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

406 THINKING BLACK
few days after I left him. With all our many months'
hoardings of enforced reticence, did we sleep that night ?
No !
we
talked the sun up. Sitting inside the snug
bastions of the Fort, the soldiers bring a pile of faggots,
and there we splice the two ends of our East and West
cables, comparing notes. Only representative of his
Queen, there he is, day by day, looking off into our
wild unknown Interior, two big business-looking revolvers
ever lying on his table, and full of forebodings. Gazing
moodily over at our terra incognita, little does he guess
I am *' boring out" to join him.
A few weeks ago his chief had been buried in the
grave hard by our fire, and—he is to follow suit in a
week. The poor fellow pours out his soul into the night
for, burdened with responsibility, he is now a miniature
edition of Great Britain in breeches, the death sentence
in his power, and he too, alas !
in the power of the death
sentence. Kinder to me than a kinsman dear, he—the
same man who in England would have treated me to
a stony British stare—he, even he, had mercy on my
limping along in old slippers in the rain. Gave me a
shirt, gave me hose, gave me medicines. Miniature
edition of Great Britain indeed, he not only represented
England's Army and Navy, but, quite unconscious of
the inroads I was making on his slender stock of supplies,
I fear I treated him as though he were an agent of the
other Army and Navy—Victoria Street
But it is only past midnight under the solemn stars
you get past the outer fringe of things, right home to