The Rapids [antikvár]

ONE V E R a sleeve of green water it was coming down towards I them like a log whose shining edges, as they now perceived, were hemmed with yellowish suds. Within this flat immensity of the Wakengo it was almost level with their eyes, a small oblong smudge on the dawn-lit waters of the river. Now and then, detaching yellowish suds, it rolled a little as though fish were nudging it, biting into it. Not asking for the old man's permission, the African in the stern of the motor boat put over the tiller so as to come into hne with the thing in the water. When it had floated quite near, they saw that it was face down. The old man coughed disapprovingly. 'No,' he said. But the African reached with a boathook and caught it, thudding it crudely against the side of the motor boat. Yellowish suds broke sluggishly oiF, floated downstream. The old man could see how the African frowned, withdrew flat lips from black and broken teeth, widened liis wide mouth in a gesture of aching discontent. He could see how the man lent forward over the edge of the boat, overcoming horror, and tipped the dead thing face upward. Briefly, he lent forward himself. One could still make out the body of a woman. 'Is there a wound?' he asked, not looking at the man nor at the dead woman, but carefully away at the frieze of tall undergrowth on the other side of the river. Far beyond and above this undergrowth and its occasional spouting trees, shaggy, decayed, tottering in fantastic misery, he could see low hills along the skyline where the frontier with French territory lay. Crouched in violet shadow on the skyhne, these French hills were always a threat of undermining change. Since the war the French had seemed to lose control of their natives; and the