not use them again, but because in the Congo they were ridiculous.

For weeks, with a missionary as a guide, he walked through forests into
which the sun never penetrated, or, on the river, moved between banks
where no white man had placed his foot; where, at night, the elephants
came trooping to the water, and, seeing the lights of the boat, fled
crashing through the jungle; where the great hippos, puffing and
blowing, rose so close to his elbow that he could have tossed his
cigarette and hit them. The vastness of the Congo, toward which he had
so jauntily set forth, now weighed upon his soul. The immeasurable
distances; the slumbering disregard of time; the brooding, interminable
silences; the efforts to conquer the land that were so futile, so puny,
and so cruel, at first appalled and, later, left him unnerved,
rebellious, childishly defiant.

What health was there, he demanded hotly, in holding in a dripping
jungle to morals, to etiquette, to fashions of conduct? Was he, the
white man, intelligent, trained, disciplined in mind and body, to be
judged by naked cannibals, by chattering monkeys, by mammoth primeval
beasts? His code of conduct was his own. He was a law unto himself.

He came down the river on one of the larger steamers of the State, and,
on this voyage, with many fellow-passengers. He was now on his way home,
but in the fact he felt no elation. Each day the fever ran tingling
through his veins, and left him listless, frightened, or choleric. One
night at dinner, in one of these moods of irritation, he took offence at
the act of a lieutenant who, in lack of vegetables, drank from the
vinegar bottle. Everett protested that such table manners were
unbecoming an officer, even an officer of the Congo; and on the
lieutenant resenting his criticism, Everett drew his revolver. The