THE FIRE-G.o.dS.

by Charles Gilson.

CHAPTER I--THE EXPLORERS' CLUB

The Explorers' Club no longer exists. To-day, as a matter of fact, it is a tea-shop in Old Bond Street--a small building, wedged between two greater ones, a fashionable milliner's and a famous Art Establishment.

Towards the end of the last century, in what is known as the mid-Victorian era, the Explorers' Club was in the heyday of its glory.

The number of its members was limited to two hundred and fifty-one. In the inner smoking-room, through the green baize doors, where guests were not admitted, both the conversation and the company were at once remarkable and unique. The walls were adorned with the trophies of the chase: heads of elk, markhor, ibex, haartebeest and waterbuck; great lions and snarling tigers; mouflon from Cyprus, and the white leopard of the Himalayas. If you looked into the room through the gla.s.s peep-hole in one of the green baize doors, you might have thought at first that you beheld a menagerie, where the fiercest and the rarest beasts in the world were imprisoned in a single cage. But, presently, your attention would have been attracted by the great, sun-burnt men, sprawling in the leather chairs, dressed in tweeds for the most part, and nearly every one with a blackened briar pipe between his lips.

In those days, Africa was the "Dark Continent"; the source of the Nile and the Great Lakes were undiscovered, of the Congo nothing was known.

Nor was this geographical ignorance confined to a single continent: in every part of the world, vast tracts of country, great rivers and mountains were as yet unexplored. And the little that was known of these uttermost parts of the earth never pa.s.sed the green baize doors of the inner smoking-room of the Explorers' Club.

There, in an atmosphere blue with smoke, where a great fire roared in winter to keep the chill of the London fog from the bones of those who, time and again, had been stricken with the fevers of the equatorial parts, a small group of men would sit and talk by the hour. There great projects were suggested, criticised and discussed. A man would rise from his seat, take down a map of some half-discovered country, and placing his finger upon a blank s.p.a.ce, announce in tones of decision that that was the exact spot to which he intended to go. And if he went, perhaps, he would not come back.

At the time our story opens, Edward Harden was probably the most popular member of the Explorers' Club. He was still a comparatively young man; and though his reputation rested chiefly upon his fame as a big game shot, he had rendered no mean service to the cause of science, as the honours heaped upon him by the Royal Geographical Society and kindred inst.i.tutions fully testified.

It was early in June, and the height of the London season, when this six foot six of explorer walked up St. James's Street on the right-hand side. Somehow he felt that he was out of it. He was not one of the fashionable crowd in the midst of which he found himself. For ten years he had been growing more and more unaccustomed to the life of cities.

It was a strange thing, he could break his way through the tangled thicknesses of an equatorial forest, or wade knee-deep in a mangrove swamp, but he could never negotiate the pa.s.sage of Piccadilly.

As he stood on the "island" in the middle of the street, opposite Burlington House, he attracted a considerable amount of attention. He was probably the tallest man at that moment between St. Paul's and the Albert Memorial. His brown moustache was several shades lighter than his skin, which had been burnt to the colour of tan. His long limbs, his sloping shoulders, and the slouch with which he walked, gave him an appearance of looseness and prodigious strength. Also he had a habit of walking with his fists closed, and his arms swinging like pendulums. He was quite unconscious of the fact that people turned and stared after him, or that he was an object of exceeding admiration to small boys, who speculated upon the result of a blow from his fist.

He had not gone far along Bond Street when he cannoned into a young man, who received a ponderous blow in the chest from Harden's swinging fist.

The explorer could hardly have been expected to look where he was going, since at that moment he was pa.s.sing a gunsmith's where the latest improvement of elephant gun was on view in the window.

"I beg your pardon!" he exclaimed in eager apology.

"It's nothing," said the other, and then added, with a note of surprise, "Uncle Ted, by all that's wonderful! I might have known it was you."

Edward Harden seldom expressed surprise. He just took the young gentleman by the arm and walked him along at the rate of about five miles an hour. "Come and have lunch," said he.

Now Max Harden, in addition to being the explorer's only nephew, was a medical student at one of the London hospitals. As a small boy, he had regarded his uncle as one of the greatest men in the universe--which, in a physical sense, he was.

A week before Max had come of age, which meant that he had acquired the modest inheritance of a thousand pounds a year. He had also secured a commission from the Royal Academy of Physicians to make sundry inquiries into the origin of certain obscure tropical diseases in the district of the Lower Congo. This was precisely the part of the world to which Edward Harden was about to depart. Max knew that quite well, and his idea was to travel with his uncle. He had been to the Explorers' Club, and had been told by the hall porter that Mr. Edward Harden was out, but that he would probably return for lunch. It was about two minutes later that he collided with his uncle outside the gunsmith's shop.

To lunch at the Explorers' Club was in itself an achievement. That day several well-known men were there: Du Cane, the lion hunter; Frankfort Williams, back from the Arctic, and George Cartwright, who had not yet accomplished his famous journey into Thibet. Upon the walls of the dining-room were full-length pictures of the great pioneers of exploration: Columbus, Franklin and Cook. It was not until after luncheon, when Max and his uncle were seated in the outer smoking-room--through the green baize doors, it will be remembered, it was forbidden for guests to enter--that Max broached the topic that was nearest to his heart.

