G. B. Lancaster

“ The natives in their rags were cave-men, neolithic men, and Penderel, with centuries of civilisation and more than centuries of knowledge dividing him from them, looked on them as the white man has learned to look on an ignorant race which will presently dissolve and blow away on the wind of time. Passing shadows they were, these naked Masai and Kikuyu, quarrelling over their half-raw lumps of zebra flesh, but the white man was strong—strong and assured, the conqueror of the earth. ”

“ With a roar the huge animal lowered its head and charged blindly—charged, not at the man, but at the smell of him, a moving mountain of living clay, controlled by the senses only.
Penderel heard the beast snort at his shoulder as he swung round, and he tore uphill with the terror of death on him again. So, in the neolithic ages, had his own ancestors run from the brutes who were greater than they. So he and the Masai ran now, separated soon by the tangling scrub, but driven by the same sense of helpless fear. Scent of the mimosa blew again in Penderel's face. ”

“ The Masai never bury their dead. They lay them in open spaces for the seeking hyenas, and so the most cowardly of brutes becomes the sepulchre for one of the bravest of the races of men. No Masai slays a hyena; but to Penderel it was ever the foulest beast that moved, and he took his rifle now and disappeared among the rock-shadows with the thirst for killing on him. ”

“ Such things as the swamp on the plateau, the hippopotamus floating unthinkingly in the lake, the naked native with his arrow and bow, must go down before the tread of the white man. It was their destiny, and Penderel, grateful for the act of grace which had made him of the ruling race, felt in his pocket for the arrow-heads and the blue bead which would score again the difference between these people and himself. ”

“ Life was in its throes of beginning, with no God, no soul to it. Life was clay only—animated clay—so near to the earth that it heard the voices of the earth and breathed the breath of it.
Nearer crept the beast, until its blotched skin showed bristly in the moonlight, and Penderel, with the sweat breaking on him, backed away from it. Then, like a shot bolt, a zebra sprang across the clearing, with panting, sleek sides and its pink tongue lolling. Hard on its quarters flashed a great yellow lioness, and the hyenas seemed to wither up in the shadows as if they were not. ”

“ About him the grass-stalks stirred with a faint sigh, and Penderel, his imagination moved for the moment by this link leading back across the ages, laughed a little shamefacedly.
"You poor old Africa!" he said. "We're taking everything from you. This swamp will be another of your ramparts gone, and, in return for what I'm going to do to you, you offer me this blue bead. It is very pretty of you, my dear, and you mustn't mind if I give it to another lady now. You have had it probably two thousand years and more." ”

“ Threat and horror lurked behind every tree, in every running shadow, in every stir of a branch. Oppression was abroad, the hand of Nature against the animal, of animal against its kind, and of blind treachery and a weak ferocity against them all. ”

“ Until that plateau could be drained, the railway survey was held up indefinitely, and Penderel, having drawn blank seventeen times already, snapped his book shut and ran his keen eyes along the bank.
"Drive in where that little creek runs down, Mbomba," he commanded, in the mixed dialect which three years of inland East Africa had taught him; and the big man obeyed, thrusting through the reeds with a force that sent the muscles rippling along his shining limbs. ”

“ It was science and the determination of man against Nature, as always, and, also as always, it was man who had won out. Penderel flung himself down in the coarse cool grass and beat the earth softly with his palm. He had warred with this veiled Africa so long and so consistently that she had become a vital and a gallant enemy to him, and he rejoiced in each overthrow with a prick of compunction. ”

“ All the horror of the jungle life, of the animal who lives to kill and to be killed, descended on him, making him one with these pariahs, one with these slinking, deformed children of this land that was still veiled Africa. ”