“All right,” said the captain and he and the clerk walked to the box.

I am probably, thought the clerk, the least interested of all. Why am I walking to somebody else’s box? I am less interested than the Arabs, even, because they get paid for this. I get no more whether I look or don’t look, which is the source of all disinterest, he considered, because nothing comes of it.

He and the captain looked into the box at the same time, seeing well enough, saying nothing, because they did not understand anything there.

“Shoes?” said the clerk after a moment. “You see the shoes?” as if nothing on earth could be more puzzling.

“Why shoes on?” said the captain, sounding stupid. What was spoiling there spoiled for one moment more, shrunk together in all that rottenness, and then must have hit bottom.

The box shook with the scramble inside, with the cramp muscled pain, with the white sun like steel hitting into the eyes there so they screwed up like sphincters, and then the man inside screamed himself out of his box.

He leaped up blind, hands out or claws out, he leaped up in a foam of stink and screams, no matter what next but up It happened he touched the clerk first. The clerk was slow with disinterest. And when the man touched he found a great deal of final strength and with his hands clamped around the clerk’s neck got dragged out of the box because the clerk was dragging and the captain tried to help drag the clerk free. Before this man from the box let go they had to hit him twice on the back of the head with the wooden axe handle.

“I need a bath,” said the clerk.

“Do you have any gin at home?” asked the captain. “I thought perhaps if you had any gin at home…”

“Yes, yes,” said the clerk, “come along. You have the gin while I have the bath.” They walked down the main street of Okar which was simply called la rue, because the official Arab name was impossible for most of the Europeans and the European names of the street had changed much too often.