_descriptions of three new birds from the belgian congo._ by james p. chapin. bulletin of the american museum of natural history, vol. xxxiv, art. xvi, pp. 509-513 _new york, october 20, 1915._ =article xvi.=--descriptions of three new birds from the belgian congo. by james p. chapin. the whole of the large collection of birds secured by the congo expedition of the american museum of natural history during the years 1909 to 1915, under the leadership of mr. herbert lang, has now arrived safely at the museum. it is composed of material gathered all across the belgian congo, from boma on the west to aba in the northeastern corner, but the greater part from the more remote territory between stanley falls and the enclave of lado, including the dense equatorial forests of the ituri, nepoko, and bomokandi, and the high-grass and bush country of the uele district to the north and northeast. of the relatively small number of zoölogical expeditions that have passed through and collected in these regions, none has ever before been able to make such a prolonged stay, and the varied zoölogical results of this expedition are surely of the highest scientific interest. the ornithological collection contains in the neighborhood of six thousand skins, and represents some 600 different species, a number of them of course new to science. these it is our purpose to describe as promptly as possible in this bulletin, before taking up the greater work of a general report on all the forms collected, with more extended notes on their distribution, habits, food, and nests. descriptions of the first three new forms follow: =chætura melanopygia= sp. nov. related to _c. stictilæma_, but much larger, with feathers of upper breast more heavily margined with blackish, and without any trace of a light rump-band. description of type, collector's no. 4986 congo exp. a. m. n. h., [male] ad. avakubi, ituri district, belgian congo, aug. 15, 1913. upper parts brownish-black (chætura-black, ridgw.) becoming black on wings and tail, with faint violet and green reflections (green on freshly molted feathers). ear coverts drab, bordered with fuscous-black; feathers of throat pale smoke-gray, margined with fuscous, those of upper breast similar, but heavily bordered with fuscous-black, consequently with a very pronounced "scaly" appearance; lower breast growing darker, so that the dark borders are less conspicuous, and the feathering of the belly completely fuscous-black with slight oily gloss. under wing coverts mouse-gray with darker edges, flanks and under tail-coverts black with slight greenish gloss. tail slightly rounded. iris dark brown, bill black, feet bluish, shading to dusky brown on tips of toes and claws. sexual organs enlarged. length (skin) 145 mm.; wing 164; tail 49.5; bill (exposed culmen), 7.5; metatarsus 13. only one specimen secured, out of two or three of these swifts that were flying about over the ituri river, in company with several examples of _chætura cassini_. in spite of our long stay in this region, the species was not again positively recognized; but _chætura cassini_, _c. stictilæma_ and _c. sabinei_ were all of common occurrence there. =apaloderma minus= sp. nov. resembling _apaloderma narina_, but decidedly smaller, of different coloration, and with bill less swollen. the serration of the maxilla is less pronounced. the adult male of _a. minus_ is distinguished by the bluer hue of the forehead, throat, and upper breast, which show in certain lights deep violet reflections, and by the more scarlet, less crimson color of the remaining underparts. in life the naked areas on the cheeks are bright yellow, whereas in _a. narina_ they are light green. the adult female differs in the more tawny or ochraceous coloration of the breast, which is grayish in this sex of _a. narina_, although sometimes washed with light brown on the upper breast. a greenish gloss on the upper breast is more common in females of _a. narina_. in juvenal plumage both species are entirely buff below, the feathers more or less tipped with dusky. type: collector's no. 4983. congo exp. a. m. n. h. [male] ad. avakubi ituri district, belgian congo, august 13, 1913. _description of adult male_ (type).--throat, upper breast, lores and forehead glossy wall-green, in certain lights with violet reflections; upper tail-coverts much the same, but nape and back brilliant peacock-green. lower breast, sides, belly, and under tail-coverts bright scarlet-red; feathering of legs dusky, with faint green gloss and slightly bordered with whitish. primaries fuscous-black, the outer ones margined with white and the inner ones white at the base. alula and primary-coverts blackish; lesser wing-coverts blackish, broadly margined with green; middle coverts with less green and vermiculated with white. greater coverts and secondaries blackish vermiculated with white, the former narrowly edged with green, the secondaries only very faintly. three middle pairs of rectrices blackish, slightly glossed with violet-blue and margined with green; outer three pairs white, with bases black faintly glossed with blue, this blackish color extending out furthest on inner webs, and finally breaking up into small dusky spots. iris red-brown; distal portion of bill light greenish gray, base of bill and two naked patches beneath eye light cadmium-yellow, naked skin above eye lemon-yellow; bare skin of foreneck (covered in life by plumage) light blue; feet pale pink. length (skin) 254 mm.; length of bill (culmen from base) 18 mm.; height of bill at nostril 9.5 mm.; greatest width of maxilla, near gape, 16 mm.; wing (measured with dividers) 113 mm.; tail 146 mm. in some of the other male specimens the green borders on the secondaries are lacking, and the exact intensity of the white vermiculation is of course variable. the measurements of a series of 11 adult males are: bill, 17-18.5 mm.; wing, 108-115.5; tail, 136.5-151. this is smaller than any _apaloderma_ heretofore described. _adult female._ crown, back, and rump brilliant peacock-green, upper tail-coverts viridian. lores, forehead, and ear-coverts more brownish; throat and upper breast snuff-brown, sometimes with glossy green at sides of neck or a few narrow green borders on the chest. lower breast cinnamon, sometimes finely barred with dusky; belly somewhat lighter and rosier than that of male; feathering of legs dusky. tail similar to that of male; but the vermiculation on the wing-coverts and secondaries is very much finer, and light ochraceous-buff, not white. iris red-brown; naked cheek-patches lemon-yellow, base of bill slightly deeper yellow; culmen dusky, bill light green below; feet flesh-color, claws gray. measurements of three adult females: bill (culmen from base), 17-17.5 mm.; wing 