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автор Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

Atoms of Empire

Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

Part 1
THE BAIT

"WHAT on earth does the Chief have an animal like this Padgett to dine in Government House for?" asked Day ton-Philipps, querulously. "I expected to rough it, of course, when I came out here to the Coast, because they promised us active service, but hang me if ever I expected to rough it at the Governor's dinner-table with a missionary-thing like that. Why, the fellow hadn't got an aitch to his name; he stoked with his knife all the time; and when he got a fresh stock of perspiration on his forehead my aunt! he was too awful for anything."

Forbes, the Colonial Secretary, fanned himself in his long-sleeved Madeira chair, and suggested lazily that Dayton-Philipps had been taken out of lavender too soon, and sent out into the warm, wide world too early. " We're a primitive people, we Coasters," said Forbes. "If a man has a white skin and a dress coat, we ask him to dinner. You're too fastidious."

"Rot!" said Dayton-Philipps. " And, besides, the Padgett person hadn't a dress coat."

"Oh, of course, I was speaking figuratively. Being a padre of sorts I forget what his fancy religion is called: never heard of it before being a padre, he naturally wears his official cloth. I saw you didn't like him at dinner. But you were very good; you swallowed down what you wanted to say; in fact, you behaved quite nicely."

"I never wanted to kick a man so much in my life. He insulted you; he said your department was corrupt. He insulted the Governor; said practically that he was a disgrace to West Africa. And he insulted the other two men skilfully and rudely. As you all sat tight and tried to look as if you liked it, when it came to my turn I just followed your lead."

"He called you a hired butcher of innocents, didn't he?" asked the Colonial Secretary, with sly malice.

"It was worse than that. Never mind, though I only got my ordinary share. But what amazes me is, why did we stand it? Of course I couldn't buck after all you big men had given me a lead; but what I couldn't understand was, why should the Chief swallow it down, when one good square snub would have shut the bounder up permanently, and let the rest of us do the talking."

"His Excellency the Governor," said Forbes, "has to play to the gallery. Uneasy lies the head that wears a—well, a Governor's helmet. Especially a West African Governor's. If a man wants to make any sort of a mark here, and bag say a K.C.M.G., he's got to put on steam and hurry, or else the climate will step in and bag him first. My faith, though, some fellows have luck! Here's his present Excellency not been back from England a fortnight, and this chance comes slick in his way."

"Let's see," said Dayton-Philipps, "you were Acting Governor, weren't you, whilst he was away at home on leave?"

"I was," said Forbes, " and knew exactly what was needed, but never had a ghost of an opportunity of getting it through. It wasn't from want of enterprise, either. I'm as keen on doing my duty to the Empire and earning my corresponding step in the Service as any of my neighbours. Then the Governor comes back, bucked-up and rosy from home, and the thing might have been pre-arranged, it's so handy for him. It's nine to one it comes off, and then he'll get the credit. I've slipped back into my old berth as Colonial Secretary, and all that will come in my way will be a lot of extra work and a lot of exposure, by which I shall certainly scoop a good many extra doses of fever, and it is not improbable that as I can't be spared for home-leave now I shall peg out here in harness."

"Oh, rot! you'll not earn a funeral this time."

"Well, I hope not. But anyway, it's a sure thing I don't get any of the plum. There's one and undivided, and it goes to the head of the Colony for the time being, in the ordinary course of routine. Have another whisky-and-soda?"

"Not for me," said Dayton-Philipps. " Man wants a very clear head if he's to follow what you C.O. fellows mean when you're pleased to be enigmatical. In fact, I'm hanged if I can make out what you've been driving at since we've been sitting here."

Now there is no doubt that the Colonial Secretary was very naturally annoyed at the course of recent events. The commercial fate of the colony had been for two or three years hanging in the balance. To the trained mind, which could see beneath the surface, it was easy to grasp the fact that the missing cog had arrived, which would, if properly used, set the machinery of state triumphantly advancing again. And Forbes told himself, bitterly enough, that had he been Acting Governor, he would have been quite as competent to order things for the Colony's weal as the present man who had returned fresh and healthy from his home-leave. It was the chance of a lifetime; and on the West Coast, where chances are few and life is short, a man cannot be blamed for a little acidity of mind when these fortunate opportunities pass him by. But at the same time State policy is not a story to be bawled abroad in a moment of spleen to any subordinate official who may not understand its niceties, and the Colonial Secretary, with a sudden recollection of these facts, pulled up his confidences.

"I didn't suppose you would follow all that's going on in the Chief's office just now," he said. "Young men who are seconded from home regiments, and come out here to take up commands in the Hausa police, do not understand much about high politics."

Dayton-Philipps laughed.

"That's right," he said; " take me down a peg. I'm sure I don't mind. I never did have any hankering after the diplomatic service. My own trade's good enough for me. But I don't mind telling you straight that I want to rise in that. I didn't come out to the West Coast just for my health. Look here, I don't want you to talk out of school, but if you can give me a straight tip, I'd be very grateful for it."

"I couldn't say anything definite," said Forbes, warily; " but you'll do yourself no harm if you get to know your men thoroughly, and hammer up their efficiency, and carry out well any little orders you may get, and, in fact, keep up to the mark generally. If you're slack, you'll just rank in with the ruck; if you're not, you may see your chance close ahead of you one of these fine days."

"H'm! I suppose that's active service you mean?"

The Colonial Secretary evaded an answer.

"By Jove!" he said; " it's grown almost cool enough to turn in with the hopes of getting a bit of sleep. Let's see: you said you wouldn't have another whisky-and-soda, didn't you?"

"You're beginning to think the talk has got on dangerous ground, eh? All right, I'll clear out. I've heard my 'rickshaw boys shuffling about down below there for this last half-hour, and if I keep them waiting much longer, they'll probably upset me on the road home, by way of a lesson. Good-night, old man."

Dayton-Philipps thought a good deal that night as the 'rickshaw boys ran with him down to the police barrack, whilst the quiet heat lightning blinked at him from overhead; but still he failed to see the reason for His Excel lency the Governor's civility to the obnoxious Padgett. He was a young officer newly come out from home, and he had only been in Africa long enough to shuck off the notions he had acquired about the engineering of a West Coast Colony in the Island of his birth; and so far had gathered very little knowledge of the real article which was used on the spot.

However, at a dinner-table before which he found himself a couple of nights later, he got a deeper insight into the question, and heard Im perial policy discussed with a freedom which, a month ago, he would have set down as blasphe mous. His host was head of a big Coast trading concern; the other diners were all commercial men; and, unlike the Colonial officials, they were able to say openly what they thought, with never a care as to whether their sentiments leaked over into print. Especially were they bitter against a certain section of the English community who are very highly looked up to by many of their neighbours here at home.

"I wish," said Charteris, " that we could get some of those canting, whining fools out here for a bit to see for themselves the mischief they are doing. But no fear of that: they've nothing to gain by knowing the truth, and meanwhile they're making a living out of their silly theories. What's worse, good old mutton-headed England believes them. West Africa is a poisonous swamp that isn't worth sticking to; the white man is still the palm-oil ruffian of fifty years ago; the black man is a little angel, only kept from being drowned in gin by their pious efforts; the sole reason the country isn't chucked away to France, or Ger many, or any one else who wants it, is because it's such a fine hunting-ground for the blessed missionary. Oh, it makes me sick and ashamed to be a Britisher when I see the way those solemn noodles handicap the fellows out here who must know the Coast best, and who would make fine prosperous colonies if they weren't perpetually clogged."

Baines, the man next him, tenderly filled his glass.

"Tommy," he said, " wet your whistle, and don't waste your wind. It's no use telling all this stale history to us, because we know it al ready; and it's no good going home and shouting it out there, because people would only look superior and not believe you if you did. More over, there's a silver lining to every cloud, and ours looks as if it's just going to show through."

"What are you driving at now?"

"If you don't know, I shan't say. But I got a hint out at Government House to-day, and I dare say other people in this room know a thing or two as well. For instance, I bet a trifle Dayton-Philipps has put his virgin sword on the grindstone already in the anticipation."

"Well, yes," said that officer; " but I'm hanged if I know who it's for. Not the French, is it? We aren't going to have a European war, are we? I thought things were simmering down."

"French be blowed!" said Baines.

Charteris winked from across the table knowingly.

What's wrong with cutting up the King of Katti?"

"That's the chap that owns the hinterland to this colony, isn't he?" asked Dayton-Philipps, the new comer.

"Same savage. All our trade comes through his country to the Coast here, and if we don't collar it, the French will."

