“Did you threaten to get him into trouble over it?  What’s he done?”

“Oh, nothing of that sort.  But the man’s got the pride of an emperor, and it came to my knowledge he’d been making a living out of fishing in the lagoon, and I worked on that.  Look out of that window; it’s a bit glary with the sun full on, but do you see those rows of stakes the nets are made fast on?  Well, one of those belongs to Captain Owen Kettle, and he works there after dark like a native, and dressed as one.  You know he’s been so long living naked up in the bush that his hide’s nearly black, and he can speak all the nigger dialects.  But I guessed he’d never own up that he’d come so low as to compete with nigger fishermen, and I fixed things so that he thought he’d have to tell white Lagos what was his trade, or clear out of the colony one-time.  It was quite a neat bit of diplomacy.”

“You have got a tongue in you,” said White.

“When a man’s as broke as I am, and as desperate, he does his best in talk to get what he wants.  But look here, Mr. White, now we’ve got Kettle, I want to be off and see the thing over and finished as soon as possible.  It’s the first time I’ve been hard enough pushed to meddle with this kind of racket, and I can’t say I find it so savory that I’m keen on lingering over it.”

The Jew shrugged his shoulders.  “We are going for money,” he said.  “Money is always hard to get, my boy, but it’s nice, very nice, when you have it.”

Keen though Sheriff was to get this venture put to the trial, brimming with energy though he might be, it was quite out of the question that a start could be made at once.  A small steamer they had already secured on charter, but she had to be manned, coaled, and provisioned, and all these things are not carried out as quickly in Lagos as they would be in Liverpool, even though there was a Kettle in command to do the driving.  And, moreover, there were cablegrams to be sent, in tedious cypher, to London and elsewhere, to make the arrangements on which the success of the scheme would depend.

The Jew was the prime mover in all this cabling.  He had abundance of money in his pocket, and he spent it lavishly, and he practically lived in the neighborhood of the telegraph office.  He was as affable as could be; he drank cocktails and champagne with the telegraph staff whenever they were offered; but over the nature of his business he was as close as an oyster.

A breath of suspicion against the scheme would wreck it in an instant, and, as there was money to be made by carrying it through, the easy, lively, boisterous Mr. White was probably just then as cautious a man as there was in Africa.

But preparations were finished at last, and one morning, when the tide served, the little steamer cast off from her wharf below the Marina, and steered for the pass at the further side of the lagoon.

The bar was easy, and let her through with scarcely so much as a bit of spray to moisten the dry deck planks, and Sheriff pointed to the masts of a branch-boat which had struck the sand a week before, and had beaten her bottom out and sunk in ten minutes, and from these he drew good omens about this venture, and at the same time prettily complimented Kettle on his navigation.