He advanced with the kind of shout one would
hurl at a dog, and smote the policeman to the earth with the stout
stick that the peculiar social atmosphere of Hayti had disposed him
to carry. By the local standard his blow was probably a trivial
one, but the moral effect of his indignant pallor and a sort of
rearing tallness about him on these occasions was always very
considerable. Unhappily these characteristics could have no effect
on a second negro policeman who was approaching the affray from
behind, and he felled Benham by a blow on the shoulder that was
meant for the head, and with the assistance of his colleague
overpowered him, while the youth and the woman vanished.
The two officials dragged Benham in a state of vehement protest to
the lock-up, and only there, in the light of a superior officer's
superior knowledge, did they begin to realize the grave fact of his
British citizenship.
The memory of the destruction of the Haytien fleet by a German
gunboat was still vivid in Port-au-Prince, and to that Benham owed
it that in spite of his blank refusal to compensate the man he had
knocked over, he was after two days of anger, two days of extreme
insanitary experience, and much meditation upon his unphilosophical
hastiness, released.
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