He laughed again in his quick, harsh way.
“Why? Because I was a priggish young cub, I suppose. I had been brought up in an over-luxurious home, and coddled and faddled after till I thought the world was made of pink cotton-wool and sugared almonds. Then one fine day I found out that someone I had trusted had deceived me. Why, how you start! What is it?”
“Nothing. Go on, please.”
“I found out that I had been tricked into believing a lie; a common bit of experience, of course; but, as I tell you, I was young and priggish, and thought that liars go to hell. So I ran away from home and plunged into South America to sink or swim as I could, without a cent in my pocket or a word of Spanish in my tongue, or anything but white hands and expensive habits to get my bread with. And the natural result was that I got a dip into the real hell to cure me of imagining sham ones. A pretty thorough dip, too—it was just five years before the Duprez expedition came along and pulled me out.”
“Five years! Oh, that is terrible! And had you no friends?”
“Friends! I”—he turned on her with sudden fierceness—“I have NEVER had a friend!”
The next instant he seemed a little ashamed of his vehemence, and went on quickly:
“You mustn't take all this too seriously; I dare say I made the worst of things, and really it wasn't so bad the first year and a half; I was young and strong and I managed to scramble along fairly well till the Lascar put his mark on me. But after that I couldn't get work. It's wonderful what an effectual tool a poker is if you handle it properly; and nobody cares to employ a cripple.”
“What sort of work did you do?”
“What I could get. For some time I lived by odd-jobbing for the blacks on the sugar plantations, fetching and carrying and so on. It's one of the curious things in life, by the way, that slaves always contrive to have a slave of their own, and there's nothing a negro likes so much as a white fag to bully. But it was no use; the overseers always turned me off. I was too lame to be quick; and I couldn't manage the heavy loads. And then I was always getting these attacks of inflammation, or whatever the confounded thing is.