More adventures of Captain Kettle, Captain Kettle, K.C.B.

Chapter I. A Diplomatic Exchange

The British Resident leaned forward in his long chair and tapped his empty glass with his cigarette case., “I can give you no official leave, sanction or encouragement ; so please understand that very clearly.”

“I had grasped that much, sir ,” said Captain Kettle, “before you had got through with ten words of your story. But am I to understand that the Government authorities of the ”

Again the Resident interrupted hurriedly. “We will name no names if you please, Captain. If, when it is absolutely necessary, you refer to the 7

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people in question as the Other Power, I shall understand you. I don’t suppose any one is eavesdropping at the present moment, or naturally I should not be speaking at all. But one never can be certain about these things, and, if you please, Fd rather change the subject. Hang it, man,” he added petulantly, “you know what’s wanted: why make further palaver?”

The little sailor stroked his red torpedo beard. “Yes, sir, I know what’s wanted well enough, and I’m always ready to do the British Government a good turn. I’ve a sincere affection for my country, and I’m sure the Government would be both surprised and gratified if they knew how many times I’ve stuck up for them already. But I can’t afford to go into this matter purely for philanthropy and patriotism. This guano island speculation that I’ve been telling you about has dealt me a very severe blow financially. The difficulties of landing were enough to make you cry. The place was a regular graveyard of reefs. With the ghost of a bit of swell running, no boat could live among them, however cleverly you handled her. There was no fraud about the island; the guano deposits there had a richness beyond belief; but all I could do on the steamboat was to sit still and smell those riches from a distance, and watch my grub and wages’ bills

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mount up. I composed a little poem, sir, on the subject, entitled 'So near, and yet so far.’ It struck me as both original and chaste. If you’d care to hear it, I have a copy in my pocket.”

"No, no, another time, Captain,” said the Resident hurriedly, and Captain Kettle sighed. "Of course I knew you were not exactly in luck’s way, or you wouldn’t have stepped ashore on the Red Sea bank at such a God- forsaken hole as this. I have even omitted to ask, you’ll observe, how you got separated from that steamer you chartered to work your guano deposits, and I may mention that over yonder at Aden they’re wild with curiosity on the subject.”

The Resident nodded out across the veranda to where the Red Sea danced and glimmered like a sheet of burnished blue metal under the deluge of sunshine. "Very active people over there at Aden,” said the Resident meditatively, "and they’ve got a most annoying lot of gun-boats in harbor always ready to send round to make inquiries. Have a cigarette ?”

"I thank you, sir, but I never use them.”

"Stronger meat for you, eh? Well, if you prefer to stick to the cheroots, the box is beside you. You see I’m by no means harrying you. I’m sure I am very sorry for your misfortunes. Naturally

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you want to make as much out of this new thing that’s put in your way as possible, and all I can say is, that what loot you can get depends on your own ingenuity.”

Kettle shook his head gloomily. “It’s very vague, sir, that. I’m sorry to be so pressing, but the fact is I’ve a wife and daughters to think about. They’re on a little farm at home, and you know what farming is. We’ve a mortgage on the stock, and I did look to that guano spec, to pay it off. Guano seems so poetically appropriate to assist farming. But now that’s failed, I’ve got to provide the interest on that mortgage somehow, and the rent, or there’s my family turned adrift.”

“Well, the job’s waiting for you.”

“What you offer, sir, is so very vague.”

The Resident shrugged his shoulders with some impatience. “It’s the best I can do. I can hand you a small sum of money to free you from your present embarrassments, and to start you off up-country, and after that I’m afraid I shall have to disown you officially and every other way. Even this small sum will have to come out of my private purse. And then there’s the risk. I suppose it is that which scares you, and, indeed, I don’t see why it should not.”

The little sailor stiffened sharply out of his de-

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jection, and sat upright in the chair. “The risk, sir,” he said acidly, “you may leave out of the question. I’m the least easily frightened man on* earth when once I meet with opposition, either from black men, or from white.”

“Then,” replied the Resident, with some dryness, “if the risk does not frighten you, and your needs are as great as you say, I should advise you to start off without further delay and get that loot. It’s there right enough.”

“You’ve not said that in so many words before. Are you sure?”

The Resident lowered his voice till it became almost a whisper, and leaned across to Captain Kettle’s ear. “My agent saw the loads made tip. We’ve had our attention on the — er — the Other Power along this side of the Red Sea for some time, and have been watching them more narrowly than they’ve any idea of. They know to a certain extent that we’ve been keeping a brotherly eye on them, because they tried to brazen it out. The Governor there wrote to me for permission for a trading party to pass through our Somaliland territory to trade and shoot in the interior beyond. I wrote back very politely that I could not give permission, as the district was too dangerous for travelers.”

