ny of the Free
State people, or I, being in their steamboat service, would have been
told of it; and the entrance is so well masked at its Congo end by
islands, that no one would guess it was there. The Congo's twenty miles
wide where our river comes in, and very shallow, and the
steamer-channel's right at the further bank. If they'd another
Englishman in their service up here, I'd not say; but don't you tell me
that the half-baked Dutchmen and Dagos who skipper their launches would
risk hunting out a new channel, and blunder on it that way."

"No," said Clay, "I'm with you there. But word travels amongst the
natives. You can't get over that."

"That's where the risk comes in. But I've done my best to make it
travel slow. I've got hold of that beast of a witch-doctor, who deserves
hanging anyway for all the poor wretches he's killed, and I've told him
that as soon as word slips out downriver of our being here, he'll get
shot, one-time. He's a man of influence, that witch-doctor, and I
shouldn't wonder but what he makes the natives keep their heads shut for
quite a long time."

"It may be professional prejudice, but I rather hope that local
practitioner gets his gruel somehow before we clear out." Clay shivered.
"He's a cruel devil. Remember the remains of those two poor sacrificed
wretches we found when we got here?"

Kettle shrugged his shoulders. "I know. But what could one do? Niggers
always are like that when they're left to play about alone--as these
here have been, I suppose, since Creation Day. We couldn't pin the
sacrifices on to the witch-doctor, or else, of course, we'd have strung
him up. We could only just give him an order for these customs to stop
one-time, and stand by to see it carried out. But we start the thing
from now, on fresh, sensible lines. We're going to have no foolery about
the nigger being as good as a white man. He isn't, and no man that ever
saw him where he grows ever thought so."

"Speaking scientifically," said Clay, "it has always struck me that a
nigger is an animal placed by the scheme of creation somewhere between a
monkey and a white man. You might bracket him, say, with a Portugee."

"About that," said Kettle; "and if you treat him as more, you make him
into a bad failure, whereas if he's left alone, he's a bit nasty and
cruel. Now I think, Doc, there's a middle course, and that's what I'm
going to try here whilst we're making our pile. We've grabbed four tidy
villages alrea