r at
animate things, never at anything he could by mental or physical
contest overcome. He swore at the dust, at the heat, at the wind, at
the sun.

The other wayfarer, with the inherent patience of his blood, said
nothing and waited, setting down the heavy kit-bag and the
canvas-valise (his own). When the way was free again he would sling
the kit-bag and the valise over his shoulder and step back into the
road. His turban, once white, was brown with dust and sweat. His
khaki uniform was rent under the arm-pits, several buttons were gone;
his stockings were rusty black, mottled with patches of brown skin; and
the ragged canvas-shoes spurted little spirals of dust as he walked.
The British-Indian government had indulgently permitted him to proceed
about his duties as guide and carrier under the cognomen of James
Hooghly, in honor of a father whose surname need not be written here,
and in further honor of the river upon which, quite inconveniently one
early morning, he had been born. For he was Eurasian; half European,
half Indian, having his place twixt heaven and hell, which is to say,
nowhere. His father had died of a complication of bhang-drinking and
opium-eating; and as a consequence, James was full of humorless
imagination, spells of moodiness and outbursts of hilarious politics.
Every native who acquires a facility in English immediately sets out to
rescue India from the clutches of the British raj, occasionally
advancing so far as to send a bullet into some harmless individual in
the Civil Service.

James was faithful, willing and strong; and as a carrier of burdens,
took unmurmuringly his place beside the tireless bullock and the
elephant. He was a Methodist; why, no one could find lucid answer,
since he ate no beef, drank from no common cup, smoked through his fist
when he enjoyed a pipe, and never assisted Warrington Sahib in his
deadly pursuit of flies and mosquitoes. He was Hindu in all his acts
save in his manner of entering temples; in this, the European blood
kept his knees unbended. By dint of inquiry his master had learned
that James looked upon his baptism and conversion in Methodism as a
corporal would have looked upon the acquisition of a V. C. Twice,
during fever and plague, he had saved his master's life. With the
guilelessness of the Oriental he considered himself responsible for his
master in all future times. Instead of paying off a debt he had
acquired one. Treated as he was, ki