Half an hour later they were on the march again. The path became rugged
and difficult, passing through thorny ground, following burbling
watercourses of rough stones. To make the going more trying Birnier wore
light moccasins intended for camp use instead of his high field boots.
Once when a long thorn penetrated the flank of his shoe he stopped to
extract it. The corporal shouted at him; the soldier behind called him
unmentionable names in the dialect and pushed him with his foot. The
insult and the heat of the sun maddened him. He leaped to his feet. The
corporal raised his gun promptly and jeered. For a moment Birnier stood
trembling with passion; then he closed his eyes as if to shut out sight
and sound and limped forward, fighting with himself.

With natives had Birnier always been able to negotiate, to live, and to
quarrel when necessary, on terms of amity; but this black "swine," as he
termed him in his wrath, prinked out in a masquerade of a white man's
clothes.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} He jammed his heel down savagely upon the thorn to divert the
southern passion. After all it was not the man's fault but zu Pfeiffer's.
Put a white man in a uniform and he becomes a beast; put a nigger in a
uniform and he becomes a devil, Birnier forced himself to reflect.

The sun grew incandescent. The heat and the flies quickened his thirst. He
plodded on, stumbling over the stones, sagging heavily in sandy patches.
They had left the comparative shelter of the jungle and were crossing a
flat plain approaching, he judged, to a river bed. The carriers, he noted,
had lagged behind. Soon they must halt. Even the fiend of a corporal would
not fatigue himself too much for the sake of tormenting a white man.

Then a new idea was added to the plagues. He had tasted nothing save the
coffee, canned beef, and native bread which had been given him for dinner
on the previous evening. The corporal had manifested his conception of
humour by refusing him beer and water on the march; was he going to
torment him by starvation as well as by thirst? And if torture were
reserved for him by that grinning black brute, then he knew what would be
the end that awaited him.

Within an hour they came to a river about forty yards broad, a swollen
rushing torrent. There was no village as he had expected. The corporal
halted. Birnier slid down the bank and thrust his muzzle into the flood.
There was torture in the restraint not to drink too much. He clambe