That print discussed what it was pleased to call "Our Colonial
Expansion" in high-flown language. It spoke much of the rights and
duties of civilization, of the sacredness of the civilizing work, and
extolled the merits of those who went about bringing light, and faith
and commerce to the dark places of the earth. Carlier and Kayerts read,
wondered, and began to think better of themselves. Carlier said one
evening, waving his hand about, "In a hundred years, there will
be perhaps a town here. Quays, and warehouses, and barracks,
and--and--billiard-rooms. Civilization, my boy, and virtue--and all. And
then, chaps will read that two good fellows, Kayerts and Carlier, were
the first civilized men to live in this very spot!" Kayerts nodded,
"Yes, it is a consolation to think of that." They seemed to forget their
dead predecessor; but, early one day, Carlier went out and replanted the
cross firmly. "It used to make me squint whenever I walked that way,"
he explained to Kayerts over the morning coffee. "It made me squint,
leaning over so much. So I just planted it upright. And solid, I promise
you! I suspended myself with both hands to the cross-piece. Not a move.
Oh, I did that properly."

At times Gobila came to see them. Gobila was the chief of the
neighbouring villages. He was a gray-headed savage, thin and black, with
a white cloth round his loins and a mangy panther skin hanging over
his back. He came up with long strides of his skeleton legs, swinging a
staff as tall as himself, and, entering the common room of the station,
would squat on his heels to the left of the door. There he sat, watching
Kayerts, and now and then making a speech which the other did not
understand. Kayerts, without interrupting his occupation, would from
time to time say in a friendly manner: "How goes it, you old image?" and
they would smile at one another. The two whites had a liking for
that old and incomprehensible creature, and called him Father Gobila.
Gobila's manner was paternal, and he seemed really to love all white
men. They all appeared to him very young, indistinguishably alike
(except for stature), and he knew that they were all brothers, and also
immortal. The death of the artist, who was the first white man whom
he knew intimately, did not disturb this belief, because he was firmly
convinced that the white stranger had pretended to die and got himself
buried for some mysterious purpose of his own, into which it was useless
to inq