18 AFRICAN CAMP FIRES. 



own experience, it had rained two months steadily. 

 Indeed, at this moment it was raining, raining a 

 steady, cold, sodden drizzle that had not even the 

 grace to pick out the surface of the harbour in the 

 jolly dancing staccato that goes far to lend attrac- 

 tion to a genuinely earnest rainstorm. 



Down the long quay splashed cabs and omni- 

 buses, their drivers glistening in wet capes, to 

 discharge under the open shed at the end various 

 hasty individuals who marshalled long lines of 

 porters with astonishing impedimenta and drove 

 them up the gang-plank. A half-dozen roughs 

 lounged aimlessly. A little bent old woman with 

 a shawl over her head searched here and there. 

 Occasionally she would find a twisted splinter of 

 wood torn from the piles by a hawser or gouged 

 from the planking by heavy freight, or kicked 

 from the floor by the hoofs of horses. This she 

 deposited carefully in a small covered market 

 basket. She was entirely intent on this minute 

 and rather pathetic task, quite unattending the 

 greatness of the ship, or the many people the 

 great hulk swallowed or spat forth. 



Near us against the rail leaned a dark-haired 

 young Englishman whom later every man on that 

 many-nationed ship came to recognize and to avoid 

 as an insufferable bore. Now, however, the angel 



