The proprietor laughed.
“That’s so. One of you will have to shake down on the floor. You can toss up which it’s to be.”
“It will do us all right,” said Gerard. “Now about terms.”
The man named a figure which seemed reasonable enough.
“You see, we could put you in lower if you were going to stop. As it is it wouldn’t pay us.”
“I see. We are quite satisfied,” said Gerard.
“Right. Maybe you’d like to stroll up into the town a bit. Tea is at seven. So long!”
“Pretty offhand, that chap,” remarked Harry, as they walked along the broad dusty road towards the town.
Lines of houses, similar to their new abode, and all built apart in their own grounds, stood on each side of the road, behind hedges of tamarisk or pomegranate. Tall bananas hung out their feathery tufts, and the verandahs twined with cactus or jessamine looked cool and inviting. A stretch of flat marshy land, extending to the blue waters of the land-locked bay, was still dotted with shaggy tufts of the “forest primeval.”
But the streets showed plenty of life in all its human varieties, black or white. The red or yellow dresses of the Indian coolies made quite a glow of colour in the dusty streets. Here and there a tall head-ringed native from some inland kraal strode down the street, his head in the air, and majestic in the proud possession of a rather cloudy check shirt, his kerries on his shoulder, and a bevy of his obedient womenkind following in his wake. At these original lords of the soil Gerard could not but look with considerable interest, as he noted with approval the massive limbs and stately bearing which seemed to raise the scantily clad savage a head and shoulders above the groups of slightly built, effeminate Orientals through which he somewhat disdainfully took his way. Whites, sallow-complexioned townspeople, there were too, standing about exchanging conversation—rather listlessly, for the close of a hot summer day in Durban is apt to find men not a little languid—and here and there a bronzed planter or farmer cantering down the street, bound for his country home among the sugar-canes or the bush.