"CIVILISED MAN" 239

stares of the villagers in the wall-less cookhouse.

There was one boy, the chief's son, who could speak
English, for he had been educated on the Coast and
called himself Samuel Johnson, and there were
strange bits and pieces of 'civilisation' scattered about
the primitive place, which seemed to indicate that at
last one was going south. In the cookhouse some-
one had painted little bright child-like pictures of
'steamships; a boy carrying an umbrella was naked
except for a piece of blue cloth strung on beads over
the genitals and a European schoolboy's belt with a
snake clasp which he wore half-way up his torso,
between his breasts and navel; and what seemed
another scrap of 'civilisation', for sexual inversion
is rare among the blacks, a pair of naked 'pansies'
stood side by side all day with their arms locked and
their hair plaited in ringlets staring at me. Vande got
drunk again with palm wine and Amah cut off the
top of his finger with one of my swords chopping
meat for the carriers' meal. I felt irritated with every-
one and everything; I could no longer afford to drink
much whisky, for my case was nearly exhausted; I
went to bed and lay awake all night because the goats
came blundering in, tripping up over our boxes. I
was vexed with them in a personal way, as if they
could help their stupidity, their clumsiness. I would
have exchanged them happily for rats; rats were
almost as noisy, but I told myself that there was some-
thing purposeful in their noise; they knew what they
were doing, but these goats were stupid. ... I could
have cried with exhaustion and anger and want of
sleep.