Niger

Q Q Sometimes he would wake in the dark, in the
d y agonies of the dyspepsia that now haunted
his life, and hear the hiss of rain on the roof and the
beat of the wind in a loosened shutter of the Dickson
house. And thereafter for long hours he could not
sleep, and his mind would turn and peer back into
those years already growing dim. How did the
Niger turn beyond Jenne ? Did it really lose
itself in the sands, as Rennell supposed, or some¬
where find an outlet to the sea ?
He would doze off again, in the beating of the
rain, and hear it in sleep and know it the singing
of the sand pellets smiting the tents in Bubaker.
Then the door would open and All’s slaves would
thrust in the pig to torment him, and he would sit
with the servile smile on his face while they jeered
at him and spat on him, and the grunting pig was
teased by the naked boys, and the sweat poured
down his back from the blaze of the day without.
. . . Sweating, he would struggle awake and
see the London morning coming through the
shutters.
It was spring. He had been three months in
London, three months when London, with the
African Association as publicity agent, had offered
to fete and entertain the tall cold-eyed young Scot
as lavishly as it knew how. But it had found him a
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