, but there
was no one near to hear. He shook his skinny yellow fist out over the
broad river that crept greasily down to the equatorial sea.

All around him the vegetable kingdom had asserted its sovereignty. At
his back loomed a dense forest, impenetrable to the foot of man, defying
his puny hand armed with axe or saw. The trees were not high, few of
them being above twenty feet, but from their branches creepers and
parasites hung in tangled profusion, interlaced, joining tree to tree
for acres, nay for miles.

As far as the eye could reach either bank of the slow river was thus
covered with rank vegetation--mile after mile without variety, without
hope. The glassy surface of the water was broken here and there by
certain black forms floating like logs half hidden beneath the wave.
These were crocodiles. The river was the Ogowe, and the man who cursed
it was Victor Durnovo, employe of the Loango Trading Association, whose
business it was at that season to travel into the interior of Africa to
buy, barter, or steal ivory for his masters.

He was a small-faced man, with a squarely aquiline nose and a black
moustache, which hung like a valance over his mouth. From the growth of
that curtain-like moustache Victor Durnovo's worldly prosperity might
have been said to date. No one seeing his mouth had before that time
been prevailed upon to trust him. Nature has a way of hanging out signs
and then covering them up, so that the casual fail to see. He was a man
of medium height, with abnormally long arms and a somewhat truculent way
of walking, as if his foot was ever ready to kick anything or any person
who might come in his way.

His movements were nervous and restless, although he was tired out and
half-starved. The irritability of Africa was upon him--had hold over
him--gripped him remorselessly. No one knows what it is, but it is
there, and sometimes it is responsible for murder. It makes honourable
European gentlemen commit crimes of which they blush to think in after
days. The Powers may draw up treaties and sign the same, but there
will never be a peaceful division of the great wasted land so near to
Southern Europe. There may be peace in Berlin, or Brussels, or London,
but because the atmosphere of Africa is not the same as that of the
great cities, there will be no peace beneath the Equator. From the West
Coast of Africa to the East men will fight and quarrel and bicker so
long as human nerves are human nerves. T