or whisped through the air overhead, or hit the vessel herself with
peremptory knocks. It is all very well to affect a contempt for a
straggling ill-aimed fire such as this; but, given a long enough
exposure to it, one is bound to be hit; and so, if the work was to be
attempted, the quicker it was set about the more chance there was of
getting it finished.

They use wood fuel on these small, ungainly steamers which do their
business up in the savage heart of Africa on the waters of the Haut
Congo, and because every man with a gun for many reasons feels himself
to be an enemy of the Free State, the steamers carry their firing logs
stacked in ramparts round their boilers and other vital parts. But wood,
as compared with coal, is bulky stuff to carry, and as the stowage
capacity of these stern-wheelers is small, they have to make frequent
calls to rebunker.

Indeed, it was for this purpose that Kettle had originally put in at the
village where Commandant Balliot had his headquarters; and, as other
events happened there which he had not calculated upon, he had steamed
out into the broad river again without a chance of taking any logs on
board, and, in fact, with his stock of fuel down very near to the
vanishing-point.

On this account, therefore, after the fatal shot into the boiler, and
the subsequent disablement and drifting on to the sandbank, all
repairing work had to be done under full exposure to the fire of the
mutineers. The Central African negro is a fairly stolid person, and as
the sight of a little slaughter does not in the least upset his nerves,
he can stand bullet hail for a good long time without emotion,
especially if there is no noise and bustle attached to it. But once let