With Edged Tools by Henry Seton Merriman
page 53 of 465 (11%)
page 53 of 465 (11%)
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will fight and quarrel and bicker so long as human nerves are human
nerves. The irritability lurks in the shades of boundless forests where men may starve for want of animal sustenance; it hovers over the broad bosoms of a hundred slow rivers haunted by the mysterious crocodile, the weird hippopotamus. It is everywhere, and by reason of it men quarrel about trifles and descend to brutal passion over a futile discussion. Victor Durnovo had sent his boatmen into the forest to find a few bananas, a few handsful of firewood, and while they were absent he gave vent to that wild unreasoning passion which is inhaled into the white man's lungs with the air of equatorial Africa. For there are moral microbes in the atmosphere of different countries, and we must not judge one land by the laws of another. There is the fatalism of India, the restlessness of New York, the fear of the Arctic, the irritability of Africa. "Curse this country!" he shouted, "curse it--curse it! River and tree--man and beast!" He rose and slouched down to his boat, which lay moored to a snag alongside the bank, trodden hard to the consistency of asphalte by a hundred bare feet. He stepped over the gunwale and made his way aft with a practised balancing step. The after part of the canoe was decked in and closed with lock and key. The key hung at his watch- chain--a large chain with square links and a suggestive doubtfulness of colour. It might have been gold, but the man who wore it somehow imparted to it a suggestion of baser metal. He opened the locker and took from it a small chest. From this he |
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