"We have a few strips of pine scantling among the stores," he said, after a moment's thought. "You can screw one or two of them down on deck--but I can't have more than a couple of screws in each. Then if you ranged a bass warp in between it would keep them off the wet. There's an old staysail they can have to sleep in. We could toss it overboard when they have done with it."
He turned away, and, soon after a meal was brought him, went to sleep while the _Palestrina_ sped on as fast as her engines could drive her towards the north. In due time she also crept into one of the many miry waterways which wind through the mangrove forests of Lower Nigeria, and Desmond sent a boat up it with a letter Ormsgill had given him to a certain white trader. An hour or two later a big gaunt man in white duck came back with the boat and drank a good deal of Desmond's wine. Then after asking the latter a few questions he looked at him with a twinkle in his eyes.
"Well," he said, "Ormsgill is rather a friend of mine, and what you have been telling me is certainly the kind of thing one would expect from him. It is by no means what I would do myself, but he always had--curious notions. Most of us have, for that matter, though, perhaps, it's fortunate they're not all the same. Well, I'll be glad to have the boys, especially as it's difficult to get Kroos enough from Liberia just now."
"I think there were certain conditions laid down in Ormsgill's letter," said Desmond reflectively.
The trader laughed. "There were," he said. "Well, I'm willing to admit that I have once or twice pitched a nigger who was a trifle impudent over the veranda rails. It's one of the things you have to do, and if you do it in one way they don't seem to mind. No doubt they understand it's only natural the climate and the fever should make you a trifle hasty. Still, I don't think a Kroo was ever done out of his earnings, or had things thrown at him when he didn't deserve it, in my factory."
Desmond fancied that this was probable, for he liked the man's face. There was rough good-humor in it, and the twinkle in his eyes was reassuring. As a matter of fact, he was, like most of those who followed his occupation in those swamps, one who lived a trifle hard and grimly held his own with a good deal against him. His code of ethics was, perhaps, slightly vague, but there were things he would not stoop to, and though now and then he might in a fit of exasperation hurl anything that was convenient as well as hard words at his boys, they knew that such action was not infrequently followed by a fit of inconsequent generosity. There are men of his kind in those factories whose boys will not leave them even when a rival offers them more gin cases and pieces of cloth for their services. In a moment or two Desmond made up his mind.