Black Kettle

“ Indeed, when Kettle, coming down the ladder himself, thrust him furiously back with a black pistol muzzle, he retreated to the bridge-deck, as did those who were with him.
But the other men of that worthy crew had no mind to be tyrannized over any longer when the steamer was momentarily settling down under their feet, and drowning was an immediate question. By the funnel stays and by one another’s backs they swarmed on to the top of the fiddley, and thence gaining the boat platforms, set about cutting adrift the grimy awnings with their knives, and clearing away the tackles and falls. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Central African negro is a fairly stolid person, and as the sight of a little slaughter does not in the least upset his nerves, he can stand bullet hail for a good long time without emotion, especially if there is no noise and bustle attached to it. But once let a scare get rubbed home into his stupid brain, and let him get started off on the run, and he is an awkward person to stop.
But Kettle did not start to hustle his black laborers back to work at once. ”

“ Pursuing the fleeing Indians, Elliott and his party suddenly ran into the midst of a horde of braves coming down the valley to help Black Kettle and the men who had been engaged with Custer. To fly was impossible. ”

“ Kettle loved music, and whatever he [Pg 112] might be doing, if he heard the strains of the Colonel’s violin, or especially Betty’s touch upon the harp in the sitting-room, it would have been necessary to chain him up to keep him away. He would sit on a little cricket in a corner, his black, shiny eyes full of rapture, and his mouth one vast grin. Kettle was in a heaven of delight when the Colonel, of evenings, tuned up his violin, and, sending for Uncle Cesar, “ole Marse” and his “boy” would make sweet, old-time music between them. ”

“ If I have any more of this hectoring spirit from you, I shall report your conduct when we get back to Stanley Pool."
"You may report till you're black in the face," said Kettle truculently; "but if you don't put a bit more backbone into things, you'll do it as a ghost and not as a live man. Look at your record up to date. You come up here at the head of a fine expedition; you set your soldiers to squeeze the tribes for rubber and ivory; they don't bring in enough niggers' ears to show that they've used their cartridges successfully, and so you shoot them down in batches ”

“ Not many of the shots hit--for the African is not a marksman--but the right effect was gained. The blacks in the canoe ducked and flinched; they were for the moment quite demoralized; and before they could man their paddles again, the stern-wheeler's stem had crushed into their vessel, had cut a great gash from one side, had rolled it over, and then mounted the wreck, and drove down stream across the top of it.
A few more angry shots snapped out at the black bodies swimming in the yellow water. "Hold up, there," Kettle ordered, "and let them swim if they can, and chance the crocodiles. ”

“ Doc, are you handy with tools?"
"Only with those of my own trade," said Clay. "I'm pretty inefficient all round," he added, with a shrug, "or else I shouldn't be here."
"Very well," said Kettle, "then I'll rate myself chief engineer." He got up, and walked round to where the black second engineer, the last man shot, still nuzzled the boiler plates exactly in the same position where he had first fallen. He lifted one of the man's arms, and let it go. It jerked back again like a spring.
"Well, Daddy," he said, "you didn't take long to get stiff. They shot you nice and clean, anyway. ”

“ With the black-handled knife that had carved their baking of pork, Nutt had stabbed him from the shoulder down through his heart.
“That saves my cartridges,” said Captain Kettle, and took his cocked revolver from where it lodged between his knee and the under side of the table.
He passed swiftly out through the pantry door, and was just in time for what he expected. The [210] negroes, alarmed by Nutt’s shrieks, were rushing from the mess-room to see what had gone wrong. He charged and drove them furiously back. They turned and ran before him, tumbling over one another in their scared haste ”

“ But Clay never worried about the matter at all. He was not the man to fill his head with useless problems.
But on this afternoon their concert was cut short before its finish. Commandant Balliot came back to the launch with satisfaction on his streaming face, and two armed black soldiers plodding at his heels.
"Well," said Kettle, "have they made you a colonel yet, or are they only going to give you the Congo medal?"
"You sacred pig," said Balliot, "you talked to M. le Commandant here of rebels. What are you but a rebel? I have told him all, and he has sent me to arrest you." ”

