A Master of Fortune | Page 7

weight of
battering, he was driven from his hold, and the beer-colored river
covered him then and for always.
After that, there was no further doubt of the next move. The
yellow-faced doctor sank back exhausted in the stern sheets of the gig,
and gave out sentence in gasps. The ship was declared unclean until
further notice; she was ordered to take up a berth a mile away against
the opposite bank of the river till she was cleared of infection; she was
commanded to proceed there at once, to anchor, and then to blow off all
her steam.
The doctor's tortured liver prompted him, and he spoke with spite. He
called Rabeira every vile name which came to his mind, and wound up
his harangue by rowing off to Chingka to make sure that the guns of the
fort should back up his commands.

The Portuguese captain was daunted then; there is no doubt about that.
He had known of this outbreak of small-pox for two days, had stifled
his qualms, and had taken his own peculiar methods of keeping the
disease hidden, and securing money profit for his ship. He had even
gone so far as to carry a smile on his dark, oily face, and a jest on his
tongue. But this prospect of being shut up with the disorder till it had
run its course inside the walls of the ship, and no more victims were to
be claimed, was too much for his nerve. He fled like some frightened
animal to his room, and deliberately set about guzzling a surfeit of neat
spirit.
Nilssen, from the bridge, fearful for his credit with the State, his
employer, roared out orders, but nobody attended to them. Mates,
quartermasters, Krooboys, had all gone aft so as to be as far as possible
from the smitten area; and in the end it was Kettle who went to the
forecastle-head, and with his own hands let steam into the windlass and
got the anchor. He stayed at his place. An engineer and fireman were
still below, and when Nilssen telegraphed down, they put her under
weigh again, and the older pilot with his own hands steered her across
to the quarantine berth. Then Kettle let go the anchor again, paid out
and stoppered the cable, and once more came aft; and from that
moment the new regime of the steamer may be said to have
commenced.
In primitive communities, from time immemorial, the strongest man
has become chieftain through sheer natural selection. Societies which
have been upheaved to their roots by anarchy, panic, or any of these
more perfervid emotions, revert to the primitive state. On this
Portuguese ship, authority was smashed into the smallest atoms, and
every man became a savage and was in danger at the hands of his
fellow savage.
Rabeira had drunk himself into a stupor before the boilers had roared
themselves empty through the escapes. The two mates and the
engineers cowered in their rooms as though the doors were a barrier
against the small-pox germs. The Krooboys broached cargo and
strewed the decks with their half-naked bodies, drunk on gin, amid a

litter of smashed green cases.
Meals ceased. The Portuguese cook and steward dropped their
collective duties from the first alarm; the Kroo cook left the rice
steamer because "steam no more lib"; and any one who felt hunger or
thirst on board, foraged for himself, or went without satisfying his
wants. Nobody helped the sick, or chided the drunken. Each man lived
for himself alone--or died, as the mood seized him.
Nilssen took up his quarters at one end of the bridge, frightened, but
apathetic. With awnings he made himself a little canvas house, airy, but
sufficient to keep off the dews of night. When he spoke, it was usually
to picture the desolation of one or other of the Mrs. Nilssens on finding
herself a widow. As he said himself, he was a man of very
domesticated notions. He had no sympathy with Kettle's constantly
repeated theory that discipline ought to be restored.
"Guess it's the captain's palaver," he would say. "If the old man likes
his ship turned into a bear garden, 'tisn't our grub they're wasting, or our
cargo they've started in to broach. Anyway, what can we do? You and I
are only on board here as pilots. I wish the ship was in somewhere
hotter than Africa, before I'd ever seen her."
"So do I," said Kettle. "But being here, it makes me ill to see the way
she's allowed to rot, and those poor beasts of niggers are left to die just
as they please. Four more of them have either jumped overboard, or
been put there by their friends. The dirt of the place is awful. They're