t Captain Kettle, during his recent many months' sojourn
as a lone white man in savage Africa, had acquired one thing which had
never burdened him much before, and that was tact. He did not openly
resent the imperative tone of his host, which any one who had known him
previously would have guessed to be his first impulse. But neither at
the same time did he permit himself to be forced into eating the noxious
meal. He temporized. With that queer polyglot called Coast English, and
with shreds from a score of native dialects, he made up a tattered
fabric of speech which beguiled the head-man back again into good humor;
and presently that one-eyed savage squatted amicably down on his heels,
and gave an order to one of his wives in attendance.

The lady brought Kettle's accordion, and the little sailor propped his
back against the wattle wall of the hut, and made music, and lifted up
his voice in song. The tune carried among the lanes and dwellings of the
village, and naked feet _pad-padded_ quickly up over dust and the grass;
the audience distributed itself within and without the head-man's hut,
and listened enrapt; and the head-man felt the glow of satisfaction that
a London hostess feels when she has hired for money the most popular
drawing-room entertainer of the day, and her guests condescend to enjoy,
and not merely to exhibit themselves as _blases_.

But Captain Kettle, it must be confessed, felt none of the artist's
pride in finding his art appreciated. He had always the South Shields
chapel at the back of his mind, with its austere code and creed, and he
felt keenly the degradation of lowering himself to the level of the
play-actor; even though he was earning his bare existence--and had been
doing all through the heart of barbarous Africa--by mumming and
carolling to tribes whose trade was murder and cannibalism.

He felt an infinite pity for himself when he reflected that many a time
nothing but a breakdown, or a loudly bawled hymn, or a series of twisted
faces, had been the only thing which stood between him and the cooking
fires. But there was no help for it. He was a fighting man, but he could
not do battle with a continent; and so he had either to take the only
course which remained, and lower himself (as he considered it) to the
level of the music-hall pariah, and mouth and mow to amuse the mob, or
else accept the alternative which even the bravest of men might well
shrink from in dismay.

His travel throug