"If the French take it, they stick on tariffs and choke you out, don't they?"

"If the French come in at the back there, we may as well put up the shutters at once, like they did in the Gambia. The trade of this colony would be dead for good and always."

"Then why the plague don't we take it?" asked Dayton-Philipps, petulantly. He had come out to the Coast to see active service; he had acquired two stiff doses of fever already; and so far he had been employed on nothing more war like than barrack duty and routine. He was getting very disgusted with the change. The commercial men round the table understood all this as well as he did, but being older Coasters, they understood also the forces of distant igno rance which cramped them in, and as they had cursed and explained these same forces ten thou sand times already amongst themselves, they for bore out of sheer weariness of the subject to speak of them again.

However, when Dayton-Philipps repeated his question, Baines did vouchsafe some sort of a reply. We don't take Katti City," said Baines, "because we aren't let. We've deputationed, and memorialised, and petitioned, till we're sick of it; we get called a pack of gin-selling buccaneers for our pains; and that murdering old beast, the King of Katti, is buttered up as a high-minded native lord. My aunt, I wish they could see his private crucifixion-tree! I wish they could even be taken close enough to smell it."

Dayton-Philipps remembered that Baines was the only white man who had ever been in Katti City or, to be more accurate, the only white man who had ever emerged from that capital and hoped to hear more details of that place. "Yes?" he said.

"Latterly the old cock's closed the roads; he's put juju on rubber, ivory, and palm oil; which means all our trade's stopped; and when we post him a letter to expostulate, he sacrifices the messenger on somebody's grave. Thanks to our clogs at home, we've got no prestige here, and he doesn't funk us in the very least, and he's showing his bally independence and highmindedness and lordliness just now by depopulating the country right and left. The only way to put things straight is to send up a big expedition; but the red tape guided by the black coat at home won't hear of that. After badgering at them for the Lord knows how long, the Governor got permission to send (I'll trouble you) an unarmed expedition to ask would the King kindly say he was sorry, and be a good boy for the fu ture. Did you ever hear of such fatheadedness?" "I never heard of an expedition going." "Not likely. His Excellency here may be a bit of an old woman about some things, but he does know something about the ways of the upcountry nigger, and the King of Katti in particular. I can tell you there was a fine boil-up in Government House here over the suggestion. He wrote home that he took upon himself to counter mand the order. He said he wasn't going to send a batch of his young men to be deliberately murdered in the Katti fetish grove as a sop to any one, not even to get an excuse for starting a very desirable war of annexation."

"Well," said Dayton-Philipps, " I can't say, from what I've heard of the gentleman, that I should care to go and pay a polite call on the King of Katti with nothing but a walking-stick and a card-case myself." And there for the time being the topic dropped.

But Dayton-Philipps, not being altogether a fool, was beginning to have inklings of what was fluttering the Colony just then, and next evening at the Governor's dinner-table he saw the matter even more clearly. The function was a solemn one. Officially it was described as the leave-taking of the Rev. Alfred Padgett, but the esoteric significance of the gathering was patent to every body. With one exception, all the diners, from the Governor downwards, were in a queer twitter of excitement. The only really calm man there was Padgett himself, and as it was plain that everybody present listened to even the least of his words with open fascination, he took advan tage of his opportunity.

He did not mince matters in the very least; he did not try and ingratiate himself with any body; but he took each diner in turn, from Forbes, the Colonial Secretary, to Charteris and Baines, mere traders and members of Council, and in sulted each over his particular share of the Colony's work, with deliberation and system. He was a man with a good clear voice, and none of his words miscarried; and when he selected a victim, all the other men at the table listened with respectful attention. The Colony, for the future, it seemed, was to be run on entirely differ ent lines: trade and the glorification of the Em pire were to be things of the past; and in the meantime he was going up to call in person on the King of Katti to present him with a new creed and, apparently, a bale of second-hand trousers.

The men round the table, old Coasters all of them, with the one exception of Philipps, solemnly and emphatically warned him of the dangers which lay beyond the narrow fringe of the Colony; and, as offensively as might be, he rejected all their advice. Nobody resented the contradiction; nobody showed up the silliness of his shallow, ignorant, sledge-hammer arguments. That was a great night for the Rev. Alfred Pad gett, and he mopped at his wet face and made the most of it. When the hour came to go and he sat consumedly long they were all still waiting and watching, and each man came for ward in his turn and shook hands with him, in a manner that made the parting scene almost like a religious rite.

But at last he went away out of the hot glare of the room into the warm night outside, and the men got into long chairs and took deep breaths as if a big restraint was taken from them.

For long enough there was silence. Each had his own thoughts to add up and value, and the lazy punkah eddied the tobacco smoke overhead.

Then Baines said: " By God, he is brave enough. When I told him what Katti City was really like, he never turned a hair. I watched the beggar."

"Pah! Brave?" said Forbes. " It was only mutton-headed ignorance. Simply, he didn't believe you."

"Think so?" said Baines. " Perhaps you're right. He certainly doesn't take any of us much at our own valuation here. Well, he'll find out many things for himself in due time, and after that the wires '11 begin to work, and the nice pink English Tommies will begin to come, and the West African squadron Good Lord! that gives me jumps."

His Excellency the Governor had accidentally tipped over a tall soda-water tumbler, which fell with a crash on to the floor. The men in the room, with their nerves all on springs, started as if a shell had burst under the table, and by the time they had settled down again, frowning and fanning, the Governor had finished apologising for his clumsiness, and had started a talk on the new pier which it was proposed to erect to supersede the dangerous surf-boats. His Excel lency might not be a brainy man, but even his enemies could not help admitting his infinite tactfulness. He did all his most delicate business round a dinner-table, and yet he was never known to let a dinner conversation grow dangerous. There have not been many public servants of whom this could be written on their official tombstones.

If Padgett expected a final ovation the next morning before he set off into the bush, he was disappointed. He started soon after daybreak. It is in the cool of daybreak that the West Afri can white man begins his work. But on this occasion every one seemed most unnaturally to have overslept himself.

Mr. Padgett stepped out in full panoply of pith helmet, white clothes, and umbrella, with a fine caravan of carriers before and behind; but no one of a higher species than laughing, chattering natives filled the street between the factories and the grass-roofed dwelling-houses. Not a single member of the white population had come to see him off, which, taking into consideration the occasion and the place, was an obvious per sonal slight. But Mr. Padgett did not mind that. On the contrary, he rather preferred it. He was one of those men who make a luxury of the minor martyrdoms.

The ease with which he collected his caravan of carriers, seemed to him a proof that the solemn warnings which the whites of the Colony had given him about the dangers of the Katti country were merely a pack of lies, intended to keep him from finding out how matters really lay. It did not occur to him that when the white man leads, the West Coast native, being a childlike and some what brainless creature, will always follow and carry for pay. And so, cheered by his bigoted ignorance, he strutted complacently enough through the trim streets of the Coast town (which made up his sole personal acquaintance with Africa) and disappeared down a narrow eighteen-inch road which corkscrewed its way into the bush beyond.

There are no electric telegraphs up-country in Africa, but in some mysterious manner news floats about amongst the natives of what is going on, and its transmission is astonishingly rapid. Comment on the progress of Padgett's expedition drifted into the factories from almost every one of its halting-places, and the white men of the Colony's capital conned over the scraps they heard with tingling nerves. In the temperate climate of England it is hard work to sit entirely still whilst one is waiting for an almost certain catastrophe, but in the unhealthy stew of a West Coast town, where one's health is chronically in rags, the suspense of such a vigil can very well approach nearly to the unendurable. But the machinery of Government and business cannot stop because its drivers are oppressed by megrims such as these, and the white men in the white clothes, with their faces yellowed by liver and violent suns, plied on doggedly at their tasks as heretofore. Latins, or men of the more emotional nations, would have halted listlessly during that wait; and as a consequence they and their kind do not now make empires. The Anglo-Saxon is a different type of animal. He may have less emotions, but nothing short of his own funeral makes him neglect his appointed work for very long together.

As a visible result, they were rather apt during this time of suspense to brace up their dinner champagne with angostura bitters, and to get hold of a few more than the customary cocktails between whiles; but they kept themselves well in hand, and, in fact, rather took on a guardedness of speech that was foreign to them. There was a hysterical native press in the Colony's capital, which at times got quoted in the London papers; and it would not do to let the idea leak out into print that they foresaw the good the forthcoming catastrophe would do, before that catastrophe took place.

