IN THE HANDS OF THE ENEMY.

Jim Dean's face looked ugly when the Portuguese, who was called Da Silva, deliberately thrust the muzzle of a revolver against his chest.

"You confounded disgrace! What are you going to do?" he inquired spitefully. "You putty-colored dago, do you think you can intimidate me with your theatrical performances? Man, I've looked inside more gun muzzles that you've ever heard of."

"This, then, is the last the senhor shall have the pleasure of examining," answered the Portuguese imperturbably. The insults he waved aside with his lemon-colored left hand, and he blew out between his lips a serene stream of cigarette smoke.

"The senhor is what you call a fire-eater, is it not? But even with a good appetite it is possible to eat too much. Is the senhor going to take his last meal?"

Da Silva talked leisurely as though he enjoyed the conversation. He looked carelessly around the trading office, where in orderly confusion lay books and papers containing records of many a cargo of cotton, palm oil, rubber, mahogany logs and the like from the opulent interior. For this, the highest trading station on the Bawa River, was the channel through which the produce of a vast savage country went to the coast, where cotton goods of pronounced colors went in exchange for lumps of wild rubber, and where square-face gin or various jimcracks bought so much oil or kernel.

Jim Dean managed this factory, from which he had to account to a board of directors in Liverpool for his doings, and for his profits and losses. Of late there had been losses, for from the wild interior had come tales of caravans attacked, of laden canoes cut off, of villages, where stores were accumulated, raided, with rumors and threats of worse things.

So far as he was personally concerned, this present incident was the apex of the unexpected. He was sitting in his office sweating at his books when three natives, coming in as he supposed on trading business, without ceremony, gripped him in their odorous arms, flung a grass rope about him, and trussed him up like a fowl ready for the roast.

A fourth man, Da Silva, had superintended the operation.

"I'd give six months' wages to have a quarter of an hour at handling you with bare fists," snapped Dean. "I should hate touching your hide with my fingers, but I'd do it like I might have to lift a bit of dirt out of my food."

"The senhor makes it no easier for himself," said the Portuguese with a show of teeth.

"You just put your gun away and give me my hands free and I'll show you something," returned Dean spitefully.

The patience of the dago man suddenly came to an end. He withdrew his eyes from sight of the brown river beyond the veranda, whither they had dreamily wandered, and suddenly set them viciously on the white man.

"I'm going to give you three minutes," he said. "If you are still acting the fool, then I shall shoot. You know what I want. Down river at the Bawa factory is a steamer just arrived from a British port. Among her cargo are a thousand rifles, with ammunition. For purposes of my own, not unconnected with my desire to be top dog in this portion of Africa, I want to get possession of those arms, and to do so I want to send such a message to the coast as will insure the steamer hurrying up the river with this part of her cargo aboard. Therefore, you will write on the company's note paper, in your own hand, something to the effect that the station is in the extremest danger, that the whole hinterland is risen, and that unless you have arms and ammunition in plenty sent you at once, the whole factory and those in it will be wiped out of existence. It's a million to one they'll send the steamer up, for it would be the quickest, and there's deep water all the way. Now, I'll dictate the exact words to you. You won't mind writing it, anyhow, because it's true."

"And when the ship comes up, what then?" asked Dean.

"I make arrangements to acquire the cargo on—well, on easy terms," answered the half-breed with a smile.

"All right, you disgrace of two continents, you do all the arranging. I'm not in it. You shoot, my friend."

It was quite true that Jim Dean had looked into death's face more times than once, but he had hardly been nearer making his exit than during the next five seconds; for Da Silva's revolver muzzle was pressed over his heart and an angry finger was on the trigger. Then the half-blood hesitated, not because he had either fear or scruples, but because Dean at the moment was worth more to him alive than dead. He had great ambitions, for the realization of which the cargo of arms was necessary, and he could think of no better way of obtaining them than by using Dean in the way he had indicated.

"On the whole, I think shooting would be too sudden," he said. "If you refuse to do as I say I will invent a method of putting you out of this world of misery that will give you the longest dose of pain that a human body can stand. Savvy?"

Jim Dean did understand. Da Silva had in the hinterland an unsavory reputation for a ferocity that, rumor said, stood at nothing, and he was credited with one or two dark doings in the back no-man's land that will not bear repeating.

He lighted another cigarette, and with malicious deliberation he detailed the manner in which he would inflict death on the other which had something with a slow fire in it and added refinements, and then he retired to make arrangements for the exit, as he termed it, leaving Dean under the guard of one negro.

