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Some got a wintry nod, others a summer smile. One high official who represented big interests got two minutes' talk and a drink. Then Julian jumped into his mule-cart, and drove away. He reflected with satisfaction on the quantity and quality of the greetings that morning. Meanwhile his Cape-boy coachman whipped up the mules and took him along the main street in style.
The mule-cart arrived; the lady of the party was put into it on a chair, and slowly bumped and rattled past the corner of Dundonald Street so named after the old sea-hero, who was, in his lifetime, full of projects for utilising this same pitch and up a pitch road, with a pitch gutter on each side.
Inch by inch they receded from the shore, dwindling every moment, until at length they seemed to be floating far in the very middle of the river. A more critical experiment awaited us; for our little mule-cart was but ill-fitted for the passage of so swift a stream.
Now, then, heave with those big shoulders of yours; tear and rip; splinter and smash; don't spare; the thing's got no friends. Use your feet, old chappie, if you want to; all's fair here. Faith, look at that worthy farmer toting up his mule-cart load of seaweed for manure!" He broke off into a roar of laughter, and hove a cushion right against the man's gaping mouth as we tore past.
If you do not mind my rough accommodation there is a room for you, and your man can pitch a tent in the garden." After some demur he accepted with gratitude, and a little later Savage and the native were sent off with a note to a man who hired out a mule-cart. "Now," I said when the gate had shut behind them, "will you tell me why you have come to Africa?" "Disaster," he replied.
Some Germans in his path, hearing the shouts that thundered after him in the night, drew their mule-cart across the pent-up passage-way down which he turned, and blocked the narrow road.
In the afternoon of the next day, when the triumphal services of Dedication were over, the Bishop was being driven to a farmhouse not very far distant. It was not till his mule-cart had almost reached home again that his driver ventured to question him. He had seemed rather preoccupied that driver all the dusty journey.
And do they trust a hireling more than you? and may he do what he likes with the horses? and do they pay him for this? They do. But I dare say that you may take the whip and guide the mule-cart if you like; they will permit that? Permit me! indeed they will not. Then, I said, may no one use the whip to the mules? Yes, he said, the muleteer. And is he a slave or a free man? A slave, he said.
"You deserve to be shot you!" said Cigarette, fiercely abusing herself as she put his head off her lap, and rose abruptly and shouted to a Tringlo, who was at some distance searching for the wounded. "Here is a Chasse-Marais with some breath in him," she said curtly, as the man with his mule-cart and his sad burden of half-dead, moaning, writhing frames drew near to her summons. "Put him in.
Go to it." He flung himself into a chair by the stove and drowsing after a while in a reactive sweep of exhaustion, awakened with a terrified jerk. A boy was banking the red-hot stove, his white face like and yet unlike Joan's. "Mr. O'Neill," he blurted with a boyish sob, "I I did it. I was driving the mule-cart up the path. Grogan told me not to but I I coaxed Tony.
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