African chief of any position always has his store
of ivory, usually hidden, sometimes in the bush, sometimes buried--for
choice, under the bed of a stream. It is foolish of him, this custom,
because it is usually the one thing that attracts the white man to his
neighborhood, and the white man's visits are frequently fraught with
disaster; but it is a custom, and therefore he sticks to it. He is not
a highly reasoning animal, this Central African savage.

The African, moreover, is used to oppression--that is, he either
oppresses or is oppressed--and he is dully callous to death. So the
villages were not much surprised at Kettle's descents upon them, and
usually surrendered to him passively on the mere prestige of his name.
They were pleasantly disappointed that he omitted the usual massacre,
and in gratitude were eager to accept what they were pleased to term his
_ju-ju_, but which he described as the creed of the Tyneside chapel.

They reduced him to frenzy about every second day by surreptitiously
sacrificing poultry in his honor; but he did not dare to make any very
violent stand against this overstepping of the rubric, lest (as was
hinted to him) they should misinterpret his motive, and substitute a
plump nigger baby for the more harmless spring chicken. It is by no
means easy to follow the workings of the black man's brain in
these matters.

But all the time he went on gathering ivory--precious ivory, worth as
much as a thousand pounds a ton if he could but get it home. Some of it
had been buried for centuries, and was black-brown with age and the
earth; some was new, and still bloody-ended and odorous; but he figured
it all out into silk dresses for Mrs. Kettle, and other luxuries for
those he loved, and gloated even over the little _escribellos_ which lay
about on the village refuse heaps as not being worthy to hide with the
larger tusks.

And, between-whiles, he preached to the newly conquered, ordered them to
adopt the faith of the South Shields chapel, and finally sang them
hymns, which he composed himself especially to suit their needs, to the
tunes of "Hold the Fort," and "From Greenland's Icy Mountains," which he
played very sweetly on the accordion. Captain Kettle might be very keen
after business, but at the same time it could never be laid to his
charge that he was ever forgetful of the duty he owed to the souls of
these heathen who came under his masterful thumb.

Dr. Clay, however, watched all th