Stories by English Authors: Africa (Selected by Scribners)
General
Stories by English Authors: Africa (Selected by Scribners)
Africa -- Fiction; Short stories, English
It is a well-known fact that when men once surrender themselves to any
unnatural and brutal vice, the gratification of the abnormal instinct
thus acquired becomes the most imperative need of their nature.
The Falkland Islands case, as bearing specially upon the foregoing
narrative, may be mentioned. Some convicts escaped from the Falkland
Island convict station, and succeeded in reaching the coast of
Patagonia. They then endeavored to make their way to Montevideo, but
having to keep along the shore so as to avoid the natives, who would
have killed them had they ventured inland, were easily intercepted by
the government cutter, which was always despatched in cases of the kind
to head off fugitives upon their only possible course. Of the party only
one man was found alive. In their dreadful need the men had cast lots as
to who should be killed and eaten by the others, and this went on until
only the one man remained. His sufferings had been so horrible that
he was let off any further punishment, and simply brought back to the
island to complete the term of his sentence. Some months after, this
man induced another to escape with him in a boat, and, when the boat was
overtaken, it was found that he had killed his companion for the purpose
of eating the latter’s flesh. This was apparent from the fact that
the supply of food which the fugitives had taken with them was not
exhausted.
MARY MUSGRAVE, By Anonymous
“Nine carets ef it’s a blessed one.”
“Scale ‘im, an’ ye’ll find he’s a half better. Clear es a bottle o’
gin, an’ flawless es the pope! Tommy Dartmoor, ye’re in luck, s’ welp me
never ef ye ain’t, an’ that’s a brilliant yer can show the polis an’ not
get time fer.”
Tommy Dartmoor, who owed his surname to a crown establishment within the
restraining walls of which he had once enjoyed a temporary residence,
growled out a recommendation to “stow that,” and then added, “Boys,
we’ll wet this. Trek to Werstein’s.”
Forthwith a crowd of dirty, tanned diggers turned their heads in the
direction of Gustav Werstein’s American Bar, and walked toward it as
briskly as the heat and their weariness would admit of. The Israelite
saw them coming, straightened himself out of the half-doze in which
he had passed the baking afternoon, stopped down the tobacco in the
porcelain bowl of his long-stemmed pipe with stumpy forefinger, and,
twisting a cork off his corkscrew, stood in readiness.
“Name yer pizons, boys, an’ get outside ‘em, wishin’ all good luck to
R’yal Straight; R’yal Straight bein’ the name o’ this yer stone given by
Thomas D. Hesquire, original diskiverer an’ present perprietor.”
The orders were given,--bass at five shillings a bottle, champagne
(nee gooseberry) at five pounds, Cape smoke at two shillings per two
fingers,--and, at a given signal, there was an inarticulate roar from
dusty throats, an inversion of tumblers over thirsty mouths, and a
second inversion over the ground to show that all the contents had
disappeared.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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