e, who was second mate on the vessel? We wrung each other's hands,
and I answered, as best I could, his questions about Kirkcaple. I had
supper with him in the cabin, and went on deck to see the moorings cast.

Suddenly there was a bustle on the quay, and a big man with a handbag
forced his way up the gangway. The men who were getting ready to cast
off tried to stop him, but he elbowed his way forward, declaring he
must see the captain. Tam went up to him and asked civilly if he had a
passage taken. He admitted he had not, but said he would make it right
in two minutes with the captain himself. The Rev. John Laputa, for
some reason of his own, was leaving Durban with more haste than he had
entered it.

I do not know what passed with the captain, but the minister got his
passage right enough, and Tam was even turned out of his cabin to make
room for him. This annoyed my friend intensely.

'That black brute must be made of money, for he paid through the nose
for this, or I'm a Dutchman. My old man doesn't take to his black
brethren any more than I do. Hang it all, what are we coming to, when
we're turning into a blooming cargo boat for niggers?'

I had all too little of Tam's good company, for on the afternoon of the
second day we reached the little town of Lourenco Marques. This was my
final landing in Africa, and I mind how eagerly I looked at the low,
green shores and the bush-covered slopes of the mainland. We were
landed from boats while the ship lay out in the bay, and Tam came
ashore with me to spend the evening. By this time I had lost every
remnant of homesickness. I had got a job before me which promised
better things than colleging at Edinburgh, and I was as keen to get up
country now as I had been loth to leave England. My mind being full of
mysteries, I scanned every Portuguese loafer on the quay as if he had
been a spy, and when Tam and I had had a bottle of Collates in a cafe I
felt that at last I had got to foreign parts and a new world.

Tam took me to supper with a friend of his, a Scot by the name of
Aitken, who was landing-agent for some big mining house on the Rand.
He hailed from Fife and gave me a hearty welcome, for he had heard my
father preach in his young days. Aitken was a strong, broad-shouldered
fellow who had been a sergeant in the Gordons, and during the war he
had done secret-service work in Delagoa. He had hunted, too, and
traded up and down Mozambique, and knew every d