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