HIS EXCEUJENCY THE PRESIDENT 119

and wrinkled with heat; one two-storeyed concrete
house stood apart from the huts in a compound
where the star and stripes dangled from a post. This
was the house built, according to the natives of
Bolahun, with forced labour. That extra storey gave
it a formidable air; it stood there above the town as
if it watched and knew all that happened; it would
be unwise to pass it by with such a long caravan
of men; it couldn't help noticing.

Everything was very still, very Sabbath; nobody
left the huts to see us come in, which was odd (the
town might have been sacked) but I noticed when
we were nearer that there were about a dozen
soldiers, in the scarlet caps with the gold star, march-
ing up and down in the compound. At the other
end of the town on a hill was a kind of garden shelter
and I could see the scarlet cap there too. A small
yellow-faced half-caste in a black fez came down
from the compound and waited for me. Yes, he said,
the Commissioner was there, and immediately led
the way back into the compound between the
sentries, leaving the carriers and the servants outside*
I had the impression that we had been expected;
and how could we not have been if it were anyone's
duty to watch the road from the first storey?

A gramophone was playing, and Miss Josephine
Baker's voice drifted across the compound with an
amusing and sophisticated melancholy. It made
everything for the moment rather unreal: the
carriers sitting in the dust, the quiet drift of huts, the
forest edging up over the horizon became no more
than a backcloth for a lovely unclothed cabaret
figure. One couldn't really believe in Mr. Reeves, who