It turned out that Captain Image already had tidings of the war canoes, and was red with wrath at the idea of any qualified black savages having the unmentionable impudence to make a something naval demonstration against a sacred Liverpool oil tank. His language was quite unprintable, but his disposition of the steamer's forces was remarkably sound. Tackles squeaked as a Krooboy gang hoisted the ladder which hung alongside. The boatswain loaded the two brass signal guns on the bridge deck with their usual noisy charge of blank, and rammed a three-pound parcel of four-inch cut nails down the muzzle of each on the top of the powder bags. The carpenter replaced the gangways which are always unshipped when steamers are in the rivers working cargo. And the winches chattered as they each hove up a ponderous palm oil puncheon to the top of a derrick, which was then swung outboard so that the puncheon could be let go by the run, and smash any canoe made of hands that happened to be underneath. When these pious duties had been fulfilled, the crew lined out along each of the lower deck rails armed with spanners, firebars, handspikes, and in fact any other weapon which a modern steamer could provide, which in lusty hands might be called upon to break a human head. On the upper bridge Captain Image oversaw the only two mates who were not down with fever as they directed and assisted these operations, and when all was ready he laid his own hands on the siren string and let loose a hoarse throaty blast of defiance across the creeks and the steamy forest. "There, Carter, me lad," said he, "that's to show the blighters we're here and waiting. I'm glad you've brought that Winchester. It's the only gun in the ship since Owe-it Slade borrowed my Holland and forgot to bring it back. They tell me you're a nailing fine shot, too." "Couldn't hit a haystack with anything except a scatter gun." "Well," said Image dryly, "as I saw some of your patients spread about in the clearing outside Smooth River Factory, I shall believe just as much of that as I choose. It's not my affair to mention it, of course, but I do know that Miss Kate was very considerably struck by the way you kept those niggers off, and if you hadn't been engaged to Slade's girl----" "Which I am, Captain. So, therefore, it's no use going into useless possibilities. By the way, isn't that stern wire slackening?" "By Crumbs, me lad, you've got a quick eye. The tide's coming up underneath her, and she's slipping off. Here you, Mr. Third Mate, ring those engines to full astern, and try and keep it in your head that you'd be in your room now if I weren't short of officers." With the lift of the yellow tide beneath her, the _M'poso_ drew out from her muddy dock as a sword is pulled from its sheath, hung for a dozen minutes in mid-stream whilst the stern-warp and its anchor were got aboard, and then, gathering her boat and its crew up to davits, turned stubbornly up the river.