Part 22 (2/2)

The hot hair cushi+ons were intolerable The dust gathered fro, and there was neither air to breathe nor coolness under all those overhanging ents!” advised the guard, passing down the train; and then the train started

I had the upper berth opposite Brown's, where it was hottest of all because of the iron roof Drunk though he was, I noticed that the first thing Brown did after we had hoisted hi andunder them With one blanket twisted about his neck and shoulders and the other tangled about his knees he remarked to the roof that his name was Brown of Lumbwa, and proceeded to sob himself to sleep He hadI drew onout red dust, remembered a promise

”Will!” I said ”Tell Fred what happened to us in Zanzibar while he and Monty viewed the reed not to,” he answered, but it seeht arouse his own enthusiasm if he did tell

”Who's afraid of Fred?” said I

That settled it

”One of you shall tell before you sleep!” Fred announced, sitting up

”Who feareth not God nor regardeth ht! Speak, Aun-case, and proceeded to stir Will's ribs and whack his feet In a hter--cracks of the cleaning rod on Will's bare legs--the sound of hands slipping on sweaty ar up ”Murder! Oh, mur-durrr!”

”Shut up, you fool!” I shouted at him But he only yelled the louder

”I knew these tears were not for nothing!” he wailed ”It was premonition! Pass me the whisky! Pass it up here! Oh, look! They're at each other's throats! Murder! Oh, mur-durrr! Pass the whisky or I'll come down and kill everybody in self-defense! Murrrrr-durrr!”

They stopped fooling because his idiotic screams could be heard all down the train

”There,” said Brown, ”you see, I've saved torthless lives! Very foolish of me! Pass the whisky! See that I save a little for the ain; and because Fred threatened to start new commotion and wake him unless Will or I confessed at once, Will took up the tale, I leaning over the edge of h the story, and finally crawled under his blanket again to lie chuckling at the underside of Brown of Lu hi to hang jokes on!”

But I knew that now Will had told the story he would not, for very shame, withdraw from the venture until we should have demonstrated that no Lady Saffren Waldon, nor Sultan of Zanzibar, nor Germans, nor Arabs could make us afraid And it seeht

The train's progress slowed and greer The panting of the engine ca by curves and zigzags up the grim dark wall of mountains And as we rew cooler--not really cool yet by a very Jacob's ladder of degrees, but delectable by co in the thought of rising from the red dead level of that awful plain, littered with the bones of camels and the slaves whom men pinned into the yokes to perish or survive in twos As we her, we shi+vered under blankets There is a spirit and a spell of Africa that grip ine blasts becaht

A dreaed war on itself, and bled I saw the caravans go, thousands long, the horsed and white-robed Arab in the lead--the paid, fat, insolent askaris, flattering and flogging--slaves burdened with ivory and other, naked, new ones, two in a yoke, shi+vering under the askari's lash, the very last dogged by vultures and hyenas, lean as they, ill-nourished on such poor picking

-----------It was the cheerful Arab rule never to release one slave from the yoke if the other failed on the journey, on the principle that then the stronger would be e, and drive the weaker

Then I saw elephants in herds five thousand strong that screae that man should interfere with them--in fear of the ruthless few armed men with rifles in their rear Whole herds crashed pell-rowth into thirty-foot-deep pits, where they lingered and died of thirst, that Arabs (who sat sht have the ivory

And all I saw in s I really was to see None of the cruelty of e and fear of animal have vanished yet from Africa Some of the cruelty is ood is ed on the whole It is a land of nighthts errant; a land whose past is glooht and uncertainty, but whose future under the rule of huinable

In ine's screa at last awokefrom cold I jumped down to recover it and realized it was dawn already We were bowling along at a fine pace past green trees and undulating veld, and I wondered why the engine should keep on screa demented I knelt on Fred's berth to lean froht curve and I could see the track ahead for rown rhinoceros stood planted on the track, his flank toward us and his interest fixed on anything but trains He was sniffing the coolthe other way