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His countenance was full of vacant restlessness; and as he stared at you through his glasses, with his silvery gray hair hanging about his ears and neck in shaggy points, rolling a large quid of tobacco in his mouth, and dangling a little whip in his right hand, you saw the index to his office.
The Indians came down the Christina in their canoes or overland, bringing their packs of beaver, otter, and deer skins, their tobacco, corn, and venison to exchange for the cloth, blankets, tools, and gaudy trinkets that pleased them.
One would think my troubles for that year had been ended; but in January 1662, one Everard, a Justice of Peace in Westminster, ere I was stirring, sent a Serjeant and thirty four musqueteers for me to White-Hall: he had twice that night seized about sixty persons, supposed fanaticks, very despicable persons, many whereof were aged, some were water-bearers, and had been Parliament-soldiers; others, of ordinary callings: all these were guarded unto White-Hall, into a large room, until day-light, and then committed to the Gate-House; I was had into the guard-room, which I thought to be hell; some therein were sleeping, others swearing, others smoaking tobacco.
He caused Pere Merlier to be taken to the chamber which had served as Dominique's prison. The old man demanded tobacco and began to smoke. Upon his impassible face not the slightest emotion was visible. But when alone, as he smoked, he shed two big tears which ran slowly down his cheeks. His poor, dear child, how she was suffering! Francoise remained in the middle of the courtyard.
"If Henry were only here, or even Charles, he should be horsewhipped, pitched out of the house. To sleep with his dirty clothes on my sofa! I'm glad it's to be sold. I never could touch the filthy thing again. Then his pipe! Good heavens, what is to be done? The abominable wretch! I smell the tobacco now, worse than an Irishman's. The smoke will be all through the house.
He was smoking slowly, holding his index and middle fingers over the pipe-bowl to prevent the tobacco burning too quickly, for he had only a couple of pipefuls left. He was thinking that to-morrow evening the pouch would be empty, when, from somewhere in the forest near by, there came a sound which brought him to his feet and the two porters up on hands and knees like listening dogs.
"There's one great consolation in returning to civilised life," he said, strolling up to the group of friends as they returned from a walk round the island. "That is tobacco! Fate can't do much harm to the man who smokes." And he accepted a cigarette from Mr. Fane. "Now," he continued, "fortune may buffet me as she pleases; I do not care. I have not smoked for four months.
It appears that when the waggon was coming down to Pretoria in charge of the interpreter, it was outspanned one day outside the borders of Lo Bengula's country, when some Kafirs Bechuanas, I think came up, asked for some tobacco, and fell into conversation with the driver, remarking that he had come up with a full waggon, and now he went down with an empty one.
If they see a foreigner very well made or particularly handsome, they will say "'tis pity he is not an Englishman." It is also somewhat amusing, at the present day, to find a German elaborately explaining to his countrymen the mysteries of tobacco- smoking, as they appeared to his unsophisticated eyes in England.
They used to place wet tobacco leaf and the leaves of certain plants among the embers in order that the smoke might be more pungent. When the hunt was over, the parties would return to the coast to dispose of all they carried home, and to receive all they had earned during their absence.
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