Part 7 (1/2)

”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 s.h.i.+vered. ”I've seen their subjects after they've played their torture games on them. My aunt, but they were a beastly sight.”

The Commandant s.h.i.+vered 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.”