"Uncle Ted," said he, "tell me about this expedition? As yet I know nothing."

"We're going up the Congo," answered Harden simply; "and it's natural enough that you should know nothing about it, since practically nothing is known. Our object is big game, but we hope to bring back some valuable geographical information. The mouth of the Congo was discovered by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century. Since then several trading-stations have sprung up on the river, but no one has penetrated inland. It is known that about five hundred miles from the mouth of the river, a tributary, called the Kasai, flows from the south.

Of the upper valley of that river absolutely nothing is known, except that it consists of the most impenetrable forests and is inhabited by cannibal tribes. It is there we propose to go."

"Who goes with you?" asked Max.

"Crouch," said Harden; "Captain Crouch. The most remarkable man on the Coast. n.o.body in England has ever heard of him; but on the West Coast, from Lagos to Loango, he is either hated like sin or worshipped like a heathen G.o.d. There's no man alive who understands natives as well as Crouch. He can get more work out of a pack of Kru-boys in a day than a shipping-agent or a trader can in a week."

"How do you account for it?" asked Max.

"Pluck," said Harden, "and perseverance. Also, from the day he was born, a special providence seems to have guarded him. For many years he was captain of a coasting-packet that worked from St. Louis to Spanish Guinea. He fell overboard once in the Bight of Biafra, and lost a foot."

"How did he do that?" asked Max, already vastly interested in the personality of Captain Crouch.

"Sharks," said Harden, as if it were an everyday occurrence. "They swim round Fernando Po like goldfish in a bowl. Would you believe it? Crouch knifed that fish in the water, though he'll wear a cork foot to his dying day. He was one of the first men to force his way up the Niger, and I happened to be at Old Calabar when he was brought in with a poisoned arrow-head in his eye. At that time the natives of the interior used to dip their weapons in snake's poison, and no one but Crouch could have lived. But he pulled through all right. He's one of those small, wiry men that can't be killed. He has got a case full of gla.s.s eyes now, of all the colours in the rainbow, and he plays Old Harry with the natives. If they don't do what he wants, I've seen him pull out a blue eye and put in a red one, which frightens the life out of them. Crouch isn't like any one else I've ever met. He has the most astonishing confidence in himself; he's practically fever-proof; he can talk about twenty West African dialects, and he's a better shot than I am. I believe the only person he cares for in the world is myself. I would never dream of undertaking this expedition without him."

"I suppose," said Max, a trifle nervously, "you wouldn't think of including a third member in your party?"

Edward Harden looked at his nephew sharply. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean," said Max, "that I have undertaken to investigate certain tropical diseases, such as sleeping sickness and malarial typhoid, in the very districts to which you are going. I thought you might not object if I came with you. I didn't know I had Captain Crouch to deal with."

Edward Harden rose to his feet and knocked out his pipe in the grate.

"For myself," said he, "I should be pleased to have you with me. Are you ready to start at once? We hope to sail next week."

Max nodded.

"H'm," said the explorer, "I must ask Crouch. I think he's in the club."

He went to one of the green baize doors at the other end of the room, opened it, and looked in.

"Crouch," said he, "do you mind coming here a moment. There's something I want to ask you."

He then came back to his seat and filled another pipe. As he was engaged in lighting this, a green baize door swung back and there entered one of the most extraordinary men that it was ever the lot of the young medical student to behold.

As we have said, the Explorers' Club was in Bond Street, and Captain Crouch was dressed after the fashion of a pilot; that is to say, he wore a navy-blue suit with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons and a red tie. He was a very small man, and exceedingly thin. There seemed nothing of him. His head was almost entirely bald. He wore a small, bristling moustache, cut short like a tooth-brush, and a tuft of hair beneath his nether lip. His eyebrows were exceedingly dark, and met on the bridge of his nose. His skin was the colour of parchment, and wrinkled and creased in all directions. He had a large hook nose, and a chin of excessive prominence. Though he appeared entirely bloodless, there was something about him that suggested extreme vital energy--the kind of vitality which may be observed in a rat. He was an aggressive-looking man.

Though he walked with a p.r.o.nounced limp, he was quick in all his movements. His mouth was closed fast upon a pipe in which he smoked a kind of black tobacco which is called Bull's Eye s.h.a.g, one whiff of which would fumigate a greenhouse, killing every insect therein from an aphis to a spider. He reeked of this as a soap-factory smells of fat.

In no other club in London would its consumption have been allowed; but the Explorers were accustomed to greater hardships than even the smell of Bull's Eye s.h.a.g.

"Well, Ted," said Crouch, "what's this?"

One eye, big and staring, was directed out of the window; the other, small, black and piercing, turned inwards upon Max in the most appalling squint.

"This is my nephew," said Harden; "Max Harden--Captain Crouch, my greatest friend."

Max held out a hand, but Crouch appeared not to notice it. He turned to Edward.

"What's the matter with him?" he asked.

"He's suffering from a complaint which, I fancy, both you and I contracted in our younger days--a desire to investigate the Unknown. In a word, Crouch, he wants to come with us."

Crouch whipped round upon Max.

"You're too young for the Coast," said he. "You'll go out the moment you get there like a night-light."

"I'm ready to take my chance," said Max.

Crouch looked pleased at that, for his only eye twinkled and seemed to grow smaller.