over at sunrise, only
four or five hours after, so as not to cast a gloom over the
passengers, you understand.' 'And you took on his child?' I
asked. 'Yes, and wanted him to settle down in the south country.
No, not Africa Kent I mean. I thought I'd settle down with him in
the better of my two countries. For it is the better. I who've
looked down at both, like Moses on the mountain, have found out
that much. But it doesn't look a bit now as if he'll believe
in my advice.' 'And if he goes out, you'll follow him?' I
questioned. He smiled. 'I think I'll be simple enough for it,' he
said; 'I seem to want to renew my youth. I somehow used to be
sorry I missed my chance to follow his father up. Now that
generation's about gone the generation of King Solomon's Mines.
It doesn't seem like putting myself forward so much if the boy
himself asks me to come up with him, does it, sir?' 'And you want
to go.' 'Well if you look over Moses' Moabitish mountain long
enough, at a promised land, so to speak, you may get a hankering
to go in,' he said. 'It's not a better country. It's not a
heavenly; I don't make any mistake about that. But it's a country
that people have thought big things about, if they have carried
them out badly. I seem to have seen something of the right and
the wrong of it all these nights coming north to Southampton
Water or south into Table Bay.' 'And what's the conclusion of the
whole matter?' I said. We were almost alone on the deck now.
(There was just one lonely, lanky passenger strolling up and
down. I guessed that the rest were in bed, or going to bed or
having a last drink below. We went down the deck together and
took our stand behind that forsaken watcher of the shore-light.
He stood at gaze, pulling deeply from his pipe and drinking in
the four-a-time flashes with owlish contentment.) 'Oh! the
conclusion's what Solomon said right enough,' he muttered. 'Fear
and keep, and keep and fear. Perhaps he'd been out and visited
the men on his mines up-country.' He paused. I seemed to hear the
jingling of bar-glasses in a back-veld canteen as he did so. The
thud of drums, too, from Kaffir villages seemed to bear down on
us. The Channel breeze came to me as it were heavily laden with
the sounding challenges of the South. 'I suppose,' I said, 'it
makes a big difference when one loses the northern star. Those
southern skies painted with unnumbered sparks are all very well,
but one lacks the pole-star of honor one stee