IN THE BEGINNING-A PREAMBLE 15 



the soft glows and dying glamours of the dusk 

 — these are things that are meet reward for 

 beds of fever and the heartless ministerings 

 of hardship. 



To hear the night winds sobbing down the 

 valleys; to listen to the trumpeting scream of 

 an elephant or the majestic roar of the lion ; 

 to have the sounds of native revelry wafted on 

 the still air to one's tent door — these are the 

 relishes of existence. 



Not only in the wilds does the spell of Africa 

 grip one. Who that has travelled along the 

 East Coast can forget the old-world beauty of 

 Mozambique, the colour riot of Zanzibar, the 

 verdure of the island of Mombasa against which 

 the sapphire seas break in snow-white foam? 

 If you have seen the illimitable sands of the 

 Egyptian and Soudanese deserts, or from the 

 Citadel watched the peace of eventide sink over 

 Cairo; if you have drunk Nile water or day- 

 dreamed below the mystic Sphinx — can you ever 

 forget these things or turn their memories into 

 the alleyways of the mind ? And who that has 

 hunted big game does not at times feel the passion 

 of the chase and the surge of an almost irresistible 

 wave of longing, years after those halcyon times 

 when life was unfettered and the world seemed 

 to be at one's feet ? 



Most of us are savages at heart. Deep down 

 in the smug contentment of that hollow thing 

 we call civilization there smoulder the fires of 

 our Berserker ancestry. We wander in the great 

 vast untrodden spaces of the world, and the 

 dwindling flames blaze up in a furnace of primor- 

 dial joy, the lusts of killing and freedom spurt up 

 in tongues of barbaric flame. Man may become 

 a savage again in the space of but a few years. 



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