Now Swizzle-Stick Smith had a long list of failings, but letting his assistants eat the bread of idleness was not among them. "Nothing like work--and a moderate amount of drugs--for keeping fever and mischief out of a man," was his motto, and he saw to it that Carter remained steadily on the run. But now the roads were stopped, and it was only the rare merchant who straggled in scared, and often wounded, from that mysterious Africa behind, George Carter discovered that life was a very different thing. Beforetime, he had found work in the feteesh, and round the factory generally, a trial to the flesh; but the idleness that took its place was infinitely more objectionable. He employed the Krooboy staff in whitewashing, in building, in making a caricature of a garden; he made the native clerks polish up their books into a shape that would have satisfied even a Glasgow Chartered Accountant; and for himself he made Okky arrows, axes, spears, drums and warhorns, in such quantities that even the curiosity shops of Europe would have been glutted if they had all gone home. In despair he even thawed to a certain intimacy with the Portuguese linguister, but presently cast him off in disgust, and realized why on the West Coast one divides up the population into white men, black men, and Portuguese. Of course White-Man's-Trouble was always at his elbow, but he hardly fulfilled the requirements of a companion. To be precise, after the roads were stopped, and Mr. Smith had departed elsewhere, the Trader-in-charge of Malla-Nulla factory discovered for himself what many millions of men have found out before, that it is not good for man to live alone, and though he made many ingenious plans for remedying the evil, all of these, save one, invariably broke down on being tested. The one plan that was sound related to Laura Slade. Every time that Laura's name inserted itself into the argument his mind would presently leap back to Upper Wharfedale, and he would hear afresh that warning of his father's about taking a wife of one's own color. And his father, he reminded himself, had once held an Indian chaplaincy, and knew what he was talking about.