ns extremely. His explorations in Hayti had been terminated
abruptly by an affair with a native policeman that had necessitated the
intervention of the British Consul. It was begun with that suddenness
that was too often characteristic of Benham, by his hitting the
policeman. It was in the main street of Cap Haytien, and the policeman
had just clubbed an unfortunate youth over the head with the heavily
loaded wooden club which is the normal instrument of Haytien discipline.
His blow was a repartee, part of a triangular altercation in which a
large, voluble, mahogany-coloured lady whose head was tied up in a
blue handkerchief played a conspicuous part, but it seemed to Benham an
entirely unjustifiable blow.

He allowed an indignation with negro policemen in general that had been
gathering from the very moment of his arrival at Port-au-Prince to carry
him away. He advanced with the kind of shout one would hurl at a dog,
and smote the policeman to the earth with the stout stick that the
peculiar social atmosphere of Hayti had disposed him to carry. By the
local standard his blow was probably a trivial one, but the moral effect
of his indignant pallor and a sort of rearing tallness about him
on these occasions was always very considerable. Unhappily these
characteristics could have no effect on a second negro policeman who was
approaching the affray from behind, and he felled Benham by a blow on
the shoulder that was meant for the head, and with the assistance of his
colleague overpowered him, while the youth and the woman vanished.

The two officials dragged Benham in a state of vehement protest to the
lock-up, and only there, in the light of a superior officer's superior
knowledge, did they begin to realize the grave fact of his British
citizenship.

The memory of the destruction of the Haytien fleet by a German gunboat
was still vivid in Port-au-Prince, and to that Benham owed it that in
spite of his blank refusal to compensate the man he had knocked over, he
was after two days of anger, two days of extreme insanitary experience,
and much meditation upon his unphilosophical hastiness, released.

Quite a number of trivial incidents of a kindred sort diversified his
enquiries into Indian conditions. They too turned for the most part
on his facile exasperation at any defiance of his deep-felt desire for
human brotherhood. At last indeed came an affair that refused ultimately
to remain trivial, and tangled him up in a coi