"Among the natives," he explained, painstakingly picking each word,
"what you call 'atrocities' are customs of warfare, forms of punishment.
When they go to war they EXPECT to be tortured; they KNOW, if they're
killed, they'll be eaten. The white man comes here and finds these
customs have existed for centuries. He adopts them, because--"

"One moment!" interrupted Everett warmly. "That does not excuse HIM.
The point is, that with him they have NOT existed. To him they should be
against his conscience, indecent, horrible! He has a greater knowledge,
a much higher intelligence; he should lift the native, not sink to him."

The Coaster took his pipe from his mouth, and twice opened his lips to
speak. Finally, he blew the smoke into the air, and shook his head.

"What's the use!" he exclaimed.

"Try," laughed Everett. "Maybe I'm not as unintelligent as I talk."

"You must get this right," protested the Coaster. "It doesn't matter
a damn what a man BRINGS here, what his training WAS, what HE IS. The
thing is too strong for him."

"What thing?"

"That!" said the Coaster. He threw out his arm at the brooding
mountains, the dark lagoons, the glaring coast-line against which the
waves shot into the air with the shock and roar of twelve-inch guns.

"The first white man came to Sierra Leone five hundred years before
Christ," said the Coaster. "And, in twenty-two hundred years, he's got