Captain Kettle allowed himself to be persuaded, and sat back again.  The mob of negroes came up to the doorway of the hut, and the witch-doctor, with many prostrations to the little sailor, made a long speech.  Then the larger of the two fowls entered into the ceremony, and was slain with a sword, and the witch-doctor, squatting on the ground, read the omens.

Kettle accepted the homage with glum silence, evidently restraining himself, but when Clay’s turn came, and the smaller and scraggier of the chickens yielded up life in his honor, he hitched up his feet, and squatted cross-legged on the chair, and held up his hand palm outward, after the manner of some grotesque Chinese idol.  A sense of the absurd was one of the many things which had hampered this disreputable doctor all through his unlucky career.

The negroes, however, took it all in good part, and in time they departed, well satisfied.  But Kettle wore a gloomy face.

“Funny, wasn’t it?” said Clay.

“I call it beastly,” Kettle snapped.  “This sort of thing’s got to stop.  I’m not going to have my new Republic dirtied by shows like that.”

“Well,” said Clay flippantly, “if you will set up as a little tin god on wheels, you must expect them to say their prayers to you.”

“I didn’t do anything of the kind.  I merely stepped in and conquered them.”

“Put it as you please, old man.  But there’s no getting over it that that’s what they take you for.”

“Then, by James! it comes to this:  they shall be taught the real thing!”

“What, you’ll import a missionary?”

“I shall wade in and teach them myself.”

“Phew!” whistled Clay.  “If you’re going to start the New Jerusalem game on the top of the New Republic, I should say you’ll have your hands full.”

“Probably,” said Kettle grimly; “but I am equal to that.”

“And you’ll not have much time left to see after ivory palaver.”

“I shall go on collecting the ivory just the same.  I shall combine business with duty.  And”—­here he flushed somewhat—­“I’m going to take the bits of souls these niggers have got, and turn them into the straight path.”

Clay rubbed his bald head.  “If you’re set on it,” said he, “you’ll do it; I quite agree with you there.  But I should have thought you’d seen enough of the nigger to know what a disastrous animal he is after some of these missionaries have handled him.”

“Yes,” said Kettle; “but those were the wrong sort of missionary—­wrong sort of man to begin with; wrong sort of religion also.”