BLACK MONTPARNASSE 187

a little on the nerves, this constant stare; but you had
to recognise the superiority of their attitude over the
white man's to something strange. We were as good
as a circus; they had no wish to stuff us or skin us
or put us in cages. The carriers, after one more
dispute over the water-carrying, were very cheerful,
but I knew better by now than to expect their happi-
ness to last. Their mood changed more rapidly than
April weather. They, too, were appreciating some-
thing genuinely Gallic, for the girls of Galaye had an
air of greater freedom towards strangers than I saw
in any other tribe: one girl in particular who, when
dark fell and the drums and harps were taken out,
joined in the carriers' dances, a stamping and thrust-
ing out of the elbows and buttocks, a caricature of
sexuality. When they approved of a dancer, the
others crowded round and stroked his arms and fore-
head, a curious intimate tactile applause.

The dancing went on for hours in a close hot circle
before our hut. The moon was half full, and the
increasing light worked on their spirits. This was one
of the revelations of Africa, the deadness of what
we t-bink of as alive, the deadness of nature, the trees
and shrubs and flowers, the vitality of what we think
of as dead, the cold lunar craters. The carriers were
aware of the moon with an intimacy from which we
were excluded. At Galaye it was already moving in
their blood, so that even Amedoo burst into the circle
and danced with a sudden wild lapse from dignity.
But the most grotesque of the dancers was a moron
dwarf. They dropped him into the ring with a couple
of piccaninnies of three years old who were as tall
as he, and he swayed a great inflated head, Eke £