104.5-113 mm.; tail, 140-149 mm. an _immature male_ has the green of the upper breast broken by irregular bars of cinnamon. the lower breast is cinnamon mixed with rose, and barred at the sides with green, and shades to light scarlet-red on belly and under tail-coverts. the greater wing-coverts and three inner secondaries bear each a large spot of light ochraceous buff, extending across the whole width of the innermost secondary, and most of the secondaries are vermiculated or speckled on their outer webs with buff. just behind the eye there is a small spot of white, and the lower edge of the ear-coverts is marked by a buff line. iris dark brown; maxilla dusky, but its base greenish-yellow like the naked cheek-patches, mandible light yellowish-green, with light-gray tip; feet pinkish. bill, 18.5 mm.; wing, 108; tail, 139. a _nestling_ ([male]), with tail only 25 mm. long, is of a yellower green above (calliste green); lores, forehead and entire underparts cinnamon-buff, the downy feathers slightly tipped with dusky except on abdomen. the wing-coverts and inner secondaries bear large spots of buff. iris brownish-gray; bill very light bluish-gray, its base and corners of mouth greenish-yellow; feet pale flesh-color, claws gray. the spots on the inner secondaries, in the first plumage, appear to be much larger in the case of _a. minus_ than with _a. narina_, for an immature female specimen of the latter shows only rounded spots on the outer webs not exceeding 5.5 mm. in diameter, while the additional buffy speckling is practically absent. this trogon was found by us in the ituri forest, from the nepoko river south to avakubi and westward to banalia, but its range is certainly wider than this. it is a species perfectly distinct from _apaloderma narina_, but both occur in the same forests, though the latter was also to be heard at times in areas of tall second-growth, whereas _a. minus_ seemed never to leave the primitive uncut forest, and was extremely shy and difficult to observe. these two trogons may easily be recognized by their voices, the common note of _a. narina_ being a double, dove-like "cu-coo," which is repeated slowly for several seconds, starting faintly but increasing in strength, and accompanied by a slight wagging of the tail. that of _a. minus_ is a series of longer, more mournful sounds that might be represented by the word "kwaw." these calls are given by the males. as compared with the measurements given in prof. reichenow's "vögel afrikas" and the british museum catalogue, our specimens of _apaloderma narina_ from the ituri district seem rather small, and may belong to the race _æquatoriale_ of dr. sharpe. a series of 12 adult males measures: bill (culmen from base) 18.5-21 mm.; wing 117.5-128; tail 146.5-166. the green borders of the secondaries are never very well marked, and sometimes virtually absent. seven females from the same region measure: bill, 18.5-21; wing 117.5-129; tail, 149-169. one male collected in the uele district, in a small forest tract between faradje and aba, is strikingly larger; wing, 134; tail 194. this example is probably referable to _a. n. narina_. =ceriocleptes= gen. nov. (indicatoridæ). resembling _indicator_ in its bill and general form, save for the tail, which is composed of 12 quills, the two middle pairs of nearly equal length, somewhat pointed and curved strongly outwards, the next pair considerably shorter, but also pointed and slightly curved; while the fourth, fifth and sixth are straight, greatly narrowed, and stiffened, becoming successively shorter, so that the outermost pair is not half so long as the median. the tail-coverts are unusually long, those below as long as the longest rectrices, and projecting in the fork of the tail. =ceriocleptes xenurus= sp. nov. description of type, collector's no. 5628, congo exp. a. m. n. h. [male] ad., avakubi, ituri district, belgian congo. apr. 17, 1914. feathers of forehead, crown, back, and rump blackish-brown, bordered or washed with yellowish-citrine, those of nape and upper back whitish at the base. sides of head lighter, shading gradually to olive-buff on throat, breast, and sides; middle of abdomen still lighter, ivory-yellow. upper wing-coverts and secondaries fuscous-black (freshly molted feathers blacker) narrowly edged with olive-ocher. primaries similar, but yellowish border almost entirely lacking; both primaries and secondaries fading to pale olive-buff on their inner edges. under wing-coverts colored like the breast, but with faint dusky shaft-streaks. feathering of flanks ivory-yellow, with strong blackish median lines. two middle pairs of rectrices dull blackish, 3rd pair whitish, with a small blackish spot on the outer edge close to the tip, and a larger concealed black spot on the inner web towards the base; the 3 remaining pairs of rectrices white. the long median pair of under tail-coverts blackish, the next pair similar, but margined with whitish, the remainder ivory-yellow with faint shaft-streaks of dark brown. upper tail-coverts fuscous-black, bordered with amber-yellow.[1] the bill, nostril, and feet resemble those of _indicator indicator_, but the bill is somewhat stouter, while the wings and tail are shorter. the 9th (outer) primary is intermediate in length between the 6th and 5th; the 7th and 8th are longest. iris bright brown, naked edges of eyelids grayish-brown; bill dusky-brown; feet dull grayish-green. length (skin), 160 mm.; wing, 93.5; tail 56; bill (culmen from base), 13.5; metatarsus, 14. this unique specimen was shot by the describer from a tall tree in the forest, where it was accompanied by one other of its kind. the sexual organs were somewhat enlarged; the stomach filled with beeswax, mixed with small pieces of insects. apparently this species is not in the habit of leading men to beehives. [illustration: fig. 1. tail of _ceriocleptes xenurus_, from below. nat. size.] publications of the american museum of natural history. the publications of the american museum of natural history consist of the 'bulletin,' in octavo, of which one volume, consisting of 400 to 800 pages and 25 to 60 plates, with numerous text figures, is published annually; the 'memoirs,' in quarto, published in parts at irregular intervals; and 'anthropological papers,' uniform in size and style with the 'bulletin.' also an 'ethnographical album,' and the 'american museum journal.' memoirs. each part of the memoirs' forms a separate and complete monograph, usually with numerous plates. vol. 1. zoölogy and palæontology. part i.--republication of descriptions of lower carboniferous crinoidea from the hall collection now in the american museum of natural history, with illustrations of the original type specimens not heretofore figured. by r. z. whitfield. pp. 1-37, pll. i-iii, and 14 text figures. september 15, 1893. price, $2.00. part ii.