He pretended flight when the canoes first came out, standing across toward the further bank of the river, which was some dozen miles away.  The rebels fell into the lure, and paddled frantically after him.  Canoe after canoe put out, as fast as they could be manned.  The white men on the steamer were running away; they were frightened; there was spoil and revenge to be got for the taking.  And from unseen villages on the islands and on the bank other canoes shot out to get their share.

In the mean while Kettle consolidated his defences.  Frantically he worked, and like Trojans Clay and the negroes labored under him.  All that drunken doctor’s limp laissez faire was gone now.  The blood of some fighting ancestor had warmed up inside him.  He might be physically weak and unhandy, but the lust of battle filled him up like new drink, and he forgot his disgraceful past, and lived only for the thrill of the present moment.

The log barricades had to be lashed and strutted so that no collision could unship them, and all hands sweated and strained in that tropical heat, till the job could not be bettered.  And at the after part of the lower deck, Commandant Balliot, driven on also by the strong-willed man whom nobody on board could resist, tended the engines with all his brain and nerve, and did his best to make the fighting machine perfect.

“Now,” said Kettle at last, “as we have got those fool Tommies nicely tailed out about the river, we’ll quit this running-away game, and get to business.  Mr. Chief Engineer, open that throttle all it’ll go, and let her rip, and mind you’re standing by for my next order.  Doc, you keep your musketry class well in hand.  Don’t waste shots.  But when you see me going to run down a canoe, stand by to give them eternal ginger when they’re ten yards from the stern.  I’ll whistle when you’re to fire.”

Captain Kettle went on to the upper deck and took over the wheel, and screwed it over hard-a-port.  The little top-heavy steamer swung round in a quick circle, lurching over dangerously to the outside edge.  She ran for half a mile up stream, and then turned again and came back at the top of her gait.  She was aiming at one particular canoe, which for a while came on pluckily enough to meet her.

But African nerve has its limits, and the sight of this strange uncouth steamer, which followed so unflinchingly their every movement, was too much for the sweating paddlers.  They turned their ponderous dug-out’s head, and tried to escape.

Kettle watched them like a cat.  He had the whistle string in his teeth, so as to leave him both hands free for the steering wheel, and when the moment came he threw back his head, and drew the string.  The scream of the steam whistle was swamped instantly in the roar of a blasting volley.  Not many of the shots hit—­for the African is not a marksman—­but the right effect was gained.  The blacks in the canoe ducked and flinched; they were for the moment quite demoralized; and before they could man their paddles again, the stern-wheeler’s stem had crushed into their vessel, had cut a great gash from one side, had rolled it over, and then mounted the wreck, and drove down stream across the top of it.