254 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

limbs of victims carried on poles; for otherwise
Colonel Davis has to be pictured as a monster, and
a monster one simply couldn't believe him to be, as
he flashed his gold teeth over the whisky, a bit
doggish, a bit charmingly and consciously shy and
small boy in the manner of the black singer Hutch.

He came across again the next evening for whisky
and nearly finished all we had. It was a bitterly cold
night, and a heavy storm came up: there could be
no doubt that the rains were on us. After an hour
or two the Colonel grew sentimental, leaning bad
in his chair with a wistful misunderstood air; and
it became difficult to believe that he had even so
much as witnessed the atrocities. "I was on a liner
once/' the Colonel said, "and I remember the Captain
calling me up to the bridge after dinner. He made
a remark I have never forgotten. He pointed to a
boat that was going by and said it reminded him of
three books that were in the library down below:
Ships that Pass in the Night—can you guess the
others?"

We couldn't.

"Well, the Captain pointed down at the deck where
the other passengers were and said to me, There,
Davis: The People We Meet9; and then he turned
to me and said, *But more important still, Davis, The
Friends We Lave?"

I filled the dictator's glass. "It was a beautiful
thought," he said, looking away.

I worked the. conversation back to Liberia and
politics. Colonel Davis was North American by
birth, but he was a Liberian patriot. "As the poet
e," Colonel Davis said, " 'Is there a man witb