“ Orchardson; as yellow as a daffodil, his hair, and beard, and eyes.”
“I don’t care a fig what his colour may be,” cried my uncle, being now on his high ropes; “he must be a black blackguard, and nothing else, if he dares to take advantage of a girl he should protect. Poor Kitty, what a pretty kettle of fish she is in! You need not tell me, ma’am, I can see it all. I have always had a gift in that way. Though I have not had so very much to do with women, for which I thank the Lord, every night of my life, I understand their ways, as well as if I had been one of them.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nilssen was an utter wreck. Prolonged residence in this pestilential Congo had sapped his constitution; the poison was constantly eating at him; and he must either get relief in a very short time, or give up the fight and die. So that same afternoon saw Kettle journeying in a dug-out canoe over the beer-colored waters of the river, up stream, toward the witch-doctor's village.
Two savages (one of them suffering from a bad attack of yaws) propelled the craft from her forward part in erratic zig-zags; amidships sat Captain Kettle in a Madeira chair under a green-lined white umbrella ”

“ 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. ”

“ Peerybingle's toes, and even splashed her legs. And when we rather plume ourselves (with reason too) upon our legs, and keep ourselves particularly neat [4] in point of stockings, we find this, for the moment, hard to bear.
Besides, the Kettle was aggravating and obstinate. It wouldn't allow itself to be adjusted on the top bar; it wouldn't hear of accommodating itself kindly to the knobs of coal; it would lean forward with a drunken air, and dribble, a very Idiot of a Kettle, on the hearth. ”

“ The villagers brought down the logs smartly enough, and waxed quite friendly on finding that none of the hostage women and children had been killed or maltreated during their absence. They duly gave up the German axes which had been loaned to them, and carried the wood aboard. Kettle arranged its disposition. He had solid defences built up all round the vulnerable boiler and engines. He had a stout breastwork built all round inside the rail of the lower deck, quite stout enough to absorb a bullet even if fired at point-blank range. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And as for the rest of you filthy, stinking, scale-covered cousins of apes, over the side you go before you're put. Thought you were going to steal my lawful salvage, did you, you crawling, yellow-faced--ah!"
The hot-tempered Portuguese was not a man to stand this tirade (as Kettle anticipated) unmoved. ”

“ Mate, round her up under those davit tackles."
Again the Krooboys tried to prevent the boarding, but again the fire of that terrible revolver drove them yelping to shelter, and the boat drew up with a bump and a swirl under the dangling ropes. Kettle clambered forward along the thwarts, and swarmed up one fall with a monkey's quickness, and the Mate, a man of wooden courage, raced him up the other. Sheriff could not climb; they had to haul him up the ship's side by brute force in a bowline ”

“ 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. ”

“ Clay pleaded, "don't spoil the show. Let's do the traveller for once, and observe the 'interesting native customs.' You needn't be afraid; they're going to sacrifice the bigger hen to you, right enough."
Captain Kettle allowed himself to be persuaded, and sat back again. The mob of negroes came up to the doorway of the hut, and the witch-doctor, with many prostrations to the little sailor, made a long speech. Then the larger of the two fowls entered into the ceremony, and was slain with a sword, and the witch-doctor, squatting on the ground, read the omens. ”

“ As though they were an invitation to work, shovels were made fast along the coamings of the hatch. The six men took these, and with shouts dropped down upon the grain. And then began a period of Homeric toil. The fireman and the coal-trimmer set the pace, and with a fine contempt for the unhandiness of amateurs did not fail to give a display of their utmost. Kettle and Dayton-Philipps gamely kept level with them. The Italian ganger turned out to have his pride also, and did not lag, and only the free-born British subject from Sierra Leone endeavored to shirk his due proportion of the toil. ”

“ It was under these circumstances, then, that the missionary came to him again, and once more put in a bid for the ju-ju which lay at the pilotage. Kettle roundly accused the man of having betrayed him, and the fellow did not deny it with any hope of being believed. He had got to get his pile somehow, so he said: the ju-ju had value, and if he could not get hold of it one way, he had to work it another. And finally, would Kettle surrender it then, or did he want any more discomfort. ”

“ But if I'd known it was old Rad who had grabbed me, I tell you I should have sat sweating."
"It takes a lot more than a mere nigger, with his head in clouts, to scare me," said Kettle truculently, "and I don't care tuppence what he may be by trade. He's got a down on me at present, I'll grant, but I'm going to give Mr. Rad el Moussa fits a little later on, and you may stand by and look on, if you aren't frightened to be near him."
"I'm not a funk in the open," grumbled Murray, "and you know it. You've seen me handle a crew. ”

“ If you resist, you'll be shot. The noise of the shot will bring out the other men on the station, and they'll be killed also. There are plenty of us here, and we are well armed, and we intend to have our own way. If you are not anything short of a fool, you'll go and sit on that chair, and keep quiet till you're given leave to talk."
"I don't think I'll argue it with you," said the operator coolly. He got up and sat where he was told, and Kettle, according to arrangement, stood guard over him. ”