| s-102
| What do you think? he said, scornfully. |
| s-103
| Then he got fever, and had to be carried in a hammock slung under a pole. |
| s-104
| As he weighed sixteen stone I had no end of rows with the carriers. |
| s-105
| They jibbed, ran away, sneaked off with their loads in the night – quite a mutiny. |
| s-106
| So, one evening, I made a speech in English with gestures, not one of which was lost to the sixty pairs of eyes before me, and the next morning I started the hammock off in front all right. |
| s-107
| An hour afterwards I came upon the whole concern wrecked in a bush – man, hammock, groans, blankets, horrors. |
| s-108
| The heavy pole had skinned his poor nose. |
| s-109
| He was very anxious for me to kill somebody, but there wasn't the shadow of a carrier near. |
| s-110
| I remembered the old doctor, – 'It would be interesting for science to watch the mental changes of individuals, on the spot. |
| s-111
| I felt I was becoming scientifically interesting. |
| s-112
| However, all that is to no purpose. |
| s-113
| On the fifteenth day I came in sight of the big river again, and hobbled into the Central Station. |
| s-114
| It was on a back water surrounded by scrub and forest, with a pretty border of smelly mud on one side, and on the three others inclosed by a crazy fence of rushes. A neglected gap was all the gate it had, |
| s-115
| and the first glance at the place was enough to let you see the flabby devil was running that show. |
| s-116
| White men with long staves in their hands appeared languidly from amongst the buildings, strolling up to take a look at me, and then retired out of sight somewhere. |
| s-117
| One of them, a stout, excitable chap with black mustaches, informed me with great volubility and many digressions, as soon as I told him who I was, that my steamer was at the bottom of the river. |
| s-118
| I was thunderstruck. |
| s-119
| What, how, why? |
| s-120
| Oh, it was all right. |
| s-121
| The manager himself was there. |
| s-122
| All quite correct. |
| s-123
| 'Everybody had behaved splendidly! splendidly! |
| s-124
| – 'you must,' he said in agitation, 'go and see the general manager at once. |