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What's interesting me is the fact that those Krooboys have got hatches off already, and are standing by the cranes and winches. I've seen them work cargo before all up and down the coast, and know the pace they can put into it, and if we don't move quick they'll scoff that ship clear down to the ceilings of her holds."
The maddened Krooboys ran in, and the wicked revolver spoke out, and then Kettle nipped into the deck-house and slammed the door to on his heels.
The Krooboys in possession were quick to see her coming. A mob of them gathered on the bridge deck, gibbering and shouting, and threatening with their hands; and even before the boat drew within range, they commenced a vigorous fusilade of coal lumps.
You come down here from England with just enough white men to handle your vessel to Sierra Leone, and then you ship Krooboys to work cargo and surf-boats, and do everything except steer, and as long as nothing happens, your Krooboy is a first-class hand.
As each roller passed tinder her, the surf-boat swooped higher and higher, and the laboring paddles seemed to give her less and less momentum. The head-man strained at the steering oar. The Krooboys had hard work to keep their perches on the gunwale. At last the head-man shouted, and the paddles ceased. They were waiting for a smooth.
I've no club at home now, or I'd ask you to look me up. But I dare say we shall meet again some time. So long." "Good-by, sir," said Kettle, and shook the operator by the hand. Then he turned, and drove the other two raiders before him out of the house, and down to the beach, and, with the Krooboys, applied himself to launching the surf-boat through the breakers.
I'm just what you see a common tramp, or worse, seeing that I've been play-acting for my dinners of late. And as for any help those niggers ashore could give, why, I shouldn't recommend it. The one-eyed old son of a dog who's head-man, has served on ships according to his own telling, and he'll have the same notions about loot as your own Krooboys.
Coals and any other missile that came handy were showered upon them by the Krooboys who manned the rail, to which they replied with a few vicious revolver shots; and then the boat drew out of range. Captain Kettle, in his clumsy canoe, paddled up close to her and nodded, and gave the boat's people a "good-morning." The greeting was quaintly enough out of place, but nobody seemed to notice that.
Again the Krooboys tried to prevent the boarding, but again the fire of that terrible revolver drove them yelping to shelter, and the boat drew up with a bump and a swirl under the dangling ropes. Kettle clambered forward along the thwarts, and swarmed up one fall with a monkey's quickness, and the Mate, a man of wooden courage, raced him up the other.
He went through his toilet with solemn deliberation, and then he opened the chart-house door and went out beneath the baking sunshine of the bridge-deck beyond. A cluster of Krooboys stood at the further end of it, cackling with talk, and at sight of him they called their friends on the main deck below, who began to come up as fast as they could get foot on the ladders.
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