d no more conception than a child of the kind of
trouble that was brewing. He knew never an honest man from a rogue,
and the result was that he received all unofficial communications with
a polite disbelief. I used to force him to see people-miners,
prospectors, traders, any one who had something to say worth listening
to, but it all glided smoothly off his mind. He was simply the most
incompetent being ever created, living in the world as not being of it,
or rather creating a little official world of his own, where all events
happened on lines laid down by the Colonial Office, and men were like
papers, to be rolled into packets and properly docketed. He had an
Executive Council of people like himself, competent officials and blind
bats at anything else. Then there was a precious Legislative Council,
intended to represent the different classes of the population. There
were several good men on it-one old trader called Mackay, for instance,
who had been thirty years in the country-but most were nominees of the
mining firms, and very seedy rascals at that. They were always talking
about the rights of the white man, and demanding popular control of the
Government, and similar twaddle. The leader was a man who hailed from
Hamburg, and called himself Le Foy--descended from a Crusader of the
name of Levi--who was a jackal of one of the chief copper firms. He
overflowed with Imperialist sentiment, and when he wasn't waving the
flag he used to gush about the beauties of English country life the
grandeur of the English tradition. He hated me from the start, for
when he talked of going 'home' I thought he meant Hamburg, and said so;
and then a thing happened which made him hate me worse. He was
infernally rude to Tommy, who, like the dear sheep he was, never saw
it, and, if he had, wouldn't have minded. But one day I chanced to
overhear some of his impertinences, so I hunted out my biggest sjambok
and lay in wait for Mr. Le Foy. I told him that he was a
representative of the sovereign people, that I was a member of an
effete bureaucracy, and that it would be most painful if unpleasantness
arose between us. But, I added, I was prepared, if necessary, to
sacrifice my official career to my private feelings, and if he dared to
use such language again to his Majesty's representative I would give
him a hiding he would remember till he found himself in Abraham's
bosom. Not liking my sjambok, he became soap and butter at once