ow what niggers are, and therefore I'm not an Exeter Hall
fool about them. I'll make free to tell you this boat-game's been
thought of before; but that bishop says he won't leave the niggers to
peg out alone; and if he's going to be idiot enough to stay, I am going
to be another idiot. That's the size of it."

"Well," said Tordoff, "I've got no use for that kind of foolishness
myself, and if you're left, you needn't come and haunt me afterwards.
You've had the straight, square tip. And you'll do no good by spreading
this palaver about. If anyone tries to stop us there'll be a lot of men
killed. We aren't the kind of crowd that'll stick at trifles if we're
meddled with. So long!"

[Illustration: "'THIS STEAMER IS PLAYED OUT. I SHALL TAKE ONE OF THE
BOATS AND SKIP.'"]

He slouched off, and I went to the deck of the bridge and looked down on
a curious scene. The main deck was a shambles. There were a score of
corpses there, pitching about stiffly to the roll of the ship, with no
one offering to touch them. There were a score more of sick, shrieking
and knotting themselves in their agony. The survivors were in two sorts
of panic--the comatose, and the madly violent. A crowd of yelling
dancing negroes, most of them stark naked, had set up a ju-ju on a
barrel of the fore-deck winch, and were sacrificing to it a hen which
they had stolen from one of the coops. The little wooden god I knew: it
was one that I had picked up in the Kasai country, and I was taking it
home as a curiosity. It had been lifted from my own state-room by some
prowling negro, and was now receiving fresh daubs of red blood amid the
clamour of frantic worshippers. It was quite a reasonable thing to
expect under the circumstances. But what threw the action of these
savages into grotesque relief was the sight of another man crouched in
prayer beside the bulwarks. It was the bishop. His tottering hands were
pinning the crucifix to his hollow chest; his hips were swaying under
him with weakness; his dry cracked lips moved noiselessly; and the
molten sunlight beat upon him as it pleased.

[Illustration: "I WAS FIGHTING FOR MY LIFE AMONGST A CROWD OF FURIES."]

The sight of that man gave me a bad feeling. Before I knew quite how it
happened, I was down on the frizzling main-deck, and the ju-ju had been
plucked from the winch barrel and flung over the side, together with the
tortured hen, and I was fighting for my life amongst a crowd of furies.
Tordoff was t