you've said."

Balliot said a couple of words in the native to one of his followers, and the man produced a pair of rusty handcuffs and held them out alluringly.

Kettle's pale cheeks flushed darkly. "No," he said, "by James! No, that's not the way for a thing like you to set about it." He jumped to his feet, and thrust his savage little face close to the black soldier's eyes. "Give me dem handcuffs." The man surrendered them limply, and Kettle flung them overboard. Balliot was trying to get a revolver from the leather holster at his waist, but Kettle, who had his weapon in a hip pocket, was ready first, and covered him.

"Throw up your hands!"

Commandant Balliot did so. He knew enough about Captain Kettle to understand that he meant business.

"Tell your soldiers to drop their guns, or I'll spread their brains on the deck."

Balliot obeyed that order also.

"Now, Doc," said Kettle in a different tone, "pack your traps and go ash.o.r.e."

"What for?" asked Clay.

"Because I'm going to take this steamer for a cruise up river. I don't mind getting the sack; I'd reckoned on that. But, by James! I'm not going to be arrested by these Belgian brutes, and that's final."

"Well, I suppose they would string you up, or shoot you, to soothe their precious dignity, from what His Whiskers here says."

"They're not going to get the chance," snapped Kettle. "Handcuffs, by James! Here, clear out, Doc, and let me get the ship under way."

"No," said Clay. "I fancy I've had about enough of the Congo Free State service, too. I'll come, too."

"Don't be an idiot."

Dr. Clay gave a whimsical laugh. "Have I ever been anything else all my life?"--He went across and took the revolver out of Balliot's holster--there, I've burnt my boats. I've disarmed His Whiskers here, and defied authority, and that gives them a _casus belli_ against me.

You'll have to take me along now out of sheer pity."

"Very well," said Kettle; "help me to shove the three of them into one of the empty rooms below, and then mount guard on them to see they don't make a row. We mustn't have them giving the alarm of this new game till we've got a start on us. You're a good soul, Doc. I'll never forget this of you."

And so Captain Owen Kettle finally severed his connection with the Congo Free State service, and set off at once again as his own master. He had no trouble with the black crew of the launch. The men half adored, half dreaded him; and, anyway, were prepared to take his orders before any others. They got the little vessel under weigh again, and just before the gang-plank was pulled in, Commandant Balliot and his disarmed escort were driven on to the beach.

The Belgian was half wild with mortification and anger. "You have won now," he screamed. "But you will be fetched back, and I myself will see that you are disgracefully hanged."

"If you come after me and worry me," said Kettle, coolly, "I'll give you my men to chop. Just you remember that, Mr. Waterloo. I think you know already that I am a fellow that never lies."