diseases out of you."

"If I go to sea," said the pilot wearily, "I shall be stitched up within the week, and dropped over to make a hole in the water. I don't know whether I'm going to get well anywhere, but if I do, it's right here. Now just hear me. You're the only living soul in this blasted Congo Free State that I can trust worth a cent, and I believe you've got grit enough to get me cured if only you'll take the trouble to do it. I'm too weak to take on the job myself; and, even if I was sound, I reckon it would be beyond my weight. I tell you it's a mighty big contract. But then, as I've seen for myself, you're a man that likes a scuffle."

"You're speaking above my head. Pull yourself together, Captain, and then, perhaps, I'll understand what you want."

Nilssen drew the quinine bottle toward him, tapped out a little hill of feathery white powder into a cigarette paper, rolled it up, and swallowed the dose. "I'm not raving," he said, "or anywhere near it; but if you want the cold-drawn truth, listen here: I'm poisoned. I've got fever on me, too, I'll grant, but that's nothing more than a fellow has every week or so in the ordinary way of business. I guess with quinine, whiskey, and pills, I can smile at any fever in Africa, and have done this last eight years. But it's this poison that gets me."

"Bosh," said Kettle. "If it was me that talked about getting poisoned, there'd be some sense in it. I know I'm not popular here. But you're a man that's liked. You hit it off with these Belgian brutes, and you make the niggers laugh. Who wants to poison you?"

"All right," said Nilssen; "you've been piloting on the Congo some six months now, and so of course you know all about it. But let me know a bit better. I've watched the tricks of the niggers here-away for a good many years now, and I've got a big respect for their powers when they mean mischief."

"Have you been getting their backs up, then?"

"Yes. You've seen that big ju-ju in my room?"

"That foul-looking wooden god with the looking-glass eyes?"

"Just that. I don't know where the preciousness comes in, but it's a thing of great value."

"How did you get hold of it?"

"Well, I suppose if you want to be told flatly, I scoffed it. You see, it was in charge of a passenger boy, who brought it aboard the M'poso at Matadi. He landed across by canoe from Vivi, and wanted steamer passage down to Boma by the M'poso. I was piloting her, and I got my eye on that ju-ju[1] from the very first. Captain Image and that thief of a purser Balgarnie were after it, too, but as it was a bit of a race between us as to who should get it first, one couldn't wait to be too particular."

[1] A ju-ju in West African parlance may be a large carved idol, or merely a piece of rag, or skin, or anything else that the native is pleased to set up as a charm. Ju-ju also means witchcraft. If you poison a man, you put ju-ju on him. If you see anything you do not understand, you promptly set it down as ju-ju. Similarly chop is food, and also the act of feeding. "One-time" is immediately.

"What did you want it for? Did you know it was valuable then?"

"Oh, no! I thought it was merely a whitewashed carved wood god, and I wanted it just to dash to some steamer skipper who had dashed me a case of fizz or something. You know?"

"Yes, I see. Go on. How did you get hold of it?"

"Why, just went and tackled the passenger-boy and dashed him a case of gin; and when he sobered up again, where was the ju-ju? I got it ashore right enough to the pilotage here in Banana, and for the next two weeks thought it was my ju-ju without further palaver.

"Then up comes a nigger to explain. The passenger-boy who had guzzled the gin was no end of a big duke--witch-doctor, and all that, with a record of about three hundred murders to his tally--and he had the cheek to send a blooming ambassador to say things, and threaten, to try and get the ju-ju back. Of course, if the original sportsman had come himself to make his ugly remarks, I'd soon have stopped his fun. That's the best of the Congo Free State. If a nigger down here is awkward, you can always get him shipped off as a slave--soldier, that is--to the upper river, and take darned good care he never comes back again. And, as a point of fact, I did tip a word to the commandant here and get that particular ambassador packed off out of harm's way. But that did no special good. Before a week was through up came another chap to tackle me. He spoke flatly about pains and penalties if I didn't give the thing up; and he offered money--or rather ivory, two fine tusks of it, worth a matter of twenty pounds, as a ransom--and then I began to open my eyes."

"Twenty pounds for that ju-ju! Why, I've picked up many a one better carved for a shilling."

"Well, this bally thing has value; there's no doubt about that. But where the value comes in, I can't make out. I've overhauled it times and again, but can't see it's anything beyond the ordinary. However, if a nigger of his own free will offered two big tusks to get the thing back, it stands to reason it's worth a precious sight more than that. So when the second ambassador came, I put the price down at a quarter of a ton of ivory, and waited to get it."

Kettle whistled. "You know how to put on the value," he said. "That's getting on for £400 with ivory at its present rates."

"I was badly in want of money when I set the figure. My poor little wife in Bradford had sent me a letter by the last Antwerp mail saying how hard-up she was, and the way she wrote regularly touched me."

"I don't like it," Kettle snapped.

"What, my being keen about the money?"

"No; your having such a deuce of a lot of wives."

"But I am so very domesticated," said Nilssen. "You don't appreciate how domesticated I am. I can't live as a bachelor anywhere. I always like to have a dear little wife and a nice little home to go to in whatever town I may be quartered. But it's a great expense to keep them all provided for. And besides, the law of most countries is so narrow-minded. One has to be so careful."

Kettle wished to state his views on bigamy with clearness and point, but when he cast his eyes over the frail wreck of a man in the Madeira chair, he forebore. It would not take very much of a jar to send Captain Nilssen away from this world to the Place of Reckoning which lay beyond. And so with a gulp he said instead: "You're sure it's deliberate poisoning?"

"Quite. The nigger who came here last about the business promised to set ju-ju on me, and I told him to do it and be hanged to him. He was as good as his word. I began to be bad the very next day."

"How's it managed?"

"Don't know. They have ways of doing these things in Africa which we white men can't follow."

"Suspect any one?"

"No. And if you're hinting at Mrs. Nilssen in the pilotage there, she's as staunch as you are, bless her dusky skin. Besides, what little chop I've managed to swallow since I've been bad, I've always got out of fresh unopened tins myself."

"Ah," said Kettle; "I fancied some one had been mixing up finely powdered glass in your chop. It's an old trick, and you don't twig it till the doctors cut you up after you're dead."

"As if I wasn't up to a kid's game like that!" said the sick man with feeble contempt. "No, this is regular ju-ju work, and it's beyond the Belgian doctor here, and it's beyond all other white men. There's only one cure, and that's to be got at the place where the poisoning palaver was worked from."

"And where's that?"

Captain Nilssen nodded down the narrow slip of sand, and mangroves,