And so Captain Owen Kettle finally severed his connection with the Congo Free State service, and set off at once again as his own master.  He had no trouble with the black crew of the launch.  The men half adored, half dreaded him; and, anyway, were prepared to take his orders before any others.  They got the little vessel under weigh again, and just before the gang-plank was pulled in, Commandant Balliot and his disarmed escort were driven on to the beach.

The Belgian was half wild with mortification and anger.  “You have won now,” he screamed.  “But you will be fetched back, and I myself will see that you are disgracefully hanged.”

“If you come after me and worry me,” said Kettle, coolly, “I’ll give you my men to chop.  Just you remember that, Mr. Waterloo.  I think you know already that I am a fellow that never lies.”

CHAPTER IV

THE NEW REPUBLIC

The fighting ended, and promptly both the invaders and the invaded settled down to the new course of things without further exultation or regret.  An hour after it had happened, the capture of the village was already regarded as ancient history, and the two white men had got a long way on in their discussion on its ultimate fate.

“No,” Captain Kettle was saying, “no being king for me, Doctor, thank you.  I’ve been offered a king’s ticket once, and that sickened me of the job for good and always.  The world’s evidently been going on too long to start a new kingdom nowadays, and I’m too much of a conservative to try and break the rule.  No, a republic’s the thing, and, as you say, I’m the stronger man of the two of us.  Doc, you may sign me on as President.”

Dr. Clay turned away his face, and relieved his feelings with a grin.  But he very carefully concealed his merriment.  He liked Kettle, liked him vastly; but at the same time he was more than a little scared of him, and he had a very accurate notion that the man who failed to take him seriously about this new scheme, would come in contact with trouble.  The scheme was a big one; it purposed setting up a new state in the heart of the Etat du Congo, on territory filched from that power; but the little sailor was in deadly earnest over the project, and already he had met with extraordinary luck in the initial stages.  Central Africa is a country where determined coups de main can sometimes yield surprising results.

The recent history of these two vagabond white men cannot be given in this place with any web of detail.  They had gone through their apprenticeship amongst these African inlands as officers of the Congo Free State; they had been divorced from that service with something of suddenness; and a purist might have held that the severance of their ties was complicated with something very near akin to piracy.  I know that they had been abominably oppressed; I know that Kettle chose running away with his steamer to the alternative of handcuffs and disgrace, and a possible hanging to follow; but there was no getting over the fact that the stern-wheeler was Free State property, and that these two had alienated it to their own uses.