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He told Perera of the business as though it was a jest — a jest to be told with white lips. ‘You should not have frighten de dog,’ said Perera, with poorly simulated hilarity.

The next two days, until the steamer came, were spent by Pollock in making a more effectual disposition of his possession. Overcoming his aversion to handling the thing, he went down to the river mouth and threw it into the sea-water, but by some miracle it escaped the crocodiles, and was cast up by the tide on the mud a little way up the river, to be found by an intelligent Arab half-breed, and offered for sale to Pollock and Perera as a curiosity, just on the edge of night. The native hung about in the brief twilight, making lower and lower offers, and at last, getting scared in some way by the evident dread these wise white men had for the thing, went off, and, passing Pollock’s shed, threw his burden in there for Pollock to discover in the morning.

At this Pollock got into a kind of frenzy. He would burn the thing. He went out straightway into the dawn, and had constructed a big pyre of brushwood before the heat of the day. He was interrupted by the hooter of the little paddle steamer from Monrovia to Bathurst, which was coming through the gap in the bar. ‘Thank Heaven!’ said Pollock, with infinite piety, when the meaning of the sound dawned upon him. With trembling hands he lit his pile of wood hastily, threw the head upon it, and went away to pack his portmanteau and make his adieux to Perera.

That afternoon, with a sense of infinite relief, Pollock watched the flat swampy foreshore of Suilyma grow small in the distance. The gap in the long line of white surge became narrower and narrower. It seemed to be closing in and cutting him off from his trouble. The feeling of dread and worry began to slip from him bit by bit. At Sulyma belief in Porroh malignity and Porroh magic had been in the air, his sense of Porroh had been vast, pervading, threatening, dreadful. Now manifestly the domain of Porroh was only a little place, a little black band between the sea and the blue cloudy Mendi uplands.

‘Good-bye, Porroh!’ said Pollock. ‘Good-bye — certainly not au revoir.’

The captain of the steamer came and leant over the rail beside him, and wished him good- evening, and spat at the froth of the wake in token of friendly ease.

‘I picked up a rummy curio on the beach this go,’ said the captain. ‘It’s a thing I never saw done this side of Indy before.’

‘What might that be?’ said Pollock.

‘Pickled ‘ed,’ said the captain.

‘What!‘ said Pollock.

“Ed — smoked. ‘Ed of one of those Porroh chaps, all ornamented with knife-cuts. Why! What’s up? Nothing? I shouldn’t have took you for a nervous chap. Green in the face. By gosh! you’re a bad sailor. All right, eh? Lord, how funny you went! … Well, this ‘ed I was telling you of is a bit rum in a way. I’ve got it, along with some snakes, in a jar of spirit in my cabin what I keeps for such curios, and I’m hanged if it don’t float upsy down. Hullo!’

Pollock had given an incoherent cry, and had his hands in his hair. He ran towards the paddle- boxes with a half-formed idea of jumping into the sea, and then he realised his position and turned back towards the captain.

‘Here!’ said the captain. ‘Jack Philips, just keep him off me! Stand off! No nearer, mister! What’s the matter with you? Are you mad?’

Pollock put his hand to his head. It was no good explaining. ‘I believe I am pretty nearly mad at times,’ he said. ‘It’s a pain I have here. Comes suddenly. You’ll excuse me, I hope.’

He was white and in a perspiration. He saw suddenly very clearly all the danger he ran of having his sanity doubted. He forced himself to restore the captain’s confidence, by answering his sympathetic inquiries, noting his suggestions, even trying a spoonful of neat brandy in his cheek, and, that matter settled, asking a number of questions about the captain’s private trade in curiosities. The captain described the head in detail. All the while Pollock was struggling to keep under a preposterous persuasion that the ship was as transparent as glass, and that he could distinctly see the inverted face looking at him from the cabin beneath his feet.