Part 11 (1/2)

Clay rubbed his bald head. ”If you're set on it,” said he, ”you'll do it; I quite agree with you there. But I should have thought you'd seen enough of the n.i.g.g.e.r to know what a disastrous animal he is after some of these missionaries have handled him.”

”Yes,” said Kettle; ”but those were the wrong sort of missionary--wrong sort of man to begin with; wrong sort of religion also.”

And then, to Dr. Clay's amazement, his companion broke out into a violent exposition of his own particular belief. It was the first time he had ever heard Kettle open his lips on the subject of religion, and the man's vehemence almost scared him. Throughout the time they had been acquainted, he had taken him to be like all other lay white men on the Congo, quite careless on the subject, and an abhorrer of missions and all their output; and, lo! here was an enthusiast, with a violent creed of his very own, and with ranting thunders to heave at all who differed from him by so much as a hairs-breadth. Here was a devotee who suddenly, across a great ocean of absence, remembered the small chapel in South s.h.i.+elds, where during sh.o.r.e days he wors.h.i.+pped beside his wife and children. Here was a prophet, jerked by circ.u.mstances into being, trumpeting the tenets of an obscure sect with something very near to inspiration.

He preached and preached on till the tropical day burned itself out, and the velvety night came down, and with it the mists from the river. The negroes of the village, with their heads wrapped up to keep off the ghosts, s.h.i.+vered as they listened to ”dem small whiteman make ju-ju”

across the clearing. Clay listened because he could not get away. He knew the man well, yes, intimately; he was constantly dealing him out unpalatable flippancies; but in this new, this exalted mood, he did not care to do less than give attention.

The man seemed to have changed; his eyes were bright and feverish; his face was drawn; his voice had lost its s.h.i.+pmaster's brusqueness, and had acquired the drone of the seaman's sh.o.r.e conventicle. There was no doubt about his earnestness; in Clay's mind, there was no doubt about the complications which would ensue from it.

When Dr. Clay lay down on his bed that night, his mind was big with foreboding. Ever since that entanglement with the woman occurred, which ruined forever his chance of practicing in England, he had gone his way with a fine recklessness as to consequences. He had lived for the day, and the day only; he had got to the lowest peg on the medical scale; and any change would be an improvement. He carried with him an incomplete case of instruments, a wire-strung banjo, and a fine taste in liquor and merriment as stock-in-trade, and if any of the many shapes which Death a.s.sumes in the Congo region came his way, why there he was ready to journey on.

But during these last weeks a chance had appeared of returning to England with a decent competency, and he jumped at it with an eagerness which only those who have at one time or other ”gone under” themselves can appreciate. In effect he had entered into a partners.h.i.+p with Captain Owen Kettle over a filibustering expedition--although they gave the thing different names--and from the first their ivory raiding had been extraordinarily successful. If only they could collect on undisturbed for another six months at the same rate, and then get their spoils down to the coast and s.h.i.+pped, the pair of them stepped into a snug competence at once. But this latest vagary of his partner's seemed to promise disruption of the whole enterprise. He did not see how Kettle could possibly carry out this evangelizing scheme, on which he had so suddenly gone crazed, without quite neglecting his other commercial duties.

However, in the course of the next day or so, as he witnessed Captain Kettle's method of spreading his faith, Clay's forebodings began to pa.s.s away. There was nothing of the hypocrite about this preaching sailor; but, at the same time, there was nothing of the dreamer. He exhorted vast audiences daily to enter into the narrow path (as defined by the Tyneside chapel), but, at the same time, he impressed on them that the privilege of treading this th.o.r.n.y way in no manner exempted them from the business of gathering ivory, by one means or another, for himself and partner.

Kettle had his own notions as to how this proselytizing should be carried on, and he set about it with a callous disregard for modern precedent. He expounded his creed--the creed of the obscure Tyneside chapel--partly in Coast-English, partly in the native, partly through the medium of an interpreter, and he commanded his audience to accept it, much as he would have ordered men under him to have carried out the business of s.h.i.+pboard. If any one had doubts, he explained further--once. But he did not allow too many doubts. One or two who inquired too much felt the weight of his hand, and forthwith the percentage of sceptics decreased marvellously.

