When these pious duties had been fulfilled, the crew lined out along each of the lower deck rails armed with spanners, firebars, handspikes, and in fact any other weapon which a modern steamer could provide, which in lusty hands might be called upon to break a human head.
On the upper bridge Captain Image oversaw the only two mates who were not down with fever as they directed and assisted these operations, and when all was ready he laid his own hands on the siren string and let loose a hoarse throaty blast of defiance across the creeks and the steamy forest.
"There, Carter, me lad," said he, "that's to show the blighters we're here and waiting. I'm glad you've brought that Winchester. It's the only gun in the ship since Owe-it Slade borrowed my Holland and forgot to bring it back. They tell me you're a nailing fine shot, too."
"Couldn't hit a haystack with anything except a scatter gun."
"Well," said Image dryly, "as I saw some of your patients spread about in the clearing outside Smooth River Factory, I shall believe just as much of that as I choose. It's not my affair to mention it, of course, but I do know that Miss Kate was very considerably struck by the way you kept those niggers off, and if you hadn't been engaged to Slade's girl----"
"Which I am, Captain. So, therefore, it's no use going into useless possibilities. By the way, isn't that stern wire slackening?"
"By Crumbs, me lad, you've got a quick eye. The tide's coming up underneath her, and she's slipping off. Here you, Mr. Third Mate, ring those engines to full astern, and try and keep it in your head that you'd be in your room now if I weren't short of officers."
With the lift of the yellow tide beneath her, the _M'poso_ drew out from her muddy dock as a sword is pulled from its sheath, hung for a dozen minutes in mid-stream whilst the stern-warp and its anchor were got aboard, and then, gathering her boat and its crew up to davits, turned stubbornly up the river.
"I'll show these Okky blighters what trouble is," declared Captain Image, "if they try and stop me. I've had their old king in my chart house here with Swizzle-Stick Smith and the other traders a score of times, and if he didn't drink the ship dry, it was only because I wouldn't let him. And now in return for that hospitality he brings out his infernal war canoes. I only hope he's in one of them and comes alongside. I'll brain him with an oil puncheon if I get him in range."