At last, however, the thundercloud broke, and the tired white men breathed deep and prepared for the deluge. The King of Katti was no nig gling savage. Reports came down from his gory capital thick and fast. He had sent an armed force to meet the invader, whose carriers promptly fled and small blame to them! The wretched Padgett first tried to run, and then, as explanations were beyond him, pluckily started to fight. Accounts of the skirmish varied, as native ac counts will: some tales credited him with terrific slaughter; whilst others held that he had merely laid about him with a walking-cane; but all agreed upon his capture and subsequent execution. Indeed the King of Katti, to remove all doubt, sent down a week later a shrivelled hand and arm, purporting to be Padgett's, as a sign of his contempt for the white man's power, and as a hint to deter future callers.

But by this time the home cable had got the news well in hand, and the sweating operators were working double shifts, whilst men in twenty offices over half the world arranged for the bringing together and the furnishing of an army. And a little later the English papers flashed out one morning, black with indignation and head lines, and asked how long a feeble English Gov ernment was going to permit missionaries of the sacred English race to be foully murdered by African barbarians. There was no talk now of the high-minded native lord; there was no talk of offending French or German susceptibilities. The good people at home had not been stewing over the catastrophe for a month before it hap pened, and the reasons for it all they would not have understood even if these had been explained to them. The news to London and England was as fresh as it was horrible, and the clamour for vengeance dinned from every side. From the slaying of this one white missionary, Britain in stantly knew that the hinterland to this Colony was not fit to govern itself, and it shouted forth the order to annex without further thought.

The project as Coasters wearily knew was not a novel one, but hitherto it had been kept in the background by a sturdy opposition. Now, however, the opposition vanished. Even woodenheaded Little Eri glanders and their adherents know when to be silent sometimes.

The British public says in its commanding way, " Do this!" and is accustomed to see it done. It chooses its servants well, and they are always smart to carry out the details. Forbes, Dayton-Philipps, His Excellency the Governor, and the other men on the spot, with the eye of prophecy had secured a month's start, and natu rally had got a wealth of preparations mapped out up the sleeve. When these were reeled forth in rhythmical precision, they spoke vol umes (to the public) of the excellence of the Colony's organisation; and the hurrying warcorrespondent, catching this key-note before he sailed, saw the perfection of the local machinery from the moment a surf-boat ejected him on the beach, and patted the white men of the place on the back in lavish dispatches. Clearly this Colony had been too long neglected. Clearly the men now in charge were just the fellows to bring it with a rush to the front.

At the London War Office, officers were tum bling over one another in their eagerness to volunteer; at Malta, Cape Town, Woolwich, Gibraltar, pieces of the war machine were get ting oiled and started; a wire to Suez sent a home-coming Indian regiment to stew some more in the tropics before it could swill its English beer; and in Free Town harbour, Sierra Leone, Her Majesty's penny steamer Alecto took on a hurried lick of paint as she prepared for her four-hundredth campaign. Nobody knew how strong were the forces of the King of Katti, and nobody, except a few responsible heads, very vastly cared. Dayton-Philipps prayed piously that they wouldn't "swamp the show with regiments."

"The old Lord High Executioner up at Katti," said he to Forbes, "has got some good fighting soldiers with excellent guns, so my fellows say, and it will be a beastly shame if they are scared into running away before the fun begins."

"Well, we want the man beaten once and for always," said the Colonial Secretary, who looked more to effect than method. " We've more luck than I hoped for: the Colony isn't having to pay for the troops; we've been such good boys that we're having 'em stood for a treat; and they can send the whole bally army for anything I care."

"And make a silly picnic of it? I didn't come out here for picnics; I came for promotion; and if it's all Tommies and no fighting, that means I've to stay where I am. Look here, you let me waltz in with the Hausas call it a reconnaissance in force, if you like and I'll clean out Katti's town for you before the other fellows arrive. I say, I could really. Do try and work it with the Chief, there's a good fellow."

"Rot!" said Forbes. "This war isn't going to be run for your particular benefit, my young friend or mine, for that matter. It's for the Colony. It '11 bring the Colony into notice, and let everybody know what a fine place it is, and how well it's run by us, of course and how much more valuable it's got by having the new territory added, and, in fact, what a desirable Colony it is for younger sons and capitalists in every way."

"Oh, if you look upon the war as a beastly advertisement scheme!"

"I do. This is the way it runs: ' To let, New portion of the British Empire, offering a highly desirable dumping-ground for single young men desirous of making a pile. Apply early for allotments.' And when the guns begin to shoot, everybody at home will turn round and see that advertisement written big in the newspapers and on the hoardings. The more guns there are, and the more they shoot, the more those excellent people will turn round to look, and become aware of the Colony's existence."

"How mad that poor beggar Padgett would be," said Philipps, " if he could only know what his blundering expedition had led up to! If he had been a German, he could not have hated any more the idea that this Colony should expand or any way go forward."

The Colonial Secretary turned on him with sudden asperity.

"Now look here," he said, " mind how you talk about Padgett. There are a lot of reporters on the beach here now, and if they get to know too much, the fat '11 be in the fire with a vengeance. Reporters are all very well in their way; they're fellows we've wanted out here badly for long enough. But it is only intended they should know the proper things. All the white men in this Colony are safe enough as far as intention goes, because they know, whoever they are, that if the Colony pushes ahead, they move on also. But the man that scares me is your loose-lipped man."

Dayton-Philipps flushed.

"I am not altogether a dam' fool," he said. "The whole business mystified me at first, I'll own. You were all so infernally close about it. But I began to see that the Chief wouldn't have a bounder like that to come and insult him day after day at Government House without a considerable reason, and after I sat down to think the matter out, I wasn't very long in seeing how Padgett would be of use. You see, I'm a bit of a fisher man myself, and when you can't rise 'em with a fly, live bait's usually the best thing, if you're fishing for the pot. But you needn't necessarily think I was the kind of fathead to go and bawl out the whole yarn to one of those correspondent fellows when he came into barracks for a cocktail.

I'm not long enough out from home myself to forget how they look at things there."

"All right," said Forbes; " I didn't mean to draw you like that, only I thought a hint might be useful. Well, I must go down to the office again. My faith, though, this kind of tea-party does mean a mountain of work for the men on the spot. I wish I could think there was a chance of it bringing in something in the way of reward besides."

Now, it is no place here to reprint what the war-correspondents with the Expeditionary Force wrote of with such breadth of colour and detail. The converging troops, with their paraphernalia of guns, rockets, commissariat, ambulance, and all the rest, steamed out to the Colony from a dozen points, in war-ship and hired transport. Every dwelling in the town was a barrack, and Government House was an officers' free restaurant. The men on the spot who knew the country, suddenly changed from exiles into residents, and Dayton- Philipps, with little thrills of glee, found himself giving advice to an admiral, three colonels, and a general, who had already won high place in the traffic of war.

"Sharp fellow, that young what's-his-name Philipps," said the big men amongst themselves. "Must try and shove him into something a bit better when this affair's through. He hasn't done much, of course, but he hasn't muddled everything, like these black regiment fellows generally do."

And in due time the nice pink English Tommies (which Baines had sighed for) were dumped on the noisy beach by the surf-boats, and the march up country, with its attendant miseries, and roadmaking, and fever, was carried out according to honoured precedent and rule. His Excellency the Governor accompanied the force, not necessarily to be shot at, but merely as a guarantee of good faith; and Dayton-Philipps and his Hausas headed the advance, and ambushed the ambushing Katti men very cannily amongst the by-paths of the bush. The correspondents who accompanied the column painted the horrors of Katti City in fresh bright red, as though they were a thing which had never been heard of before, and quite ignored the fact that the Colonials had been vainly crying against them for years.

One illustrator, more ingenious than his fellows, sent home a sombre photograph of " Rev. Padgett's grave." But, truth to tell, Padgett had rather dropped out of history by this time. He was dead; he had been useful; and he was forgotten. What more could the man expect? In life he had not endeared himself to the Colonials.

There was no hitch anywhere. Great Britain makes a speciality of these little wars, and in them trains the sections of her fighting machinery perfectly, as some one will find out expensively when the threatened big war arrives. The King of Katti was duly caught, tried, and deported to a distant shore; his ecclesiastical arrangements were upset for good, and human sacrifices finally abolished; and in his place was set up one Day ton- Philipps, an ordinary British subaltern, as Resi dent, with a guard of Hausas, to uphold his dignity. The country, wearied of its old rulers, settled down at once, and the Hausas (who, being natives, are good judges of such a matter) showed their appreciation of the quietude by sending for their wives and families to come and take up immediate residence in Katti City.

