“I was the first that ever burst
Into this silent tea. . . .”
Heaven alone knew to how many cups of tea that disintegrating corpse had contributed of its best before the gusts of Bertram’s temper had contributed to its dislodgment.
(Temper seems to have scored a point here, it must be reluctantly confessed.)
Bertram arose and plunged forth into the darkness, not daring to trust himself to call the cook.
Raising his clenched hands in speechless wrath, he drew in his breath through his clenched teeth—and then slipped with catastrophic suddenness on a patch of slimy clay and sat down heavily in very cold water.
He arose a distinctly dangerous person. . . .
Near the ration-dump squatted a solid square of naked black men, not precisely savages, raw shenzis of the jungle, but something between these and the Swahilis who work as personal servants, gun-bearers, and the better class of safari porters. They were big men and looked strong. They smelt stronger. It was a perfectly indescribable odour, like nothing on earth, and to be encountered nowhere else on earth—save in the vicinity of another mass of negroes.
In the light of a big fire and several lanterns, Bertram saw that the men were in rough lines, and that each line appeared to be in charge of a headman, distinguished by some badge of rank, such as a bowler hat, a tobacco tin worn as an ear-ring, a pair of pink socks, or a frock coat. These men walked up and down their respective lines and occasionally smote one of their squatting followers, hitting the chosen one without fear or favour, without rhyme or reason, and apparently without doing much damage. For the smitten one, without change of expression or position, emitted an incredibly thin piping squeal, as though in acknowledgment of an attention, rather than as if giving natural vent to anguish. . . .
Every porter had a red blanket, and practically every one wore a panga. The verbs are selected. They had blankets and they wore pangas. The blankets they either sat upon or folded into pads for insertion beneath the loads they were to carry upon their heads. The pangas were attached to strings worn over the shoulder. This useful implement serves the African as toothpick, spade, axe, knife, club, toasting-fork, hammer, weapon, hoe, cleaver, spoon, skinning-knife, and every other kind of tool, as well as being correct jungle wear for men for all occasions, and in all weathers. He builds a house with it; slays, skins and dismembers a bullock; fells a tree, makes a boat, digs a pit; fashions a club, spear, bow or arrow; hews his way through jungle, enheartens his wife, disheartens his enemy, mows his lawn, and makes his bed. . . .
Not far away, a double company of the Hundred and Ninety-Eighth “stood easy.” The fact that they were soaked to the skin did nothing to give them an air of devil-may-care gaiety.