“But that’s not diplomacy, sir, is it ? It’s merely

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the truth. The Mad Mullah’s 'out’ just now, isn’t he, and the country’s alight?”

The Resident chuckled. "Diplomacy isn’t necessarily all lies, Captain. Sometimes the truth is more convenient. It was no news to them about the Mad Mullah being 'out.’ The trading party were simply taking up arms for that person to use against us. See?”

"Perfectly, sir. And so the Governor wrote back that you could go to blazes, and the expedition would trade as it jolly well liked?”

"Pooh!” said the Resident. "That’s not diplomacy, my dear Captain. A letter like that might very well bring about war between England and — er — the Other Power at touchy times like these. No, the Governor wrote back most civilly, thanking me for my warning, and stating that he had refused the expedition his leave to start. But at the same time his polite Excellency gave that expedition a firm hint to start without leave, and away they went.”

"Then I don’t see,” said Kettle doubtfully, "what’s wrong with your sending some of your own troops to cut them off. I’ve no very high opinion of soldier officers, as I’ve mentioned frequently ; but surely they are equal to a small job like that?”

"Oh, the soldiers could snaffle them easily enough r A DIPLOMATIC EXCHANGE.

if I chose, but if the beggars were caught officially, don’t you see, they’d think of their own skins first, and let on that his Excellency the Governor had sent them, and then — well, then there would be a row. Let me tell you, Captain, there’s enough fat in the fire already between Great Britain and — er — the Other Power, and I shouldn’t be thanked for dropping in the extra handful which might well set half the world in a blaze. Come, man, you must see which way the cat jumps now. It’s a case for nice diplomacy.”

It was acting on these somewhat obscure hints and instructions, then, that Captain Owen Kettle found himself traversing a portion of British Somaliland, with the attendance of a party of forty-three armed natives. By daytime he had to evade the bands of the Mad Mullah, the local faction fights which are always set up in a disturbed country, and incidentally to keep out of the way of those tiny armies of British native troops- which were doing their best to hammer the country into quietude again.

By night, when the lions sang their lullabies, he had personally to attend to the fires and the thorn zareba, as no amount of hard handling and hard language would make his Mohammedan following careful in this direction. Their theory was that if

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it was written that lions should devour them, this would surely come to pass. Wherefore it was entirely useless to stay awake on sentry-go, unless perchance they were encamped in the neighborhood of a hill of red ants. The which was consistent, of course, but irritating to a non-fatalist leader. However, when it came to fighting, they showed up artistically enough to satisfy even such a connoisseur as Captain Kettle.

The country was, as I have said, in a state of considerable turmoil, and it was Kettle's object to thread his way as nicely as might be between the various centres of disturbance, so that he might arrive at his final destination with a force if possible undiminished. He had a constitutional distaste for avoiding a fight, but the needs of his wife and daughters at home were always at the back of his mind, and he did constant violence to his own appetites on their behalf.

But there is a limit to the forbearance of all men, and Captain Kettle's was reached when one day, on topping a rise, he saw in a pleasant valley immediately beneath him, a battle displayed in full working order. A small force was holding a village of wattled huts, a larger force was attacking with savage ferocity, wounded writhed here and there, twisted dead dotted the ground, a field gun

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coughed spasmodically, a hut burned, and a dazzling sun dished up the whole scene into the plainest possible view. Even then he had it in him (remembering those at home) to have retired quietly from the ridge. But a tall white man showed among those who defended the village, plainly leading them, and as the attack pressed more ferociously, the white man showed more, exposing himself with the utmost of recklessness, and doing prodigies of valor to inspirit his desponding troops.

That tall white man held Kettle’s admiration, and clogged his retreating feet, and presently, when it was plain the village would be rushed by overwhelming numbers, the kinship of blood boiled within him so strong that the last taint of his prudence evaporated.

To give them their due, his native following were willing always for warfare, and he had little trouble in hustling them to cover along the brink of the ridge, and when the word was given, they loosed off their fire as fast as their dusky fingers could slip cartridges into the Remingtons.

The effect was sufficiently surprising. The attacking army in the valley below them halted in its advance, and began to make aimless little rushes to this side and to that. One of the panics so common to undisciplined troops had gripped them, soul and

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bones; and when one, more ingenious in his fright than the rest, hit upon a line of flight, they tailed in after him as fast as their toes could spurn the ground.

