"CIVILISED MAN" 233

recited at any time. The piccaninny appeared: a tiny
creature of about three years old, dressed in nothing
but a transparent shirt. The dark settled over Baplai
as he began rapidly to read, his pronunciation so odd
that I could only recognise occasional words—venial:
purgatory: Communion of Saints. Victor Prosser
interrupted him, 'What is purgatory?" and the small
Gio repeated rapidly the definition established by I
know not what council of the medieval church,
"Purgatory is that state . . ." He wasn't really read-
ing, I could tell that: he had learnt the whole thing
off by heart, but if I were inclined to criticise the
value of that, there before me was Victor Prosser who
had in his time too been a piccaninny with nothing
but a retentive memory for words which meant
nothing to him at all, and now sat there visibly
entranced over 'purgatory' and 'the communion of
saints'. The child, too, had an ancient English reader
with little steel engravings of ladies in bustles and
gentlemen with trousers buckled below their boots.
Victor Prosser refused the drink I offered him and,
rising to go, said that he would lead us himself next
morning on our road as far as Toweh-Ta.

So this bare grimy pool in the deep forest had more
goodness in it than we had expected: even the fat
chief in his dirty robe and battered bowler, who had
greeted us so surlily when we entered, mistaking us,
as Mr. Nelson had done, for Government agents,
proved himself to possess a kindly heart. Amah and
Vande were quite drunk with palm wine long before
dark, and when we ourselves were sitting at dinner
the waving of half a dozen torches announced the
chiefs approach with the carriers' chop. He stopd