They do not try to conceal their
feelings, their vices, or their longings. They talk to the first
white stranger they meet of things which in the great cities a man
conceals even from his room-mate, and men they would not care to
know, and whom they would never meet in the fixed social pathways of
civilization, they take to their hearts as friends. They are too few
to be particular, they have no choice, and they ask no questions. It
is enough that the white man, like themselves, is condemned to
exile. They do not try to find solace in the thought that they are
the "foretrekkers" of civilization, or take credit to themselves
because they are the path-finders and the pioneers who bear the heat
and burden of the day. They are sorry for themselves, because they
know, more keenly than any outsider can know, how good is the life
they have given up, and how hard is the one they follow, but they do
not ask anyone else to be sorry. They would be very much surprised
if they thought you saw in their struggle against native and
Portuguese barbarism, fever, and savage tribes, a life of great good
and value, full of self-renunciation, heroism, and self-sacrifice.
On the day they boarded the _Kanzlar_ the pains of nostalgia were
sweeping over the respectable members of Chinde society like waves
of nausea, and tearing them. With a grim appreciation of their own
condition, they smiled mockingly at the ladies on the quarter-deck,
as you have seen prisoners grin through the bars; they were even
boisterous and gay, but their gayety was that of children at recess,
who know that when the bell rings they are going back to the desk.
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