once on the neck, and once on the round of a shoulder, and red stains
grew over the white satin of his skin. The work was strange to him
certainly, but he set about it with more than an amateur's skill. All
sailors have been handy with their fingers from time immemorial, but the
modern steamer-sailor, during his apprenticeship as mate, has to turn
his hand to a vast variety of trades. He is painter, carpenter,
stevedore, crew-driver, all in one day; and on the next he is doctor,
navigator, clerk, tailor, and engineer. And especially he is engineer.
He must be able to drive winch, windlass, or crane, like an artist; he
must have a good aptitude for using hand tools; and if he can work
machine tools also, it is so much the better for him.

Yes, Captain Kettle put the patch on that boiler like a workman. He
fitted his bolts, and made his joints; then luted the manhole and bolted
that back in place; and then stepped down while a couple of negroes
sluiced him with water from gourds, and rubbed him clean and dry with
handfuls of wild cotton waste. So far, although the incessant hail of
bullets had pitted the boiler's skin in a hundred places, no second shot
had found a spot sufficiently soft to make a puncture. The range of the
bombardment was long, perhaps, and though a bullet at seven hundred
yards may, with convenience, kill a man, it will not pierce
seven-eighths boiler plate. And so, theoretically, the boiler was safe
for the time being.

But practically it was otherwise. The boiler was by no means new. It was
corroded with years, and incapacity, and neglect, as is the custom with
all parts of boats and machinery on the Haut Congo. But it had been
brought up to that waterway by carriers at vast expense from Matadi, the
highest steamer port on the Lower Congo, probably costing three months
and a dozen lives in transit, so that it was debited in the books of the