he half kills the boy. He broods over that, until he
discovers, or his crazy mind makes him think he has discovered, that in
revenge the boy is plotting to poison him. So he punishes him again.
Only this time he punishes him as the black man has taught him to
punish, in the only way the black man seems to understand; that is, he
tortures him. From that moment the fall of that man is rapid. The heat,
the loneliness, the fever, the fear of the black faces, keep him on
edge, rob him of sleep, rob him of his physical strength, of his moral
strength. He loses shame, loses reason; becomes cruel, weak, degenerate.
He invents new, bestial tortures; commits new, unspeakable 'atrocities,'
until, one day, the natives turn and kill him, or he sticks his gun in
his mouth and blows the top of his head off."

The Coaster smiled tolerantly at the wide-eyed eager young man at his
side.

"And you," he mocked, "think you can reform that man, and that hell
above ground called the Congo, with an article in _Lowell's Weekly_?"

Undismayed, Everett grinned cheerfully.

"That's what I'm here for!" he said.

By the time Everett reached the mouth of the Congo, he had learned that
in everything he must depend upon himself; that he would be accepted
only as the kind of man that, at the moment, he showed himself to be.
This attitude of independence was not chosen, but forced on him by the
men with whom he came in contact. Associations and traditions, that in
every part of the United States had served as letters of introduction,
and enabled strangers to identify and label him, were to the white men
on the steamer and at the ports of call without meaning or value. That
he was an Everett of Boston conveyed little to those who had not heard
even of Boston. That he was the correspondent of _Lowell's Weekly_
meant less to those who did not know that _Lowell's Weekly_ existed.
And when, in confusion, he proffered his letter of credit, the very fact
that it called for a thousand pounds was, in the eyes of a "Palm Oil
Ruffian," sufficient evidence that it had been forged or stolen. He soon
saw that solely as a white man was he accepted and made welcome. That he
was respectable, few believed, and no one cared. To be taken at his face
value, to be refused at the start the benefit of the doubt, was a novel
sensation; and yet not unpleasant. It was a relief not to be accepted
only as Everett the Muckraker, as a professional reformer, as one holier
than oth