Free State an
organization which was quite strange to him. When he landed at Banana,
Captain Nilssen, pilot of the Lower Congo and Captain of the Port of
Banana, gave him advice on the subject in language which was plain and
unfettered.

"They are a lot of swine, these Belgians," said Captain Nilssen, from
his seat in the Madeira chair under the veranda of the pilotage, "and
there's mighty little to be got out of them. Here am I, with a wife in
Kjobnhavn and another in Baltimore, and I haven't been able to get away
to see either of them for five blessed years. And mark you, I'm a man
with luck, as luck goes in this hole. I've been in the lower river pilot
service all the time, and got the best pay, and the lightest jobs.
There's not another captain in the Congo can say as much. Some day or
other they put a steamboat on the ground, and then they're kicked out
from the pilot service, and away they're off one-time to the upper river
above the falls, to run a launch, and help at the rubber palaver, and
get shot at, and collect niggers' ears, and forget what champagne and
white man's chop taste like."

"You've been luckier?"

"Some. I've libbed for Lower Congo all my time; had a home in the
pilotage here; and got a dash of a case of champagne, or an escribello,
or at least a joint of fresh meat out of the refrigerator from every
steamboat I took either up or down."

"But then you speak languages?" said Kettle.

"Seven," said Captain Nilssen; "and use just one, and that's English.
Shows what a fat lot of influence this Etat du Congo has got. Why, you
have to give orders even to your boat-boys in Coast English if you want
to be understood. French has no sort of show with the niggers."

Now white men are expensive to import to the Congo Free State, and are
apt to die with suddenness soon after their arrival, and so the State
(which is in a chronic condition of hard-up) does not fritter their
services unnecessarily. It sets them to work at once so as to get the
utmost possible value out of them whilst they remain alive and in
the country.

A steamer came in within a dozen hours of Kettle's first stepping
ashore, and signalled for a pilot to Boma. Nilssen was next in rotation
for duty, and went off in his boat to board her, and he took with him
Captain Owen Kettle to impart to him the mysteries of the great river's
navigation.

The boat-boys sang a song explanatory of their notion of the new pilot's
personality as the