And in the daytime
came certain flies, extremely clever and noxious about one's wrist and
ankle. Captain Gerilleau, who was Holroyd's sole distraction from these
physical distresses, developed into a formidable bore, telling the simple
story of his heart's affections day by day, a string of anonymous women,
as if he was telling beads. Sometimes he suggested sport, and they shot at
alligators, and at rare intervals they came to human aggregations in the
waste of trees, and stayed for a day or so, and drank and sat about, and,
one night, danced with Creole girls, who found Holroyd's poor elements of
Spanish, without either past tense or future, amply sufficient for their
purposes. But these were mere luminous chinks in the long grey passage of
the streaming river, up which the throbbing engines beat. A certain
liberal heathen deity, in the shape of a demi-john, held seductive court
aft, and, it is probable, forward.
But Gerilleau learnt things about the ants, more things and more, at this
stopping-place and that, and became interested in his mission.
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