The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A RomanceJohnston, Harry
General
The Man Who Did the Right Thing: A Romance
Johnston, Harry
British -- Africa, East -- Fiction; Missions -- Tanzania -- Fiction
It was curious how her personality projected itself across five thousand
miles of land and sea into Equatorial Africa; so that Lucy and perhaps
Roger should both have been thinking about her as they were preparing to
leave their home in this secluded region. Lucy thought of Sibyl
pleasantly as of one she no longer feared because she never desired to
cross her path as a rival, or contest her superiority. Sibyl would
offer her a temporary home in her home country where her children could
be riotously happy, and where Roger—even—might be tempted to join her
for a few months before resuming his strenuous life as a conqueror of
the wilderness. Roger had held out this hope to alleviate the sadness
of their approaching separation.
He was to accompany his wife and sister as far as Burungi; after which
he must return to the Iraku Hills to take full advantage of the
dry-season months for great projected developments of the planting and
mining industries. From Burungi, now quite an important centre of
traffic, whence well-made roads proceed coastwards, with rest-houses
every twenty miles, Lucy and Maud and the precious children would be
escorted to the coast port of their embarkation by the two German
sergeants, whose service Brentham has taken over from the Stotts. Their
journey might be broken by a few days’ rest at Hangodi in the Nguru
country. Maud would like to see the scene of the tragedy and of Lucy’s
induction into African life. Lucy would like to pay a visit of
sentiment to John Baines’s grave and to live over again in a sense of
contrite reminiscence her brief experiences as a missionary’s wife. She
wants to put herself back in time to where the outlook seemed hopeless,
and realize the wide horizon of happiness which now seems open before
her.
So—an hour late, with all these last thoughts, musing reflections and
leave-takings—Halima is howling with grief because she must remain
behind—the caravan starts on its first day’s march. Lucy from delicacy
of constitution is unable to ride much, so she travels in a machila with
her baby. Maud bestrides a Maskat donkey and hopes when she returns
they will by that time have got horses safely through the tsetse belt,
into interior transport ... "you have so little initiative on a donkey,
it will never do anything unconventional." Ambrose being thought too
young to ride a donkey is handed over to his special guardian and chum,
a tall Manyamwezi porter who hoists him on to his broad shoulders. From
this elevation of six feet he surveys the landscape as the _safari_
swings along. Some German friend had given him the previous Christmas a
tin trumpet, and with blasts of this and shouts of glee he hails the
sight of game standing at gaze in the distance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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