Carter had a natural gift for tongues, and was picking up the difficult Coast languages to the best of his ability, but his vocabulary was of necessity small, and a Krooboy stood by to translate intricate passages into idiom more likely to penetrate the harder skulls. The Krooboy wore trousers and singlet in token of his advanced civilization, and bore with pride the name of White-Man's-Trouble. There was a glut of customers that baking afternoon. High-scented trade stuffs poured into the factory in pleasing abundance, and bundles of European produce were balanced upon woolly craniums for transportation through bush paths to that wild unknown Africa beyond the hinterland. The new law of K. O'Neill allowed no lingering in the feteesh. Once a customer had been delivered of his goods, and had accepted payment, White-Man's-Trouble decanted him into the scalding sunshine outside, and bade him hasten upon his ways. K. O'Neill had stated very plainly, in a typewritten letter, that the leakage by theft was unpleasing to the directorate in Liverpool, and must be stopped. K. O'Neill understood that the thefts took place after a customer had spent all his cash on legitimate purchase, as then all his savage intelligence was turned to pilfering. Carter, as the man on the spot, recognized the truth of all this, and carried out the instructions to the foot of the letter. Mr. Smith warned him he would have trouble over it. "Ever since the first factory came down to blight this Coast," Smith explained, "the boys have been allowed to hang around the feteesh and steal what wasn't nailed down. They look upon it in the light of a legitimate discount, and it's grown up into a custom. Now in West Africa you may burn a forest, or blot out a nation, or start a new volcano, and nobody will say very much to you, but if you interfere with a recognized custom, you come in contact with the biggest kind of trouble." "Still," Carter pointed out, "these orders are definite." "And you are the kind of fool that goes on the principle of 'obeying orders if you break owners.' Well, go ahead and carry out instructions. I won't interfere with you. I'd rather like to see this cocksure K. O'Neill get a smack in the eye to cure his meddling. And for yourself, keep your weather eye lifting, or some indignant nigger will ram a foot of iron into you. It's the Okky-men I'd take especial care of if I were you. They've got their tails up a good deal more than's healthy just now. I'm told, too, that their head witch doctor wants his war drum redecorated." Mr. Smith grinned--"I don't want to be personal, of course." "Oh, don't mind me. So far I rather fail to understand what I've got to do with the Okky City war drum." "You see you carry round with you something that would make the very best kind of heap-too-good ju-ju." "Still I don't understand."