ir weakness, they became daily more like a pair
of accomplices than like a couple of devoted friends. They had heard
nothing from home for eight months. Every evening they said, "To-morrow
we shall see the steamer." But one of the Company's steamers had been
wrecked, and the Director was busy with the other, relieving very
distant and important stations on the main river. He thought that the
useless station, and the useless men, could wait. Meantime Kayerts and
Carlier lived on rice boiled without salt, and cursed the Company, all
Africa, and the day they were born. One must have lived on such diet to
discover what ghastly trouble the necessity of swallowing one's food
may become. There was literally nothing else in the station but rice
and coffee; they drank the coffee without sugar. The last fifteen lumps
Kayerts had solemnly locked away in his box, together with a half-bottle
of Cognac, "in case of sickness," he explained. Carlier approved. "When
one is sick," he said, "any little extra like that is cheering."

They waited. Rank grass began to sprout over the courtyard. The bell
never rang now. Days passed, silent, exasperating, and slow. When the
two men spoke, they snarled; and their silences were bitter, as if
tinged by the bitterness of their thoughts.

One day after a lunch of boiled rice, Carlier put down his cup untasted,
and said: "Hang it all! Let's have a decent cup of coffee for once.
Bring out that sugar, Kayerts!"

"For the sick," muttered Kayerts, without looking up.

"For the sick," mocked Carlier. "Bosh! . . . Well! I am sick."

"You are no more sick than I am, and I go without," said Kayerts in a
peaceful tone.

"Come! out with that sugar, you stingy old slave-dealer."

Kayerts looked up quickly. Carlier was smiling with marked insolence.
And suddenly it seemed to Kayerts that he had never seen that man
before. Who was he? He knew nothing about him. What was he capable of?
There was a surprising flash of violent emotion within him, as if in the
presence of something undreamt-of, dangerous, and final. But he managed
to pronounce with composure--

"That joke is in very bad taste. Don't repeat it."

"Joke!" said Carlier, hitching himself forward on his seat. "I am
hungry--I am sick--I don't joke! I hate hypocrites. You are a hypocrite.
You are a slave-dealer. I am a slave-dealer. There's nothing but
slave-dealers in this cursed country. I mean to have sugar in my coffee
to-day, anyhow!"

"I