A Master of Fortune | Page 3

unofficial
retail store in the forecastle, of whose existence Captain Image, the
commander, and Mr. Balgarnie, the purser, professed a blank and
child-like ignorance.
Kettle had come across many types of sea-trader in his time, but
Captain Image and Mr. Balgarnie were new to him. But then most of
his surroundings were new. Especially was the Congo Free State an
organization which was quite strange to him. When he landed at
Banana, Captain Nilssen, pilot of the Lower Congo and Captain of the
Port of Banana, gave him advice on the subject in language which was
plain and unfettered.
"They are a lot of swine, these Belgians," said Captain Nilssen, from
his seat in the Madeira chair under the veranda of the pilotage, "and
there's mighty little to be got out of them. Here am I, with a wife in
Kjobnhavn and another in Baltimore, and I haven't been able to get
away to see either of them for five blessed years. And mark you, I'm a
man with luck, as luck goes in this hole. I've been in the lower river
pilot service all the time, and got the best pay, and the lightest jobs.
There's not another captain in the Congo can say as much. Some day or
other they put a steamboat on the ground, and then they're kicked out

from the pilot service, and away they're off one-time to the upper river
above the falls, to run a launch, and help at the rubber palaver, and get
shot at, and collect niggers' ears, and forget what champagne and white
man's chop taste like."
"You've been luckier?"
"Some. I've libbed for Lower Congo all my time; had a home in the
pilotage here; and got a dash of a case of champagne, or an escribello,
or at least a joint of fresh meat out of the refrigerator from every
steamboat I took either up or down."
"But then you speak languages?" said Kettle.
"Seven," said Captain Nilssen; "and use just one, and that's English.
Shows what a fat lot of influence this État du Congo has got. Why, you
have to give orders even to your boat-boys in Coast English if you want
to be understood. French has no sort of show with the niggers."
Now white men are expensive to import to the Congo Free State, and
are apt to die with suddenness soon after their arrival, and so the State
(which is in a chronic condition of hard-up) does not fritter their
services unnecessarily. It sets them to work at once so as to get the
utmost possible value out of them whilst they remain alive and in the
country.
A steamer came in within a dozen hours of Kettle's first stepping ashore,
and signalled for a pilot to Boma. Nilssen was next in rotation for duty,
and went off in his boat to board her, and he took with him Captain
Owen Kettle to impart to him the mysteries of the great river's
navigation.
The boat-boys sang a song explanatory of their notion of the new pilot's
personality as they caught at the paddles, but as the song was in Fiote,
even Nilssen could only catch up a phrase here and there, just enough
to gather the drift. He did not translate, however. He had taken his new
comrade's measure pretty accurately, and judged that he was not a man
who would accept criticism from a negro. So having an appetite for

peace himself, he allowed the custom of the country to go on
undisturbed.
The steamer was outside, leaking steam at an anchorage, and sending
out dazzling heliograms every time she rolled her bleached awnings to
the sun. The pilot's boat, with her crew of savages, paddled towards her,
down channels between the mangrove-planted islands. The water
spurned up by the paddle blades was the color of beer, and the smell of
it was puzzlingly familiar.
"Good old smell," said Nilssen, "isn't it? I see you snuffling. Trying to
guess where you met it before, eh? We all do that when we first come.
What about crushed marigolds, eh?"
"Crushed marigolds it is."
"Guess you'll get to know it better before you're through with your
service here. Well, here we are alongside."
The steamer was a Portuguese, officered by Portuguese, and manned by
Krooboys, and the smell of her drowned even the marigold scent of the
river. Her dusky skipper exuded perspiration and affability, but he was
in a great hurry to get on with his voyage. The forecastle windlass
clacked as the pilot boat drew into sight, heaving the anchor out of the
river floor; the engines were restarted so soon as ever the boat hooked
on at the foot of the Jacob's ladder; and the vessel was under a full head
of steam