Then he asked me to his room, which was in the main building of the station. He struck a match, and I perceived that this young aristocrat had not only a silver-mounted dressing-case but also a whole candle all to himself. Just at that time the manager was the only man supposed to have any right to candles. Native mats covered the clay walls; a collection of spears, assegais, shields, knives was hung up in trophies. The business entrusted to this fellow was the making of bricks⁠—so I had been informed; but there wasn’t a fragment of a brick anywhere in the station, and he had been there more than a year⁠—waiting. It seems he could not make bricks without something, I don’t know what⁠—straw maybe. Anyway, it could not be found there and as it was not likely to be sent from Europe, it did not appear clear to me what he was waiting for. An act of special creation perhaps. However, they were all waiting⁠—all the sixteen or twenty pilgrims of them⁠—for something; and upon my word it did not seem an uncongenial occupation, from the way they took it, though the only thing that ever came to them was disease⁠—as far as I could see. They beguiled the time by backbiting and intriguing against each other in a foolish kind of way.