The tall white man of the village with his own hands helped with the gun to bedeck their departure, and he was engaged in firing a final shot, when Captain Kettle and his tail marched up to make his acquaintance.

“I trust, sir,” said the little sailor, “that you will pardon my interference, but it struck me at the time I chipped in, that those beggars had about given you your bellyful.”

“Don’t mention it,” said the tall man, laughing. “They’d have got us as sure as cooking if you hadn’t helped. They were some of the Mad Mullah’s crew, and regular devils for fighting. To tell the truth they’ve been chivvying us for three days, and have got all our truck, pretty nearly. It was all we could do to save this rotten little pop-gun here. Hayden’s my name, by the way. You don’t happen to have such a thing as a whiskey and soda among your loads, do you ?”

“I’m traveling very light myself,” said Kettle evasively, “and the whiskey was forgot to be put in. I’m sorry. I should have liked very much to have drunk your health.”

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Hayden stared. “Oh,” he said, “I beg your pardon. I thought you were some swell come up here lion-shooting.”

“I don’t know, sir,” said the little sailor with a flush, “that my personal status is any concern of yours.”

“Of course it isn’t, not a bit. Please believe that I didn’t intend to be in the least rude. One’s been up-country here so long among natives that one’s forgotten how to speak ordinary civil English. Of course I’m infinitely obliged to you for saving me and some of Britain’s dusky forces from being wiped out. But you see, being in command of this district, one has to fill up official forms and things, and I’m just now wondering as to what you might be up here after.”

“Then, sir, you may enter under the heading of ‘occupation’ that I am ‘engaged on urgent private affairs.’ That’s true, and it’s diplomatic.”

It was Hayden’s turn to blush now. “You make things very awkward for me. You have just put me under a tremendous obligation, and so I can’t possibly arrest you, which I rather believe it’s my duty to do.”

“Oh,” said Kettle stiffly, “don’t let that stand in tlie way, sir. You may arrest me if you’re able; but I’ve been bidden to use diplomacy over my pres-

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ent errand, and I’m going to use it now or know the reason why. So I must bid you now good .afternoon.”

The little sailor whistled his natives together, gave a direction to the headman, and set the caravan once more upon the march, himself waiting to act as rear guard. Hayden stood uncomfortably at his side, feeling to the full the embarrassment of the situation.

The long snaky line of the forty-three men, some with loads on their heads, all with rifles, at last got into swing, and Kettle fell in at their tail. “Good-by, sir,” he said, as he stepped off.

“Good-by,” said Hayden, thinking hard. “Much obliged to you. Fall back on me if you get into trouble further on.” And with that he turned and set about giving orders for the burial of the dead and the tending of the wounded. But presently he made up his mind, and went to his fellow white man, who was doctor to the force. “Pat,” he said, “look here; that little chap with the red torpedo beard isn’t up here lion hunting, and he isn’t up here exploring. He can only have one possible game, it seems to me, and that’s mischief.”

“Well, you can’t shoot him out of common decency, after pulling us out of the fire the way he

“Quite so; but we can follow him up and spoil his game.”

“Ye — es.”

“We must He’s on the make; you can see it in his eye. There’s only one kind of commercial spec, that would pay in British Somaliland at the present moment, and that’s taking arms and cartridges to the Mullah. The old scoundrel’s got plenty of money, and he will pay handsomely if he’s approached in the proper way.”

“But the small chap hadn’t got the arms with him — or at least very few.”

“Oh, that’s all right. The cargo couldn’t be shipped on our sea-board. That’ll come from the next territory, and he’ll rendezvous with it at a fixed spot, and come into touch with the Mullah on the road, and make arrangements about price and delivery. You have to go through these preliminaries when dealing with Mad Mullahs, or otherwise, if you are found personally convoying the guns, they just shoot you, and collar the swag.”

“Sweet lot.”

“Aren’t they? Well, get your invalids into hammocks, and away we go on our friend’s trail. We’ll deal tenderly with him because he’s been nice to us — although to me personally he was most ob-

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jectionable. But we must upset his little game, because that’s duty.”

Here then was a surprising result yielded up by Captain Kettle’s attempt at diplomacy. A more experienced officer might by tact have discovered more of the truth, or by induction have guessed at it. But Hayden was merely an ordinary militia subaltern, with more adventurous spirit than brain, who was seconded from his regiment, and attached to a corps of native levies ; and up-country in Somaliland he had learned more about rough-and-tumble relyon-y ourself fighting than about the exigencies of politics. That Kettle was in some way connected with arm-smuggling with the enemy he guessed quite correctly, but that the British Resident in one of the Coast towns could be the little sailor’s backer was quite beyond his conception.

