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forest seen at once. Blair’s problem, the African said, was that he lived only in the waking world. That was why he needed maps, because he saw so little.
    Blair claimed he rarely dreamed, and this sent the African into paroxysms of laughter. Only a man without memory couldn’t dream. What about Blair’s parents? Even if they were far away, he could visit them in dreams. Blair said he had no memory of his parents. His father was anonymous, his mother was buried at sea. He was about four then. How could he have any memories?
    The African offered to cure him so he would have memories and dreams.
    Blair said, No!
    He opened his eyes. On his lap was a Temperance pamphlet. “Drink drowns all feelings of Sorrow and Shame! Drink turns the Labourer into the Sluggard, the Loving Father into the Prodigal! Does this sound Familiar to You?”
    It certainly did. He would never get back to the Gold Coast. With open eyes, with the clarity of fever, he saw that Hannay’s promise was like a bauble dangled above a child’s hand. Missionaries were the rage, and none of them would accept a man with Blair’s reputation as amember of his team, no matter what the Bishop said, and Hannay knew it. So all that was really being offered was the hundred and fifty pounds, one hundred of which was already owed him. Which left whatever he could steal from expenses.
    Wigan? A single minute spent there was money wasted. Blair thought he might even forget the hundred pounds that was owed. He could stay on the train to Liverpool and catch the first steamer to West Africa. The problem was that as soon as he set foot in the Gold Coast, the consulate would have him put back on board the ship. If he went into the bush to find his daughter, soldiers would follow. They had before. In which case she was better off without him.
    He saw her dancing on a mat, winding and unwinding herself within her mother’s golden cloth back in his house in Kumasi. The girl glowed from the threads. An entire language was spoken by the hands during a dance, and her hands said: No, go away. Stop, stay there. Come here. Closer, closer. Dance with me.
    He had no talent as a dancer, whereas Ashanti seemed to have extra joints in their bodies just for dancing. She would cover her mouth because he was so clumsy. He watched her dance and wondered, Where am I in her? She had distilled everything that was decent in him and he wondered what she had done with all the rest. Perhaps there was some other child, black on the inside. It wasn’t the gold that made her shine; the glow came from herself. If she was at all a mirror of him, why was the mirror brighter?
    “The prostitute, at least, plays a traditional role in society. She is a fallen woman, perhaps weak, perhaps depraved, usually ignorant and poor, pawning her greatest prize for a few coins. A pathetic creature but understandable. The pit girls of Wigan, however, are a far greater threat for two reasons.” Earnshaw paused.
    His eyes closed; trying to sleep, Blair listened to the ties passing underneath to the endless formula “wiganwiganwiganwigan,” over a trestle bridge “africafricafrica,” then again “wiganwiganwigan.”
    “For two reasons,” Earnshaw went on. “First, because she has traduced her very sexuality. She has denied it and perverted it. A prostitute is, at least, a woman. But what is a pit girl? I have seen pictures of them for sale throughout England. Freaks wearing mannish pants, looking at the camera with mannish stares. The reaction of any decent woman is repulsion and disgust. Indeed, the instinctive reaction even of fallen women is the same.
    “The second reason is that pit girls do the work that should be done by men. There is no other instance in industrial England of women shouldering labor meant for the stronger, more responsible sex. By doing so, the pit girl steals food not only from men but from the families of those men. Wives and children are the victims, a suffering to which mineowners