Charteris and Baines bought over the Government loot of carved ivory and gold dust at such a nice profit to themselves that they were able a year later to " chuck the Coast for good " and live decently at home on ample incomes; and His Excellency the Governor received the reward of his tact and luck in the shape of the coveted K.C.M.G., and promotion to another colony where the death-rate for Europeans did not average more than twenty-seven per thousand, which of course was by comparison quite a health resort. Even Forbes got the reward which he so persistently refused to expect, and is now His Excellency the Governor, in his late Excellency's place. And at home people studied their maps and remarked complacently that ter ritory eager for trade had been added to the British Empire, in acreage equal to the British Islands, with Belgium and Holland thrown in.

But Padgett was the discontented man, and in my humble judgment rightly so. He had acted on his own pig-headed initiative certainly; but all the same he had been made use of as a Bait neither more nor less. It appeared that he had not been killed at all, and the shrivelled hand which had been sent down as a mark of 'bona fides had been borrowed from some unknown stranger. Pleasantries of this sort are quite ad mitted in the diplomacy of the African interior. Instead, he had been haled off up country in the custody of a couple of local ecclesiastics, who (as probably he would have done himself) treated their prisoner with some intolerance, and did not liberate him till long after the trouble was over, and he had ceased to have value as a hostage.

He got down to the Coast in rags, but quite unchastened in spirit. Men certainly knew him, but after the first formal congratulations on his escape, their recognitions were disgustingly dry and inhospitable. One would have thought that their sense of generosity would have been touched; they all of them certainly had gained much through Mr. Padgett's unconscious aid. But I am only writing history here, and the fact remains that they gave him the cold shoulder. The man's usefulness was gone; they saw in him only a noisy, objectionable bounder.

Mr. Padgett went home as an "assisted pas senger " by an early steamer, vowing vengeance on Colonial officials, the Coast, and every piece of work to which a white man can put his hand in West Africa. He would have a general in quiry; he would frame a list of abuses; he would have questions in Parliament; he would procure a Royal Commission. He might have done it, too, had the journalistic season been propitious, being a man of astonishing energy against his dislikes. But there was another excitement on hand, and the Colony was saved from worry. One small evening paper, after much clamouring at editorial doors, did publish an expurgated " Statement by Rev. Paget," but there the matter rested. The statement was not copied by any of the other journals. The other excitement on hand beat it in interest.

There is luck in these minor matters of cantankering, just as there is in the larger affairs of empire-making. Suitable baits do not come to hand every day of the week.

Part 2
RUN DOWN

"HULLO! there's Calvert, of all people!" I heard a brisk voice say behind me. " Now, he's the very man. I'll introduce you to him this minute, and then we'll go below and see your room, and backsheesh the steward into civility."

I turned my head and saw Vanrennan elbowing his way amongst the crowd which swarmed on the steamer's bridge-deck between the gang way and the head of the first-class companion. He had a couple of dressing-bags in his fists, a bundle of rugs under his arm, and a pair of ladies in his train. To these last he introduced me:

"Mrs. Codrington, and my sister Mabel. They're going across to New York to stay with some friends, and then, when the warm weather comes, they're off with a party to see the Yosemite Valley. They'll be met on the wharf at the other side, but up to there they'll be two lone, lorn females, and I want you to give them the benefit of your countenance, and do the genial watch-dog business. By the way, you're taking matters pretty coolly: you look either as if you had been settled here for a week, or else had no connection with the steamer whatever. I suppose you are crossing by her?"

I laughed. " Oh, yes," I said; " I came on board her sixteen minutes ago; saw the Purser, and found I knew him; made him give me the best room in the ship instead of the one I'd got; carted my things in there one-time, and locked the door; and then cleared out here, and didn't worry any more."

"You're an old, bold hand," said Vanrennan, "and many years of wandering have made you perfect in the art of looking after yourself. What do you think of the boat?"

"Oh, she's a fine steamer, and she'll do a quick passage. Moreover, because she is a foreigner, they'll feed us extremely well, which is a great thing for this time of year."

"Then do you think we shall have a very bad crossing?" Mrs. Codrington asked anxiously.

"We may have a breeze, or we mayn't; the Western Ocean is always delightfully uncertain about that. But I was thinking about the cold. There'll be precious little going out on deck; meals will be the most interesting item of the day; and therefore a good table is a distinct pleasure to look forward to."

"Do you think there is any danger?" said Mrs. Codrington.

I smiled. " Remarkably little. Considerably less, for instance, than you would be exposed to if you travelled by train for a week backwards and forwards between London and Glasgow. In fact, if you care to give me the sum of one penny apiece, I'll insure you each for .1000 against fatal accident all the way across, like the weekly papers do ashore. Come, now, will you let me do that stroke of business?"

"Save your coppers," said Vanrennan, laughing. " Calvert is too grasping. Come along down below and get settled in your quarters, and then bid me an affectionate good-bye. I shall have to clear if I don't want to be taken on. Ta-ta, Calvert, old chap. So awfully good of you to take these damsels under your charge. Hope you'll all have a good time on the other side, and not get frozen on the road. Good-bye."

We hove up at dusk that afternoon, and because the Channel outside was white with an ugly, choppy sea, there were fiddles on the table at dinner and extraordinarily few diners. I sent down dry champagne and biscuits to Mrs. Codrington's room, and then, seating myself next to the Purser, made a gorgeous meal.

"We do ourselves well here in the grub line, don't we?" said the Purser. " Better than the English boats. We're dragging all the passenger trade away from them now. Come along down to my room for your coffee, and we'll have a quiet smoke before I get to work squaring up my papers. Lord! I wouldn't care to be the Old Man to-night! He'll be perched there freezing on the upper bridge till we're bang clear of the Channel, and very likely for the next twenty-four hours after that if the weather's at all thick. He's got just over a thousand human lives on this ship, and I guess they give him all the responsibility he's any use for. Steward, bring me down a bottle of liqueur cognac to my room. Now, Mr. Calvert, if you're ready."

The Purser and I talked Western Ocean shop during the burning of two Cuban cigars, and then he turned to at work, and I slipped off to the smoke-room and read the illustrated papers. It was eleven o'clock before the smoke-room steward hinted that the hour of closing had come.

I went out into the night, a black misty night full of rain and spindrift driving down from the nor'-nor'-west. I cocked my eye and saw the skipper and two mates patrolling the upper bridge; on the break of the deck ahead of me were three men in glistening oilskins; in the crow's-nest forward were two others; and I shivered luxuriously, and thanked the fates that I was a mere passenger who could travel in abso lute safety and have no watch to keep. And then I went below, made fast my portmanteaux, and turned in. Sleep humoured me at once.

I woke to the tune of colliding ships and the full orchestra of Death.

To say that my senses came to me without flurry and at once would be too great a claim. By some violent shock from beneath I was banged up against the iron roof of the cabin. I pitched back on the floor, and for a minute or so lay there stunned.

Something serious was going on. I became dully conscious of this, and with an effort roused myself and stared curiously at the curtain-rod of the bunk, which lay doubled up and twisted between my hands. Then it began to be borne in upon me that the ship was awake with screaming and the trampling of frightened feet, and then the interpretation of these things came to me in a flash. We were in collision.

A man snatched open my door, stammered out, " We're going down: oh! what shall I do?" and ran away shouting. The ship was full of noise and darkness and hammering. The propeller had stopped; no light came when I turned the electric switch; and we had so heavy a list to starboard (my side) that already the ports were covered most of the time. It was precisely clear that the steamer was in a bad way, and one's first and most natural instinct was to bolt for the upper decks.

I'm ashamed to say that I had already rushed outside the door with this idea before I got my wits in hand again. But then I pulled myself up, and went back and dragged on some heavy serge clothes over my pyjamas, and added boots and a whisky-flask; after which I pounded off along the alley-ways to the room which Mrs. Codrington shared with the Vanrennan girl.

The door of it was slamming noisily with the roll of the ship. I looked inside. The place was empty, and from out of the darkness came a swirl of water which ran coldly about my knees. I guessed they had gone to the upper deck, and ran there myself with the best of pace. There was a feel about the steamer that I knew. She lay down sodden and numb in the sea, and rose to the waves no more. I had felt that sluggish sullen roll before on another ship. We had found her drifting, and boarded her in midocean, and had just time to leave her decks before she sank down to the ocean floor. The mail steamer was going to repeat that dive and she was carrying a thousand human lives.