Captain Kettle on his part marched on with an equable mind. He had yielded to the impulse of saving a man of his own color; but he had not truckled to him in the least; and had preserved his own independence and respect. Moreover, though the opportunity lay open to him, he had not lied about his business. But at the same time he felt that he had concealed it entirely, and plumed himself on his diplomatic skill in doing so.

His onward progress was not unattended with

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casualties. Like many another commander before him, he carried no stores of provender. ITis impedimenta consisted of rifles and ammunition. And following the innumerable precedents of other military expeditions who for various reasons have had to travel light, he lived upon the country. Of course Somaliland is not England, or even the United States; but even Somaliland at times objects to the comparative stranger who comes to live upon it, and being a primitive country, is apt to translate its protests into active measures.

There were times indeed when Kettle and his merry men had to retreat, and that hurriedly, with hunger gnawing at their belts, and despair sitting heavy upon their shoulders. There were other times also no less terrible, in the deserts, where they fought for the possession of some well, and were beaten off with swollen tongues and with leathern throats, to march on under the parching sun to the next water, or die by the way as seemed them best.

The original forty-three dwindled in this process, but the numbers of the company were kept up by those rough-and-ready means which are native to these countries of low civilization. The sentiment of loyalty there means loyalty only to the master for the time being, and a prisoner made one day might very well be fighting bravely against his former

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friends on the next. As to the question of arms, that adjusted itself. The Remington rifle is common currency in Eastern Soudan, Abyssinia and Somaliland. If a Remington was lost, the next new recruit used a spear or tree root, or whatever weapon offered till another Remington was recaptured. Such are the resources of a self-supporting force when under the command of a leader of Kettle’s ingenuity.

His final exploit of capturing the expedition with the smuggled arms was brought off with an ease that was almost laughable. From information picked up from the villages through which it had passed, they had been on its trail for some days, and finally, coming to the edge of a forest belt, espied it in a fortified camp in the middle of a small open plain.

To storm and capture this by open assault was a feat impossible even for a man of such desperate reckless bravery as Captain Kettle, with so small a following behind him, although the following by this time, to give them their due, would have gone anywhere the little sailor led them. But inside the zareba in the plain were two hundred men at the very lowest computation, and although many of these were officially carriers, there were naturally plenty of weapons available, and the East African

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black is very adaptable in these cases. You may use him as a carrier for six days of the week, but this will make him act none the worse as a soldier on the seventh.

Captain Kettle halted his men inside the rim of the forest, and then, to prevent straggling, marched them half a mile back to make their bivouac. He issued orders to the headman to see that no one gave the alarm, and the headman (when Kettle’s back was turned) translated this into a cheerful threat to crucify any one who made himself obnoxious in this way, head downward, over a slow fire. The which was quite in concord with the custom of the country and with all his friends’ views.

So they set about their cooking quite unconcernedly, and watched the small white man who had led them go off to reconnoiter, placidly convinced that when they had eaten he would invite them to a fight that would be fully worth their attention. As has been hinted before, the Mohammedan negro of East Africa enjoys active warfare rather more than does the fighting Hausa of the Western Soudan, which is rather more than the average athletic Englishman enjoys a cricket or a football match'.

Captain Kettle walked back to the edge of the forest growth, and taking his stand in the bush a yard

24 :

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off the path, where a fringe of orchids and creepers screened him from any possible watcher, set himself quietly to prospect the resources and defences of the party before him.

The zareba, he noted with disgust, was an uncommonly strong one. They were out of the range of that country where the camel thorn grows, and at first sight he had concluded that the fence was one which could easily be pulled to pieces. But closer observation showed that it was built by one who took no superfluous chances. Its bushes were all of spiny, spiky wood, which would tear a bare skin like so much glass, and, moreover, these were woven together with no amateur architecture. A stream watered the camp, so starvation tactics could not tire it out.

Kettle bit his teeth round the butt of a dead cheroot, and puzzled over the situation. What had to be done must be carried through quickly. It was no place or season for dilatory operations. That swiftly moving person, the Mad Mullah, was in the immediate neighborhood, and it was well known that he had a scent for munitions of war surpassed by no nose in Africa.

Kettle stared at the encampment with the last of the afternoon sun, and stared on when the darkness of night had snapped down with its tropical

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suddenness. The lights of the cooking fires gave up the camp as a vivid picture.

Gradually a scheme for its conquest unfolded itself to him, and then by degrees all its details were thought out and perfected. He wished to take no risks, and so he hammered at his plan till absolutely no flaw showed itself, and then, and not before, did he go back to his own bivouac and issue orders.

