that waterway by carriers at vast expense from Matadi, the
highest steamer port on the Lower Congo, probably costing three months
and a dozen lives in transit, so that it was debited in the books of the
Free State as being worth its weight in silver, and destined to be used
on without replacement till it saw fit to burst.

So Kettle knew that in places it would be not much thicker than stout
brown paper, and was quite aware that if any of the pattering bullets
investigated one of these patches, he would have to do his work over
again. He had a strong--and, I think, natural--disinclination for this.
He had come through terrific risks during the last four hours, and could
not expect to do so a second time with equal immunity; his two wounds
smarted; and (although it sounds ludicrous that such a thing should have
weight) the dirt inseparable from such employment jarred against his
neat and cleanly habits, and filled him with unutterable disgust.

The moment, he conceived, was one for hurry. He told off four of the
negroes as trimmers and stokers, and set Commandant Balliot over them to
see that they pressed on with their work; he sent Clay with a huge gang
of helpers overboard on the lee side to risk the crocodiles, and dig
away the sand; and he himself, with a dozen paddlers, got into the
dug-out canoe, which was his only boat, and set to carrying out a kedge
and line astern. All of these occupations took time, and when at last
steam had mounted to a working pressure in the battered gauge, and they
got on board again, two of his canoe-men had been shot, and one of
Clay's party had been dragged away into deep water by a prowling
crocodile.

As no one else was competent, Kettle himself took charge of the engines,
and roared his commands with one hand on the throttle, and the other on
the reversing gear; Clay, for the moment, was quartermaster, and stood
to the wheel on the upper deck; and Balliot, under the tuition of curses
and revilings, drove the winch, which heaved and slacked on the line
made fast to the kedge.

The little steamer rolled and squeaked and coughed, and the paddle-wheel
at her stern kicked up a compost of sand and mud and yellow water that
almost choked them with its crushed marigold scent. The helm swung over
alternately from hard-a-starboard to hard-a-port; the stern-wheel ground
savagely into the sand, first one way and then the other; and the
gutter, which she had delved for herself in the bank, g