Hatteras knew something of surgery, and under his directions Walker poulticed and bandaged him until he recovered.  The bandaging, however, was amateurish, and, as a result, the muscles contracted in Hatteras’ thigh and he limped—­ever so slightly, still he limped—­he limped to his dying day.  He did not, however, on that account abandon his explorations, and more than once Walker, when his lights were out and he was smoking a pipe on the verandah, would see a black figure with a trailing walk cross his compound and pass stealthily through the wicket in the fence.  Walker took occasion to expostulate with his friend.

“It’s too dangerous a game for a man to play for any length of time.  It is doubly dangerous now that you limp.  You ought to give it up.”

Hatteras made a strange reply.

“I’ll try to,” he said.

Walker pondered over the words for some time.  He set them side by side in his thoughts with that confession which Hatteras had made to him one evening.  He asked himself whether, after all, Hatteras’ explanation of his conduct was sincere, whether it was really a desire to know the native thoroughly which prompted these mysterious expeditions; and then he remembered that he himself had first suggested the explanation to Hatteras.  Walker began to feel uneasy—­more than uneasy, actually afraid on his friend’s account.  Hatteras had acknowledged that the country fascinated him, and fascinated him through its hideous side.  Was this masquerading as a black man a further proof of the fascination?  Was it, as it were, a step downwards towards a closer association?  Walker sought to laugh the notion from his mind, but it returned and returned, and here and there an incident occurred to give it strength and colour.

For instance, on one occasion after Hatteras had been three weeks absent, Walker sauntered over to the Residency towards four o’clock in the afternoon.  Hatteras was trying cases in the court-house, which formed the ground floor of the Residency.  Walker stepped into the room.  It was packed with a naked throng of blacks, and the heat was overpowering.  At the end of the hall sat Hatteras.  His worn face shone out amongst the black heads about him white and waxy like a gardenia in a bouquet of black flowers.  Walker invented his simile and realised its appositeness at one and the same moment.  Bouquet was not an inappropriate word since there is a penetrating aroma about the native of the Niger delta when he begins to perspire.

Walker, however, thinking that the Court would rise, determined to wait for a little.  But, at the last moment, a negro was put up to answer to a charge of participation in Fetish rites.  The case seemed sufficiently clear from the outset, but somehow Hatteras delayed its conclusion.  There was evidence and unrebutted evidence of the usual details—­human sacrifice, mutilations and the like, but Hatteras pressed for more.  He sat until it was dusk, and