--republication of descriptions of fossils from the hall collection in the american museum of natural history, from the report of progress for 1861 of the geological survey of wisconsin, by james hall, with illustrations from the original type specimens not heretofore figured. by r. p. whitfield. pp. 39-74, pll. iv-xii. august 10, 1895. price, $2.00. part iii.--the extinct rhinoceroses. by henry fairfield osborn. part i. pp. 75-164, pll. xii_a_-xx, and 49 text figures. april 22, 1898. price, $4.20. part iv.--a complete mosasaur skeleton. by henry fairfield osborn. pp. 165-188, pll. xxi-xxiii, and 15 text figures. october 25, 1899. part v.--a skeleton of diplodocus. by henry fairfield osborn. pp. 189-214, pll. xxiv-xxviii, and 15 text figures. october 25, 1899. price of parts iv and v, issued under one cover, $2.00. part vi.--monograph of the sesiidæ of america, north of mexico. by william beutenmüller. pp. 215-352, pll. xxix-xxxvi, and 24 text figures. march, 1901. price, $5.00. part vii.--fossil mammals of the tertiary of northeastern colorado. by w. d. matthew. pp. 353-448, pll. xxxvii-xxxix, and 34 text figures. price, $2.00. part viii.--the reptilian subclasses diapsida and synapsida and the early history of the diaptosauria. by henry fairfield osborn. pp. 449-507, pl. xl, and 28 text figures. november, 1903. price, $2.00. vol. ii. anthropology. _jesup north pacific expedition, vol. i._ part i.--facial paintings of the indians of northern british columbia. by franz boas. pp. 1-24, pll. i-iv. june 16, 1898. price, $2.00. part ii.--the mythology of the bella coola indians. by franz boas. pp. 25-127, pll. vii-xii. november, 1898. price, $2.00. part iii.--the archæology of lytton. british columbia. by harlan i. smith. pp. 129-161, pl. xiii, and 117 text figures. may, 1899. price, $2.00. part iv.--the thompson indians of british columbia. by james teit. edited by franz boas. pp. 163-392, pll. xiv-xx, and 198 text figures. april, 1900. price, $5.00. part v.--basketry designs of the salish indians. by livingston farrand. pp. 393-399, pll. xxi-xxiii, and 15 text figures. april, 1900. price, 75 cts. part vi.--archæology of the thompson river region. by harlan i. smith. pp. 401-442, pll. xxiv-xxvi, and 51 text figures. june, 1900. price, $2.00. vol. iii. anthropology. part i.--symbolism of the huichol indians. by carl lumholtz. pp. 1-228, pll. i-iv, and 291 text figures. may, 1900. price, $5.00. part ii.--the basketry of the tlingit. by george t. emmons. pp. 229-277, pll. v-xviii, and 73 text figures. july, 1903. price, $2.00. 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figures. december, 1901. price, $3.00. vol. viii. anthropology. *_jesup north pacific expedition, vol. v._ part. i.--the haida of queen charlotte islands. by john r. swanton. pp 1-300, pll. i-xxvi, 4 maps, and 31 text figures. price, $8.00. part ii.--the kwakiutl of vancouver island. by franz boas. pp. 301-522. pll. xxvii-lii, and 142 text figures. 1909. price, $10.00. vol. ix. zoölogy and palæontology. part i.--the osteology of _camposaurus_ cope. by barnum brown. pp. 1-26, pll. i-v. december, 1905. price, $2.00. part ii.--the phytosauria, with especial reference to _mystriosuchus_ and _rhytiodon_. by j. h. mcgregor. pp. 27-101, pll. vi-xi, and 26 text figures. february, 1906. price, $2.00. part iii.--studies on the arthrodira. by louis hussakof. may, 1906. pp. 103-154, pll. xii and xiii, and 25 text cuts. price, $3.00. part iv.--the conard fissure, a pleistocene bone deposit in northern arkansas, with descriptions of two new genera and twenty new species of mammals. by barnum brown. pp. 155-208, pll. xiv-xxv, and 3 text-figures. 1907. price, $2.50. part v.--studies on fossil fishes (sharks, chimæroids, and arthrodires). by bashford dean. pp. 209-287, pll. xxvi-xli, and 65 text figures. february, 1909. price, $3.50. part vi.--the carnivora and insectivora of the bridger basin, middle eocene. by w. d. matthew. pp. 289-567, pll. xlii-lii, and 118 text figures. august, 1909. price, $5.00. vol. x. anthropology. *_jesup north pacific expedition, vol. vi._ part i.--religion and myths of the koryak. by w. jochelson. pp. 1-382, pll. i-xiii, 1 map, and 58 text figures. 1905. price, $10.00. part ii.--material culture and social organization of the koryak. by w. jochelson. pp. 383-811, pll. xiv-xl, and 194 text figures. 1908. price, $12.00. vol. xi. anthropology. *_jesup north pacific expedition, vol. vii._ part i.--the chuckchee: material culture. by w. bogoras. pp. 1-276, pll. i-xxxi, 1 map, and 199 text figures. 1904. price, $8.00. part ii.--the chuckchee: religion. by w. bogoras. pp. 277-536, pll. xxxii-xxxiv, and 101 text figures. 1907. price, $4.00. part iii.--the chuckchee: social organization. by w. bogoras. pp. 537-733, pl. xxxv, and 1 text figure. 1909. price, $3.00. vol. xii. anthropology (not yet completed). *_jesup north pacific expedition, vol. viii._ part i.--chuckchee mythology. by waldemar bogoras. pp. 1-197, 1910. price, $1.25. vol. xiii. anthropology (not yet completed). *_jesup north pacific expedition, vol. ix._ part i.--the yukaghir and the yukaghirized tungus. by waldemar jochelson. pp. 1-133, pll. i-vii, 1 map, 1910. price, $3.40. vol. xiv. anthropology. *_jesup north pacific expedition, vol. x._ part i.--kwakiutl texts. second series. by franz boas and george hunt. pp. 1-269. 1906. price, $2.80. part ii.--ilaida texts. by john r. swanton. pp. 271-802. 1908. price, $5.40. memoirs. new series, vol. i. part i.--crania of tyranosaurus and allosaurus. by henry fairfield osborn, pp. 1-30, pll. i-iv and text figures 1-27. 1912. part ii.--integument of the iguanodont dinosaur trachodon. by henry fairfield osborn. pp. 31-54, pll. v-x, and text figures 1-13. 1912. parts i and ii are issued under one cover. price, $2.00. part iii.--craniometry of the equidæ. by henry fairfield osborn. pp. 55-100, text figures 1-17. 1912. price, 75 cents. part iv.--orthogenetic and other variations in muskoxen, with a systematic review of the muskox group, recent and extinct. by j. a. allen. pp. 103-226, pll. xi-xviii, text figures 1-45, 1913. price $2.50. part v.--the california gray whale (_rhachianectes glaucus_ cope). by roy c. andrews. pp. 229-287, pll. xix-xxvii, text figures 1-22. 