ABSTRACT
A LITTLE Portuguese coasting steamer, wedged between ocean liners, is lying alongside the docks at Lourenço Marques. The time is about 11 p.m. on September 19th, 1917. All is dark on the boat. Two women missionaries, having said good-bye to friends who came to see them off, grope their way along the lower deck, amid little heaps of sleeping humanity—African, natives come from the Rand by train, who have been working in the mines of Johannesburg and are now returning to their own homes for a rest. The missionaries, preceded by a boy with a lantern, find their way to one of the little cabins set apart for white people. They nearly fall over a pig which haunts the passage, accompanying the vessel on all her coastal trips.
