A Master of Fortune | Page 9

scheme for dealing out justice to Captain Rabeira.
"It is not your palaver," he said, "or mine. If you want to stir up trouble,
tell the State authorities when you get ashore. That won't do much good
either. They don't value niggers at much out here."
"Nor do I," said Kettle. "There's nothing foolish with me about niggers.
But there's a limit to everything, and this snuff-colored Dago goes too
far. He's got to be squared with, and I'm going to do it."
"Guess it's your palaver. I've told you what the risks are."
"And I'm going to take them," said Kettle grimly. "You may watch me
handle the risks now with your own eyes, if you wish."
He went down off the bridge, walked along the clean decks, and came
to where a poor wretch lay in the last stage of small-pox collapse. He
examined the man carefully. "My friend," he said at last, "you've not
got long for this world, anyway, and I want to borrow your last
moments. I suppose you won't like to shift, but it's in a good cause, and
anyway you can't object."
He stooped and lifted the loathsome bundle in his arms, and then, in
spite of a cry of expostulation from Nilssen, walked off with his burden

to Rabeira's room.
The Portuguese captain was in his bunk, trying to sleep. He was sober
for the first time for many days, and, in consequence, feeling not a little
ill.
Kettle deposited his charge with carefulness on the littered settee, and
Rabeira started up with a wild scream of fright and a babble of oaths.
Kettle shut and locked the door.
"Now look here," he said, "you've earned more than you'll ever get paid
in this life, and there's a tolerably heavy bill against you for the next. It
looks to me as if it would be a good thing if you went off there to settle
up the account right now. But I'm not going to take upon myself to be
your hangman. I'm just going to give you a chance of pegging out, and
I sincerely hope you'll take it. I've brought our friend here to be your
room mate for the evening. It's just about nightfall now, and you've got
to stay with him till daybreak."
"You coward!" hissed the man. "You coward! You coward!" he
screamed.
"Think so?" said Kettle gravely. "Then if that's your idea, I'll stay here
in the room, too, and take my risks. God's seen the game, and I'll guess
He'll hand over the beans fairly."
Perspiration stood in beads on all their faces. The room, the one
unclean room of the ship, was full of breathless heat, and stale with the
lees of drink. Kettle, in his spruce-white drill clothes, stood out against
the squalor and the disorder, as a mirror might upon a coal-heap.
The Portuguese captain, with nerves smashed by his spell of debauch,
played a score of parts. First he was aggressive, asserting his rights as a
man and the ship's master, and demanding the key of the door. Then he
was warlike, till his frenzied attack earned him such a hiding that he
was glad enough to crawl back on to the mattress of his bunk. Then he
was beseeching. And then he began to be troubled with zoological
hauntings, which occupied him till the baking air cooled with the

approach of the dawn.
The smitten negro on the settee gave now and then a moan, but for the
most part did his dying with quietness. Had Kettle deliberately worked
for that purpose, he could not have done anything more calculated to
make the poor wretch's last moments happy.
"Oh, Massa!" he kept on whispering, "too-much-fine room. You
plenty-much good for let me lib for die heah." And then he would
relapse into barbaric chatterings more native to his taste, and fitting to
his condition.
Captain Kettle played his parts as nurse and warder with grave attention.
He sat perspiring in his shirt sleeves, writing at the table whenever for a
moment or two he had a spell of rest; and his screed grew rapidly. He
was making verse, and it was under the stress of severe circumstances
like these that his Muse served him best.
The fetid air of the room throbbed with heat; the glow from the candle
lamp was a mere yellow flicker; and the Portuguese, who cowered with
twitching fingers in the bunk, was quite ready to murder him at the
slightest opening: it was not a combination of circumstances which
would have inspired many men.
Morning came, with a shiver and a chill, and with the first flicker of
dawn, the last spark of the negro's life went out. Kettle nodded to the
ghastly face as though it