Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne

“ The steamer was outside, leaking steam at an anchorage, and sending out dazzling heliograms every time she rolled her bleached awnings to the sun. The pilot's boat, with her crew of savages, paddled towards her, down channels between the mangrove-planted islands. The water spurned up by the paddle blades was the color of beer, and the smell of it was puzzlingly familiar.
"Good old smell," said Nilssen, "isn't it? I see you snuffling. Trying to guess where you met it before, eh? We all do that when we first come. ”

“ But the launch, armed with her fine rampart of logs, bore it unflinchingly, and steamed up within a hundred yards of the thick of them, and just held there in her place, with her wheel gently flapping against the stream, and opened a vicious fire from fifty muzzles.
Of modern rifles Kettle had only twenty on board, but he had an abundance of those beautiful instruments known as "trade guns," and at shot-range a man can be killed just as definitely by a dose of pot-leg out of a gas-pipe barrel as he can by a dum-dum bullet sent through scientific rifling. ”

“ He squatted just underneath the slit, and began to quarry the earth at the foot of the wall with skill and determination.
But if Kettle was prompt, his captors were by no means dilatory. Between Kettle's prison and the mate's was another of those bottle-shaped oubliettes, and in that there was presently a bustle of movement. There came the noises of some one lighting a fire, and coughing as he fanned smouldering embers into a glow with his breath, and then more coughing and some curses as the fire-lighter took his departure. ”

“ But somehow he and Hamilton, after a few days' acquaintance, seemed to glide into the subject imperceptibly. Mutual confidences followed in the course of nature. It seemed that Hamilton too, like Kettle, was a devotee of the stiller forms of verse.
"You see, Skipper," he said, "I've been a pretty bad lot, and I've made things hum most of my time, and so I suppose I get my hankerings after restfulness as the natural result of contrast."
"Same here, sir. Ashore I can respect myself, and in our chapel circle, though I say it myself, you'll find few more respected men. ”

“ The New Orleans heat smote upon the chart-house roof, and the air outside clattered with the talk of negroes. Already hatches were off, and the winch chains sang as they struck out cargo, and from the levee alongside, and from New Orleans below and beyond, came tangles of smells which are peculiarly their own. A steward brought in tea, and it stood on the chart-table untasted, and at last Kettle finished, and Lupton put a question. ”

“ In the throat of the English Channel a blundering steamship did her best to run them down, and actually rasped sides with the sailing-vessel as she tore past into the night; but nobody made an attempt to jump for safety on to her decks, nobody even took the trouble to swear at her with any thing like heartfelt profanity.
"It's a blooming Flying Dutchman we're on," said the coal-trimmer who acted as mate. "There's no killing the old beast. Only hope she gets us ashore somehow, and doesn't stay fooling about at sea forever just to get into risks. ”

“ Cranze gasped back his breath, and used it in a torrent of curses.
"Play on him again," said Kettle, and selected a good black before-breakfast cigar from his pocket. He lit it with care. The man on the bulwark shifted his shoulder for a better hold against the derrick-guy, and swung the limp hose in-board again. The water splashed down heavily on Cranze's head and shoulders, and the onlookers took stock of him without a trace of emotion. They had most of them seen the remedy applied to inebriates before, and so they watched Cranze make his gradual recovery with the eyes of experts. ”

“ We're at sea now, and no one can gossip beyond the walls of the ship. Besides Kettle is far too staunch to talk. He's the sort of man who can be as mum as the grave when he chooses. But if you persist in refusing to trust him, well, I tell you that the thought of what he may be up to makes me frightened."
"Now look here, my boy," said White, "you force me to remind you that I'm senior partner here, and to repeat that what I say on this matter's going to be done. I flatly refuse to trust this Kettle with the whole yarn. ”

“ The work was dangerous, and required more than ordinary nerve and endurance and skill. A heavy sea ran, and from its crests a spindrift blew which cut the face like whips, and numbed all parts of the body with its chill. The boats were tossed about like playthings, and required constant bailing to keep them from being waterlogged. But Kettle had brought the Flamingo to windward of the Grosser Carl, and each boat carried a line, so that the steam winches could help her with the return trips. ”

“ Every biting insult in his vocabulary, every lashing word that is used upon the seas, every gibe, national, personal, or professional, that a lifetime of hard language could teach, he poured out on that shivering boat's crew then.
They were Germans certainly, but being an English shipmaster, he had, of course, many a time sailed with a forecastle filled with their nationality, and had acquired the special art of adapting his abuse to the "Dutchman's" sensibilities, even as he had other harangues suited for Coolie or Dago mariners, or even for that rare sea-bird, the English sailorman. ”

