The odds were too long. I have been lame ever
since, and shall be to my dying day; in the month of March the wound
always troubles me a great deal, and every three years it breaks
out raw. I need scarcely add that I never traded the lot of ivory at
Sikukuni's. Another man got it--a German--and made five hundred pounds
out of it after paying expenses. I spent the next month on the broad of
my back, and was a cripple for six months after that. And now I've told
you the yarn, so I will have a drop of Hollands and go to bed."
KING BEMBA'S POINT, A WEST AFRICAN STORY, By J. Landers
We were for the most part a queer lot out on that desolate southwest
African coast, in charge of the various trading stations that were
scattered along the coast, from the Gaboon River, past the mouth of the
mighty Congo, to the Portuguese city of St. Paul de Loanda. A mixture of
all sorts, especially bad sorts: broken-down clerks, men who could not
succeed anywhere else, sailors, youths, and some whose characters would
not have borne any investigation; and we very nearly all drank hard, and
those who didn't drink hard took more than was good for them.
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