Carter shuddered and slowly opened his eyes. A brown cockroach, horrible with dust, dropped from the rafter above onto his face. "I'm afraid you've had rather a rough bout of it, landing, my lad. It's a very bad beach to-day. There, don't move. You're all right. You'll feel a bit queer yet." "The boat upset----" "It did, most thoroughly. But you're now at Malla-Nulla factory in West Africa, and I bid you welcome. I'm Mr. Smith, your commanding officer. You'd like to lie still for a bit, perhaps?" "Yes." "Well, buck up, and you'll soon be all right. You needn't fancy you'll be a candidate for a top-hat and a gun-case yet." "For a which?" The trader pointed with his pipe stem across the store to a wooden box full of flintlock trade guns. "That's a gun case. Man's usually too long to fit it comfortably, especially if he's as well-grown as you are. So we knock out one end, and nail on an old top-hat. Then you can plant him in style." The patient's mouth twitched with the corner of a smile. "A most tidy custom," he said faintly. "But I say, could you do anything for my arm? Sorry to trouble you, but it's most abominably painful." "Your arm's broken, worse luck. I'll set it for you when I've got off this cargo." "I'd rather have a doctor. Will you send off to the _M'poso_ for the doctor there, please?" The old man laughed and polished his eyeglass on a sleeve of his pyjamas. "My lad, you don't understand. You've left the steamer now, and her doctor's not the kind of fool to risk his own bones trying to get here with the beach as bad as it is to-day. I don't suppose he mistakes you for a millionaire. You came out in the second class, I suppose?" "Yes." "Then there you are. His responsibility ended when you left the steamer, and ship's doctors don't come ashore on this Coast unless they're sure of touching a big fat fee. Now you must just lie quiet where you are, and bite on your teeth till I've some time for surgery. Trade comes first in West Africa." With which naked truth, Swizzle-Stick Smith relit his pipe, and went out again into the brazen sunshine, and presently was hustling on the factory boys at their cargo work with his accustomed eloquence and dexterity. CHAPTER II INTRODUCES MISS LAURA SLADE If a white man in a West African factory volunteers details of his previous history, all hearers are quite at liberty to believe or disbelieve, as suits their whim; but if, on the other hand, no word about previous record is offered, Coast etiquette strictly rules that none shall be asked for.