“Oh, my soul doesn’t bother me.  But England! that’s fine to think about, old man, isn’t it?  England!” he repeated dreamily.  “Yes, I suppose I should have to change my name if I did go back.  I don’t know, though.  It’d have blown over by now, perhaps; things do blow over, and if I went to a new part of the country I expect I could still stick to the old name, and not be known from Adam.  Yes, things do blow over with time, and if you don’t make too much stir when you go back.  I should have to keep pretty quiet; but I bet I’d have a good time for all that.  Fancy the luxury of having good Glenlivet in a cask again, with a tap half-way up, after the beastly stuff one got on the coast, or, worse still, what one gets up here—­and that’s no whiskey at all!”

“Well, you needn’t worry about choosing your home drinks just now,” said Kettle. “‘Palaver no set’ here by a very long chalk yet, and till it is you’ll have to go sober, my lad, and keep a very clear head.”

Clay came to earth again.  “Sorry, Skipper,” he said, “but you set me off.  ’Tisn’t often I look across at either to-morrow or yesterday.  As you say, it’s a very dry shop this, and so the sooner we get what we want and quit, the sooner we shall hit on a good time again.  And the sooner we clear out, too, the less chance we have of those beastly Belgians coming in here to meddle.  You know we’ve had luck so far, and they haven’t interfered with us.  But we can’t expect that for always.  The Congo Free State’s a trading corporation, with dividends to make for the firm of Leopold and Co., in Brussels, and they don’t like trade rivals.  What stealing can be done in the country, they prefer to do themselves.”

“When the time comes,” said the little sailor grimly, “we shall be ready for them, and if they interfere with me, I shall make the Congo Free State people sit up.  But in the mean while they are not here, and I don’t see that they need be expected.  They can trace us up the Congo from Leopoldville, if you like, by the villages we stopped at—­one, we’ll say, every two hundred miles—­but then we find this new river, and where are we?  The river’s not charted; it’s not known to any of the Free State people, or I, being in their steamboat service, would have been told of it; and the entrance is so well masked at its Congo end by islands, that no one would guess it was there.  The Congo’s twenty miles wide where our river comes in, and very shallow, and the steamer-channel’s right at the further bank.  If they’d another Englishman in their service up here, I’d not say; but don’t you tell me that the half-baked Dutchmen and Dagos who skipper their launches would risk hunting out a new channel, and blunder on it that way.”

“No,” said Clay, “I’m with you there.  But word travels amongst the natives.  You can’t get over that.”

“That’s where the risk comes in.  But I’ve done my best to make it travel slow.  I’ve got hold of that beast of a witch-doctor, who deserves hanging anyway for all the poor wretches he’s killed, and I’ve told him that as soon as word slips out downriver of our being here, he’ll get shot, one-time.  He’s a man of influence, that witch-doctor, and I shouldn’t wonder but what he makes the natives keep their heads shut for quite a long time.”