Clay watched on, non-interferent, hugging himself with amus.e.m.e.nt, but not daring to let a trace of it be seen. ”And I thought,” he kept telling himself with fresh spasms of suppressed laughter, ”that that man's sole ambition was to set up here as a sort of robber baron, and here he's wanting to be Mahomet as well. The crescent or the sword; Kettleism or kicks; it's a pity he hasn't got some sense of humor, because as it is I've got all the fun to myself. He'd eat me if I told him how it looked to an outsider.”

Once, with the malicious hope of drawing him, he did venture to suggest that Kettle's method of manufacturing converts was somewhat sudden and arbitrary, and the little sailor took him seriously at once.

”Of course it is,” said he. ”And if you please, why shouldn't it be? My intelligence is far superior to theirs at the lowest estimate; and therefore I must know what's best for them. I order them to become members of my chapel, and they do it.”

”They do it like birds,” Clay admitted. ”You've got a fine grip over them.”

”I think they respect me.”

”Oh, they think you no end of a fine man. In fact they consider you, as I've said before, quite a little tin--”

”Now stop it, Doc. I know you're one of those fellows that don't mean half they say, but I won't have that thrown against me, even in jest.”

”Well,” said Clay, slily, ”there's no getting over the fact that some person or persons unknown sacrificed a hen up against the door of this hut under cover of last night, and I guess they're not likely to waste the fowl on me.”

”One can't cure them of their old ways all at once,” said Kettle, with a frown.

”And some genius,” Clay went on, ”has carved a little wooden image in trousers and coat, nicely whitewashed, and stuck up on that old _ju-ju_ tree down there by the swamp. I saw it when I was down there this morning. Of course, it mayn't be intended to be a likeness of you, skipper, but it's got a pith helmet on, which the up-country n.i.g.g.e.r doesn't generally add to portraits of himself; and moreover, it's wearing a neat torpedo beard on the end of its chin, delicately colored vermilion.”

”Well?” said Kettle sourly.

”Oh, that had got a hen sacrificed in front of it, too, that's all. I recognize the bird; he was a game old rooster that used to crow at me every time I pa.s.sed him.”

”Beastly pagans,” Kettle growled. ”There's no holding some of them yet.

They suck up the glad tidings like mother's milk at first, and they're back at their old ways again before you've taught them the tune of a hymn. I just want to catch one or two of these backsliders. By James!

I'll give them fits in a way they won't forget.”

But if Captain Kettle was keen on the conversion of the heathen to the tenets of the Tyneside chapel, he was by no means forgetful of his commercial duties. He had always got Mrs. Kettle, the family, and the beauties of a home life in an agricultural district at the back of his mind, and to provide the funds necessary for a permanent enjoyment of all these items close at hand, he worked both Clay and himself remorselessly.

Ivory does not grow on hedgerows even in Africa, and the necessary store could by no means be picked up even in a day, or even in a matter of weeks. Ivory has been looked upon by the African savage, from time immemorial, not as an article of use, but as currency, and as such it is vaguely revered. He does not often of his own free will put it into circulation; in fact, his life may well pa.s.s without his once seeing it used as a purchasing medium; but custom sits strong on him, and he likes to have it by him. An African chief of any position always has his store of ivory, usually hidden, sometimes in the bush, sometimes buried--for choice, under the bed of a stream. It is foolish of him, this custom, because it is usually the one thing that attracts the white man to his neighborhood, and the white man's visits are frequently fraught with disaster; but it is a custom, and therefore he sticks to it. He is not a highly reasoning animal, this Central African savage.

The African, moreover, is used to oppression--that is, he either oppresses or is oppressed--and he is dully callous to death. So the villages were not much surprised at Kettle's descents upon them, and usually surrendered to him pa.s.sively on the mere prestige of his name.