1914. price, $2.00. ethnographical album. _jesup north pacific expedition._ ethnographical album of the north pacific coasts of america and asia. part 1, pp. 1-5, pll. 1-28. august, 1900. sold by subscription, price, $6.00. bulletin. the matter in the 'bulletin' consists of about 24 to 36 articles per volume, which relate about equally to geology, palæontology, mammalogy, ornithology, entomology, and (in former volumes) anthropology, except vol. xi, which is restricted to a 'catalogue of the types and figured specimens in the palæontological collection of the geological department,' and vols. xv, xvii, and xviii, which relate wholly to anthropology. volume xxiii and the later volumes contain no anthropological matter, which is now issued separately as 'anthropological papers.' volume i, 1881-86 out of print " ii, 1887-90 price, $4.75 " iii, 1890-91 " 4.00 " iv, 1892 " 4.00 " v, 1893 " 4.00 " vi, 1894 " 4.00 " vii, 1895 " 4.00 " viii, 1896 " 4.00 " ix, 1897 " 4.75 " x, 1898 " 4.75 " xi, 1898-1901 " 5.00 " xii, 1899 " 4.00 " xiii, 1900 " 4.00 " xiv, 1901 " 4.00 " xv, 1901-1907 " 5.00 " xvi, 1902 " 5.00 " xvii, part i, 1902 " 1.50 " " " ii, " " .75 " " " iv, 1905 out of print " " " iv, 1905 price, $ .75 " " " v, 1907 " 1.25 " xviii, " i, 1902 " 2.00 " " " ii, 1904 " 1.50 " " " iii, 1905 " .50 " " " iv, 1907 " 2.00 " xix, 1903 " 6.00 " xx, 1904 " 5.00 " xxi, 1905 " 5.00 " xxii, 1906 " 6.00 " xxiii, 1907 " 9.00 " xxiv, 1908 " 6.00 " xxv, part i, 1908 " 1.50 " xxvi, 1909 " 6.00 " xxvii, 1910 " 5.00 " xxviii, 1910 " 4.00 " xxix, 1911 " 4.50 " xxx, 1911 " 4.00 " xxxi, 1912 " 4.00 " xxxii, 1913 " 5.50 " xxxiii, 1914 " 5.50 anthropological papers. vols. i-xiv, 1908-1914. american museum journal. the 'journal' is a popular record of the progress of the american museum of natural history, issued monthly, from october to may inclusive. price, $1.50 a year. volumes i-xiv, 1900-1914. *the anatomy of the common squid. by leonard worcester williams. pp. 1-87, pll. i-iii, and 16 text figures. 1909. *chinese pottery of the han dynasty. by berthold laufer. pp. 1-339, pll. i-lxxv, and 55 text figures. 1909. for sale at the museum. *published by e. j. brill, leiden, holland. not on sale at the museum. american agent, g. e. stechert, 129 west 20th street, new york city. footnote: [footnote 1: colors named according to ridgway's 'color standards and nomenclature.'] transcriber's note: * text enclosed between equal signs was in bold face in the original (=bold=). * the symbol for male is represented by [male]. * the footnote have been moved to the end of the bulletin. * pg 4 added hyphen within "tail coverts" in "on belly and under tail coverts" for consistency. * pg 7 added closing single quote after "journal" in "american museum journal". * publication listing on each of the cover pages moved to end of bulletin in an ordered manner. proofreading team the congo and coasts of africa by richard harding davis, f.r.g.s. author of "soldiers of fortune," "the scarlet car," "with both armies in south africa," "farces," "the cuban and porto rican campaigns" illustrations from photographs by the author and others charles scribner's sons new york 1907 [illustration (frontispiece): mr. davis and "wood boys" of the congo.] to cecil clark davis my fellow voyager along the coasts of africa contents i the coasters 3 ii my brother's keeper 32 iii the capital of the congo 55 iv americans in the congo 93 v hunting the hippo 118 vi old calabar 142 vii along the east coast 176 illustrations mr. davis and "wood boys" of the congo _frontispiece_ mrs. davis in a borrowed "hammock," the local means of transport on the west coast 10 a white building, that blazed like the base of a whitewashed stove at white heat 22 the "mammy chair" is like those swings you see in public playgrounds 28 a village on the kasai river 42 "tenants" of leopold, who claims that the congo belongs to him, and that these native people are there only as his tenants 52 the facilities for landing at banana, the port of entry to the congo, are limited 56 "prisoners" of the state in chains at matadi 60 bush boys in the plaza at matadi seeking shade 70 the monument in stanley park, erected, not to stanley, but to leopold 82 the _deliverance_. the river raced over the deck to a depth of four or five inches. between her cabin and the wood-pile, were stored fifty human beings 86 the native wife of a _chef de poste_ 90 english missionaries, and some of their charges 98 the laboring man upon whom the american concessionaires must depend 106 mr. davis and native "boy," on the kasai river 128 the hippopotamus that did not know he was dead 134 the jesuit brothers at the wombali mission 138 there, in the surf, we found these tons of mahogany, pounding against each other 152 a log of mahogany jammed in the anchor chains 156 the palace of the king of the cameroons 160 the home of the thirty queens of king mango bell 164 the mother superior and sisters of st. joseph and their converts at old calabar 168 the kroo boys sit, not on the thwarts, but on the gunwales, as a woman rides a side saddle 172 going visiting in her private tram-car at beira 182 one-half of the street cleaning department of mozambique 190 custom house, zanzibar 194 chain-gangs of petty offenders outside of zanzibar 198 the ivory on the right, covered only with sacking, is ready for shipment to boston, u.s.a. 202 the late sultan of zanzibar in his state carriage 206 h.s.h. hamud bin muhamad bin said, the late sultan of zanzibar 210 a german "factory" at tanga, the store below, the living apartments above 214 soudanese soldiers under a german officer outside of tanga 218 the congo and coasts of africa i the coasters no matter how often one sets out, "for to admire, and for to see, for to behold this world so wide," he never quite gets over being surprised at the erratic manner in which "civilization" distributes itself; at the way it ignores one spot upon the earth's surface, and upon another, several thousand miles away, heaps its blessings and its tyrannies. having settled in a place one might suppose the "influences of civilization" would first be felt by the people nearest that place. instead of which, a number of men go forth in a ship and carry civilization as far away from that spot as the winds will bear them. when a stone falls in a pool each part of each ripple is equally distant from the spot where the stone fell; but if the stone of civilization were to have fallen, for instance, into new orleans, equally near to that spot we would find the people of new york city and the naked indians of yucatan. civilization does not radiate, or diffuse. it leaps; and as to where it will next strike it is as independent as forked lightning. during hundreds of years it passed over the continent of africa to settle only at its northern coast line and its most southern cape; and, to-day, it has given cuba all of its benefits, and has left the equally beautiful island of hayti, only fourteen hours away, sunk in fetish worship and brutal ignorance. one of the places it has chosen to ignore is the west coast of africa. we are familiar with the northern coast and south africa. we know all about morocco and the