it was not possible to take serious questions seriously. In the fact
that, to those about him, the thought of death was ever present, he
found further excuse for much else that puzzled and shocked him. At
home, death had been a contingency so remote that he had put it aside as
something he need not consider until he was a grandfather. At Matadi,
at every moment of the day, in each trifling act, he found death must be
faced, conciliated, conquered. At home he might ask himself, "If I eat
this will it give me indigestion?" At Matadi he asked, "If I drink this
will I die?"

Upsher told him of a feud then existing between the chief of police and
an Italian doctor in the State service. Interested in the outcome only
as a sporting proposition, Upsher declared the odds were unfair, because
the Belgian was using his black police to act as his body-guard while
for protection the Italian could depend only upon his sword-cane. Each
night, with the other white exiles of Matadi, the two adversaries met
in the Cafe Franco-Belge. There, with puzzled interest, Everett watched
them sitting at separate tables, surrounded by mutual friends, excitedly
playing dominoes. Outside the cafe, Matadi lay smothered and sweltering
in a black, living darkness, and, save for the rush of the river, in
a silence that continued unbroken across a jungle as wide as Europe.
Inside the dominoes clicked, the glasses rang on the iron tables, the
oil lamps glared upon the pallid, sweating faces of clerks, upon the
tanned, sweating skins of officers; and the Italian doctor and the
Belgian lieutenant, each with murder in his heart, laughed, shrugged,
gesticulated, waiting for the moment to strike.

"But why doesn't some one DO something?" demanded Everett. "Arrest them,
or reason with them. Everybody knows about it. It seems a pity not to DO
something."