The bridge-deck lay atilt like the roof of a house, and it was carpeted with humanity. From the upper bridge, rockets climbed up high into the night in one never-ending stream of yel low flame. Orders, prayers, shrieks, and threats were being hurled about in every tongue that Europe knows. The stoke-hold crews, mad with fear, were raging like devils unchained round the grips and chocks of the lifeboats. Naked emi grants were with them. Sick men, who could hardly crawl, tore at the boat-awnings with their teeth. The ship's officers and the few deck-hands were swept aside like straws.

Then a bellow from the steam siren drowned all the clamour, and at that instant the moon slid out and burnt like a great white arc-lamp through a gap in the racing clouds. A shout could not be heard above that din, and the shouts died away whilst the trembling fingers fumbled on at boatgrips, and rived at the stops on the falls. Then the captain on the upper bridge let go the lanyard of the siren, and gave his orders before the silence could be broken.

"Keep your heads, and all will be saved," he cried in German. " Women stand by the star board boats, and men away to port. Boat crews to their stations. I will shoot the first swine that disobeys me." Then he repeated the words in English and French and Norsk, till his cry was lost once more in the raging clamour.

Now, for myself, I had seen the uselessness of thinking about my own hide till matters were somewhat further advanced, and I remembered (with grim amusement) how I had offered to heavily insure two ladies' lives for the trifling premium of two copper coins. So from the moment of coming out on deck I had been em ployed in hunting for these charges amongst the mob, and had not been sparing vigour in the process. There were nine hundred people wedged into one group, and it was not a possible thing to go through these singly. So I had gone round outside the bulwark rail, occasionally climbing up by a stanchion or a stay, and had gazed down on the huddle of faces from above; and when I found the two that were wanted I fought my way to them with elbow or shut fist as required. Mrs.

Codrington wore a flannel dressing-gown; and as the other girl had turned out in a singularly be coming garment of cotton, I gave her my own pilot- jacket, and stole also for her (by brute force) a spotted carriage-rug from a Polish Jew.

"Now," I said, " there's string in the pocket of that jacket, and this thing will make you an ele gant skirt. You'd much better stop being fright ened, and then we can get along more comfortably. You aren't going to get drowned, or anything like it. I've insured you for a thousand apiece to Vanrennan, and I can't afford to let you come to grief at that price. When these fools have stopped struggling and squealing, you shall go off in a big boat and join another steamer. We shall have ten round us in half an hour. Look at those rockets."

Mrs. Codrington gripped my arm. " Then you think we have a chance of—" she began, and "m-m-m-m " said the great steam horn from above.

When we could hear ourselves speak again, and whilst the captain was giving his orders from the upper bridge, the Purser came to my elbow.

"Here, Calvert," he said in my ear, " you're a man. Those port boats won't lower anyway: she's listed too much over. I don't know whether we can get the starboard boats in the water with out swamping with this sea running, but we've got to try; and if any one goes off in them except the boat crews, it's got to be the women and kids. Same old yarn, y' know. So you've got to peg out anyway, and you may as well do it in a way that'll make you respect yourself. Ah, would you?" He knocked down a frantic German who was battling his way towards one of the starboard boats with a revolver outstretched. He wrenched away the weapon, and gave it me. "Here's a gun, old man. Just you wire in and murder the swine if they try to swamp you. They'll soon see those port boats won't lower, and they'll be back here in a minute."

Now a peculiar feeling had come over me. I had made up my mind that I had got to die, and didn't waste time by being sorry for myself over it. All my brain was turned on two objects. First, I had got to keep my ticket clean by seeing that the two girls I was looking after were sent away clear of the mess. And second, I wanted to leave a very red mark on the cowards who were wasting other people's lives because they could not save their own. That last wish amounted to a mania. I was ashamed of being a man whilst some of those brutes lived and could call themselves men also.

One of the starboard boats had been lowered already, packed with people. But before she was in the water the after fall had jammed in the block, and because the other took charge, she tilted bow-downwards, and spilt her wretched freight into the charging seas. Another boat was swung out, and lay beating against the rail as the steamer rolled. I would have hustled my two charges into her, but she was crowded in an instant and lowered away. She took the water safely, shoved off, and with oars straddling out on either side, crawled away over the inky water like some uncouth insect.

Then came the rush. The list had grown till the port boats hung inboard against their davits, and the waiting crowds beside them saw that that road of escape was cut off for good. In half the tongues of Pentecost they screamed into the windy night that the ship was sinking, sinking and each brute amongst them thought that his own life was worth more than all the honour and the wealth the world combined. They poured down the slope of the decks in a raving horde Polish and Russian Jews, Hungarian peasants fleeing from the conscription, Italian thieves, Belgian stokers a foul gush from the dregs of Europe; and with them came men who ought to have known better, but who had gone mad also, smitten by this same infection of terror.

I had slung the two women on to the floor grating of No. 3 lifeboat, and stood with my back against the gunwale. One of the mates, a gigan tic Swede, rose up beside me, his teeth gritting with fury and a belaying pin gripped in his hand.

Three deck-hands were sweating and swearing at the falls, getting the boat lifted right off her chocks and swung outboard.

The other women on the decks were knocked down and stamped on, and the mob of men leaped at the boat. It was no time for words. The mate and I hit out at every face we could reach with savage fury, but none turned to hit again. They scrabbled at the boat's gunwales with their hands, and those behind tore the leaders back. I could have beat in their faces in my hate; but I could not bring myself to shoot: there was nothing there worthy of a bullet.

The boat was lifted from its bed, and swung outboard. The steamer had ceased to roll, and the seas were coming green on her bridge-deck rail. The boat was floated almost before the falls were let go, and a wave came up and swayed her clear. The crowd shrieked and drew back up the slanting decks.

I leaned up against a davit, my breath returning to me in laboured pants. But the Swedish mate left me, and if ever murder showed in a man's eye, I saw it gleaming from his then; and shrieks coming through the darkness told what his fury was doing. He at any rate, I told my self, would die warm.

But the lust for maiming had left me. The last of the boats had gone, and the women and children who were left had got to die with us men, and with those who were infinitely less than men. The rockets were still spouting up in unwearied series from the upper bridge, and once I saw the Purser pass me, jaunty as of yore, with a lit cigar in his fingers, and an assurance be tween his teeth that all would be well. But I heeded him little. The chill of Death was nip ping me with its agues, and the hopeless minutes were dragging out intolerably. With a lifebelt I might … but no: there were women left, and I had got to stay.

Then of a sudden there burst out a roar, and a clang of iron, and a gush of scalding steam; and the decks ripped and splintered, and the steam rushed down in grey, peeling clouds. No, not that death. I vaulted the rail, and sank.

The instinct of the swimmer is curious. I had gone over the side quite satisfied that escape was hopeless, and intending to drown with one long plunge. But no sooner did the icy water thunder in my ears than the old instinct made me strike out for the surface. But I could not reach it. I swam on for what seemed to be minutes, hours, years, thousands of years; my arms aching, the veins like to burst through my skin; and then it came upon me that the steamer had sunk, and I was being dragged in her swirl down, down, down, to the dark sea floor; down, down, where it was too cold down down.

I opened my eyes and blinked; blinked again, and saw dimly the rough sea living-room of fishers. It was wainscoted with bunks round to the rudder case, and on the forward bulkhead was a fireplace resplendent with brass. I imagined I was in one of the bunks, but was not very certain about it, and so coughed inquiringly. Somebody came to my side. I pondered awhile, and then remarked, "I seem, somehow, to know that coat."

"It's yours," said the some one. " Don't you remember? I'm Mabel Vanrennan."

This was more satisfactory. I woke further, and inquired, " Where's the other Mrs. er I forget?"

"Codrington," said a voice from one of the bunks. " Here."

I was getting on. " I'm afraid you must have lost all your clothes?" was the next thing that occurred to me.

"Yes," said the voice, " and such a lovely diamond star!"

Then came a torrent of sobbing, and, between sobs: " Oh! how could I be so horrid as to think of such a thing now? There are only sixty picked up, they say. And all those other poor people lost! Isn't it awful to think about?"

"Very probably," I said. " But we've saved our own skins, and I don't think we've anything to be ashamed of. It wasn't my fault that some one gathered me up, though."

Then a man came in and stared at me thought fully a fisherman, in clumsy sea boots and brown-patched oilskin.

"Closish squeak you've had, mister," said he, slowly. " We just passed that other boat what run you down. She'd about seven foot of her bow gone, and looked pretty sick, I tell you. We hailed her to know if she wanted anything; but she said ' No.' Got her steering gear fixed up again, and was going to put into Ports mouth. She's a Welsh collier bound there. Rum go this has been. Where was your steamer hit?"