picturesque raisuli, lord cromer, and shepheard's hotel. the kimberley diamond mines, the boer war, jameson's raid, and cecil rhodes have made us know south africa, and on the east coast we supply durban with buggies and farm wagons, furniture from grand rapids, and, although we have nothing against durban, breakfast food and canned meats. we know victoria falls, because they have eclipsed our own niagara falls, and zanzibar, farther up the coast, is familiar through comic operas and rag-time. of itself, the cape to cairo railroad would make the east coast known to us. but the west coast still means that distant shore from whence the "first families" of boston, bristol and new orleans exported slaves. now, for our soap and our salad, the west coast supplies palm oil and kernel oil, and for automobile tires, rubber. but still to it there cling the mystery, the hazard, the cruelty of those earlier times. it is not of palm oil and rubber one thinks when he reads on the ship's itinerary, "the gold coast, the ivory coast, the bight of benin, and old calabar." one of the strange leaps made by civilization is from southampton to cape town, and one of its strangest ironies is in its ignoring all the six thousand miles of coast line that lies between. nowadays, in winter time, the english, flying from the damp cold of london, go to cape town as unconcernedly as to the riviera. they travel in great seagoing hotels, on which they play cricket, and dress for dinner. of the damp, fever-driven coast line past which, in splendid ease, they are travelling, save for the tall peaks of teneriffe and cape verde, they know nothing. when last mrs. davis and i made that voyage from southampton, the decks were crowded chiefly with those english whose faces are familiar at the savoy and the ritz, and who, within an hour, had settled down to seventeen days of uninterrupted bridge, with, before them, the prospect on landing of the luxury of the mount nelson and the hospitalities of government house. when, the other day, we again left southampton, that former departure came back in strange contrast. it emphasized that this time we are not accompanying civilization on one of her flying leaps. instead, now, we are going down to the sea in ships with the vortrekkers of civilization, those who are making the ways straight; who, in a few weeks, will be leaving us to lose themselves in great forests, who clear the paths of noisome jungles where the sun seldom penetrates, who sit in sun-baked "factories," as they call their trading houses, measuring life by steamer days, who preach the gospel to the cannibals of the congo, whose voices are the voices of those calling in the wilderness. as our tender came alongside the _bruxellesville_ at southampton, we saw at the winch kroo boys of the ivory coast; leaning over the rail the soeurs blanches of the congo, robed, although the cold was bitter and the decks black with soot-stained snow, all in white; missionaries with long beards, a bishop in a purple biretta, and innumerable belgian officers shivering in their cloaks and wearing the blue ribbon and silver star that tells of three years of service along the equator. this time our fellow passengers are no pleasure-seekers, no cook's tourists sailing south to avoid a rigorous winter. they have squeezed the last minute out of their leave, and they are going back to the station, to the factory, to the mission, to the barracks. they call themselves "coasters," and they inhabit a world all to themselves. in square miles, it is a very big world, but it is one of those places civilization has skipped. nearly every one of our passengers from antwerp or southampton knows that if he keeps his contract, and does not die, it will be three years before he again sees his home. so our departure was not enlivening, and, in the smoking-room, the exiles prepared us for lonely ports of call, for sickening heat, for swarming multitudes of blacks. in consequence, when we passed finisterre, spain, which from new york seems almost a foreign country, was a near neighbor, a dear friend. and the island of teneriffe was an anticlimax. it was as though by a trick of the compass we had been sailing southwest and were entering the friendly harbor of ponce or havana. santa cruz, the port town of teneriffe, like la guayra, rises at the base of great hills. it is a smiling, bright-colored, red-roofed, typical spanish town. the hills about it mount in innumerable terraces planted with fruits and vegetables, and from many of these houses on the hills, should the owner step hurriedly out of his front door, he would land upon the roof of his nearest neighbor. back of this first chain of hills are broad farming lands and plateaus from which barcelona and london are fed with the earliest and the most tender of potatoes that appear in england at the same time bermuda potatoes are being printed in big letters on the bills of fare along broadway. santa cruz itself supplies passing steamers with coal, and passengers with lace work and post cards; and to the english in search of sunshine, with a rival to madeira. it should be a successful rival, for it is a charming place, and on the day we were there the thermometer was at 72°, and every one was complaining of the cruel severity of the winter. in santa cruz one who knows spanish america has but to shut his eyes and imagine himself back in santiago de cuba or caracas. there are the same charming plazas, the yellow churches and towered cathedral, the long iron-barred windows, glimpses through marble-paved halls of cool patios, the same open shops one finds in obispo and o'reilly streets, the idle officers with smart uniforms and swinging swords in front of cafés killing time and digestion with sweet drinks, and over the garden walls great bunches of purple and scarlet flowers and sheltering palms. the show place in santa cruz is the church in which are stored the relics of the sea-fight in which, as a young man, nelson lost his arm and england also lost two battleflags. as she is not often careless in that respect, it is a surprise to find, in this tiny tucked-away little island, what you will not see in any of the show places of the world. they tell in santa cruz that one night an english middy, single-handed, recaptured the captured flags and carried them triumphantly to his battleship. he expected at the least a k.c.b., and when the flags, with a squad of british marines as a guard of honor, were solemnly replaced in the church, and the middy himself was sent upon a tour of apology to the bishop, the governor, the commandant of the fortress, the alcalde, the collector of customs, and the captain of the port, he declared that monarchies were ungrateful. the other objects of interest in