LITMIR.BIZ

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too.”

      He gave me a serious glance, and made another note.

      “Any madness in your family?” he asked.

      I felt very annoyed.

      “Is that question in the interests of science, too?”

      “It will be,” he said, “interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot, but…”

      “Are you an alienist?” I interrupted.

      “Every doctor must be – a little,” answered he imperturbably. “I have a little theory which you gentlemen who go out there must help me to prove. This is my share in the advantages my country shall reap from the possession of such a magnificent dependency. The mere wealth I leave to others. Pardon my questions, but you are the first Englishman under my observation…”

      I hastened to assure him I was not in the least typical.

      “Really?” said I. “But I talk to you.”

      “What you say is rather profound, and probably erroneous,” he said, with a laugh. “Avoid irritation more than exposure to the sun. Adieu. How do you English say, eh? Good-bye. Ah! Good-bye. Adieu. In the tropics one must keep calm.”

      He lifted a warning forefinger,

      “Keep calm, keep calm.”

      6

      One thing more remained to do – to say good-bye to my excellent aunt. I found her triumphant. I had a cup of tea – the last decent cup of tea for many days. In a room, we had a long quiet chat by the fireside. In the course of these confidences it became quite plain to me one thing. I was represented to the wife of the high dignitary. Goodness knows to how many more people besides. They recommended me as an exceptional and gifted creature – a piece of good fortune for the Company. Good heavens! I was going to take charge of a cheap river-steamboat with a cheap whistle!

      It appeared, however, I was also one of the Workers, with a capital[16] – you know. Something like an emissary of light, something like an apostle. The excellent woman talked about ‘weaning those ignorant millions from their horrid ways,’ till she made me quite uncomfortable. I ventured to hint that the Company was run for profit[17].

      “You forget, dear Charlie, that the labourer is worthy of his hire,” she said, brightly.

      It’s queer how out of touch with truth women are. They live in a world of their own.

      After this she told me to wear flannel, be sure to write often, and so on – and I left. In the street – I don’t know why – a queer feeling came to me that I was an imposter. I had a moment – I won’t say of hesitation, but of startled pause, before this commonplace affair.

      7

      I left in a French steamer. That steamer called in every blamed port – to land soldiers and custom-house officers. I watched the coast. To watch a coast is to think about an enigma. There it is before you – smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, ‘Come and find out.’

      This one was almost featureless. The edge of a colossal jungle, so dark-green, almost black, fringed with white surf, ran straight, like a ruled line, far, far away along a blue sea whose glitter was blurred by a mist. The sun was fierce. The land glistened and dripped with steam. Here and there greyish-whitish specks showed up clustered inside the white surf, with a flag above them perhaps. Settlements some centuries old, and still no bigger than pinheads.

      We pounded along, stopped, landed soldiers; went on, landed custom-house clerks. Some people got drowned in the surf. But nobody particularly cared. On we went.

      Every day the coast looked the same. We passed various places – trading places – with names like Gran’ Bassam, Little Popo. These names seemed to belong to some sordid farce.

      The idleness of a passenger, my isolation amongst all these men with whom I had no contact, the oily and languid sea, the uniform sombreness of the coast, kept me away from the truth of things. I was within the toil of a mournful and senseless delusion. The voice of the surf now – and then was a positive pleasure, like the speech of a brother. It was something natural, that had its reason, that had a meaning.

      Now and then[18] a boat from the shore gave one a momentary contact with reality. It was paddled by black fellows. I saw from afar the white of their eyeballs. They shouted, sang. Their bodies streamed with perspiration. They had faces like grotesque masks – these chaps. But they had bone, muscle, a wild vitality, an intense energy of movement. It was as natural and true as the surf along their coast. They wanted no excuse.

      8

      Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war[19]. There wasn’t even a shed there. That man-of-war was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars thereabouts. The ensign dropped limp like a rag. The muzzles of the long six-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull. The greasy, slimy swell swung it up lazily and let it down. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there it was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent.

      Pop – went one of the six-inch guns. A small flame darted and vanished. A little white smoke disappeared. A tiny projectile gave a feeble screech – and nothing happened. Nothing happened. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight. Somebody on board assured me earnestly there was a camp of natives – he called them enemies!.

      We gave them letters (I heard the men in that lonely ship were dying of fever: three men a day) and went on. We visited some more places with farcical names, where the merry dance of death and trade goes on in a still and earthy atmosphere. I saw the formless coast bordered by dangerous surf. Nature herself tried to ward off intruders; in and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rotting into mud, whose waters invaded the contorted mangroves.

      We stopped nowhere long enough to get a particularized impression. The general sense of vague and oppressive wonder grew upon me. It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares.

      9

      In thirty days I saw the mouth of the big river[20]. We anchored off the seat of the government. But my work did not begin there. I must go two hundred miles more. So I went to a place thirty miles higher up.

      I had my passage on a little sea-going steamer. The captain was a Swede. He invited me on the bridge. He was a young man, lean, fair, and morose, with lanky hair and a shuffling gait. As we left the miserable little wharf, he tossed his head contemptuously at the shore.

      “Did you live there?” he asked.

      I said,

      “Yes.”

      “Fine lot these government chaps – are they not?” he went on.

      He was speaking English with great precision and considerable bitterness.

      “It is funny what some people will do for a few francs a month. I wonder what becomes of them when they go inside the country.”

      I said that I expected to see that soon.

      “So-o-o!” he exclaimed.

      He shuffled athwart.

      “Don’t be too sure,” he continued. “The other day I took up a man who hanged himself[21] on the road. He was a Swede, too.”

      “Hanged himself! Why, in God’s name?” I cried.

      He looked out watchfully.

      “Who knows? Too much sun for him, or the country perhaps.”

      At last the river became wide. A rocky cliff appeared, mounds

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