"Oh, you didn't know it. But if you asked a favor for my father's daughter from the purser of the _Secondee_--she's the boat that's due--you would get an unkind answer. We're in debt all round, and I'm afraid he didn't behave very well to either the purser or the captain of the _Secondee_. Now, please do not press me any more. I stay here at Smooth River factory." George Carter hit the table with his fist. "Then I stay, too. The da Silvas will put me up, and if they object, I'll turn them out into the bush and live in their house alone. Malla-Nulla must look after itself." "What will Mr. K. say to that?" "He will approve. K.'s a tough nut in business matters, but he's a man all through." "Is he?" said the girl with a queer smile. "I don't agree with you."' "One may not at the moment like the way he hustles one along in his letters," said Carter stoutly, "but he's a man all through, and if he was to get to know how things are fixed here, and to hear I'd stuck to my own job at Malla-Nulla and left you in the lurch at Smooth River, he'd fire me one-time, even if he had to get a steamer specially stopped to land his mail. No, K. O'Neill would have no use for brutes of that description in his employ. Now, if you'll be so very nice, my dear, as to pick up that swizzle-stick and make me a good grippy cocktail, when I've had that I'll go out and do what I can to discourage the Okky men if they see fit to pay a call." Now, his Majesty the King of Okky once boasted to a West African official that he could put 20,000 spearmen into the field, but there is no doubt that this was an over-estimate. Moreover many of the Okky troops carried flintlock guns and matchets in place of the spear, and others again were bowmen, and still others wielded the Dahomey axe. But his Majesty was a parvenu king who had fought his way to the throne, and he saw to it that there was no inefficiency in his War Office. He made the conditions of service sufficiently pleasant to tempt in the fighting Moslemin from the Haûsa country, and these fine soldiers of fortune gave the needful stiffening to his own pagan levies.