filed out to the dimly-lighted
platform. A space in the center was roofed with corrugated iron and
under that the yellow lamplight cast a maze of moving shadows as the
passengers swarmed toward the dining-room. The smell of greasy cooking
blended with the reek of axle and lamp oil. At the platform's forward
end shadowy figures were throwing cord-wood into the tender, and the
thump-thump-thump of that sounded like impatience; everything else
suggested lethargy.

"Guard!" called the voice again. "Come here, guard!"

He stopped in passing to close our windows and lock our compartment
door against railway thieves.

"There's a man asleep in there," I said.

"The 'eat 'll sober 'im!" he grinned, slamming the last window down.
"What'll you bet 'er 'ighness don't want me to fetch dinner to 'er?
She was in the train in Mombasa two hours afore startin' time, an' the
things she ordered me to do 'ud have made a 'alf-breed think 'e was
demeaning of 'imself! I 'aven't seen the color of 'er money yet. If
she wants dinner she gets out and walks or 'er maid fetches it--you
watch!"

Coutlass, the other Greek and the Goanese staggered out beside us on to
the platform, drunk enough not to know whether Hassan was with them or
not. He came out and stood beside them in a sort of alert defensive
attitude.

"Guard!" called the voice again. "Where is the man?"

We followed the last of the crowd through the screened doors, and took
seats at a table marked "First Class Only!" There were four men there
ahead of us, two government officials disinclined to talk; a
missionary in a gray flannel shirt, suffering from fever and too
suspicious to say good evening; and a man in charge of that section of
the line, who checked the station master's accounts and counted money
in a tray between mouthfuls. Between us and the second-class tables
was a wooden screen on short legs, and beyond that arose babel.
Second-class is democratic always, and talks with its mouth full. In
addition to our privilege of paying more for exactly the same food, we
enjoyed exclusiveness, a dirty table-cloth, and the extra smell from
the kitchen door. (The table-cloth was dirty because the barefoot
Goanese waiters invariably stubbed their feet against a break in the
floor and spilt soup exactly in the same place.)

We had scarcely taken our seats when Coutlass swaggered in, closely
followed by his gang. Inside the door he turned on Hassan.

"Black men eat ou