On the other hand, he was at the moment absolutely penniless. If he did discover a waterway down to the coast--or rather when he had discovered that waterway, for he was fully determined to do it--how much forwarder would he be? What steamer could he charter? None. By no means could he get one without giving up a large slice of his precious mine to the man who ran the risk. He did not blame them. He put himself in the traders' places. If he were running a down-river factory, and had a launch, and some tattered red-headed fellow came down out of the back of beyond with a wild tale about a tin mine, and asked for the loan of the launch, and promised to pay when a cargo was brought down, and sent to a smelter in England and realized upon, what would he say to such a preposterous offer? Why, he would laugh at it. The proposition was not one that any business man would entertain.
No, he must get some capital, and buy that launch. And then came the question of where was the capital to come from.
His father? Well, he was engaged to Laura, and he did not feel like going near his father.
Slade?--Smith? Neither of them had a penny.
O'Neill and Craven? That meant Kate. He started as if he had been stung at the idea of going to Kate and asking her for money. Kate was successful, and she could loan it easily. Granted, and if she had been successful so would he be, and without her help. He shook an angry fist at Africa. "Curse you, if you've given her a fortune you've got to give me one too, or I'll take it in spite of you!"
He had a touch of fever that night, and White-Man's-Trouble plied him with decoctions of herbs of such appalling nastiness that (in his own phrase) he decided to get well quickly, merely to avoid the drugs. But it was a fancy built of that fever which put him on the path of success.
He imagined that the shades of the old Portuguese, who had built the strong stone house in those far-off days, came in that night to visit him. They were miners, too, or metal workers, he could not make out which, and they strutted about in long patched cotton stockings which reached to mid-thigh, and a combination garment of thick cloth that covered all the rest of them. Even in that stifling room, and in that baking climate, they wore metal helmets and metal body armor, and Carter wondered how they could go abroad into the sunshine and not be cooked alive in their shells.