room to make it up, is bound to end in trouble for the man. On the other
hand, it must be owned I had not much reason to count upon a general run
of good luck. And suppose I had the misfortune to pile her up high and
dry on some beastly shoal? That would have been the final undoing of
that voyage. It was plain that if Falk refused to tow me out he would
also refuse to pull me off. This meant--what? A day lost at the
very best; but more likely a whole fortnight of frizzling on some
pestilential mud-flat, of desperate work, of discharging cargo; more than
likely it meant borrowing money at an exorbitant rate of interest--from
the Siegers' gang too at that. They were a power in the port. And that
elderly seaman of mine, Gambril, had looked pretty ghastly when I
went forward to dose him with quinine that morning. _He_ would certainly
die--not to speak of two or three others that seemed nearly as bad,
and of the rest of them just ready to catch any tropical disease going.
Horror, ruin and everlasting remorse. And no help. None. I had fallen
amongst a lot of unfriendly lunatics!

At any rate, if I must take my ship down myself it was my duty to
procure if possible some local knowledge. But that was not easy. The
only person I could think of for that service was a certain Johnson,
formerly captain of a country ship, but now spliced to a country wife
and gone utterly to the bad. I had only heard of him in the vaguest way,
as living concealed in the thick of two hundred thousand natives, and
only emerging into the light of day for the purpose of hunting up some
brandy. I had a notion that if I could lay my hands on him I would sober
him on board my ship and use him for a pilot. Better than nothing. Once
a sailor always a sailor--and he had known the river for years. But in
our Consulate (where I arrived dripping after a sharp walk) they could
tell me nothing. The excellent young men on the staff, though willing to
help me, belonged to a sphere of the white colony for which that sort of