I stopped. Graham was lighting a cigarette, and I noticed that the flame wavered as he held the match. There are some men who are cold sober up to a certain point, and then what they have drunk takes hold of them all at once. Graham was such a person. When he spoke again his words were slurred and sluggish. "White man's country," he repeated uncertainly, and then made an effort to speak clearly. "I'm goin' back some day. Got dear old home, family servants, broad lawn--everything. Not mine though. Younger son. Had to win hearth an' saddle of m'own. Arthur's got it all, damn him. Always was lucky beggar. Got all family estates, all income, I got nothing. Then I liked girl. Second cousin. Arthur got her, or goin' to. Engaged. Damn lucky beggar. Always was lucky chap. Steady and dependable. Damn stodgy, I think. Told him so. Called him a ---- ---- an' he kicked me out. All because I got into trouble and signed his name to somethin', to get out." "Easy there, Graham," I warned. "I don't want to hear anything, you know." "You better not," he said suddenly, in a clear voice. He turned beastlike eyes on me. "If anybody tries to pry into my affairs, they don't get far." I blew a cloud of smoke over the railing of the veranda and said nothing. Through the moonlit night the throbbing of the drums came clearly to us sitting there. They beat on steadily, monotonously, hypnotically. There was something strangely menacing in the rhythmic, pulsing rumble. The cries of night birds and insects, and occasionally an animal sound, seemed natural and normal, but the muttering of those drums with that indescribable hollow tone they possess, seemed to portend a strange event. "Juju," said Graham abruptly, "is the key to the African mind. I don't give a damn for the natives. All I care about is what I can get out of this country, but I say that juju is the key to the African mind." I smoked on a moment in silence. "I'd rather not meddle with it," I remarked. "Sooner or later it means ground glass in your coffee of a morning. Just before I left Ticao, Da Cunha found some in his. He shot his cook and then found it was another boy entirely." "I'd have whipped him to death with a _chiboka_," said Graham viciously. "That's what Da Cunha did," I informed him mildly. "But the governor's made him leave Ticao for six months. He's over in Mozambique." "My boys'll never dare try to poison me," declared Graham. He leaned toward me in drunken confidence. "They believe that if they did----" "The procession has started again," I said, interrupting him. "I hear the yelling." It was so. The drums still beat monotonously and rhythmically, but beneath their deep bass muttering, a faint, high, continuous sound could be heard. The procession seemed to be making its way back to the village. "I'm goin' to bed," announced Graham sharply. "You go t' bed too. Don't sit out here an' smoke. Go to bed."