Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

BLACK SUFFRAGETTES 251
sense of quick hearing. True, we still talk about " cocking
our ears," but in the dark we stupidly scratch a match to
find out what made the noise, whereas the negro having
no matches must, in the dark, make his ears tell him all.
The drum of his ear is both match and candle, and in the
broad racial sense the negro verily has his reward. For
the hundreds of night sounds—rustlings, twitterings,
raspings, tinglings, and roarings—are all known to even
Africa's tot, the ears being called his " eyes of darkness."
But matches are a boon, notwithstanding, and there
often comes the painful pinch when you find yourself
benighted without a kindly lucifer match. In these
wilds the philanthropic beam of a farthing candle is too
high an aspiration, but, other things being equal, the
native can always produce light by rubbing his fire-stick.
Often your most urgent need is a match for a midnight
alarm. True, we have plenty of electric light, when the
Lord switches it on in the sky ; and many a good turn
it has done me. I was in a tight corner in the Sera
plains when a humble lucifer would have been the simple
solution. Black clouds had rolled up from the far
Kundelungu range, and the heavens rang with the loud
artillery of thunder. Then the lightning began to fork
and flash. Driven into a deserted hamlet before the
advancing deluge, a random choice of a hut was made
too random, alas ! for the thing was many sizes too small
for one. Only just in the nick of time, for growl went
the bursting thunder, and the torrential downpour was
upon us. Doubled up there in a leaky outhouse with an