[Following the Equator Part 7 by Mark Twain]@TWC D-Link bookFollowing the Equator Part 7 CHAPTER LXIV 10/24
There were indications that that man was fond of his anecdote; that it was his pet, his standby, his shot that never missed, his reputation-maker.
But he will never tell it again.
No doubt he will think of it sometimes, for that cannot well be helped; and then he will see a picture, and always the same picture--the double rank of dead men; the vacant deck stretching away in dimming perspective beyond them, the wide desert of smooth sea all abroad; the rim of the moon spying from behind a rag of black cloud; the remote top of the mizzenmast shearing a zigzag path through the fields of stars in the deeps of space; and this soft picture will remind him of the time that he sat in the midst of it and told his poor little tale and felt so lonesome when he got through. Fifty Indians and Chinamen asleep in a big tent in the waist of the ship forward; they lie side by side with no space between; the former wrapped up, head and all, as in the Indian streets, the Chinamen uncovered; the lamp and things for opium smoking in the center. A passenger said it was ten 2-ton truck loads of dynamite that lately exploded at Johannesburg.
Hundreds killed; he doesn't know how many; limbs picked up for miles around.
Glass shattered, and roofs swept away or collapsed 200 yards off; fragment of iron flung three and a half miles. It occurred at 3 p.m.; at 6, L65,000 had been subscribed.
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