“I should draw the line at that, myself,” said Kettle stiffly.

“Dare say.  You’re a Britisher, and therefore you’re a bit narrow-minded.  We’re a vury adaptable nation, we Amurricans.  Say, though, you haven’t told me what you’re up here for yet?  I guess you haven’t come just in search of health?”

Captain Kettle reflected.  His gorge rose at this man, but the fellow seemed to have some sort of authority in the village, and probably he could settle the question of Nilssen’s ailment with a dozen words.  So he swallowed his personal resentment, and, as civilly as he could, told the complete tale as Nilssen had given it to him.

The trader missionary’s face grew crafty as he listened.  “Look here, you want that old sinner Nilssen cured?”

“That’s what I came here for.”

“Well, then, give me the ju-ju, and I’ll fix it up for you.”

“The ju-ju’s to be my fee,” said Kettle.  “I suppose you know something about it?  You’re not the kind of man to go in for collecting valueless curiosities.”

“Nop.  I’m here on the make, and I guess you’re about the same.  But I wouldn’t be in your shoes if the people in the village get to know that you’ve a finger in looting their idol.”

“Why?”

“Oh, you’ll die rather painfully, that’s all.  Better give the thing up, Captain, and let me take over the contract for you.  It’s a bit above your weight.”

Kettle’s face grew grim.  “Is it?” he said.  “Think I’m going to back down for a tribe of nasty, stinking, man-eating niggers?  Not much.”

“Well,” said the missionary, “don’t get ruffled.  I’ve got no use for quarrelling.  Go your way, and if things turn out ugly don’t say I didn’t give you the straight cinch, as one white man to another in a savage country.  And now, it’s about my usual time for siesta.”

“Right,” said Kettle.  “I’ll siesta too.  My fever’s gone now, and I’m feeling pretty rocky and mean.  Sleep’s a grand pick-me-up.”

They took off their coats, and lay down then under filmy mosquito bars, and presently sleep came to them.  Indeed, to Kettle came so dead an unconsciousness that he afterward had a suspicion (though it was beyond proof) that some drug had been mixed with his drink.  He was a man who at all times was extraordinarily watchful and alert.  Often and often during his professional life his bare existence had depended on the faculty for scenting danger from behind the curtain of sleep; and his senses in this direction were so abnormally developed as to verge at times on the uncanny.  Cat-like is a poor-word to describe his powers of vigilance.

But there is no doubt that in this case his alertness was dulled.  The fatigue of the march, his dose of fever, his previous night of wakefulness in the canoe, all combined to undermine his guard; and, moreover, the attack of the savages was stealthy in the extreme.  Like ghosts, they must have crept back from the bush to reconnoitre their village; like daylight ghosts, they must have surrounded the trader missionary’s hut and peered at the sleeping man between the bamboos of the wall, and then made their entrance; and it must have been with the quickness of wild beasts that they made their spring.