these customs have existed for centuries. He adopts them, because--"

"One moment!" interrupted Everett warmly. "That does not excuse _him_.
The point is, that with him they have _not_ existed. To him they should
be against his conscience, indecent, horrible! He has a greater
knowledge, a much higher intelligence; he should lift the native, not
sink to him."

The Coaster took his pipe from his mouth, and twice opened his lips to
speak. Finally, he blew the smoke into the air, and shook his head.

"What's the use!" he exclaimed.

"Try," laughed Everett. "Maybe I'm not as unintelligent as I talk."

"You must get this right," protested the Coaster. "It doesn't matter a
damn what a man _brings_ here, what his training _was_, what _he is_.
The thing is too strong for him."

"What thing?"

"That!" said the Coaster. He threw out his arm at the brooding
mountains, the dark lagoons, the glaring coast-line against which the
waves shot into the air with the shock and roar of twelve-inch guns.

"The first white man came to Sierra Leone five hundred years before
Christ," said the Coaster. "And, in twenty-two hundred years, he's got
just twenty miles inland. The native didn't need forts, or a navy, to
stop him. He had three allies: those waves, the fever, and the sun.
Especially the sun. The black man goes bare-headed, and the sun lets him