Through all that storm, when the _Dorothy_ was toiling in the sea, and afterwards through the rain, for more than two hours, I stood outside on the small forward deck throwing the heavy lead without stopping, and directing the man at the wheel. As we anchored the day was breaking, which made twenty-four hours of continuous work. But all the following day, whether at work or rest, I was thinking of the long overdue furlough. XII A SCHOOL I said that Mendam had the best laugh in the school; and a good heart went with it. A much younger boy, Mba, came from a town near where Mendam lived. But they were not of the same clan. Both boys were from towns far up the river and neither of them had ever seen the sea until they came to my school. Like all interior people they thought that the whole world was one great “bush.” Mba was shy and sensitive and Mendam became a _big brother_ to him through the school year. I think the _Big Brother_ idea, now popular in America, must have come from Africa. The two boys became devotedly attached to each other. Mendam helped Mba with his lessons; helped him also to take the jiggers out of his feet. One day just before dinner several boys were down in the gully behind the school when they suddenly came upon a python. They announced it with a shout that brought the entire school stampeding down the hill. Mba had his whole dinner of rice and smoked fish on his plate at the moment when he heard the shout. He ran with it in his hand until he came to the path leading down into the gully, and then, naturally, he set the plate down in the path while he hurried on. But how was Obiang to know that Mba’s dinner was right in the middle of the path when he came tearing down the hill to kill the python? Obiang planted his foot fair on the plate, leaving a large track and not much else. Mba, after a vain hunt for the python, came back to enjoy his dinner. I hope we shall never get so old that we cannot sympathize with the pangs of a hungry boy. Mba was as inconsolable as the mother bird whose “brood is stol’n away.” But it only lasted till Mendam arrived. “Never mind, Mba,” he said, “I’ll give you half of my dinner. I’ll give you _more_ than half.” That was some sacrifice for a healthy, hungry boy who was much bigger than Mba. But the tragedy of life begins early in Africa. One day the news came that war had broken out between neighbouring towns up the river and that Mba’s father had killed Mendam’s father.