helmet, I noted, was a military one. Perhaps I looked as I felt;
that it was a pity to see so good a man go back to such a land, for
he looked up at me from the swinging ladder and smiled understanding
as though we had been old acquaintances.

"You going far?" he asked. He spoke in the soft, detached voice of
the public-school Englishman.

"To the Congo," I answered.

He stood swaying with the ship, looking as though there were
something he wished to say, and then laughed, and added gravely,
giving me the greeting of the Coast: "Luck to you."

"Luck to YOU," I said.

That is the worst of these gaddings about, these meetings with men
you wish you could know, who pass like a face in the crowded street,
who hold out a hand, or give the password of the brotherhood, and
then drop down the sea ladder and out of your life forever.




II

MY BROTHER'S KEEPER


To me, the fact of greatest interest about the Congo is that it is