The engine, with rational treatment, seemed a very decent sort of machine, though the feathering propeller, even till its final days, was always liable to moods of uncertainty, and after twenty-four hours of sending the launch ahead, would without any warning suddenly begin to pull her astern. Still these erratic moods always yielded to treatment, and, considering that she had been bought without a rag of reputation, Carter was always full of surprise at prolonged spells of good behavior. He did not go up direct as he had come down in the King of Okky's sixty man-power war canoe. He prospected the labyrinth of waterways for other channels, and charted them out with infinite care. He intended to take every possible precaution for preserving the secrecy of his mine. Even if he was followed, and he took it for granted that on some future voyage he presently would be followed, he wanted to be able to puzzle pursuit. At a point agreed upon he put into a village which sprawled along the bank, and presented the King's mandate, and demanded canoes. The villagers gave them without enthusiasm and without demur. He took these in tow, great cotton-wood dugouts that would hold a hundred men apiece, and hauled them after him, winding through great tree-hedged waterways where twilight reigned half the day, and then coming out between vast park-like savannas where the sun scorched them unchecked and grazing deer tempted the rifle. When he arrived at Tin Hill again, the King's finger had left a visible mark. Great heaps of picked ore lay along the waterside ready for loading the flotilla. "Good man, Kallee!" said the Englishman appreciatively. "I'll dash you a new state umbrella for that." The water-bellows organ that he had set up at the foot of the waterfall bellowed out its _boo-paa-bumm_, and against each of the great bamboo pipes there fluttered a bunch of red-dyed feathers to show that that other ju-ju man, his majesty of Okky, countersigned the warning not to unduly trespass. * * * * * Cargo after cargo Carter rushed down to the Coast, and dumped on land he had hired behind a factory. Ever and again he sent a tidy parcel of ore to a smelter in England and in due time had more money put to his credit at the Bank of West Africa. But he did not try any expensive tricks with the home tin market just then. He had got out a new launch, a more solid affair this time, driven by a sixty horse-power gasolene engine that had low-tension magneto ignition, and so many other improvements on its predecessor, that White-Man's-Trouble, who had it in charge, tied a dried monkey's paw to the compression cock on each cylinder head, as an extra special protective ju-ju.