“ See?"
"It was Miss Teresa Anderson I was pitying," said Kettle pointedly.
"Good Lord, man, why? Isn't it the finest thing in the world for her?"
"It might be fine to get away from where she is, and land home to find a nice property waiting. But I don't care to see a woman have a husband forced on her. It would be nobler of you, Mr. Wenlock, to let the young lady get to England, and look round her for a while, and make her own choice."
"I'm too hard up to be noble," said Wenlock drily. "I've not come here on philanthropy, and marrying that girl is part of my business. ”

“ You paddle back to your squaw and piccaninnies on the beach, Robinson, and don't you come out here to mock your betters when they're down on their luck. We've nothing to give you except ugly words, and you'll get them cheap."
"Well, Mr. Mate," said Kettle, "I haven't heard white man's English for a year, but if you can teach me anything new, I'm here to learn. I've come across most kinds of failure in my time, but a white man who lets himself be kicked off his ship by a parcel of Krooboys, and who disgraces Great Britain by being a blooming Englishman, is a specimen that's new to me. ”

“ The Krooboys broached cargo and strewed the decks with their half-naked bodies, drunk on gin, amid a litter of smashed green cases.
Meals ceased. The Portuguese cook and steward dropped their collective duties from the first alarm; the Kroo cook left the rice steamer because "steam no more lib"; and any one who felt hunger or thirst on board, foraged for himself, or went without satisfying his wants. Nobody helped the sick, or chided the drunken. Each man lived for himself alone--or died, as the mood seized him.
Nilssen took up his quarters at one end of the bridge, frightened, but apathetic. ”

“ But the explosion was quite outdone in noise by the cackle of laughter which followed it. So slow was the flight of the missile that the eye could trace it. So short was its journey, and so curved its trajectory, that it came very near to hitting one of the boats of the divers, and the men working there cried out in derision that they would catch cold by being wetted by the spray.
"Well," thought Kettle, "these are pretty cool hands for Dagos, anyway. I'm going to have a fine tough time of it when my part of the scuffle comes." ”

“ Dark fell and the dug-out was made fast to a mangrove root. The Africans covered their heads to ward off ghosts, and snored on the damp floor of the canoe. Kettle took quinine and dozed in the Madeira chair. Mists closed round them, white with damp, earthy-smelling with malaria. Then gleams of morning stole over the trees and made the mists visible, and Kettle woke with a seaman's promptitude. He roused Brass Pan, and Brass Pan roused the canoe-men, and the voyage proceeded. ”

“ To my mind, it's not a nice thing marrying a woman that you evidently despise, just for her money."
Wenlock flushed. "Look here," he said, "I refuse to be lectured, especially by you. Aren't you under promise to get £50 from me the moment I'm safely married? And didn't you fairly jump at the chance of fingering it."
Captain Kettle did not hit this man who cast such an unpleasant imputation on him; he did not even let him feel the lash of his tongue in return. He merely smiled grimly, and said: "Get down into the boat, you and your case of rifles." ”

“ From below the mud came up in white billows, which danced, and swirled, and eddied as the air bubbles from the divers' exhaust valves stirred it. And out beyond, in and among the reefs, and along the distant shore, which swung and shimmered in the heat haze, hungry dhows prowled like carrion birds temporarily driven away from a prey.
Tazzuchi and the chief engineer busied themselves in binding together fragments of fire-bars with iron wire. The Italian shipmaster had a great notion of the damage his signal-guns could do against a dhow, if they were provided with orthodox solid shot. ”

“ If you rob a man in that region, he merely respects your superior power. If you offer him payments, he promptly suspects you of weakness, and sets his clumsy mind at work to find the method by which you may be robbed of whatever you have not voluntarily surrendered.
"Of course," said Kettle, taking up the thread of his tale again, "it's understood that we run this country for our own advantage first."
"What other object should white men have up-country in Africa?" said Clay. "We don't come here merely for our health." ”

“ Kettle read the hurried letter through a second time, and then got up out of his long chair, and put on his spruce white drill uniform coat, and exchanged his white canvas shoes for another pair more newly pipeclayed. His steamer might merely be a common cargo tramp, the town he was going to visit ashore might be merely the usual savage settlement one meets with on the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf, but the little sailor did not dress for the admiration of fashionable crowds. He was smart and spruce always out of deference to his own self-respect. ”

