The white man is superior to the black and must show it in his manners
and deportment.
This is an unwritten law, observed in the early days of any of our
African settlements.
For the man who breaks this law the punishment is swift and severe: he
is shunned by his caste and colour.
It is said, but it is nevertheless generally true, that as the
settlement prospers, so does this excellent law fall into abeyance. Men
without manners arrive and are soon in the majority.
But in the beginnng, the white man watches himself very carefully. He
knows all eyes are upon him. He must not permit himself to unbend. In
the observance of the law, a man is very self-conscious and is apt to
seem stiff and unsympathetic.
In the very, very early days of Kazungula the natives of the place
watched some white men relax, and the spectacle afforded them as much
pleasurable interest as the knowledge that they had been seen caused
pain to the white men.
For many a day the natives of Kazungula commanded a ready audience
anywhere in the country, for had not they, and they alone, seen white
men at play?
It came about in this way.
A solitary white man stood on the north bank of the Zambesi river,
looking across to the other side.
It was Knight, the Native Commissioner, who had for the last fortnight
expected daily the arrival of some waggons which carried his year's
provisions and other stores. He had little of anything left. No sugar,
very little tea, and a single bottle of gin represented his cellar.
He longed each night for the usual "sundowner," but had determined not
to open his one remaining bottle, in case of accident. Just what he
meant by accident he could not have said. In answer to a direct question
he might have replied: "Oh, anything might happen, one never knows."
To-night, for some reason unknown to himself, he was more impatient of
the sluggard waggons than usual. Would the darned things never come?
The sun was setting and small flights of duck were going down stream to
the marshy feeding grounds. A goose passed in the same direction.
The reed birds, in large noisy flocks, were choosing their roosting
place for the night. It seemed that they could not make up their minds.
No sooner had they settled in one patch of reeds than they started up
with much twittering in search of a better place. They had done this at
least a dozen times, and their indecision irritated the man.
A plump kingfisher, sitting on a log almost at his feet, dived from time
to time into the shallow water and returned to his perch again. Knight
noticed that the busy bird usually returned with a tiny silver fish in
his bill, and mentally commended him for his good fishing.
Well, the waggons hadn't come, and wouldn't come to-night. The sun had
set and it was growing dark. A chill wind sprang up and the reed birds
had become silent. The watcher turned slowly and walked in the direction
of his camp.
He had not gone far when he stopped, for he had caught sight of a
queer-looking man hobbling towards him along the path which ran by the
river side. In the dying light he saw that the stranger was a white man
accompanied by a single native, that he wore a long blonde beard, that
he was unusually tall, that his trousers were cut off above the knee,
that he had no boots, that he was very lame and had his feet bandaged in
rags. In short, he saw a fellow white man in distress.
He forgot his own little troubles and hastened towards the newcomer.