The men were well fed and rested, and ready for the work. The ghosts of the forests, which always parade and do their mischief in the darkness, were not there that evening, because Captain Kettle said they were not, and when the scheme was explained to them, the black men set about carrying it into execution with chuckling glee.

It had occurred to Kettle that the stream which watered the camp in the plain was capable of manipulation. The forest which sheltered his bivouac lay on a furrowed hillside, and the stream ran here also. It had dug for itself a ravine, and by Kettle’s direction this cut was now being dammed. It was no common dam his followers built, either, but one more after the fashion of a sluice-gate, which at a given notice might be thrown bodily down.

Below in the camp on the plain the stream dried up, but no one gave the phenomenon any special notice. Up in the woods men toiled through the

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hot damp night, tearing down branches, carrying turf and bush for the building of the dam. And behind its embankment the water in the ravine gathered and formed a quiet lake.

Three-quarters of the night through did this toil go on, and the negroes sniggered and gurgled in the darkness over their tragic joke; and then when a sufficiency of water had collected, and dawn threatened, Kettle led forty out toward the plain, and left the headman and two others to see to the breaking of the dam.

Punctually to its time the deluge welled out, swirling with its debris down the ravine, rushing through its old channel across the plain, and then brimming above the banks, and flooding the camp thigh deep, and sweeping the zareba hedge before it as though the stout interlaced bushes had been thistledown. The chilly surprise of it would have dampened the spirits of any troops; it daunted those inside the zareba beyond even Kettle’s highest expectations.

When he and his company came splashing in behind the last wave of the destruction they had set loose, they met with no resistance. Not a rifle was fired against them, not a sword was lifted. There stood before them ranks of men dazed and dully submissive. If this sender of the waterspout wished to cut their throats, it was written that he did this

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thing; if he merely wished to take them into his own slavery, again, it was Allah’s will. There was but one Prophet, and every man’s fate was writ large upon his forehead. It was impious to deny the Prophet, or to struggle against decided fate.

Kettle took steps to guard that there should be no reversal of this idea, by rounding up his prisoners under guard, and carefully depriving them of all utensils of defence; and then he began a search for the white man in command, who was the subject of that Other Power, and about whom the Resident had specifically given him information and instructions.

Pie had already in his own mind formed an opinion that either this individual was down with fever, or else was no small piece of a coward, or otherwise he would have shown fight, or at least have tried to put spirit into his men. A green canvas tent that showed dimly in the thinning night seemed to point to the white man’s residence, and Kettle splashed toward it through the falling water, with a revolver muzzle against his shoulder in case of accidents.

The flap of the tent was pinned over with a thorn. He pulled it rudely open and stepped inside, with weapon ready to drop into instant use.

He went in with his fierce little face drawn and set, ready to meet sudden death or deal it out. A

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moment later he had rushed out of the tent blushing scarlet all over his body.

The canvas house was dark when he stepped inside, and at first he had seen nothing. He searched the gloom with his eyes, following them with a revolver muzzle. Then a little feminine scream fell upon his drawn nerves like salt on a cut. There was a camp bed at one side of the tent, and on that a packing-case, and on that a chair, and on that again, with a head en papillote pressed against the roof, a pretty little lady dressed in an elaborate robe de nuit.

“Pm sure I beg your pardon, ma’am,” gasped Kettle, and made his exit in the condition described.

Here then was a complication. Here was a jape for fantastic fate to play against him. A man he could serve with any indignity the moment suggested; but a woman! He blushed afresh at the thought of his encounter.

But as he cooled, the memory of his own women-kind at home and their needs came back to him and forced him to take action, however distasteful the situation might be to him. He could speak the language of the Other Power with inaccurate fluency. ‘‘Inside the tent there?” he hailed. “Will you tell me who is in command of, this outfit?”

“I am,” came the astonishing reply.

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“Are you alone in there ?”

“Certainly, monsieur.’’

“Then I must ask you, madame, to refer me to your partner. Where shall I find him?”

“I have no partner; the cowards were all afraid to come. I am here by myself.”

Kettle cursed beneath his breath. “By James!” he murmured; “was ever any man in such a dirty fix ?” But the thing had to be faced. He continued doggedly : “Then, if there is no one else, I must see you. Please dress, madame, as soon as you are able.”

“Is that abominable flood over ?”

“Yes.”

“If it had not been for the rainstorm and the flood you never would have got here. I would have fought you. G — r — r — r! Yes, I have taught my black creatures how to fight admirably ; but the water vanquished me, and Heaven sent the water. Yes, it is Heaven alone which has made me yield.”