Kayerts and Carlier did not disappear, but remained above on this earth, that, somehow, they fancied had become bigger and very empty.  It was not the absolute and dumb solitude of the post that impressed them so much as an inarticulate feeling that something from within them was gone, something that worked for their safety, and had kept the wilderness from interfering with their hearts.  The images of home; the memory of people like them, of men that thought and felt as they used to think and feel, receded into distances made indistinct by the glare of unclouded sunshine.  And out of the great silence of the surrounding wilderness, its very hopelessness and savagery seemed to approach them nearer, to draw them gently, to look upon them, to envelop them with a solicitude irresistible, familiar, and disgusting.

Days lengthened into weeks, then into months.  Gobila’s people drummed and yelled to every new moon, as of yore, but kept away from the station.  Makola and Carlier tried once in a canoe to open communications, but were received with a shower of arrows, and had to fly back to the station for dear life.  That attempt set the country up and down the river into an uproar that could be very distinctly heard for days.  The steamer was late.  At first they spoke of delay jauntily, then anxiously, then gloomily.  The matter was becoming serious.  Stores were running short.  Carlier cast his lines off the bank, but the river was low, and the fish kept out in the stream.  They dared not stroll far away from the station to shoot.  Moreover, there was no game in the impenetrable forest.  Once Carlier shot a hippo in the river.  They had no boat to secure it, and it sank.  When it floated up it drifted away, and Gobila’s people secured the carcase.  It was the occasion for a national holiday, but Carlier had a fit of rage over it and talked about the necessity of exterminating all the niggers before the country could be made habitable.  Kayerts mooned about silently; spent hours looking at the portrait of his Melie.  It represented a little girl with long bleached tresses and a rather sour face.  His legs were much swollen, and he could hardly walk.  Carlier, undermined by fever, could not swagger any more, but kept tottering about, still with a devil-may-care air, as became a man who remembered his crack regiment.  He had become hoarse, sarcastic, and inclined to say unpleasant things.  He called it “being frank with you.”  They had long ago reckoned their percentages on trade, including in them that last deal of “this infamous Makola.”  They had also concluded not to say anything about it.  Kayerts hesitated at first—­was afraid of the Director.

“He has seen worse things done on the quiet,” maintained Carlier, with a hoarse laugh.  “Trust him!  He won’t thank you if you blab.  He is no better than you or me.  Who will talk if we hold our tongues?  There is nobody here.”