"
He got a package of American cigarettes out of his pocket,
selected one and lighted it with a fragment of the box thrust
into the fire.
"That's where Tavor was the last year. When the ambulance picked
him up, he'd crawled around the Horn in a Siamese tramp."
He paused.
"Great people, the English; no fag-out to them. Look how Scott
went on in the Antarctic with his feet frozen . . . It's in the
blood; it was in Tavor.
"I sat there that winter night in my room in New York while he
told me all about it.
"It was morning when he finished - the milk wagons were on the
street, - and then, he added, quite simply, as though it were a
matter of no importance
"'But I can't go back, Barclay, old man; my tramping's over.
That was no fit I had on the dock.'
"He looked at me with his dead eyes in his tan-colored plaster
face. You've heard of the hemp-chewers and the betel-chewers;
well, all that's baby-food to a thing they've got in the Shamo.
It's a shredded root, bitter like cactus, and when you chew it,
you don't get tired and you don't get hot . . . you go on and you
don't know what the temperature is.
Pages:
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244