In the first place, there was the old standing trouble about the Shuwa Patrol; in the second, the truculent Chiboks were waxing insolent again, and their young men were regarding not the words of their elders concerning Sir Garnet Wolseley, and what happened, long, long ago, after the battle of Chibok Hill.
Thirdly, the price of grain had risen to six shillings a saa, and famine threatened; fourthly, the Shehu and Shuwa sheiks were quarrelling again; and, fifthly, there was a very bad smallpox ju-ju abroad in the land (a secret society whose "secret" was to offer His Majesty’s liege subjects the choice between being infected with smallpox, or paying heavy blackmail to the society).
Lastly, there was acrimonious correspondence with the All-Wise Ones (of the Secretariat in "Aiki Square" at Zungeru), who, as usual, knew better than the man on the spot, and bade him do either the impossible or the disastrous.
And across
all the Harmattan was blowing hard, that terrible wind that carries the Saharan
dust a hundred miles to sea, not so much as a sand-storm, but as a mist or fog
of dust as fine as flour, filling the eyes, the lungs, the pores of the skin,
the nose and throat; getting into the locks of rifles, the works of watches and
cameras, defiling water, food and everything else; rendering life a burden and
a curse.
The fact, moreover, that thirty days' weary travel over burning desert, across oceans of loose wind-blown sand and prairies of burnt grass, through breast-high swamps, and across unbridged boatless rivers, lay between him and Kano, added nothing to his satisfaction.
For, in spite of all,
satisfaction there was, inasmuch as Kano was rail-head, and the beginning of
the first stage of the journey Home.
That but another
month lay between him and "leave out of Africa," kept George Lawrence
on his feet. From that wonderful and romantic Red City, Kano, sister of
Timbuktu, the train would take him, after a three days' dusty journey, to the
rubbish-heap called Lagos, on the Bight of Benin of the wicked West African
Coast.
There he would embark
on the good ship Appam, greet her commander, Captain Harrison, and sink into a
deck chair with that glorious sigh of relief, known in its perfection only to
those weary ones who turn their backs upon the Outposts and set their faces
towards Home.
Meantime, for George Lawrence—disappointment, worry,
frustration, anxiety, heat, sand-flies, mosquitoes, dust, fatigue, fever,
dysentery, malarial ulcers, and that great depression which comes of monotony
indescribable, weariness unutterable, and loneliness unspeakable.
https://www.amazon.es/Beau-Geste-Percival-Christopher-Wren-ebook/dp/B01CELZ2SC
AND, OF COURSE, DO NOT FORGET THE FILM, WITH GARY COOPER!
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