“There are a thousand of your troops in the mutiny already, according to your tally,” said Kettle stiffly, “and I don’t see that if this hundred joined them it would make much difference to us, one way or the other.  Besides,” he added, almost persuasively, “if I had the handling of them they would not join the others.  They would stay here and do as they were told.”

“Captain Kettle,” snapped the Commandant, “you have heard my orders.  If I have any more of this hectoring spirit from you, I shall report your conduct when we get back to Stanley Pool.”

“You may report till you’re black in the face,” said Kettle truculently; “but if you don’t put a bit more backbone into things, you’ll do it as a ghost and not as a live man.  Look at your record up to date.  You come up here at the head of a fine expedition; you set your soldiers to squeeze the tribes for rubber and ivory; they don’t bring in enough niggers’ ears to show that they’ve used their cartridges successfully, and so you shoot them down in batches; and then you aren’t man enough to keep your grip on them, but when they’ve had enough of your treatment, they just start in and rebel.”

“One man can’t fight a thousand.”

“You can’t, anyway.  If the Doc and I had turned up with this launch half an hour later, your excellent troops would have knocked you on the head and chopped you afterward.  But I’d like to remind you that we ran in-shore and took you away in spite of their teeth.”

“You are very brave,” sneered the Commandant, “you and Monsieur le Docteur.”

“Well, you see,” said Kettle with cheerful insult, “our grandfathers didn’t run away at Waterloo, and that gives us something to go upon.”

“I put you under arrest,” screamed the Belgian.  “I will have satisfaction for this later.  I——­”

“Steady on,” said Clay, with a yawn.  He put down his banjo, stretched, and stood up.  Behind him the bullets pattered merrily against the iron plating.  “Why on earth do you two keep on nagging?  Look at me—­I’m half drunk as usual, and I’m as happy as a lord.  Take a peg, each of you, and sweeten your tempers.”

They glared at him from each side.

“Now it’s not the least use either of you two trying to quarrel with me.  We might as well all be friends together for the little time we’ve got.  We’ve a good deal in common:  we’re all bad eggs, and we’re none of us fit for our billets.  Monsieur le Commandant, you were a sous-officier in Belgium who made Brussels too hot to hold you; you come out here, and you’re sent to govern a district the size of Russia, which is a lot beyond your weight.

“Friend Kettle, you put a steamer on the ground in the lower Congo; you probably had a bad record elsewhere, or you’d never have drifted to the Congo service at all; and now you’re up here on the Haut Congo skippering a rubbishy fourpenny stern-wheel launch, which of course is a lot beneath your precious dignity.