Tales of Three Hemispheres | Page 2

of which he had

thought at the last (and where the natives believed he was once a king),
of which he had raved till the loneliness rang with his raving, had
settled down all about them; and they were afraid, for it was so strange
a city, and wanted more dow. And the two travelers gave them more
quinine, for they saw real fear in their faces, and knew they might run
away and leave them alone in that place, that they, too, had come to
fear with an almost equal dread, though they knew not why. And as the
night wore on their feeling of boding deepened, although they had
shared three bottles or so of champagne that they meant to keep for
days when they killed a lion.
This is the story that each of those two men tell, and which their porters
corroborate, but then a Kikuyu will always say whatever he thinks is
expected of him.
The travelers were both in bed and trying to sleep but not able to do so
because of an ominous feeling. That mournfullest of all the cries of the
wild, the hyæna like a damned soul lamenting, strangely enough had
ceased. The night wore on to the hour when Bwona Khubla had died
three or four years ago, dreaming and raving of "his city"; and in the
hush a sound softly arose, like a wind at first, then like the roar of
beasts, then unmistakably the sound of motors--motors and motor
busses.
And then they saw, clearly and unmistakably they say, in that lonely
desolation where the equator comes up out of the forest and climbs
over jagged hills,--they say they saw London.
There could have been no moon that night, but they say there was a
multitude of stars. Mists had come rolling up at evening about the
pinnacles of unexplored red peaks that clustered round the camp. But
they say the mist must have cleared later on; at any rate they swear they
could see London, see it and hear the roar of it. Both say they saw it not
as they knew it at all, not debased by hundreds of thousands of lying
advertisements, but transfigured, all its houses magnificent, its
chimneys rising grandly into pinnacles, its vast squares full of the most
gorgeous trees, transfigured and yet London.

Its windows were warm and happy, shining at night, the lamps in their
long rows welcomed you, the public-houses were gracious jovial places;
yet it was London.
They could smell the smells of London, hear London songs, and yet it
was never the London that they knew; it was as though they had looked
on some strange woman's face with the eyes of her lover. For of all the
towns of the earth or cities of song; of all the spots there be,
unhallowed or hallowed, it seemed to those two men then that the city
they saw was of all places the most to be desired by far. They say a
barrel organ played quite near them, they say a coster was singing, they
admit that he was singing out of tune, they admit a cockney accent, and
yet they say that that song had in it something that no earthly song had
ever had before, and both men say that they would have wept but that
there was a feeling about their heartstrings that was far too deep for
tears. They believe that the longing of this masterful man, that was able
to rule a safari by raising a hand, had been so strong at the last that it
had impressed itself deeply upon nature and had caused a mirage that
may not fade wholly away, perhaps for several years.
I tried to establish by questions the truth or reverse of this story, but the
two men's tempers had been so spoiled by Africa that they were not up
to cross-examination. They would not even say if their camp-fires were
still burning. They say that they saw the London lights all round them
from eleven o'clock till midnight, they could hear London voices and
the sound of the traffic clearly, and over all, a little misty perhaps, but
unmistakably London, arose the great metropolis.
After midnight London quivered a little and grew more indistinct, the
sound of the traffic began to dwindle away, voices seemed farther off,
ceased altogether, and all was quiet once more where the mirage
shimmered and faded, and a bull rhinoceros coming down through the
stillness snorted, and watered at the Carlton Club.

HOW THE OFFICE OF POSTMAN FELL VACANT IN
OTFORD-UNDER-THE-WOLD

The duties of postman at Otford-under-the-Wold carried Amuel
Sleggins farther afield than the village, farther afield than the last house
in the lane, right up to the big bare wold and the