"Well, Mr. Carter," said the old man screwing in an eyeglass and staring at him, "if I were you I should dash Trouble five bob for saving your life, and follow out the rest of his instructions. Ju-ju often gets there when drugs won't touch the spot at all, and, mark you, you're getting that admission from the man who knows more about drugs suitable for Coast ailments than anybody in West Africa. The only trouble about putting this into general practice, is, where are you going to find the proper ju-ju to meet the case? But you seem to have got hold of the right boy for this sort of thing in Trouble. Turning to business for a moment, I hope you're satisfied with your exertions on behalf of Craven and O'Neill with his Majesty of Okky?" "Well, I don't know what he's done yet, sir. Mr. Slade said he had wiped out Malla-Nulla factory and killed you and all the boys, but that seems, well, exaggerated." "Slade always takes the gloomy view. The King talked; and I'll admit things looked ugly for a bit. You see you'd walked off with the Firm's artillery." "Good heavens, do you mean that my tin-pot ten-and-sixpenny revolver was the only gun about the place?" "Certainly I do. You see--er--Mr. Carter, one occasionally--er--dines rather heavily here, and once after dining too well I saw a man shoot another whose loss he regretted afterwards. So as I wished to spare myself those regrets, I saw to it that there was nothing more deadly about the place than trade guns, and you wouldn't catch me loosing off one of those, however drunk I might be. I regret to say the King didn't continue to carry his liquor like a gentleman after you'd left; he grew quarrelsome; and finally I had to pull him up with some sharpness. Then came the ultimatum. He said I should find the roads stopped already--the old scoundrel had been playing me like a trout, it seems, till everything had been got ready, and he told me that as a fine for your lèse-majesté he should help himself to the contents of the factory as they stood." "But you headed him off there, sir, at any rate." Swizzle-Stick Smith chuckled. "Well, I haven't been on this Coast for twenty-five years without knowing a thing or two. I told the King I was rather glad to hear him say that because it showed that a prophecy made a year ago was now going to be fulfilled. He asked what it was. I spouted to him 'Maecenas Atavis edite regibus O et præsidium et dulce decus meum, Sunt, quos curriculo pulverem Olympicum Conlegisse juvat, ... as the first thing that came into my head, and fine pompous lines they are, as you'd remember if you'd ever been to a public school, which you haven't." "I've written out all Horace twenty times over in impositions and know the bulk by heart, but I can't say I ever got a taste for construing it."