"You can't, anyway. If the Doc and I had turned up with this launch half an hour later, your excellent troops would have knocked you on the head and chopped you afterward. But I'd like to remind you that we ran in-sh.o.r.e and took you away in spite of their teeth."

"You are very brave," sneered the Commandant, "you and Monsieur le Docteur."

"Well, you see," said Kettle with cheerful insult, "our grandfathers didn't run away at Waterloo, and that gives us something to go upon."

"I put you under arrest," screamed the Belgian. "I will have satisfaction for this later. I----"

"Steady on," said Clay, with a yawn. He put down his banjo, stretched, and stood up. Behind him the bullets pattered merrily against the iron plating. "Why on earth do you two keep on nagging? Look at me--I'm half drunk as usual, and I'm as happy as a lord. Take a peg, each of you, and sweeten your tempers."

They glared at him from each side.

"Now it's not the least use either of you two trying to quarrel with me.

We might as well all be friends together for the little time we've got.

We've a good deal in common: we're all bad eggs, and we're none of us fit for our billets. Monsieur le Commandant, you were a sous-officier in Belgium who made Brussels too hot to hold you; you come out here, and you're sent to govern a district the size of Russia, which is a lot beyond your weight.

"Friend Kettle, you put a steamer on the ground in the lower Congo; you probably had a bad record elsewhere, or you'd never have drifted to the Congo service at all; and now you're up here on the Haut Congo skippering a rubbishy fourpenny stern-wheel launch, which of course is a lot beneath your precious dignity.

"And I--well, I once had a practice at home; and got into a row over a woman; and when the row was through, well, where was the practice? I came out here because no one will look at me in any other quarter of the globe. I get wretched pay, and I do as little as I possibly can for it.

I'm half-seas over every day of the week, and I'm liked because I can play the banjo."

"I don't see what good you're getting by abuse like this," said Kettle.

"I'm trying to make you both forget your silly naggling. We may just as well be cheerful for the bit of time we've got."

"Bit of time!"

"Well, it won't be much anyway. Here's the launch with a hole shot in her boiler, and no steam, drifted hard and fast on to a sandbank. On another bank, eight hundred yards away, are half a regiment of rebel troops with plenty of good rifles and plenty of cartridges, browning us for all they're worth. Their friends are off up stream to collect canoes from those villages which have been raided, and canoes they'll get--likewise help from the recently raided. When dark comes, away they'll attack us, and personally, I mean to see it out fighting, and they'll probably chop me afterward, and the odds are I give some of them bad dyspepsia. About that I don't care two pins. But I don't intend to be caught alive. That means torture, and no error about it." He shivered. "I've seen their subjects after they've played their torture games on them. My aunt, but they were a beastly sight."

The Commandant shivered also. He, too, knew what torture from the hands of those savage Central African blacks meant.

"I should blow up the launch with every soul on board of her," he said, "if I thought there was any chance of their boarding with canoes."

"Well, you can bet your life they'll try it," said Kettle, "if we stay here."

"But how can we move? We can't make steam. And if we do push off this bank, we shall drift on to the next bank down stream."

"That's your idea," said Kettle. "Haven't you got a better?"

"You must not speak to me like that," said Balliot, with another little snap of dignity and pa.s.sion. "I'm your senior officer."

"At the present rate you'll continue to be that till about nightfall,"

said Kettle unpleasantly, "after which time we shall be killed, one way or another, and our ranks sorted out afresh."

"Now, you two," said Clay, "don't start wrangling again." He took a bottle out of a square green case, and pa.s.sed it. "Here, have some gin."

"For G.o.d's sake, Doc, dry up," said Kettle, "and pull yourself together, and remember you're a blooming Englishman."

Clay's thin yellow cheeks flushed. "What's the use?" he said with a forced laugh. "'Tisn't as if anybody wanted to see any of us home again."

"I'm wanted," said Kettle, sharply, "by my wife and kids. I've got them to provide for, and I'm not going to shirk doing it. Let me have my own way, and I can get out of this mess; yes, and out of a dozen worse messes on beyond it. The thing's nothing if only it's tackled the right way."

"How shall you set about it," asked the Commandant.

