ed himself. A minute
after the ship's shrapnel burst near him, putting death's fear
upon his weakness. Someone had said that the ambush was in the
grass rather than in the banana grove, the ambush that was
screened so well. Was there just will and time left to invoke the
Rider on the White Horse of that unforgotten and abiding vision?
I think there was. Then the shrapnel burst over Isaka. He was
blotted, as his fellow Christians of the ship and her guns might
have expressed it. The twelve-pounder (or was it the four-inch?)
crashed again and again. The Maxim coughed and spat in a
paroxysm. The Rider on the Red Horse rode on relentlessly.

THREE AND AFRICA

We all three went a common way with rather a bad grace, and
Africa in a measure dominated our movements, or at least our
proposed destinations. I think she tightened her grip on all our
three affections by that journey, she made us more of her slaves
she has ever a hankering after the slave-trade, has she not?
In her shrewdness she gained a grip on us by very diverse
expedients. Me the restless, so feverishly tired of her, she
exercised in fresh fields. One result was, that I found out in
those trial-grounds ever so many reasons why flight from Africa
would be unthinkable for me. While as to him, my friend, whose
doom of exile from her she had herself done much to bring about,
I am sure that she dazzled him on that his road to the railway
(his Via Dolorosa,) making assurance much more sure that he must
leave his heart with her. As to her, my other friend, who had
taken Africa so complacently and so very much for granted, Africa
made revelations to her at each stage of a journey that was
rousing in itself, for it brought her away from her western
station to a very different countryside. And if these revelations
were not prone to stimulate affection, I am quite mistaken. I
could make out a strong case against Africa, on the grounds of
that journey, as capricious, inconsiderate, and so on. Yet before
I have done, I want to indicate pleas of extenuation.

We were going with a donkey-wagon, he and I, the wagon wherein
she, my other friend, was riding. He had been in the Civil
Service, and suffered much from fever; yet he was leaving the
Service for other reasons as well as that particular one. He was
traveling cross-country to his exit station, prolonging thus his
pangs of farewell; he was making himself useful by escorting her
on her desolate road. Moreover,