on a fine afternoon, the barrack-room witticisms, the girls of garrison towns; but, besides, he had also a sense of grievance.  He was evidently a much ill-used man.  This made him moody, at times.  But the two men got on well together in the fellowship of their stupidity and laziness.  Together they did nothing, absolutely nothing, and enjoyed the sense of the idleness for which they were paid.  And in time they came to feel something resembling affection for one another.

They lived like blind men in a large room, aware only of what came in contact with them (and of that only imperfectly), but unable to see the general aspect of things.  The river, the forest, all the great land throbbing with life, were like a great emptiness.  Even the brilliant sunshine disclosed nothing intelligible.  Things appeared and disappeared before their eyes in an unconnected and aimless kind of way.  The river seemed to come from nowhere and flow nowhither.  It flowed through a void.  Out of that void, at times, came canoes, and men with spears in their hands would suddenly crowd the yard of the station.  They were naked, glossy black, ornamented with snowy shells and glistening brass wire, perfect of limb.  They made an uncouth babbling noise when they spoke, moved in a stately manner, and sent quick, wild glances out of their startled, never-resting eyes.  Those warriors would squat in long rows, four or more deep, before the verandah, while their chiefs bargained for hours with Makola over an elephant tusk.  Kayerts sat on his chair and looked down on the proceedings, understanding nothing.  He stared at them with his round blue eyes, called out to Carlier, “Here, look! look at that fellow there—­and that other one, to the left.  Did you ever such a face?  Oh, the funny brute!”

Carlier, smoking native tobacco in a short wooden pipe, would swagger up twirling his moustaches, and surveying the warriors with haughty indulgence, would say—­

“Fine animals.  Brought any bone?  Yes?  It’s not any too soon.  Look at the muscles of that fellow third from the end.  I wouldn’t care to get a punch on the nose from him.  Fine arms, but legs no good below the knee.  Couldn’t make cavalry men of them.”  And after glancing down complacently at his own shanks, he always concluded:  “Pah!  Don’t they stink!  You, Makola!  Take that herd over to the fetish” (the storehouse was in every station called the fetish, perhaps because of the spirit of civilization it contained) “and give them up some of the rubbish you keep there.  I’d rather see it full of bone than full of rags.”

Kayerts approved.

“Yes, yes!  Go and finish that palaver over there, Mr. Makola.  I will come round when you are ready, to weigh the tusk.  We must be careful.”  Then turning to his companion:  “This is the tribe that lives down the river; they are rather aromatic.  I remember, they had been once before here.  D’ye hear that row?  What a fellow has got to put up with in this dog of a country!  My head is split.”