"Miss Kate, I was sure you'd find that what I said was true, and that Smooth River factory was no place for a lady like you. You see those dead niggers are fresh now, but when the sun gets on 'em--er--I mean there's no trade coming into this section of the Coast just now till that blessed old King of Okky opens the roads again, and he won't do that yet awhile on his own dirty account, and neither you nor I have got the ju-ju that will make him. My dear Miss, I'm just as pleased as a monkey with green--er--with a green tail to hear you're going to take the round trip home with me, and if my clean collars do run out, you must remember that we all wear panjammers when we're south of the Islands and the trippers. If only I'd thought of shipping a jack-wash when I got my Krooboys at Sarry Leone. Well, one can't be prepared for everything." The girl laughed. "I wouldn't strain the supply of collars for worlds. I only want you to take me two days on from here and drop me at this factory again on the way back." The tint of Captain Image's vermilion face deepened to plum color. He scented irony, and his touchy Welsh temper bubbled up into view. "Miss," he said, "when I pull my anchors out of Smooth River mud in ten hours from now, I go out on the flood across the bar, and as you must know I walk in and do the civil in Water Street, Liverpool, before I smell the stink of these particular mud banks again." She slipped a plump firm hand on his white drill sleeve. "Won't you ask me into the chart house, Captain, and send Brass-Pan for some tea? I'm absolutely dying for tea. And you can have a cocktail. I've got a long story I want to tell you. There's cargo waiting for you, Captain, up a creek that opens off Smooth River which you've never been up, and which I think will pretty well fill the _M'poso_ without your troubling to call anywhere else." Captain Image's face cooled to vermilion again, and puckered into a smile in spite of himself. He even went so far as to pat the fingers that rested on his arm. "By Crumbs, Miss, I'd ordered them to boil up that tea when I saw you shoot out of the factory creek in your surf boat, and till you reminded me, I'd clean forgotten it. And here you've been standing and yarning to me on the front door step all the time. They'll call the _M'poso_ a dry boat with a vengeance if this tale gets about. I shall be chaffed to death over it. Come up on top." Mr. Balgarnie saw them ascending the ladder, and rushed into the chart house and pulled down three photographs that had been fastened on the wall with drawing pins since Miss Kate O'Neill's departure. He was thumped on the back by his grateful skipper who caught him in the act of pocketing them.