These circumstances set Dean thinking furiously, and after a while he decided that though a death by torture might be picturesque, there would not be much common sense in submitting to it when there was a way out, which, though humiliating enough, might yet afford him another chance. With his life he might get the game into his own hands—with death was the end of the game.

"All right," he said. "You've got the bulge on me this time. Just free my hands, and I'll write what you say."

Da Silva dictated with his finger on the trigger of his weapon, and the muzzle of it somewhere between Dean's shoulder blades.

Macfarlane, manager of the coast factory on the Bawa River, ran across the strip of sun-scorched beach and tumbled into a dugout boat of cottonwood, and with a speed that indicated he was handling matters of great urgency, he pushed the boat out into the yellow stream and paddled for all he was worth toward the rusty tramp steamer which lay in mid-river. Lettering under her stern indicated the double fact that she was classically called the Athena, and that she hailed from Liverpool. An inspection of her decks would have shown that in the midday heat her crew were resting. The steam winch sizzled, the drip from a steam pipe falling on the hot iron deck almost dried before it touched the plates, the heat rose from the iron hull as from a stove; there was probably not a bearable spot in the ship.

Macfarlane came up the ladder in a hurry, and he mounted to the chart room on the little bridge deck with a speed that made some eyes open in surprise. Captain Bingham, who was reclining on a locker dressed in pajamas open at the chest, looked mild surprise at the agent's hurry, when the latter thrust into his hand a somewhat crumpled piece of paper and bade him read it.

"A nigger has just brought it," he said. "Dean, our man up the river, is in danger. In fact, you might say more. The whole back of the country is in danger. There's a rising in progress, and the first thing they'll attack is the upper factory, that being the sign and token of white aggression. Their cry is the black man's country for the black man, which may be all right, only we're white men, and we're here, and we want to keep on our trade. Now, I shouldn't be surprised if there isn't some one at the back of all this. There's a brainy, unscrupulous beggar called Da Silva, who's Portuguese. He's got some sort of a crack-brained notion of a black republic with himself as president, and incidentally owner of our factories and trading posts. He's been in the hinterland for the last six months to my knowledge, and up to no good, I'll stake my swizzle stick. If this trouble is Da Silva's palaver, you can bet it's going to be a jugful, and the thing in such a case, or any other like it, is to blow the froth off it early. Strike a blow at once. Here's Dean writing in a hurry saying that while he has men he's no arms worth reckoning, and that practically the fate of the whole colony depends on his having enough rifles and ammunition in his hands within twenty-four hours."

"You're making me hotter than I was," breathed the skipper of the Athena. "What do you want? I'm not an advice merchant."

"If you'll read what Dean's written you'll see he says that if I have any arms, the best way is to charter the best steam craft I can put hands on, put the stuff on it, and send her upstream. Now, there are a dozen cases of rifles in your hold, which were going into Portuguese territory. They haven't been unloaded yet, see?"

"I can see you are going to put me in for something that my owners don't reckon on," said Bingham with a laugh, opening the jacket of his pajamas, and throwing out his broad chest.

"I reckon your owners value the trade on this bit of coast," said Macfarlane dryly. "It means losing it all if Dean doesn't get his guns. And there's a twenty-foot channel all the way upstream."

"If we can keep in it—I know. This old craft is no mud plugger. Still, with more cargo out of her she'll swim a bit higher. I'll just rouse up that crew of mine. And you get your boats around sharp, because I'm going to make that cargo buck."

Thereafter came a continual roar for many hours of both fore and aft steam winches, and the way the cargo was vomited out of the Athena's hold was a pretty good record for that river mouth.

Half an hour before sunset the Athena's anchors broke mud, and with her plimsoll and the red streak of her watermark high up out of the brown wash, she started nosing her way up against the current. The night fell suddenly like the quick closing of shutters, and from the river and the dank vegetation on its banks rose the mist that spelled fever and sickness. There was a ladling out of quinine that night to all hands. Macfarlane took a double dose. This river with its sickening smell of crushed marigolds, where the mangroves threw hideous twisted roots into the slime, and noisome creatures sprawled in the gloom, had a breath of poison.

"I'm hanged if I don't think," said the agent, as he took his second dose of quinine wrapped in a cigarette paper, "that we'd be better off with Da Silva in possession and us at home. I'm homesick. And this is West Africa. My stars! listen to the splashing of that crocodile!"

The skipper swore softly when a little shiver went through the hull. "That's the bottom," he said. "That deep channel may be there, but it takes keeping in. Now, if you take my tip, you'll get those shooters of yours unpacked. Your man may want a few in a hurry. Gosh! there's the bottom again. It'll be no soft thing if we get stuck, either for us or your man." But they went up the waterway in safety till dawn came, when Captain Bingham breathed more freely.

