Belgian and Arab
Lieutenant Albert Werper had only the prestige of the name he had
dishonored to thank for his narrow escape from being cashiered. At first
he had been humbly thankful, too, that they had sent him to this
Godforsaken Congo post instead of court-martialing him, as he had so
justly deserved; but now six months of the monotony, the frightful
isolation and the loneliness had wrought a change. The young man
brooded continually over his fate. His days were filled with morbid selfpity,
which eventually engendered in his weak and vacillating mind a
hatred for those who had sent him here-- for the very men he had at first
inwardly thanked for saving him from the ignominy of degradation. He
regretted the gay life of Brussels as he never had regretted the sins which
had snatched him from that gayest of capitals, and as the days passed he
came to center his resentment upon the representative in Congo land of the
authority which had exiled him--his captain and immediate superior.