here after they picked you up,
you looked fit to peg out one-time, but the only sane thing you could
do was to waggle out a little leopard-skin parcel, and bid me swallow
the stuff that was inside. You'd started out to get me that physic, and,
by gum, you weren't happy till I got it down my neck."

"Well, you look fit enough now."

"Never better."

"But about the missionary brute?"

"Well, my lad, I suppose you're well enough to be told now. He's got his
trading cut short for good. That nigger with the yaws who paddled you up
brought down the news. The beggars up there chopped him, and I'm sure I
hope he didn't give them indigestion."

"My holy James!"

"Solid. His missionary friends here have written home a letter to Boston
which would have done you good to see. According to them, the man's a
blessed martyr, nothing more or less. The gin and the guns are left
clean out of the tale; and will Boston please send out some more
subscriptions, one-time? You'll see they'll stick up a stained-glass
window to that joker in Boston, and he'll stand up there with a halo
round his head as big as a frying-pan. And, oh! won't his friends out
here be resigned to his loss when the subscriptions begin to hop in from
over the water."

"Well, there's been a lot of trouble over a trumpery wooden idol. I
fancy we'd better burn it out of harm's way."

"Not much," said Nilssen with a sigh. "I've found out where the value
comes in, and as you've earned them fairly and squarely, the dividends
are yours to stick to. One of those looking-glass eyes was loose, and I
picked it out. There was a bit of green glass behind. I picked out the
other eye, and there was a bit of green glass at the back of that too."

"Oh, the niggers'll use anything for ju-ju."

"Wait a bit. I'd got my notions as to what that green glass was, and so
I toted them in my pocket up and down the river and asked every man who
was likely to know a jewel what he thought. They aren't green glass at
all. They're emeralds. They're come from the Lord knows where, but that
doesn't matter. They're worth fifty pounds apiece at the very lowest,
and they're yours, my lad, to do what you like with."

Captain Kettle lay back on his pillow and smiled complacently. "That
money'll just set up my Missis nicely in a lodging-house. Now I can go
on with my work here, and know that whatever happens she and the kids
are provided for."

"Eh, well," said Nilssen with a sigh, "she'll be ni