"I'm not going to let you go like this, me lad. I've one turkey left in the refrigerator, and if you peg out afterwards up those beastly rivers, I'd always like to think I'd stood you one good dinner when the chance came in my way. Come now, Carter-me-lad; turkey-chop? There's not another skipper on the Coast that would make you an offer like that." Carter laughed and gave in, and turned towards the flesh-pots. He did not like turkey. Once in Upper Wharfedale his father had come home from Skipton with thirty turkey poults, which the family reared with very vast care, and thereafter had to eat. Turkey once per annum is a luxury; twice cloys; but thirty times, when legs follow breast, and wings are succeeded by side-bones, would weary any man living. But by custom in West Africa, turkey from a steamer's refrigerator is the height of luxury, and Carter recognized the hospitable motive. Captain Image, when mellowed by food and wine that night, talked of Miss Kate O'Neill, and Carter behind an elaborate indifference listened with a hungry interest. She was floating rubber companies it appeared with enormous success. She had very nearly been engaged to a law-sharp named Austin, but had got out of it in time. She was reported in Liverpool to be struck on some palm oil clerk on the Coast, but Captain Image proclaimed that to be rot, and what did Carter-me-lad think? "Well, of course, there was Cascaes," said Carter judicially, "but I don't see there was anyone else. All the rest of the men she met out here were either married or engaged." But George Carter whistled cheerfully to the stars as his boat-boys paddled him up through the steaming mangroves to his abiding place that night, and Mr. Balgarnie and Captain Image nudged one another delightedly as they listened to his music. Button and Maidson's launch, that ought to have served the factory in Copper River, turned out upon inspection to be even worse than Captain Image had forecasted, and the agent in charge was most enthusiastic in accepting the two five-pound notes that were offered for her. And thereafter for Carter and White-Man's-Trouble began a period of savage toil. The white man was a mechanic born, but he had never seen an oil engine in his life, knew nothing of clutch, water-jackets, or reversing gear, and had to make his first acquaintanceship with a carburetor. The men at the factory were frankly ignorant of the launch's mechanism; said so indeed before they sold her. "But I know we have got a plan-thing of the works stowed away somewhere," the agent stated. "Can you understand a machine from seeing a drawing?" "Rather," said Carter. "Well, we'll find it," said the agent, and they wasted two days in turning over every scrap of paper the factory contained, but the blue prints refused to discover themselves. "Let you off your bargain if you like," said the agent ruefully, when the place had been searched through without success.