teneriffe are camels, which in the interior of the island are common beasts of burden, and which appearing suddenly around a turn would frighten any automobile; and the fact that in teneriffe the fashion in women's hats never changes. they are very funny, flat straw hats; like children's sailor hats. they need only "_u.s.s. iowa_" on the band to be quite familiar. their secret is that they are built to support baskets and buckets of water, and that concealed in each is a heavy pad. [illustration: mrs. davis in a borrowed "hammock," the local means of transport on the west coast.] after teneriffe the destination of every one on board is as irrevocably fixed as though the ship were a government transport. we are all going to the west coast or to the congo. should you wish to continue on to cape town along the south coast, as they call the vast territory from lagos to cape town, although there is an irregular, a very irregular, service to the cape, you could as quickly reach it by going on to the congo, returning all the way to southampton, and again starting on the direct line south. it is as though a line of steamers running down our coast to florida would not continue on along the south coast to new orleans and galveston, and as though no line of steamers came from new orleans and galveston to meet the steamers of the east coast. in consequence, the west coast of africa, cut off by lack of communication from the south, divorced from the north by the desert of sahara, lies in the steaming heat of the equator to-day as it did a thousand years ago, in inaccessible, inhospitable isolation. two elements have helped to preserve this isolation: the fever that rises from its swamps and lagoons, and the surf that thunders upon the shore. in considering the stunted development of the west coast, these two elements must be kept in mind--the sickness that strikes at sunset and by sunrise leaves the victim dead, and the monster waves that rush booming like cannon at the beach, churning the sandy bottom beneath, and hurling aside the great canoes as a man tosses a cigarette. the clerk who signs the three-year contract to work on the west coast enlists against a greater chance of death than the soldier who enlists to fight only bullets; and every box, puncheon, or barrel that the trader sends in a canoe through the surf is insured against its never reaching, as the case may be, the shore or the ship's side. the surf and the fever are the minotaurs of the west coast, and in the year there is not a day passes that they do not claim and receive their tribute in merchandise and human life. said an old coaster to me, pointing at the harbor of grand bassam: "i've seen just as much cargo lost overboard in that surf as i've seen shipped to europe." one constantly wonders how the coasters find it good enough. how, since 1550, when the portuguese began trading, it has been possible to find men willing to fill the places of those who died. but, in spite of the early massacres by the natives, in spite of attacks by wild beasts, in spite of pirate raids, of desolating plagues and epidemics, of wars with other white men, of damp heat and sudden sickness, there were men who patiently rebuilt the forts and factories, fought the surf with great breakwaters, cleared breathing spaces in the jungle, and with the aid of quinine for themselves, and bad gin for the natives, have held their own. except for the trade goods it never would be held. it is a country where the pay is cruelly inadequate, where but few horses, sheep, or cattle can exist, where the natives are unbelievably lazy and insolent, and where, while there is no society of congenial spirits, there is a superabundance of animal and insect pests. still, so great are gold, ivory, and rubber, and so many are the men who will take big chances for little pay, that every foot of the west coast is preëmpted. as the ship rolls along, for hours from the rail you see miles and miles of steaming yellow sand and misty swamp where as yet no white man has set his foot. but in the real estate office of europe some power claims the right to "protect" that swamp; some treaty is filed as a title-deed. as the powers finally arranged it, the map of the west coast is like a mosaic, like the edge of a badly constructed patchwork quilt. in trading along the west coast a man can find use for five european languages, and he can use a new one at each port of call. to the north, the west coast begins with cape verde, which is spanish. it is followed by senegal, which is french; but into senegal is tucked "a thin red line" of british territory called gambia. senegal closes in again around gambia, and is at once blocked to the south by the three-cornered patch which belongs to portugal. this is followed by french guinea down to another british red spot, sierra leone, which meets liberia, the republic of negro emigrants from the united states. south of liberia is the french ivory coast, then the english gold coast; togo, which is german; dahomey, which is french; lagos and southern nigeria, which again are english; fernando po, which is spanish, and the german cameroons. the coast line of these protectorates and colonies gives no idea of the extent of their hinterland, which spreads back into the sahara, the niger basin, and the soudan. sierra leone, one of the smallest of them, is as large as maine; liberia, where the emigrants still keep up the tradition of the united states by talking like end men, is as large as the state of new york; two other colonies, senegal and nigeria, together are 135,000 square miles larger than the combined square miles of all of our atlantic states from maine to florida and including both. to partition finally among the powers this strip of death and disease, of uncountable wealth, of unnamed horrors and cruelties, has taken many hundreds of years, has brought to the black man every misery that can be inflicted upon a human being, and to thousands of white men, death and degradation, or great wealth. the raids made upon the west coast to obtain slaves began in the fifteenth century with the discovery of the west indies, and it was to spare the natives of these islands, who were unused and unfitted for manual labor and who in consequence were cruelly treated by the spaniards, that las casas, the bishop of chiapa, first imported slaves from west africa. he lived to see them suffer so much more terribly than had the indians who first obtained his sympathy, that even to his eightieth year he pleaded with the pope and the king of spain to undo the wrong he had begun. but the tide had set west, and las casas might as well have tried to stop the trades. in 1800 wilberforce stated in the house of commons that at that time british vessels