Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 31, 2025
From the waist upwards he remained shadowy, with a row of buttons gleaming up to the vague outline of his chin. "You may thank Captain Whalley for this," Mr. Van Wyk said curtly to him before turning away. The lamps on the veranda flung three long squares of light between the uprights far over the grass. A bat flitted before his face like a circling flake of velvety blackness.
Van Wyk . . . Indeed, Mr. Van Wyk . . . For the future, Mr. Van Wyk" and by the suffusion of blood Massy's vast bilious face acquired an unnatural orange tint, out of which the disconcerted coal-black eyes shone in an extraordinary manner. "Nonsense. I am tired of this. I wonder you have the impudence to come alongside my jetty as if I had it made for your convenience alone."
Van Wyk disliked littleness of every kind, but there was nothing small about that man, and in the exemplary regularity of many trips an intimacy had grown up between them, a warm feeling at bottom under a kindly stateliness of forms agreeable to his fastidiousness. They kept their respective opinions on all worldly matters. His other convictions Captain Whalley never intruded.
He moaned at great length apologetically; the words conspiracy, plot, envy, came out prominently, whined with greater energy. Mr. Van Wyk, examining with a faint grimace his polished finger-nails, would say, "H'm. Very unfortunate," and turn his back on him.
Van Wyk would descend the steps of the veranda and stroll over the grass plot in front of his house, down to the waterside, with a frown on his white brow. "You've been laid up after an accident, I presume."
Van Wyk, whose feeling of outraged love had been translated into a form of struggle with nature, understood very well that, for that man whose whole life had been conditioned by action, there could exist no other expression for all the emotions; that, to voluntarily cease venturing, doing, enduring, for his child's sake, would have been exactly like plucking his warm love for her out of his living heart.
Van Wyk detected a faint smile of assurance flitting under the heavy mustache. Later on Captain Whalley would now and then consent to dine "at the house." He could even be induced to drink a glass of wine. "Don't think I am afraid of it, my good sir," he explained. "There was a very good reason why I should give it up."
The time of course would have to come, and he trusted to his Maker to provide a manner of going out of which he need not be ashamed. For the rest he hoped he would live to a hundred if need be: other men had been known; it would be no miracle. He expected no miracles. The pronounced, argumentative tone caused Mr. Van Wyk to raise his head and look at him steadily.
His desire to make his new excursion amid the African wilds is no stronger than that of "Groot Willem" Van Wyk, who ever since his return from the last expedition, six months before, has been anxious to undertake another in quest of game such as he has not yet encountered. Our readers will search in vain around the camp-fire for little Jan and Klaas.
In the wisdom of men he had not so much confidence. The disposition had to be helped up pretty sharply sometimes, he admitted. They might be silly, wrongheaded, unhappy; but naturally evil no. There was at bottom a complete harmlessness at least . . . "Is there?" Mr. Van Wyk snapped acrimoniously. Captain Whalley laughed at the interjection, in the good humor of large, tolerating certitude.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking