‘You must be thankful your wife’s arrived safely, Major Scobie. Those poor people over there. Forty days in the boats. It shakes one up to think of it.’ ‘It’s the damned narrow channel between Dakar and Brazil that does it every time,’ Perrot said. The doctor came gloomily out on to the verandah. Everything over the river was still and blank again: the torches were all out. The light burning on the small jetty below the bungalow showed a few feet of dark water sliding by. A piece of wood came out of the dark and floated so slowly through the patch of light that Scobie counted twenty before it
...more
