nder the sheltered side
of the boiler again, and smoked, and played more music-hall ditties on
the banjo. Commandant Balliot held to a sullen silence. He was growing
to have a poisonous hatred for this contemptuous little Englishman who
by sheer superiority had made him give up his treasured dictatorship,
and he formed schemes for the Englishman's discomfiture in the
near future.

But for the present he hoped very much that the man would not be killed;
he recognized, with fresh spasms of anger every time he thought about
it, that without Captain Kettle there would be no future--at any rate on
this earth--for any of them.

And meanwhile Captain Owen Kettle, stripped to shoes and trousers,
sweated over his work in the baking heat. Twice had a bullet grazed him,
once on the neck, and once on the round of a shoulder, and red stains
grew over the white satin of his skin. The work was strange to him
certainly, but he set about it with more than an amateur's skill. All
sailors have been handy with their fingers from time immemorial, but the
modern steamer-sailor, during his apprenticeship as mate, has to turn
his hand to a vast variety of trades. He is painter, carpenter,
stevedore, crew-driver, all in one day; and on the next he is doctor,
navigator, clerk, tailor, and engineer. And especially he is engineer.
He must be able to drive winch, windlass, or crane, like an artist; he
must have a good aptitude for using hand tools; and if he can work
machine tools also, it is so much the better for him.

Yes, Captain Kettle put the patch on that boiler like a workman. He
fitted his bolts, and made his joints; then luted the manhole and bolted
that back in place; and then stepped down while a couple of negroes
sluiced him with water from gourds, and rubbed him clean and dry with
handfuls of wild cotton waste. So far, although the incessant hail of
bullets had pitted the boiler's skin in a hundred places, no second shot
had found a spot sufficiently soft to make a puncture. The range of the
bombardment was long, perhaps, and though a bullet at seven hundred
yards may, with convenience, kill a man, it will not pierce
seven-eighths boiler plate. And so, theoretically, the boiler was safe
for the time being.

But practically it was otherwise. The boiler was by no means new. It was
corroded with years, and incapacity, and neglect, as is the custom with
all parts of boats and machinery on the Haut Congo. But it had been
brought up to