“It is our custom,” Von Ragastein declared a little didactically, “in Germany and wherever we Germans go, to be prepared not only for what is likely to happen but for what might possibly happen.”

“A war in my younger days, when I was in the Army,” Dominey mused, “might have made a man of me.”

“Surely you had your chance out here?”

Dominey shook his head.

“My battalion never left the country,” he said.  “We were shut up in Ireland all the time.  That was the reason I chucked the army when I was really only a boy.”

Later on they dragged their chairs a little farther out into the darkness, smoking cigars and drinking some rather wonderful coffee.  The doctor had gone off to see a patient, and Von Ragastein was thoughtful.  Their guest, on the other hand, continued to be reminiscently discursive.

“Our meeting,” he observed, lazily stretching out his hand for his glass, “should be full of interest to the psychologist.  Here we are, brought together by some miraculous chance to spend one night of our lives in an African jungle, two human beings of the same age, brought up together thousands of miles away, jogging on towards the eternal blackness along lines as far apart as the mind can conceive.”

“Your eyes are fixed,” Von Ragastein murmured, “upon that very blackness behind which the sun will rise at dawn.  You will see it come up from behind the mountains in that precise spot, like a new and blazing world.”

“Don’t put me off with allegories,” his companion objected petulantly.  “The eternal blackness exists surely enough, even if my metaphor is faulty.  I am disposed to be philosophical.  Let me ramble on.  Here am I, an idler in my boyhood, a harmless pleasure-seeker in my youth till I ran up against tragedy, and since then a drifter, a drifter with a slowly growing vice, lolling through life with no definite purpose, with no definite hope or wish, except,” he went on a little drowsily, “that I think I’d like to be buried somewhere near the base of those mountains, on the other side of the river, from behind which you say the sun comes up every morning like a world on fire.”

“You talk foolishly,” Von Ragastein protested.  “If there has been tragedy in your life, you have time to get over it.  You are not yet forty years old.”

“Then I turn and consider you,” Dominey continued, ignoring altogether his friend’s remark.  “You are only my age, and you look ten years younger.  Your muscles are hard, your eyes are as bright as they were in your school days.  You carry yourself like a man with a purpose.  You rise at five every morning, the doctor tells me, and you return here, worn out, at dusk.  You spend every moment of your time drilling those filthy blacks.  When you are not doing that, you are prospecting, supervising reports home, trying to make the best of your few millions of acres of fever swamps.  The doctor worships you but who else knows?  What do you do it for, my friend?”