"Haven't a notion."

"Well, what were her water-tight bulkheads doing?"

"Very sorry, but I can't tell you."

"H'm!" said the man. Then what do you know about it?"

"Nothing," said I, " except that I'm here now, and that just now I imagined I was drowned."

"Well," said the man, "you won't do much towards dirtying any poor beast of a sailor's ticket at the inquiry, that's one blessing. I'll send you in a can of tea, and then you'd better sleep. We're standing in for Penzance to bring the news, because there ought to be a reward kicking about, and by the time you wake we should be there. So long!"

Part 3
THE FINGER OF HANKIN

1.

HE was called William Edward Hankin Seale, and by giving him the name of Hankin, his god fathers and godmothers considered that they had provided him with brilliant prospects. Where fore they economised, and forbore to add the usual christening mug and silver feeding tackle. In after years William Edward Seale had it constantly repeated to him that there was a man called Hankin who lived on a place called the West Coast of Africa, where he had amassed wealth, and was still amassing.

In his school days William Edward Seale said little about the vague Hankin. He learned that West Africa was a considerable distance from Charterhouse in miles; that the climate was hot, through some connection which it had with a thing called the equator, upon which the sun ap parently traversed as a bead does upon a wire; and that the Coast produced gold dust, ivory, and monkeys. Afterwards he got hold of The Cruise of the Midge, and added to this list of products, slaves, fever, sunstroke, and picturesque fighting.

He pictured Hankin as a king of countless negroes, who owned a long black schooner for nefarious purposes, and who went out for rides on his own private elephant and ate cocoa-nuts free of cost. He rather envied the old gentleman, but he did not swagger about him then. Later, however, he did both.

He went from Charterhouse to a bank in London, where he laboured easily, but acquired no unwieldy prosperity. He lived slightly beyond his income, but kept the leeway in check by waving Hankin before the eyes of his duns. He pointed out that the West Coast was notoriously unhealthy and that Hankin could not live much longer. He was generous in the matter of inter est, too. He said that when he put on a black tie for Hankin, they would see that there was nothing mean about him when he came to pay for accommodation. So he lived on; and the rumours of Hankin provided him gratis with dances and theatre paper; and dinners and Sun day river-parties were bestowed upon him by people who had marriageable daughters. " It's no use your asking me to pay for anything," he would say cheerfully. " I've barely a sixpence beyond my salary at present."

Occasionally he came across some man who had been in the Colonial Service or in a trading house on the West Coast, and asked about his connection, who, he stated, was some sort of a nine teenth cousin. But none of the Coasters ever knew about Hankin, or (what is perhaps more accurate) they never said they knew. So as far as William Edward Seale was concerned, Hankin remained vague and nebulous; but Seale never lost faith in his riches and dutiful cousinly affection (as bespoken by the afore-mentioned god parents); and calculated on the approaching windfall with certainty and sweet delight.

It was the coming of Captain Charteris with Nancy that gave him his first definite idea of Hankin. Charteris wired from Liverpool to ask for an interview, and was invited to come up and dine at the club and talk matters over there. Charteris came, and enjoyed his meal, as most men do after a course of Coast and steamer fare; but he talked whilst he was eating, and what he said did woful damage to Scale's appetite. After wards they went to a quiet corner of the billiardroom for coffee and cognac; and between whiffs of a good cigar, Charteris went on with his tale:

"We aren't mighty particular out there as a general rule, y' know, but that was a bit too blackguardly and low for anything. They kicked him out of the Service, of course; and they told him that if he didn't clear out of the Colony one time, they'd prosecute him to boot, and he'd get sent home to do five years for an absolute cert. So he cleared; and went to Lagos."

"But he was very rich at that time, wasn't he?" Seale asked.

"Rich? He owned the finest assortment of debts of any man in Accra. They had to pay his steamer-fare to get him away. I don't believe the old scamp ever did have a cent beyond his pay, but he'd a knack of hinting that he was a millionaire, and people sometimes believed him. He blarneyed himself into a trading house in Lagos on the strength of swaggering about money, which of course he hadn't got, and he might have worked himself back into a comfortable position if he had only chosen to keep straight. But that was not his way. He hung on there for a couple of years till he'd got his fingers well into the pie, and then one fine day he pulled out all the plums that were available and skipped by the British African boat to Grand Canary. He'd about a thousand pounds all told in his pocket when he landed at Las Palmas, and on the strength of it he married that pretty little woman I was telling you about, who died when Nancy was born."

"After which he took the child back to the Coast again, and brought her up like a savage?"

"No, he didn't; and that's about the only good point I ever heard the old ruffian accused of. He left her in Grand Canary, farmed her out (don't you call it?) in a village just outside Las Palmas, and went back again to the Coast to find money for the up-keep of her. It was a pretty plucky thing to do, because several gaols were waiting for him anxiously, and he'd dirtied his ticket so thoroughly up and down, that no white man would touch him with the end of a swizzle-stick.

What he did was to steam down coast to Lagos Roads, change over to the branch-boat and get across the bar, and then slip away from her by native canoe. He didn't land on the island at all. He went off over the lagoon, and then on, right up to the back of the Egba country. There was a hot war on then with the Yorubas, and it was about nine to one got knocked on the head and chopped; but somehow the old scamp slipped through, and then he started in to collect rubber. He got a mud-and-grass hut built and lived on native chop, and must have had a pretty tough time of it at first, because all the roads were blocked, and he could neither get ' trade ' up-coun try or send his rubber down. But after a bit, things went better with him. He got his rubber carried down to Lagos, contrived to lay hold of a few domestic slaves to do his work, and was able to send remittances to the woman who farmed Nancy outside Las Palmas. If he'd stuck to what he'd made then, he might have lived pretty comfortably, because trade-gin makes tol erable cocktails when you're used to it, and up in that part of the bush you can always get chickens and mutton if you care to pay. But he didn't do that: he stuck to the cheap native chop; and when he had fever he grudged himself pills and quinine: it took him all he knew to scrape up eighty pounds a year for Nancy."

"Oh, my hat!" said Seale; " and I thought that man was a millionaire."

"I wish," said Charteris, " you could have seen him when I did. I was up at the back of the Egba country with a Commission, and we picked up the wood-smoke of his cooking one day in the dusk. We had missed the village we were trying for, and had no fancy for collecting fever by squatting out in the bush. So we pushed on, and came upon a few chimbeques in a clearing. A thing that called itself a white man was in one of them, and that was Hankin. He was down with black-water fever, and when the doctor had done a turn with him, I went in to stand my watch. He wasn't an inviting spectacle, and if you knew what black-water fever is which you don't you'd understand why. But he was a white man, or had been white once, and out there one feels a sort of kin ship to one's colour. So I sat by the poor devil and heard his yarn; and when he asked me a bit of a favour, I couldn't very well refuse it, because, you see, he asked when he was in the very act of pegging out. He wanted me to pick up this youngster of his as I was going home, and hand her over to you."

But why to me of all people?"

"Hankin said," replied the other, stolidly, "that he knew you thought you'd some claim on him, and that therefore he considered he'd a claim on you. I said I didn't see the force of his argument. He said that was his palaver, and would I do what I was asked, or have a very nasty taste left on my conscience by refusing? So of course I was forced to say ' Yes,' and there was an end of the matter. The Hausas buried him at sunrise, and we marched on."

"But what on earth am I to do with the brat? I'm making a poor enough show of keeping my self. I had er expectations once, but they haven't come off yet, and I'm more largely dipped than I care to think about. I'm only a poor brute of a bank clerk with half-nothing a year by way of pay. It strikes me you've done some body a pretty mean turn."

"How could I help myself?" said Charteris, with a shrug. " I didn't know you from Adam, and Hankin shoved the job on to me at a peculiar time. You haven't seen a man die the way he did, in a bush hut, with no one round but savages, or else you'd understand. I can quite imagine it's an unpleasant surprise to you; but you know you needn't take over the youngster."

"What?" said Seale, quickly, " you'll keep her on yourself?"

Captain Charteris laughed harshly. " I shall drag out my own leave here in England mostly on tick, and then get back to the Coast again. Man, I haven't thirty pounds in the world. I couldn't afford to be saddled with a dog. I sup pose it comes to this: we shall both repudiate her."

And the result will be?"

"Workhouse, I suppose."

What a ghastly thing to think about!"