were carrying each year to the indies and the american colonies 38,000 slaves, and when he spoke the traffic had been going on for two hundred and fifty years. after the treaty of utrecht, queen anne congratulated her peers on the terms of the treaty which gave to england "the fortress of gibraltar, the island of minorca, and the monopoly in the slave trade for thirty years," or, as it was called, the _asiento_ (contract). this was considered so good an investment that philip v of spain took up one-quarter of the common stock, and good queen anne reserved another quarter, which later she divided among her ladies. but for a time she and her cousin of spain were the two largest slave merchants in the world. the point of view of those then engaged in the slave trade is very interesting. when queen elizabeth sent admiral hawkins slave-hunting, she presented him with a ship, named, with startling lack of moral perception, after the man of sorrows. in a book on the slave trade i picked up at sierra leone there is the diary of an officer who accompanied hawkins. "after," he writes, "going every day on shore to take the inhabitants by burning and despoiling of their towns," the ship was becalmed. "but," he adds gratefully, "the almighty god, who never suffereth his elect to perish, sent us the breeze." the slave book shows that as late as 1780 others of the "elect" of our own south were publishing advertisements like this, which is one of the shortest and mildest. it is from a virginia newspaper: "the said fellow is outlawed, and i will give ten pounds reward for his head severed from his body, or forty shillings if brought alive." at about this same time an english captain threw overboard, chained together, one hundred and thirty sick slaves. he claimed that had he not done so the ship's company would have also sickened and died, and the ship would have been lost, and that, therefore, the insurance companies should pay for the slaves. the jury agreed with him, and the solicitor-general said: "what is all this declamation about human beings! this is a case of chattels or goods. it is really so--it is the case of throwing over goods. for the purpose--the purpose of the insurance, they are goods and property; whether right or wrong, we have nothing to do with it." in 1807 england declared the slave trade illegal. a year later the united states followed suit, but although on the seas her frigates chased the slavers, on shore a part of our people continued to hold slaves, until the civil war rescued both them and the slaves. as early as 1718 raynal and diderot estimated that up to that time there had been exported from africa to the north and south americas nine million slaves. our own historian, bancroft, calculated that in the eighteenth century the english alone imported to the americas three million slaves, while another 2,500,000 purchased or kidnapped on the west coast were lost in the surf, or on the voyage thrown into the sea. for that number bancroft places the gross returns as not far from four hundred millions of dollars. all this is history, and to the reader familiar, but i do not apologize for reviewing it here, as without the background of the slave trade, the west coast, as it is to-day, is difficult to understand. as we have seen, to kings, to chartered "merchant adventurers," to the cotton planters of the west indies and of our south, and to the men of the north who traded in black ivory, the west coast gave vast fortunes. the price was the lives of millions of slaves. and to-day it almost seems as though the sins of the fathers were being visited upon the children; as though the juju of the african, under the spell of which his enemies languish and die, has been cast upon the white man. we have to look only at home. in the millions of dead, and in the misery of the civil war, and to-day in race hatred, in race riots, in monstrous crimes and as monstrous lynchings, we seem to see the fetish of the west coast, the curse, falling upon the children to the third and fourth generation of the million slaves that were thrown, shackled, into the sea. the first mention in history of sierra leone is when in 480 b.c., hanno, the carthaginian, anchored at night in its harbor, and then owing to "fires in the forests, the beating of drums, and strange cries that issued from the bushes," before daylight hastened away. we now skip nineteen hundred years. this is something of a gap, but except for the sketchy description given us by hanno of the place, and his one gaudy night there, sierra leone until the fifteenth century utterly disappears from the knowledge of man. happy is the country without a history! nineteen hundred years having now supposed to elapse, the second act begins with de cintra, who came in search of slaves, and instead gave the place its name. because of the roaring of the wind around the peak that rises over the harbor he called it the lion mountain. after the fifteenth century, in a succession of failures, five different companies of "royal adventurers" were chartered to trade with her people, and, when convenient, to kidnap them; pirates in turn kidnapped the british governor, the french and dutch were always at war with the settlement, and native raids, epidemics, and fevers were continuous. the history of sierra leone is the history of every other colony along the west coast, with the difference that it became a colony by purchase, and was not, as were the others, a trading station gradually converted into a colony. during the war in america, great britain offered freedom to all slaves that would fight for her, and, after the war, these freed slaves were conveyed on ships of war to london, where they were soon destitute. they appealed to the great friend of the slave in those days, granville sharp, and he with others shipped them to sierra leone, to establish, with the aid of some white emigrants, an independent colony, which was to be a refuge and sanctuary for others like themselves. liberia, which was the gift of philanthropists of baltimore to american freed slaves, was, no doubt, inspired by this earlier effort. the colony became a refuge for slaves from every part of the coast, the west indies and nova scotia, and to-day in that one colony there are spoken sixty different coast dialects and those of the hinterland. sierra leone, as originally purchased in 1786, consisted of twenty square miles, for which among other articles of equal value king naimbanna received a "crimson satin embroidered waistcoat, one puncheon of rum, ten pounds of beads, two cheeses, one box of smoking pipes, a mock diamond ring, and a tierce of pork." what first impressed me about sierra leone was the heat. it does not permit one to give his attention wholly to