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Updated: June 9, 2025
It reared her up, stern uppermost, and passed, leaving her half swamped by its foaming passage; and then came another sea, and the boat broached to and spilt. The Krooboys jumped like black frogs from either gunwale, and Kettle jumped also, and made his way easily to the sand, being used to this experience.
Sheriff followed, and Captain Kettle, with his hands in his pockets, brought up the rear. The Krooboys, according to their orders, stayed on the beach, brought in the boat, collected her furniture, and got all ready for relaunching. White seemed to know the way as if he had been there before.
Well, here we are alongside." The steamer was a Portuguese, officered by Portuguese, and manned by Krooboys, and the smell of her drowned even the marigold scent of the river. Her dusky skipper exuded perspiration and affability, but he was in a great hurry to get on with his voyage.
I've come across most kinds of failure in my time, but a white man who lets himself be kicked off his ship by a parcel of Krooboys, and who disgraces Great Britain by being a blooming Englishman, is a specimen that's new to me. But perhaps I'm making a mistake? Perhaps you're a Dutchman or a Dago that's learnt the language?
But he had no time for fresh speculations just then as to her business. The scuffling on board had been growing more and more serious, and it was clear that the blacks of her complement were giving the whites more than they cared about. Kettle knew enough of the custom of the Coast to be able to sum the situation. "Her Krooboys have broken out of hand," he commented. "That's what's the trouble.
The black man is proverbially tough, and a whip, moral or physical, which will cut the most hardened of whites to ribbons, will leave him unmoved. And so I think it speaks highly for Captain Kettle's powers when, at the end of three minutes' talk, he caused many of those Krooboys to visibly wince.
He had seen enough of Captain Kettle's method already to quite appreciate its efficacy. The Krooboys, with the custom of servitude strong on them, soon fell-to when once they were started. The thump of holy-stones went up into the baking air, and grimy water began to dribble from the scuppers. With the chief engineer Kettle had another scuffle.
Once, when the cackle of negro voices seemed to point to an immediate outbreak, Rabeira gave an order, and presently a couple of cubical green boxes were taken forward by the ship's Krooboys, broken up, and the square bottles which they contained, distributed to greedy fingers. "Dashing 'em gin," said Nilssen, looking serious.
A winch chain rattled, and a sling load of cloth bales swung up to one of her derrick sheaves. "My faith, look at that! They've begun to broach cargo by now, and there are some of the beggars setting to lower the surf-boats to ferry it on to the beach." The Mate rapped out sulphurous wishes for the Krooboys' future state. "Yes, yes," said Sheriff, "but we're wasting time.
The Krooboys broached cargo and strewed the decks with their half-naked bodies, drunk on gin, amid a litter of smashed green cases. Meals ceased.
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