That
looked like business and when Bertie saw the shore canoes alongside,
armed with spears, bows and arrows, and Sniders, he wished more
earnestly than ever that the cruise was over.
That evening the natives were slow in leaving the ship at sundown. A
number of them checked the mate when he ordered them ashore.
"Never mind, I'll fix them," said Captain Hansen, diving below.
When he came back, he showed Bertie a stick of dynamite attached to a
fish-hook. Now it happens that a paper-wrapped bottle of chlorodyne
with a piece of harmless fuse projecting can fool anybody. It fooled
Bertie, and it fooled the natives. When Captain Hansen lighted the
fuse and hooked the fish-hook into the tail-end of a native's
loin-cloth, that native was smitten with so ardent a desire for the
shore that he forgot to shed the loin-cloth. He started for'ard, the
fuse sizzling and spluttering at his rear, the natives in his path
taking headers over the barbed wire at every jump. Bertie was
horror-stricken. So was Captain Hansen. He had forgotten his
twenty-five recruits, on each of which he had paid thirty shillings
advance. They went over the side along with the shore-dwelling folk
and followed by him who trailed the sizzling chlorodyne bottle.
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