A few more angry shots snapped out at the black bodies swimming in the yellow water.  “Hold up, there,” Kettle ordered, “and let them swim if they can, and chance the crocodiles.  They’ve got their gruel.  Load up now, and get ready for the next.”

He turned the launch again, and stood across the stream down the strung-out line of canoes, occasionally making feints at them, but ramming no more for the present.  They all fired at him as he passed them; indeed, a wild, scattered fire was general from all the fleet; but his log armor protected him from this, and he steamed grimly on, without returning a shot.

At the furthermost end of the line he turned sharply again, and ran down the last canoe, just as he had run down the other; and then he deliberately started to drive the whole fleet together into one solid flock.  He had the speed of them, and with rifle fire they could not damage him, but for all that it was not easy work.  They expected the worst, and made desperate efforts to scatter and escape; finally, he drove them altogether in one hopeless huddle—­cowed, scared, and tired out; and then he brought the stern-wheeler to a sudden stop just above them, and made Clay shout out terms in the native tongue.

They were to throw all their weapons overboard into the river.  They did it without question.

They were to throw their paddles overboard.  They did that also.

They were to tie all their canoes together into one big raft.  They obeyed him there, too, with frenzied quickness.

He took the raft in tow and steamed off down river to the headquarters Free State post of the Upper River.  He was feeling almost complacent at the time.  He had shown Commandant Balliot what he was pleased to term a quick way with rebels.

But Commandant Balliot, whose life had been saved, and army disarmed and brought back from rebellion in spite of himself, was not the man to let any vague feeling of gratitude overweigh his own deep sense of injury.  He was incompetent, and he knew it, but Kettle had been tactless enough to tell him so; and, moreover, Kettle had thrown out the national gibe about Waterloo, which no Belgian can ever forgive.  Commandant Balliot gritted his teeth, and rubbed at his scrubby beard, and melodramatically vowed revenge.

He said nothing about it then; he even sat at meat with the two Englishmen, and shared the ship duties with them without so much as a murmur.  He could not but notice, too, that Kettle said nothing more now about being supreme chief, and had, in fact, tacitly dropped back to his old position as skipper of the launch.  But Balliot brooded over the injuries he had received at the hands of this truculent little sailor, and they grew none the smaller from being held in memory.