A HANDFUL OF DUST

It did not come easily to him to realize that he was an explorer. It was barely a fortnight ago that he had become one. Even the presence in the hold of two vast crates, bearing his name and labelled NOT WANTED ON THE VOYAGE--crates containing such new and unfamiliar possessions as a medicine chest, an automatic shot gun, camping equipment, pack saddles, a cinema camera, dynamite, disinfectants, a collapsible canoe, filters, ti

Tony had spent very little of his life abroad. At the age of eighteen, before going to the University, he had been boarded for the summer with an elderly gentleman near Tours, with the intention that he should learn the language. (... a grey stone house surrounded by vines. There was a stuffed spaniel in the bathroom. The old man had called it `Stop' because it was chic at that time to give dogs an English name. Tony had bicycled along straight, white roads to visit the chвteaux; he carried rolls of bread and cold veal tied to the back of the machine, and the soft dust seeped into them through the paper and gritted against his teeth. There were two other English boys there, so he had learned little French. One of them fell in love and the other got drunk for the first time on sparkling Vouvray at a fair that had been held in the town. That evening Tony won a live pigeon at a tombola; he set it free and later saw it being recaptured by the proprietor of the stall with a butterfly net ...) Later he had gone to central Europe for a few weeks with a friend from Balliol. (They had found themselves suddenly rich with the falling mark and had lived in unaccustomed grandeur in the largest hotel suites. Tony had bought a fur for a few shillings and given it to a girl in Munich who spoke no English.) Later still his honeymoon with Brenda in a villa, lent to them, on the Italian Riviera. (... cypress and olive trees, a do

Thus Tony had no very ambitious ideas about travel, and when he decided to go abroad his first act was to call at a tourist agency and come away laden with a sheaf of brightly coloured prospectuses, which advertised commodious cruises among palm trees, Negresses and ruined arches. He was going away because it seemed to be the conduct expected of a husband in his circumstances, because the associations of Hetton were for the time poisoned for him, because he wanted to live for a few months away from people who would know him or Brenda, in places where there was no expectation of meeting her or Beaver or Reggie St. Cloud at every corner he frequented, and with this feeling of evasion dominant in his mind, he took the prospectuses to read at the Greville Club. He had been a member there for some years, but rarely used it; his resignation was only postponed by his recurrent omission to cancel the banker's order for his subscription. Now that Brat's and Brown's were distasteful to him he felt thankful that he had kept on with the Greville. It was a club of intellectual flavour, composed of dons, a few writers and the officials of museums and learned societies. It had a tradition of garrulity so that he was not surprised when, seated in an armchair and surrounded with his illustrated folders, he was addressed by a member unknown to him who asked if he were thinking of going away. He was more surprised when he looked up and studied the questioner.

Dr. Messinger, though quite young, was bearded, and Tony knew few young men with beards. He was also very small, very sunburned and prematurely bald; the ruddy, brown of his face and hands ended abruptly along the line of his forehead, which rose in a pale dome; he wore steel-rimmed spectacles and there was something about his blue serge suit which suggested that the wearer found it uncomfortable.

Tony admitted that he was considering taking a cruise.

``I am going away shortly,'' said Dr. Messinger, ``to Brazil. At least it may be Brazil or Dutch Guiana. One ca

``No, I don't think I do.''

``You are fortunate. That man has just robbed me of two hundred pounds and some machine guns.''

``Machine guns?''

``Yes, I travel with one or two, mostly for show you know, or for trade, and they are not easy to buy nowadays. Have you ever tried?''

``No.''

``Well you can take it from me that it's not easy. You can't just walk into a shop and order machine guns.''

``No, I suppose not.''

``Still at a pinch I can do without them. But I can't do without the two hundred pounds.''

Tony had open on his knee a photograph of the harbour at Agadir. Dr. Messinger looked over his shoulder at it. ``Ah yes,'' he said, ``interesting little place. I expect you know Zingerman there?''

``No, I've not been there yet.''

``You'd like him--a very straight fellow. He used to do quite a lot, selling ammunition to the Atlas caids before the pacification. Of course it was easy money with the capitulations, but he did it better than most of them. I believe he's ru

It was one o'clock and the room was begi

``We'd better go up and lunch,'' said Dr. Messinger. Tony had not intended to lunch at the Greville but there was something compelling about the invitation; moreover, he had no other engagement.

Dr. Messinger lunched off apples and a rice pudding. (``I have to be very careful what I eat,'' he said.) Tony ate cold steak and kidney pie. They sat at a window in the big dining room upstairs. The places round them were soon filled with members, who even carried the tradition of general conversation so far as to lean back in their chairs and chat over their shoulders from table to table--a practice which greatly hindered the already imperfect service. But Tony remained oblivious to all that was said, absorbed in what Dr. Messinger was telling him.

``... You see there has been a continuous tradition about the City since the first explorers of the sixteenth century. It has been variously allocated, sometimes down in Matto Grosso, sometimes on the upper Orinoco in what is now Venezuela. I myself used to think it lay somewhere on the Uraricuera. I was out there last year and it was then that I established contact with the Pie-wie Indians; no white man had ever visited them and got out alive. And it was from the Pie-wies that I learned where to look. None of them had ever visited the City, of course, but they knew about it. Every Indian between Ciudad Bolivar and Para knows about it. But they won't talk. Queer people. But I became blood-brother with a Pie-wie--interesting ceremony. They buried me up to the neck in mud and all the women of the tribe spat on my head. Then we ate a toad and a snake and a beetle and after that I was a blood-brother--well, he told me that the City lies between the head waters of the Courantyne and the Takutu. There's a vast tract of unexplored country there. I've often thought of visiting it.