'Truly interesting,' Lexington said.
The rubber-booted men were busy catching the rest of the pigs, and one after another the animals were hooked on to the moving wire and carried up through the roof, crying loudly as they went.
At this point, while Lexington was staring upwards at the last pig, a man in rubber boots came up quietly behind him and put one end of a chain around the youth's own leg, hooking the other end of the chain to the moving belt. The next moment, before he had time to realise what was happening, Lexington was pulled off his feet and dragged backwards along the floor of the hut.
'Stop!' he cried. 'Stop everything! My leg is caught!'
But nobody seemed to hear him, and five seconds later the unhappy young man was pulled off the floor and lifted up through the open roof of the hut upside down, hanging like a fish.
'Help!' he shouted. 'Help! There's been a mistake! Stop the engine! Let me down!'
The guide took a cigarette out of his mouth and looked up at the youth hanging from the chain, but he said nothing. The men in rubber boots were already on their way out to collect the next pigs.
'Oh, save me!' Lexington cried. 'Let me down! Please let me down!' But he was now nearing the top floor of the building, where the moving belt entered a large hole in the wall, a kind of doorway without a door; and there, waiting to greet him, in dark-stained rubber clothes, the slaughterer stood.
Lexington saw him only from upside down, and very quickly, but he noticed the expression of absolute peace on the man's face, the cheerfulness in his eyes and the little smile. All these things gave him hope.
'Hi, there!' the man said, smiling.
'Quick! Save me!' Lexington cried.
'With pleasure,' the man said, and taking Lexington gently by one ear with his left hand, he raised his right hand and quickly cut the boy's throat with a knife.
The belt moved on. Lexington went with it. Everything was still upside down and the blood was pouring out of his throat and getting into his eyes, but he could still see a little. He thought he was in a very long room, and at the far end of the room there was a great smoking pot of water, and there were dark figures half hidden in the steam. These figures were dancing round the edge of the pot and they were holding long sticks. The belt seemed to be travelling right over the top of the pot and the pigs seemed to be dropping down one by one into the boiling water and one of the pigs seemed to be wearing long white gloves on its front feet.
Suddenly Lexington started to feel very sleepy, but it was not until his good strong heart had pumped the last drop of blood from his body that he passed out of this, the best of all possible worlds, into the next.
An African Story
In East Africa there was a young man who was a hunter, who loved the plains and the valleys and the cool nights on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. In September 1939 war had begun in Europe and he had travelled over the country to Nairobi and was training to be a pilot with the RAF. He was doing quite well, but after five weeks he got into trouble because he took his plane up and flew off in the direction of Nakuru to look at the wild animals when he should have been practising spins and turns. While he was flying there, he thought he saw some rare animals, became excited and flew down low to get a better view of them. He flew too low and damaged the wing, but he managed to get back to the airfield in Nairobi.
After six weeks, he was allowed to make his first cross-country flight on his own, and he flew off from Nairobi to a little town called Eldoret two thousand metres up in the Highlands. But again he was unlucky; this time he had engine failure on the way, due to water in the fuel tanks. He kept calm and made a beautiful forced landing without damaging his aircraft, not far from a little hut which stood alone on the highland plain with no other building in sight. That is lonely country up there.
He walked over to the hut, and there he found an old man, living alone, with only a small garden of sweet potatoes, some brown chickens and a black cow.
The old man was kind to him. He gave him food and milk and a place to sleep, and the pilot stayed with him for two days and two nights, until a rescue plane from Nairobi found his aircraft, landed beside it, found out what was wrong, went away and came back with clean petrol which enabled him to take off and return.
But during his stay, the old man, who was lonely and had seen no one for many months, was glad of his company and of the opportunity to talk. He talked a lot and the pilot listened. He talked of his lonely life, of the lions that came in the night and of the elephant that lived over the hill in the west, of the heat of the days and of the silence that came with the cold at midnight.
On the second night he talked about himself. He told a long, strange story, and as he told it, it seemed to the pilot that the old man was lifting a great weight off his shoulders by telling it. When he had finished, he said that he had never told that to anyone before, and that he would never tell it to anyone again, but the story was so strange that the pilot wrote it down as soon as he got back to Nairobi. He wrote it in his own words, although he had never written a story before. Of course he made mistakes because he didn't know any of the tricks that writers use, but when he had finished writing he left a rare and powerful story. We found the story in his suitcase two weeks later when we were packing his things after he had been killed in training. The pilot seemed to have had no relatives and because he was my friend, I took the story and looked after it for him. This is what he wrote.
The old man came out of the door into the bright sunshine, and for a moment he leaned on his stick and looked around him. He stood with his head on one side, looking up, listening for the noise which he thought he had heard.
He was small and over seventy years old, although he looked nearer eighty-five because of illness. His face was covered with grey hair, and when he moved his mouth, he moved it only on one side of his face. On his head, indoors or outdoors, he wore a dirty white hat.
He stood quite still in the bright sunshine, his eyes almost closed, listening for the noise.
Yes, it was again. He looked towards the small wooden hut which stood a hundred metres away in the field. This time there was no doubt about it; the cry of a dog, the high, sharp cry of pain which a dog gives when he is in great danger. Twice more it came and this time the noise was more like a scream. The note was higher and sharper, as if it were torn from some small place inside the body.
The old man turned and walked across the grass towards the wooden hut where Judson lived, pushed open the door and went in.
The small white dog was lying on the floor and Judson was standing over it, his legs apart, his black hair falling all over his long face, sweating through his dirty white shirt. His mouth hung open in a strange lifeless way, as if his jaw were too heavy for him, and there was spit down the middle of his chin. He stood there looking at the small white dog which was lying on the floor, and with one hand he was slowly twisting his left ear; in the other hand he held a heavy wooden stick.
The old man ignored Judson and went down on his knees beside his dog and gently moved his thin hands over its body. The dog lay still, looking up at him with sad eyes. Judson did not move. He was watching the dog and the man.