'And now for
this stupid scoundrel--' 'Your success in Europe is assured in any
case,' I affirmed steadily. I did not want to have the throttling of
him, you understand--and indeed it would have been very little use for
any practical purpose. I tried to break the spell--the heavy, mute spell
of the wilderness--that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast
by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of
gratified and monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had
driven him out to the edge of the forest, to the bush, towards the gleam
of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this
alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted
aspirations. And, don't you see, the terror of the position was not in
being knocked on the head--though I had a very lively sense of that
danger, too--but in this, that I had to deal with a being to whom I
could not appeal in the name of anything high or low. I had, even like
the niggers, to invoke him--himself--his own exalted and incredible
degradation. There was nothing either above or below him, and I knew
it. He had kicked himself loose of the earth. Confound the man! he had
kicked the very earth to pieces.
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