Simpson, standing at the pier-end, was suffering from them now. His exaltation--a thing of a moment, as his fervour had been--had gone out of him, leaving him limp, uncertain of his own powers, of his own calling, even--the prey to the discouragement that precedes action, which is the deepest discouragement of all. Except for himself and Witherbee the pier was deserted; behind him the filthy town slept in its filth. Four buzzards wheeled above it, gorged and slow; the harbour lay before him like a green mirror, so still that the ship was reflected in it down to the last rope-yarn. Over all, the sun, colourless and furnace-hot, burned in a sky of steel. There was insolence in the scorched slopes that shouldered up from the bay, a threatening permanence in the saw-edged sky-line. The indifference of it all, its rock-ribbed impenetrability to human influence, laid a crushing weight on Simpson's soul, so that he almost sank to his knees in sheer oppression of spirit. "Do you know much about Hayti?" asked Witherbee, coming up behind him. "As much as I could learn from books." Simpson wanted to be angry at the consul--why he could not tell--but Witherbee's voice was so carefully courteous that he yielded perforce to its persuasion and swung around, facing him. Suddenly, because he was measuring himself against man and not against Nature, his weakness left him, and confidence in himself and his mission flooded back upon him. "As much as I could get from books." He paused. "You have lived here long?" "Long enough," Witherbee answered. "Five years." "You know the natives, then?" "Can't help knowing them. There are quite a lot of them, you see, and there's almost no one else. Do you know negroes at all?" "Very little." "You'd better study them a bit before you--before you do anything you have it in mind to do--the Haytian negro in particular. They're not like white men, you know." "Like children, you mean?" "Like some children. I'd hate to have them for nephews and nieces." "Why?" "We-ell"--Witherbee, looking sidelong at Simpson, bit off the end of a cigar--"a number of reasons. They're superstitious, treacherous, savage, cruel, and--worst of all--emotional. They've gone back. They've been going back for a hundred years. The West Coast--I've been there--is not so bad as Hayti. It's never been anything else than what it is now, you see, and if it moves at all it must move forward. There's nothing awful about savagery when people have never known anything else. Hayti has. You know what the island used to be before Desalines." "I've read. But just what do you mean by West Coast savagery--here?" "Snake-worship. Voodoo." Witherbee lit the cigar "Human sacrifice." "And the Roman Church does nothing!" There was exultation in Simpson's voice. His distrust of the Roman Church had been aggravated by his encounter with the black priest that morning.