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

BORING OUT EAST 371
and in a few minutes Mr. Badger is rolling drunk. The
liquor swimming through his veins like a glorious fire
makes him mad for murder. In height not much more
than a foot, anterior claws say two inches, here is my boy
killed by a drunk skunk. The skin is so tantalizingly
loose that if you grip it, he can actually turn in it and
grip you. Another instance of Africa being a topsy-turvy
land, an animal being doubly a distiller and a drunkard.
Beneath all this opulence of colour there lurks the
sinister thought that Palpalis is ambushed in every green
clump, transforming it into a weeping willow. For this
vile fly means sleeping sickness, and sleeping sickness
means a wipe-out. Now meandering through mossy
glades, now thundering down the gorge, these Congo
tributaries really ring hollow at heart. Only the birds and
beasts have a good time down here. There, serene in it
all, the black darter sits sentinel on a snag jutting out of
the water, and sunning his dark shining-green wings out-
stretched. Oblivious of the masked murder all around,
clouds of snow-white egrets with bright yellow bills in
the still reaches of the river fly lazily up and down
to their favourite feeding haunts. On, on you glide
down the gorge to the steady dip of your paddles,
the river brawling over the rocks and preaching as we
pass. True for you. Father Congo ! In Africa we do
find that a Christian is not a canal cut out by a foot-rule ;
not a canal, but a river. And a river has its deeps and
23