Once Upon A Time | Page 7

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 others
at the table took it from him, and locked him in his cabin. In the
morning, when he tried to recall what had occurred, he could remember
only that, for some excellent reason, he had hated some one with a
hatred that could be served only with death. He knew it could not have
been drink, as each day the State allowed him but one half-bottle of
claret. That but for the interference of strangers he might have shot a
man, did not interest him. In the outcome of what he regarded merely
as an incident, he saw cause neither for congratulation or self-reproach.
For his conduct he laid the blame upon the sun, and doubled his dose of
fruit salts.
Everett was again at Matadi, waiting for the Nigeria to take on cargo
before returning to Liverpool. During the few days that must intervene
before she sailed, he lived on board. Although now actually bound
north, the thought afforded him no satisfaction. His spirits were
depressed, his mind gloomy; a feeling of rebellion, of outlawry, filled
him with unrest.
While the ship lay at the wharf, Hardy, her English captain, Cuthbert,
the purser, and Everett ate on deck under the awning, assailed by
electric fans. Each was clad in nothing more intricate than pajamas.
"To-night," announced Hardy, with a sigh, "we got to dress ship. Mr.
Ducret and his wife are coming on board. We carry his trade goods, and

I got to stand him a dinner and champagne. You boys," he commanded,
"must wear 'whites,' and talk French."
"I'll dine on shore," growled Everett.
"Better meet them," advised Cuthbert. The purser was a pink-cheeked,
clear-eyed young man, who spoke the many languages of the coast
glibly, and his own in the soft, detached voice of a well-bred
Englishman. He was in training to enter the consular service.
Something in his poise, in the assured manner in which he handled his
white stewards and the black Kroo boys, seemed to Everett a constant
reproach, and he resented him.
"They're a picturesque couple," explained Cuthbert. "Ducret was
originally a wrestler. Used to challenge all comers from the front of a
booth. He served his time in the army in Senegal, and when he was
mustered out moved to the French Congo and began to trade, in a small
way, in ivory. Now he's the biggest merchant, physically and every
other way, from Stanley Pool to Lake Chad. He has a house at
Brazzaville built of mahogany, and a grand piano, and his own
ice-plant. His wife was a supper-girl at Maxim's. He brought her down
here and married her. Every rainy season they go back to Paris and run
race-horses, and they say the best table in every all-night restaurant is
reserved for him. In Paris they call her the Ivory Queen. She's killed
seventeen elephants with her own rifle."
In the Upper Congo, Everett had seen four white women. They were
pallid, washed-out, bloodless; even the youngest looked past
middle-age. For him women of any other type had ceased to exist. He
had come to think of every white woman as past middle-age, with a
face wrinkled by the sun, with hair bleached white by the sun, with
eyes from which, through gazing at the