Said one of them to the other:
'Hullo?'
Said the other: 'Hullo!'
They grunted together for a while. Then one pleasantly:
'Oh, I'm sorry for that! I thought I was going to have you under me
for a bit. Then you'll use the rest-house there?'
'I suppose so,' said the other. 'Do you happen to know if the roof's
on?'
Here a woman wailed aloud for her dervish spear which had gone adrift,
and I shall never know, except from the back pages of the Soudan
Almanack, what state that rest-house there is in.
The Soudan Administration, by the little I heard, is a queer service. It
extends itself in silence from the edges of Abyssinia to the swamps of
the Equator at an average pressure of one white man to several thousand
square miles. It legislates according to the custom of the tribe where
possible, and on the common sense of the moment when there is no
precedent. It is recruited almost wholly from the army, armed chiefly
with binoculars, and enjoys a death-rate a little lower than its own
reputation. It is said to be the only service in which a man taking
leave is explicitly recommended to get out of the country and rest
himself that he may return the more fit to his job.
