“Good-by,” said Kettle, as he toppled the corpse over, and it fell with a splash, stiff-limbed into the yellow water.  He watched the body as it bobbed up again to the surface, and floated with the stream out into the silvery sunshine.  “Good-by, cocky,” said he.  “You’ve been a good nigger, and, as you were shot doing your duty, they’ll set you on at the place where you’ve gone to, one of the lightest jobs they’ve got suitable for a black pagan.  That’s a theological fact.  You’ll probable turn to and stoke; I’ll be sending you down presently another batch of heathen to shovel on the fire.  I’ve got a biggish bill against those beggars on that sandbank yonder for the mischief they’ve done.”

But it was no place there to waste much time on sentiment.  The woodwork of the shabby little steamer was riddled with splintered holes; the rusted iron plating was starred with gray lead-splashes; and every minute more bullets ploughed furrows in the yellow waters of the river, or whisped through the air overhead, or hit the vessel herself with peremptory knocks.  It is all very well to affect a contempt for a straggling ill-aimed fire such as this; but, given a long enough exposure to it, one is bound to be hit; and so, if the work was to be attempted, the quicker it was set about the more chance there was of getting it finished.

They use wood fuel on these small, ungainly steamers which do their business up in the savage heart of Africa on the waters of the Haut Congo, and because every man with a gun for many reasons feels himself to be an enemy of the Free State, the steamers carry their firing logs stacked in ramparts round their boilers and other vital parts.  But wood, as compared with coal, is bulky stuff to carry, and as the stowage capacity of these stern-wheelers is small, they have to make frequent calls to rebunker.

Indeed, it was for this purpose that Kettle had originally put in at the village where Commandant Balliot had his headquarters; and, as other events happened there which he had not calculated upon, he had steamed out into the broad river again without a chance of taking any logs on board, and, in fact, with his stock of fuel down very near to the vanishing-point.

On this account, therefore, after the fatal shot into the boiler, and the subsequent disablement and drifting on to the sandbank, all repairing work had to be done under full exposure to the fire of the mutineers.  The Central African negro is a fairly stolid person, and as the sight of a little slaughter does not in the least upset his nerves, he can stand bullet hail for a good long time without emotion, especially if there is no noise and bustle attached to it.  But once let a scare get rubbed home into his stupid brain, and let him get started off on the run, and he is an awkward person to stop.