Meredith had a way of performing most of his toilet outside his tent, and while Joseph made his discouraging report he was engaged in buttoning his waistcoat. He nodded gravely, but his manner was not that of a man who fully realised his position of imminent danger. Some men are like this—they die without getting at all flustered.
“There’s not more nor two or three out of the whole lot that I can put any trust in,” continued Joseph.
Jack Meredith was putting on his coat.
“I know what a barrack-room mutiny is. I’ve felt it in the hatmosphere, so to speak, before now, sir.”
“And what does it feel like?” inquired Jack Meredith, lightly arranging his watch-chain.
But Joseph did not answer. He stepped backwards into the tent and brought two rifles. There was no need of answer; for this came in the sound of many voices, the clang and clatter of varied arms.
“Here they come, sir,” said the soldier-servant—respectful, mindful of his place even at this moment.
Jack Meredith merely sat down behind the little table where his breakfast stood untouched. He leant his elbow on the table and watched the approach of the disorderly band of blacks. Some ran, some hung back, but all were armed.
In front walked a small, truculent-looking man with broad shoulders and an aggressive head.
He planted himself before Meredith, and turning, with a wave of the hand, to indicate his followers, said in English:
“These men—these friends of me—say they are tired of you. You no good leader. They make me their leader.”
He shrugged his shoulders with a hideous grin of deprecation.
“I not want. They make me. We go to join our friends in the valley.”
He pointed down into the valley where the enemy was encamped.
“We have agreed to take two hundred pounds for you. Price given by our friends in valley—”
The man stopped suddenly. He was looking into the muzzle of a revolver with a fixed fascination. Jack Meredith exhibited no haste. He did not seem yet to have realised the gravity of the situation. He took very careful aim and pulled the trigger. A little puff of white smoke floated over their heads. The broad-shouldered man with the aggressive head looked stupidly surprised. He turned towards his supporters with a pained look of inquiry, as if there was something he did not quite understand, and then he fell on his face and lay quite still.
Jack Meredith looked on the blank faces with a glance of urbane inquiry.
“Has anybody else anything to say to me?” he asked.
There was a dead silence. Someone laughed rather feebly in the background.
“Then I think I will go on with my breakfast.”
Which he accordingly proceeded to do.
One or two of the mutineers dropped away and went back to their own quarters.
“Take it away,” said Meredith, indicating the body of the dead man with his teaspoon.
“And look here,” he cried out after them, “do not let us have any more of this nonsense! It will only lead to unpleasantness.”
Some of the men grinned. They were not particularly respectful in their manner of bearing away the mortal remains of their late leader. The feeling had already turned.
Joseph thought fit to clinch matters later on in the day by a few remarks of his own.
“That’s the sort o’ man,” he said, more in resignation than in anger, “that the guv’nor is. He’s quiet like and smooth-spoken, but when he does ’it he ’its ’ard, and when he shoots he shoots mortal straight. Now, what I says to you Christy Minstrels is this: we’re all in the same box and we all want the same thing, although I admit there’s a bit of a difference in our complexions. Some o’ you jokers have got a fine richness of colour on your physiognimies that I don’t pretend to emulate. But no matter. What you wants is to get out of this confounded old Platter, quick time, ain’t it now?—to get down to Loango and go out on the bust, eh?”
The “Christy Minstrels” acquiesced.
“Then,” said Joseph, “obey orders and be hanged to yer.”
It had been apparent to Meredith for some weeks past that the man Nattoo, whom he had just shot, was bent on making trouble. His prompt action had not, therefore, been the result of panic, but the deliberate execution of a foreordained sentence. The only question was how to make the necessary execution most awe-inspiring and exemplary. The moment was well chosen, and served to strengthen, for the time being, the waning authority of these two Englishmen thus thrown upon their own resources in the heart of Africa.
The position was not a pleasant one. For three months the Plateau had been surrounded by hostile tribes, who made desultory raids from time to time. These, the little force on the summit was able to repulse; but a combined attack from, say, two sides at once would certainly have been successful. Meredith had no reason to suppose that his appeal for help had reached Msala, infested as the intervening forests were by cannibal tribes. Provisions were at a low ebb. There seemed to be no hope of outside aid, and disaffection was rife in his small force. Jack Meredith, who was no soldier, found himself called upon to defend a weak position, with unreliable men, for an indefinite period.
Joseph had a rough knowledge of soldiering and a very rudimentary notion of fortification. But he had that which served as well—the unerring eye for covert of a marksman. He was a dead shot at any range, and knowing what he could hit he also knew how to screen himself from the rifle of an enemy.
Above all, perhaps, was the quiet influence of a man who never flinched from danger nor seemed to be in the least disconcerted by its presence.
“It seems, sir,” said Joseph to his master later in the day, “that you’ve kinder stumped them. They don’t understand you.”
“They must be kept in check by fear. There