"All the same, I'm not enjoying myself," he said. "The salt sea is a dashed sight more to my liking. How much further is it?"

"We shall strike it this evening," said Macfarlane. "If we had been crows we could have got there in one-third the distance. This river winds about some."

It was the long, roundabout journey that the vessel had to go which enabled the plotter, Da Silva, to get news of her approach, and of the success of his plans, for the native runner, who had in the first place conveyed the letter, forced from Dean, by way of direct forest paths, went back the same way, carrying promise of immediate assistance.

Therefore the half-blood went on with his arrangements. To begin with, he sent runners out to various villages both near and distant, whence fighting men could come. He sent word that for each man there would be a rifle and cartridges, and that the war to regain the black man's country for the black man was ripe to commence. And then he constructed a simple, unsuspicious arrangement for trapping the ship that was nosing her way up the river.

Four hundred yards down from the strip of sun-baked beach in front of the trading factory the river was divided by a lush, swampy island into two channels. The near one was the only practicable way, and this he carefully filled up by dropping a couple of giant cottonwoods from the bank into it. The parts of the trees above the water lopped off till their presence was inconspicuous, and so came about as he intended the catching of the Athena like a jackal in a trap.

Going many miles at half speed, more miles at dead slow, the ocean tramp, making her uncertain way up this muddy channel into the heart of Africa, did not arrive within sight of her destination till close on midnight.

"We're close now," Macfarlane was saying. "Why not give a tootle on our siren just to buck up Dean, and give his enemies a shiver if they are near?"

Bingham got hold of the string, but with the first stabbing of the tropic night by the shrieking whistle there came a sudden shiver through the ship, a violent scraping, and a bumping on the plates below water. The siren stopped short, and the telegraph handle was suddenly dragged over to full speed astern while Captain Bingham said things. The propeller swirled up whirlpools of mud, and cast up enough crushed marigold smell to choke them; but the ship did not move, and Captain Bingham let his soul go out in bitterness.

"We've got to wait till daylight, anyhow," he said finally. "We're fast, and we can't do anything till we can see what's holding us."

Meanwhile things were happening ashore. For three days Jim Dean had sweated, a prisoner in his own office. He had seen little of Da Silva, one big negro, who smoked black cigars all day long, and wore a nautical cap, being his guard. The black seemed to possess the faculty of infinite wakefulness. If he ever slept he did not seem to. His eyes were always open, dreamily watching the smoke from his tobacco. Dean thought and thought, and produced nothing. The negro was twice his size, armed and wakeful. He, while not trussed up, had the area of his activity circumscribed by a thong fastened round his waist and made fast to the floor. The odds were too great for any effective dealing with the situation, until by accident he alighted on a small possibility of at least freeing himself. And with freedom of movement much was possible. He wriggled on the floor.

A prick in the calf of his leg betrayed the point of a nail sticking up in the floor. He altered his position so that he could get a bend of the thong against the nail point, and then he tried gently rubbing it, or rather letting the nail peck at the hide. There was not much strength in the nail, so that the operation had to be done with care; but it was done ultimately, and when there fell on Dean's surprised ears the fragmentary shriek of the steamer's siren he was both ready and able to go!

He fell on the negro as though a steel spring propelled him, and he bowled him over, and hammered the black head on the floor before the brain inside the woolly skull had awakened to what was happening. It was a thick skull, but the blow was in proportion, and the big body rolled over on the floor.

Possessing himself of the black's revolver, sheath knife, and belt, and the nautical cap to save his head from thorns, Dean slipped out from the veranda and down into the garden.

But this had not been done without some noise, and as Dean ran away toward the gate of the inclosure, he heard voices in the darkness, and cries of warning and alarm. The door of the inclosure was fast. Precious moments were wasted unbolting it. By the time he was fleeing across the strip of beach he knew he was pursued. He ran along the water's edge as far as he could till the thick brake of mangroves, which succeeded the beach, prevented him, for they grew right to the edge of the water, and the giant twisted roots snaked far out into the very slime of the river itself.

He struck into the thick mass of vegetation, away from the river, but keeping as near parallel to the bank as he could. Ropes of prickly creeper held him again and again. Boughs of sickly sweet blossoms dashed against his face, and to force his way through the tangled mass of greenery he had to slash out with his knife at almost every step. Then he made for the river bank again.