"My dear sir, we can gather comfort from knowing it's no fault of ours. It's a case of 'sins of the fathers.' Hankin shouldn't have been a blackguard; or if he was, he shouldn't have married; or if he did marry, he shouldn't have allowed Nancy to step out into the world. If he's any sense of decency left, Hankin ought to be squirming in Hell this minute at the thought of the mischief he's brought about."

Seale hit the table in front of him so that the cigar ashes jumped.

"This is a horrible business anyway," he said, "but it's got to be put an end to. The more we think over it, the worse it gets. You and I have no legal responsibility; so we'll just hand over this calamitous brat to the police, and shuffle clear of the whole matter. Where have you stowed her?"

At the ' Metropole.' We'll go there one-time if you like."

"Yes," said Seale, and strode noisily out of the room.

They exchanged only one remark on the way across.

"She's a taking little beggar," said Charteris, "though I don't think she cares much for me." Upon which Seale broke out against him with sudden violence and profanity, and insisted on the subject being dropped. And after that they marched down Northumberland Avenue in silence.

"It's right up at the top," said Charteris, as they walked into the hall of the hotel. " I econo mised in the matter of rooms. So we may as well go up by the lift. Shall I tell the porter to have a four-wheeler ready in five minutes?"

"Oh, do anything you like," said Seale. " No, you needn't bother about that now, though. There are cabs always ready. Here, come along; there's a lift just going up."

Two minutes later Captain Charteris opened a door and showed Seale a pretty child of six asleep in a deep armchair. She woke as they came into the room, nodded to Charteris, and stared at his companion critically. For once in his life Seale was tongue-tied before a lady. He somehow or other felt unutterably mean, though (as he care fully explained to himself) there was no just cause for this feeling. And as an effect, all initiatory small talk left him. There was a long silence in the room, and it was the child who first broke it.

"You must be the gentleman," said she to Seale, " who is going to take care of me?"

"No," he answered sullenly, " I am not."

"Oh," said Nancy, leaning back in her chair again, " I am sorry for that."

Seale could not help asking " Why?"

"Because," came the answer, " I like you. I like you better than him," she added with a nod across at her steamer escort.

"This is gratifying," said Charteris. " But I am afraid, young lady, that it is a rather useless avowal. Now we've come to take you out for a drive somewhere. So suppose you put on your hat and jacket."

"Can't," said Nancy, cheerfully. " I've not begun to dress myself yet. I'm not growed up enough for that. But you," she said with a nod at Scale, " can put on my things for me if you like. They're all lying there on that sofa. Shoes first."

"Oh, look here," said Charteris, " we'd better ring for the stewardess chambermaid, I mean."

"No," said Seale; " I may as well do what I can for the kid. Hang it, man! let me do some thing. God knows I'm feeling brute enough as it is."

So with infinite pains and clumsiness he put on Nancy's outdoor raiment, and when he had fin ished, he stepped back to overlook his handiwork.

Well?" she said.

What?" he asked.

Don't I look nice?"

"Ye-es, I suppose you do. Yes, distinctly you do."

"Then what are you waiting for?"

"I don't understand."

"The others," said Nancy, judicially, "when they dressed me, and when I was good, and when I looked nice, always gave me a kiss to finish up."

Charteris laughed.

Scale turned on him savagely with a " Drop that!" Then he stooped and took hold of the child's hand and said, " Come on."

"Kiss first," said Nancy. " I've been good."

Shamefacedly Seale pecked at her with his mouth, and Charteris laughed again. " I wouldn't do it," said Charteris, " if I were you. That sort of thing leaves a nasty taste afterwards when you remember she is rigged in workhouse uniform, you know."

Seale kissed the child again, this time more scientifically. " Now, look here," he said, " we'll just drop that foolishness, please, for always. If you think I'm going to let this jolly little beggar go to the parish pauper shop, you're badly mistaken. What will become of her in the end, I'm damned if I know; but for the present, and until something turns up, I'm going to take her off to my own rooms; and my landlady and I'll dry-nurse her between us. We shall probably make a poor enough job of it, because funds are very scarce; but I guess we're about the only opening Nancy has before her at present. Come along, Nancy, and we'll drive off in a rubbertired hansom to my palatial chambers."

"I say," said Charteris, as they were going back along the corridors, " you're rather a good sort, you know."

Seale turned upon him with a sudden glow of passion. " I'm about the most unlucky brute in London this minute," he cried, " and if there's one man I ought to hate, that's you. You've landed me in the devil of a mess, and there's no getting out of it. You knew what she was; you'd seen her; and I don't think you did the fair thing not telling me beforehand. Of course, I thought that being Hankin's kid, she'd be well, just fit for the workhouse. How was I to know that she was like this?"

"You're a bit unreasonable."

"I'm not going to argue with you," said Seale. "The thing's done, and I've got no use for you any further."

"I don't quite take your meaning."

"Well, it's this, Captain Charteris: what little I've seen of you will last me the rest of my time. You may say good-bye to Nancy if you like, but you needn't bother to shake hands with me. I wish you were at the devil."

2.

When a young man of twenty-three deliber ately adds to his bachelor household an attractive young lady of six summers, who speaks foreign languages and possesses a history, attention is naturally drawn to the performance. Scale's acquaintances, especially the feminine portion of them, were first curious, and then shocked; and out of sheer justice to Nancy he had to tell one or two of them the true story of Hankin. The news spread through that small fraction of Lon don which knew Seale, and the regard with which it had previously regarded him changed with a very short prelude. It is no use giving dinners to a young man with no expectations who has deliberately chosen to cumber himself with a scamp's brat; and if you have daughters, it is a mad thing to ask to your dances a wretched fellow whom it would be the utmost misfortune for your daughter to fall in love with. And so the invitations ceased with brisk unanimity; and as Seale had been accustomed to much going out and about, he saw fit to do it now on his own resources, which of course cost money.

How he managed to keep going for the next seven years is a matter best known to himself and Nancy, who at an early stage was initiated into the art of circumventing res angusta domi and living at the rate of twice one's income. But there is a certain amount of enjoyment to be derived from sailing close to the wind, and a camaraderie grew up between the two of them that was very pleasant in its completeness. At the same time, that he might not accuse him self of hoodwinking youth, Seale used to instil morality as he went along.

"Y' know we're awful blackguards, old lady, having things and not paying for them the way we do," he would say; " and I ought to be kicked for showing a kid like you the style it's managed."

Upon which Nancy would retort: All right, Ted, I quite understand. But it's me that's to blame, not you. If there was no me to fritter money over, you'd live on your pay and have a lot left over. So as far as you're concerned, it doesn't count."

And then after Seale had solemnly assured her that she was completely wrong, and that he (by reason of his seniority) carried the sin of the pair of them on his own shoulders, they would go off to a theatre, or West for dinner, by way of get ting rid of the taste of the lecture.

But this style of living, ingenious though it may be, is liable to be brought to an end from the outside; and when the conclusion did finally come, Scale's only matter for surprise was that it had not arrived several years earlier.

"Old lady," said Seale, one day when he had lit up his cigar after dinner, in the big chair beside the fireplace, " the bank's given me the chuck."

"Phe-ew!" said Nancy.

"At least they've told me of another billet that's open, and said that if I don't resign nicely and take it with a smile, I shall probably find myself out of a job altogether. The manager seemed to think that my ideas of personal finance were too florid to be quite healthy in a mere bank clerk."

"Where's the new billet?"

Seale laughed. " In a place you've heard of before Lagos. One year on duty and six months' leave, with steamer fare paid home and back. Three hundred a year and allowances to draw all the time."

"My!" said Nancy, " what a lot! It's a heap more than you're getting now. We'll go, eh?"

You won't, anyway."

Why not? Don't we do everything together? I shall come and keep house for you, and save you lots. You can't keep house a bit, Ted."

"Shall have to. I Nancy, come here, old girl."

Nancy came across the hearthrug, and sat her self upon his knee, and lay back luxuriously.

"Nancy, I've been an awful brute to you. I've kept you here because I liked having you, when you ought to have been away at school with other girls, learning things."

"I have been learning," said Nancy, stoutly. "I've had lessons with you nearly every day. I can read, and write, and mend socks, and do accounts, and order a dinner. Isn't that enough?"

"Nowhere near," said Seale. " You're growing up, you see. You're thirteen now, and you'll be in long frocks in a year or so, with your hair in a knob, and the Lord knows what else; and there are things a girl ought to learn that I can't teach; and well, I'm a dam' bad lot, old lady, and if you go away to a decent school, you'll learn that is so."