“ Captain Kettle felt himself to redden all over under the tan of his skin. Neatness in clothes was always a strong point with him, and he resented the barbarism of his present get-up acutely. "If I wanted a job at teaching manners, I could find one in your boat, that's certain," was his prompt retort. "And when I'd finished with that, I could give some of you a lesson in pluck without much harm being done. I wonder if you call yourselves white men to let a crowd of niggers clear you out of your ship like that?" ”

“ The noise of the shot came to them quite a long time afterward, when the little puff of smoke which had spirted up from the distant sandbank had already begun to thin under the sunshine; but it was that gun-crack, and not the sight of the dead engineer, which gave the working negroes their final scare. With loud children's cries, and queer dodgings of fear, they pitched down their working tools, and fled to where the other black soldiers and passengers were lying on the iron floor-plates of the launch, in security below her water-line. ”

“ The villagers, wakened up from their torpid sleep, rushed from the grass and wattle houses on every hand. Kettle in his Berserk rage charged them whenever they made a stand, till at last all fled from him as though he were more than human.
Bodies lay upon the ground staring up at the moon; but there were no living creatures left, though the little sailor, with bared teeth and panting breath, stood there waiting for them. ”

“ CHAPTER I IN QUARANTINE
"The pay is small enough," said Captain Kettle, staring at the blue paper. "It's a bit hard for a man of my age and experience to come down to a job like piloting, on eight pound a month and my grub."
"All right, Capt'n," replied the agent. "You needn't tell me what I know already. The pay's miserable, the climate's vile, and the bosses are beasts. And yet we have more applicants for these berths on the Congo than there are vacancies for. And f'why is it, Capt'n? Because there's no questions asked. The Congo people want men who can handle steamers. ”

“ The black man is proverbially tough, and a whip, moral or physical, which will cut the most hardened of whites to ribbons, will leave him unmoved. An artist in words may rail at him for an hour without making him flicker an eyelash, or a Yankee mate might hammer him with a packing-case lid (always supposing there was no nail in it) for a like period without jolting from him so much as a cry or a groan. And so I think it speaks highly for Captain Kettle's powers when, at the end of three minutes' talk, he caused many of those Krooboys to visibly wince. ”

“ Captain Kettle was saying, "no being king for me, Doctor, thank you. I've been offered a king's ticket once, and that sickened me of the job for good and always. The world's evidently been going on too long to start a new kingdom nowadays, and I'm too much of a conservative to try and break the rule. No, a republic's the thing, and, as you say, I'm the stronger man of the two of us. ”

“ The march stopped at the first outbreak of the squall. Kettle bolted to a rock ahead of him, and squatted down in a dry lee, sucking up great draughts of the new cool air. There are times when a drop of five degrees of temperature can bring earthly bliss of a quality almost unimaginable. And there he stayed, philosophically waiting till the tornado should choose to blow itself out. ”

“ Captain Kettle whistled to himself long and dismally. "Piled her up," he muttered, "that's what her old man has done. Hit a half-ebb reef, and fairly taken root there. He's not shoved on his engines astern either, and that means she's ripped away half her bottom, and he thinks she'll founder in deep water if he backs her off the ground." A tiny spit of flame, pale against the moonlight, jerked out from under the awnings of the steamer's upper bridge. The noise of the shot came some time afterward, no louder than the cracking of a knuckle. ”

“ She rode there at the end of her painter, and the three rowers and the third mate fended her off, while Kettle's crew of nondescripts scrambled unhandily down to take their places. The negro stowaway refused stubbornly to leave the steamer, and so was lowered ignominiously in a bowline, and then, as he still objected loudly that he came from Sa' Leone, and was a free British subject, some one crammed a bucket over his head, amidst the uproarious laughter of the onlookers. ”

“ He was a tall man, and the hands thrust him from below, upward, and, though he struggled wildly and madly, all his efforts to have his own way were futile. Captain Owen Kettle had handled far too many really strong men in this fashion to even lose breath over a dram-drinking passenger. So Cranze found himself hurtled out on to the lower fore-deck, where somebody handcuffed him neatly to an iron stanchion, and presently a mariner, by Captain Kettle's orders, rigged a hose, and mounted on the iron bulwark above him, and let a three-inch stream of chilly brine slop steadily on to his head. ”