He could hear the pounding of the ship's propeller, and he rightly guessed she was struggling to get free from the trap that she had got into. He came out upon the river bank and picked his way through the sprawling roots of the mangroves. He sank knee-deep into the slime, then he made a plunge and bore out into the river. He could see the steamer scarce a hundred yards away, and he put his best work into his swimming, not the less because he knew there were crocodiles in the water.

He had not covered more than half the distance when he heard the sound of paddles no great way off. He looked over half a shoulder, and he saw a dug-out canoe shoot from the shore with half a dozen paddles at work. He swam till every muscle and sinew ached with the strain. He tore through the water, and grasped a rope that hung over the cathead of the Athena, thirty yards ahead of the pursuing canoe. He was over the edge of the forecastle just as the canoe came below. A moment later, with the water dripping from him, he had turned, and was firing at the black heads that sprang up above the cathead. A short spear plunged at his head, and stuck quivering into the forecastle planks; but two big splashes followed his shots, and there came a discordant chorus of yells from below, that a moment later was broken into by a deep-throated cry of inquiry from the bridge.

"You are trapped, that's all," answered Dean, taking aim at the retreating canoe.

"Gad, is that Jim Dean?" Macfarlane came running forward. "Have you had to swim for it at the finish? Are we too late with the arms?"

"No, you're just in time," said Dean, watching the effect of his shot, "that is, if you have some men who can use them."

"You said you'd got plenty."

"I'd better own up," said the young man, "although it hasn't a pleasant taste in my mouth. I wrote that letter at Da Silva's dictation with a pistol at my head. There was likewise a pleasant alternative of being spitted over a slow fire. He wants this cargo himself. Odds are on it that we shall get an attack before dawn."

"Then, by the great James, we'll have some handshakes ready for them," declared Captain Bingham. "Now, you just loosen out some of our cargo, Mr. Macfarlane."

The expected attack came about half an hour before dawn, when the white mists at the river edge were thickest. Half a dozen big canoes filled with men shot out from the banks. There were one or two firearms among them, but these were discharged at too great a range for savage marksmen, and they did no more than emphasize the alarm, though that was not needed, for watchful eyes had kept a careful lookout on the Athena all night.

"They'll be monkeys, and a bit over, if they climb up here," observed Macfarlane; for the ship with no cargo in her stood high out of the water, but the attack had been arranged by a brain. The first canoe to reach the vessel's side wasted, for savages, little time in shouting and brandishing spears, but straightway made casts with looped lengths of grass rope, and before the defenders were quite up to the move half a dozen black bodies were swarming up toward the mizzen chains.

Shots accounted for three, but the other three got up to the rail, and it was an ugly fight before accounts were settled. Each canoe was supplied with these ropes, which were cast with amazing skill, and wherever there was the slightest hold or projection there was a rope quickly looped over, and a black body swarming up the next instant. Axes and cutting knives hacked at them, but many a savage got aboard, and there were gashes and spear thrusts in plenty among the crew of the Athena when dawn broke.

The affair finished just as the sun slipped up over the trees, with the canoes, such as had men to propel them, paddling away to the shore, while two others drifted downstream, with only dead and wounded men in them. The daylight showed half a dozen blacks, either dead or badly wounded, on the ship's decks, and the second engineer lying on the fidley with a gashed head and wounded thigh.

"And there's ane de'il ah hae made prisoner after a vera bonny fecht," said the Scotch bosun. "Ah'm thinking he's no' a'together a nigger. The scoondrel's a bit tae yellow."

They found the dago, lying on the main deck, panting and furious, clothed only in a loin cloth, with half a dozen of his own grass ropes around him.

"Sae ye're the captain o' this dirty crood, air ye?" observed the bosun critically, as the half-blood lay there swathed in the grass rope.

"Mon, ye started something outside yere weight. But perhaps ye'll be useful. When we've had a bite o' something tae eat, we shall want a few hondy niggers tae chop awa' the trees we've rinned upon, and mebbe ye can whustle up a few."

But while they were snatching a hasty scrap of food, the prisoner, unwatched for a few minutes, managed to partly wriggle out of the rope, and to crawl toward an open sally port.

They heard him splash over the side, and a moment later, as they saw him swimming, in spite of rope-encumbered legs, he was seen to suddenly turn over in the water and to cast a look of fear back at them. The next moment he gave a shriek, and sank from sight. A little eddy in the brown water showed only for a moment where he had disappeared.

"A crocodile," said Dean with a shudder. "And I swam over there myself last night. Poor beggar. When you're ready I should like to go ashore. I expect my office will be a bit upset."