"Ter-waddle," said Nancy. Didn't you sad dle yourself with me, and doesn't that prove you to be the best man in the world? 'Tisn't as if I'd never seen any others of the boys. I've met 'em, lots of 'em, and that's why I know what I say's right. And besides, it would never make any difference to me whether you were the big gest sweep on earth, or the biggest angel. You're just my Ted, and that's all I care about."

"Yes; but, Nancy, you couldn't go to the Gold Coast, anyway. You'd lose all your good looks for one thing "

Don't care."

"But I do. I'm proud of them, if you are not. And besides, you'd spoil all the arrangements. This way: you see I get allowances for one only. If you went, there'd be your steamer fare to pay, and an establishment to keep up. And that would run away with all the cash. Whereas if I go alone, I shall get everything paid; come back with all my screw saved; and then you and I can spend the six months' leave on the jolliest spree imaginable."

But Nancy did not see it, and said so with point and argument. However, for once in his life Seale was firm. He had a feeling that he would have a much better chance, and a much better time of it, if he started this new life on the Coast as a bachelor without encumbrances.

Still, he did not work openly upon this principle. He said he was leaving Nancy behind, entirely for Nancy's good. But in the end, of course, he got his way.

3.

A B. and A. boat took Seale across the Bay, and after calling at several African ports, brought up to an anchor head-on to a heavy swell in the Lagos Roads. A small branch-steamer came out to her from inside the bar, and Seale tasted the joys of being transhipped in a tossing surf-boat paddled by yelling Elmina boys. The branchsteamer deposited him at one of the wharves which jut out from the boulevard of the Marina into the lagoon, and his new chief met him there with a pink 'rickshaw and a white umbrella.

Knowing that Lagos is a town of negroes, Seale had somehow or other been prepared to find unlimited stinks; and because these were entirely absent, the air of the place came to him as a pleasant surprise. He settled down in two large, cool, whitewashed rooms, and proceeded to enjoy himself.

Being newly landed and full of health, he natu rally found the work expected of him ridicu lously light; and as he had occasion to put on his dress clothes every night, and discovered that white men in Lagos are addicted to gorgeous dinners and much hospitality, he told himself with confidence that the Coast had been unjustly maligned, and that he had tumbled into a very snug berth. He retained this ecstatic frame of mind for exactly fourteen days, and then one morning a man came into his office and asked him to dinner for that evening.

"Can't," said Seale. " Much obliged all the same. I'm chopping with Anderson to-night. And so, by the way, are you, although I sup pose you've forgotten. He asked us yesterday."

"You've got to go to Anderson's funeral in two hours' time," said the other man, dryly. "He pegged out with heat apoplexy during the night, just before that tornado came on. Ta-ta, see you at the cemetery. And mind you turn up to dine with me. Seven-thirty sharp."

The other man nodded and left, and Seale mopped a very moist brow with his pockethandkerchief. This," he told himself, " was the very devil of a climate." And by way of having the lesson rammed home, he was invited to stand and frizzle in the sun, precisely one week later, whilst the flippant other man was himself being buried.

Seale was consumed with a mild touch of Coast fever that night, and the fear of death gripped him by the heart. He reviewed much of his past life, and was truly sorry that he had not amended his ways earlier, and so avoided coming to Lagos. He laid much solid blame upon Hankin, and told himself that he could dance with calm delight upon Hankin's tomb. Incidentally he remembered Nancy, and tried to carry his resentment along to her; but that did not act. No, it was no fault of Nancy's that he was out in this abominable exile. She was a good little beggar anyhow, and a hot, new trouble rose in him when he thought of what must happen to her after he died, as (he was quite sure) must take place within the next few hours.

However, of course, he did not die then; and as an early dose of fever is the very best thing to acclimatize a man, he soon settled down into a very healthy fellow from a Coast point of view. But that early scare had bitten in deeply, and it prevented him from remaining popular with the Lagos community. Where every one is lavishly free-handed, the careful man who does not keep open house is not called careful merely. They give him an uglier name. And if a man of any obstinacy once overhears himself spoken of as " that stingy brute," he is rather apt to act up to the character. Besides, every time the dangers of the place were brought home to him more nearly, either by illness within the marches of his own proper body, or by the news of death amongst the white community, Seale could have screamed aloud in his agony of dread as to what would happen if Nancy were left unprovided for.

Yet torment himself how he would, the fund which he was making for her grew with exasper ating slowness. He had to eat and drink to live; and everything was expensive; and the pay and allowances which had seemed dazzling enough at a distance, shrivelled wofully when counted on the spot. Moreover, he had always possessed the unwieldy knack of making two shillings go as far as one, and had never contrived to shake himself adrift from it. And so when the time of his first leave came round, he drew his home-pay and accepted a six months' billet in the bush for extra lucre. He wrote home to tell Nancy that he was so hard-worked that he could not get away which was scarcely true and also that he was in brilliant health at the time of writing, which was a solid lie.

His next leave he also tried to miss, but broke down with dysentery, and had to spend a muchgrudged two months in Grand Canary to save his life. But he came back to the Coast again with new health, and hammered desperately at the dollar-mill to make up his leeway. He was not liked in Lagos still; but a rumour had got about that there was a reason for his stinginess, and some of the men had got a respect for him though of course that is a vastly different thing from a liking.

And at the end of four and a half years from his leaving England, Captain Charteris came to him again and put a change into his life, as he had done once before.

Scale had not forgotten his old animosity against the man; and when he first brought his face into the office quite unexpectedly for Charteris had come into money, and was living at home as a decent English gentleman now Seale bade him uncivilly enough to get out, one time.

"You must hear my message first," said Charteris, "although I'm repeating an old offence."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm bringing Nancy to you. She's upstairs, waiting in your house this minute, and I've just come down here to break the news."

"What! Nancy here! Man, you're either dreaming or drunk."

"I am neither, although I wish I was both. The Lord knows I've no cause for rejoicing."

Seale sat at his office desk and passed a finger round inside his shirt collar. " You'd better explain," he said.

"Quite so. To begin with, Hankin or rather his ghost is interfering again. It seems he once invested money in one of the Coast mines here at Axim. That followed the habit of most gold mines by going pop. But they've found magnifi cent quartz reefs on either side of his property; and so the ground has been valued at ninety thousand pounds; and, what is better still, has been sold for eighty thousand pounds and paid for. That's Nancy's now, and nothing would suit her but that she must come down here and give you news of it herself."

My God!" said Seale. Then after a minute he added, " But what have you come down here for?"

"Because," said Charteris, slowly and quietly "because I love her."

"You love Nancy! You! You love that child 1 But there, I suppose she's grown up. Well, are you going to tell me next that the pair of you are to be married?"

Charteris looked at him queerly. " Shouldn't you mind," he asked, if I did tell you that?"

"I shouldn't like it. To be candid, I don't particularly care for you, as you know. But I suppose she'll marry some day. I always have pictured that, ever since I've been on the Coast, because, you see, she must be provided for some way."

"But man! don't you care for her yourself?"

"Care for her!" Seale gave a mirthless laugh. If you knew what I've been doing here all these years, you wouldn't ask that. Of course I care for her."

But how?"

"Oh, I've never defined it. Paternally, I suppose, or like a brother. That kid and I were the best of friends."

"Seale, you're a fool! Kid, you say. She's a woman. She's the loveliest But I'm not going to talk. You must see for yourself. Only, don't you go upstairs and make any mistake. She's got no daughter's feelings for you, or sister's; and if you go and break her heart over any nonsense of that kind, I've got it in me to shoot you for your pains. I've had my life ruined for me during these last months by you being in the way, and if hers is to be spoiled too by your blundering, you can understand that I shall want to kill you very badly."

"Wait a minute," said Seale, unsteadily. " This has come upon me with so much suddenness that I hardly grasp "

"I have no more to say to you," said Charteris, and he went out into the dazzling sunshine of the Marina, where the shouting negroes were carrying loads over the brick-red dust.

Seale swayed and tottered, then pulled himself together with an effort, and went up the stairs which led to his house above. Nancy knew his footstep and met him at the door, a radiant vision in tropical white. He felt himself tangled by her arms. Her lips were against his ear. " Oh, Ted! my love," she was saying to him, " I could not wait away from you any longer. Ted, darling, I had to come. Oh! my own love, if you only knew how I had hungered for you, you would have come to me sooner."

Then Scale's eyes were opened. He did not make the blunder which Charteris had warned him against. He felt no inclination that way. A new feeling towards the girl surged within him like a glow of fire. " Sweetheart," he whispered back to her, " I never knew you would be like this. If I had known, I could never have kept myself away from you."

Part 4
THE CHOLERA SHIP