ve made an
excellent father of a family--was terrible to his subordinates when he
took a pen in his hand. He knew the mechanism of every _Chef de Poste_ in
his district, and the sort of letter that would rouse him up, stimulate
him to renewed action, and the slaves under him to renewed work.

Van Laer was of quite a different type. Van Laer had the appearance of a
famished hound held back by a leash. He was tall and thin. He had been a
schoolmaster dismissed from his school for a grave offence; he had been a
billiard-marker; he had walked the streets of Brussels in a frock-coat and
tall hat, a "guide" on the lookout for young foreigners who wished to
enjoy the more dubious pleasures of the city. He had been many things,
till, at the age of thirty-five, he became a servant of the crown.

The pale blue eyes of Van Laer held in them a shallowness and murderous
cruelty, an expression of negation and coldness combined with mind such as
one finds nowhere in the animal kingdom, save that branch of it which
prides itself on its likeness to God. His thumbs were cruelly shaped and
enormous. A man may disguise his soul, he may disguise his mind, he may
disguise his face, but he cannot disguise his thumbs unless he wears
gloves.

No one wears gloves on the Congo, so Van Laer's thumbs were openly
displayed.

He had been six months now at M'Bina and he was sick of the place,
accounts were of no interest to him. He was a man of action, and he wanted
to be doing. He could make money up there in the forest at the heart of
things; here, almost in touch with civilization, he was wasting his time.
And he wanted money. The bonus-ache had seized him badly. When he saw the
great tusks of green ivory in their jackets of matting, when he saw the
bales of copal leafed round with aromatic unknown leaves, and speaking
fervently of the wealth of the tropics and the riches of the primeval
forests, when he saw the tons of rubber and remembered that this stuff,
which in the baskets of the native collectors looks like fried potato
chips, in Europe becomes, by the alchemy of trade, minted gold, a great
hunger filled his hungry soul.

At M'Bina great riches were eternally flowing in and flowing out. Wealth
in its original wrappings piled itself on the wharf in romantical packets
and bales, piled itself on board steamers, floated away down the golden
river, and was replaced by more wealth flowing in from the inexhaustible
forests.

The sight of all