He caught up a log of fire wood and laid open the scalp of the black
boy, from the eye to the crown of his head. The boy dropped, and
Everett, seeing the blood creeping through his kinky wool, turned ill
with nausea. Drunkenly, through a red cloud of mist, he heard himself
shouting, "The BLACK nigger! The BLACK NIGGER! He touched me! I TELL
you, he touched me!" Captain Nansen led Everett to his cot and gave him
fizzy salts, but it was not until sundown that the trembling and nausea
ceased.

Then, partly in shame, partly as a bribe, he sought out the injured boy
and gave him the entire roll of cloth. It had cost Everett ten francs.
To the wood-boy it meant a year's wages. The boy hugged it in his arms,
as he might a baby, and crooned over it. From under the blood-stained
bandage, humbly, without resentment, he lifted his tired eyes to those
of the white man. Still, dumbly, they begged the answer to the same
question.

During the five months Everett spent up the river he stopped at many
missions, stations, one-man wood posts. He talked to Jesuit fathers,
to inspecteurs, to collectors for the State of rubber, taxes, elephant
tusks, in time, even in Bangalese, to chiefs of the native villages.
According to the point of view, he was told tales of oppression, of
avarice, of hideous crimes, of cruelties committed in the name of trade
that were abnormal, unthinkable. The note never was of hope, never of
cheer, never inspiring. There was always the grievance, the spirit of
unrest, of rebellion that ranged from dislike to a primitive, hot hate.
Of his own land and life he heard nothing, not even when his face was
again turned toward the east. Nor did he think of it. As now he saw
them, the rules and principles and standards of his former existence
were petty and credulous. But he assured himself he had not abandoned