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

326 THINKING BLACK
is easier to talk than live. Did not poor Pilkington up
North die with a rifle in his hand repressing revolt?
Did not Livingstone wear a Consul's hat? Remember,
here in the bush you have no parading policeman who
runs to your call ; no clean-cut institutions of civilisation
where each oflScial is seriously saddled with responsibility.
Unlikely things can happen, and at this point the most
unlikely of all falls to my lot. Hard by our Mission camp
on the Lofoi, the Belgians have built their Fort, the whole
garrison consisting of a picked band of English Haussas^^
and Dahomey men. But on the East the Arabs are
hemming us in, so unless the Government makes an ag-
gressive sortie as far out as Lake Mweru, these Arabs will
certainly construe silence as supineness and be on us like
a bolt. What's to be done? These are the days when
the solidarity of the white race swamps petty national
distinctions. Did not Julius Caesar say that on crossing
over to England he found the inhabitants of that island
called Belgw ? Why should not these Belgians now have
their revenge ?
Unlike Caesar, who encountered people called Belgse
in territory called Britain, these Belgians have found
people called British in territory called Belgian. Witness,
then, the curious sequel. In the dead of night Captains
Brasseur and Verdickt sit down and write their last
will and testament (poor Brasseur was killed in the
second Arab sortie), and off they start towards the East,
leaving me a poor half-and-half creature indeed : acting
Commandant of the Fort with my soldiers to drill and at