"By giving orders, and taking mighty big care that everybody on this ship carries them out."

Commandant Balliot rubbed at his close, scrubby beard, and bared his teeth viciously. Behind him, from the distant sandbank, the rebel bullets rapped unceasingly at the launch's iron plating. "But I am the senior in rank," he repeated again. "Officially I could not resign the command in your favor."

"Yes, I know. But here's the situation packed small: if you climb up, and do the large, and perch on your blessed rank, we shall probably see this day out, but we certainly sha'n't see another in. You're at the end of your string, and you can't deny it."

"But if you've a suggestion to make which will save us, make it, and I will act."

"No," snapped Kettle. "I'll either be boss and carry out my schemes my own way; or else, if we stay on as we are, I hold my tongue, and you can go on and arrange the funeral."

"If you can get us out of this mess--"

"I've said I can."

"Then I will let you take the command."

"Well and good. In the first place--"

"Wait a minute. I resign to you temporarily; but, understand, even if I wished to, I could not do this officially. When we get down to Leopoldville--when we get down to the next post even--"

"Oh, you can collar the blooming credit," said Kettle contemptuously, "when we do get clear away to any of your own headquarters. I'm not looking for grat.i.tude either from a Belgian or from the Congo Free State. They don't like Englishmen."

"You are not a lovable nation," said Commandant Balliot spitefully.

"Now," said Kettle, thrusting his fierce little face close up to the other, "understand once and for all that I will not have England abused, neither do I take any more of your lip for myself. I'm Captain of the whole of this show now, by your making, and I intend to be respected as such, and hold a full captain's ticket. You'll call me 'sir' when you speak, and you'll take orders civilly and carry them out quick, or, by James! you'll find your teeth rammed down your throat in two twinkles of a handspike. Savvy that?"

The man of the weaker nation subsided. There was no law and order here to fall back upon. There was nothing but unnerving savagery and vastness. The sandbar where their wrecked launch lay was out in the middle of the Congo, perhaps eight miles from the park-like lands which stretched indefinitely beyond either bank. The great river astern of her glared like a mirror under the intolerable sunshine; came up and swirled around her flanks in yellow, marigold-smelling waves; and then joined up into mirror shape again till the eye ached in regarding it. The baking sky above was desolate even of clouds; there was no help anywhere; and on another distant sandbank, where here and there little bushes of powder smoke sprouted up like a gauzy foliage, a horde of barbarous blacks l.u.s.ted to tear out his life.

In Commandant Balliot's own heart hope was dead. But it seemed that this detestable Englishman had schemes in his head by which their lives might yet be saved.

He had been given a sample of the Englishmen's brazen daring already.

After his troops mutinied, and pandemonium reigned in the village where he was quartered, the Englishman had steamed up with his paltry stem-wheel launch, and by sheer dash and recklessness had carried him and his last parcel of faithful men away in spite of the mutineers' teeth.

It was an insane thing to do, and when he had (as senior officer) complimented Kettle on the achievement, the little sailor had coldly replied that he was only carrying out his duty and earning his pay. And he had further mentioned that it was lucky for Commandant Balliot that he was a common, low-down Britisher, and not a fancy Belgian, or he would have thought of his own skin first, and steamed on comfortably down river and just contented himself with making a report. The white engineer of the launch--a drunken Scot--had, it seemed, been killed in the sortie, which, of course, was regretable; but Balliot (who disliked the Scot personally) had omitted to make the proper condolences; and it was at this that Kettle had taken umbrage and turned the nasty edge of his tongue outward.

"Now," said Captain Kettle, "enough time's been wasted. We will start business at once, please. That boiler's got to be mended, first."

"But," said Balliot, "it's under fire all the time."

"I can see that for myself," said the little sailor, "without being reminded by a subordinate who wasn't asked to speak. We take things as we find them, and so it's got to be mended under fire. Moreover, as the chief engineer of this vessel was killed ash.o.r.e, and the second engineer was shot overboard, there's others that will have to take rating as engine-room officers. Commandant Balliot, have you any mechanics amongst your lot?"

"I have one man who acted as armorer-sergeant. He is very inefficient."

"He must do his best. Can you handle a drill or a monkey wrench, yourself?"