anything else. i always have maintained that the hottest place on earth is new york, and i have been in other places with more than a local reputation for heat; some along the equator, lourenço marquez, which is only prevented from being an earthen oven because it is a swamp; the red sea, with a following breeze, and from both shores the baked heat of the desert, and nagasaki, on a rainy day in midsummer. but new york in august radiating stored-up heat from iron-framed buildings, with the foul, dead air shut in by the skyscrapers, with a humidity that makes you think you are breathing through a steam-heated sponge, is as near the lower regions as i hope any of us will go. and yet sierra leone is no mean competitor. we climbed the moss-covered steps to the quay to face a great white building that blazed like the base of a whitewashed stove at white heat. before it were some rusty cannon and a canoe cut out of a single tree, and, seated upon it selling fruit and sun-dried fish, some native women, naked to the waist, their bodies streaming with palm oil and sweat. at the same moment something struck me a blow on the top of the head, at the base of the spine and between the shoulder blades, and the ebony ladies and the white "factory" were burnt up in a scroll of flame. [illustration: a white building, that blazed like the base of a whitewashed stove at white heat.] i heard myself in a far-away voice asking where one could buy a sun helmet and a white umbrella, and until i was under their protection, sierra leone interested me no more. one sees more different kinds of black people in sierra leone than in any other port along the coast; senegalese and senegambians, kroo boys, liberians, naked bush boys bearing great burdens from the forests, domestic slaves in fez and colored linen livery, carrying hammocks swung from under a canopy, the local electric hansom, soldiers of the w.a.f.f., the west african frontier force, in zouave uniform of scarlet and khaki, with bare legs; arabs from as far in the interior as timbuctu, yellow in face and in long silken robes; big fat "mammies" in well-washed linen like the washerwomen of jamaica, each balancing on her head her tightly rolled umbrella, and in the gardens slim young girls, with only a strip of blue and white linen from the waist to the knees, lithe, erect, with glistening teeth and eyes, and their sisters, after two years in the mission schools, demurely and correctly dressed like british school marms. sierra leone has all the hall marks of the crown colony of the tropics; good wharfs, clean streets, innumerable churches, public schools operated by the government as well as many others run by american and english missions, a club where the white "mammies," as all women are called, and the white officers--for sierra leone is a coaling station on the cape route to india, and is garrisoned accordingly--play croquet, and bowl into a net. when the officers are not bowling they are tramping into the hinterland after tribes on the warpath from liberia, and coming back, perhaps wounded or racked with fever, or perhaps they do not come back. on the day we landed they had just buried one of the officers. on saturday afternoon he had been playing tennis, during the night the fever claimed him, and sunday night he was dead. that night as we pulled out to the steamer there came toward us in black silhouette against the sun, setting blood-red into the lagoon, two great canoes. they were coming from up the river piled high with fruit and bark, with the women and children lying huddled in the high bow and stern, while amidships the twelve men at the oars strained and struggled until we saw every muscle rise under the black skin. as their stroke slackened, the man in the bow with the tom-tom beat more savagely upon it, and shouted to them in shrill sharp cries. their eyes shone, their teeth clenched, the sweat streamed from their naked bodies. they might have been slaves chained to the thwarts of a trireme. just ahead of them lay at anchor the only other ship beside our own in port, a two-masted schooner, the _gladys e. wilden_, out of boston. her captain leaned upon the rail smoking his cigar, his shirt-sleeves held up with pink elastics, on the back of his head a derby hat. as the rowers passed under his bows he looked critically at the streaming black bodies and spat meditatively into the water. his own father could have had them between decks as cargo. now for the petroleum and lumber he brings from massachusetts to sierra leone he returns in ballast. because her lines were so home-like and her captain came from cape cod, we wanted to call on the _gladys e. wilden_, but our own captain had different views, and the two ships passed in the night, and the man from boston never will know that two folks from home were burning signals to him. because our next port of call, grand bassam, is the chief port of the french ivory coast, which is 125,000 square miles in extent, we expected quite a flourishing seaport. instead, grand bassam was a bank of yellow sand, a dozen bungalows in a line, a few wind-blown cocoanut palms, an iron pier, and a french flag. beyond the cocoanut palms we could see a great lagoon, and each minute a wave leaped roaring upon the yellow sand-bank and tried to hurl itself across it, eating up the bungalows on its way, into the quiet waters of the lake. each time we were sure it would succeed, but the yellow bank stood like rock, and, beaten back, the wave would rise in white spray to the height of a three-story house, hang glistening in the sun and then, with the crash of a falling wall, tumble at the feet of the bungalows. we stopped at grand bassam to put ashore a young english girl who had come out to join her husband. his factory is a two days' launch ride up the lagoon, and the only other white woman near it does not speak english. her husband had wished her, for her health's sake, to stay in his home near london, but her first baby had just died, and against his unselfish wishes, and the advice of his partner, she had at once set out to join him. she was a very pretty, sad, unsmiling young wife, and she spoke only to ask her husband's partner questions about the new home. his answers, while they did not seem to daunt her, made every one else at the table wish she had remained safely in her london suburb. through our glasses we all watched her husband lowered from the iron pier into a canoe and come riding the great waves to meet her. the kroo boys flashed their trident-shaped paddles and sang and shouted wildly, but he sat with his sun helmet pulled over his eyes staring down into the bottom of the boat; while at his elbow, another sun helmet told him yes, that now he could make out the partner, and that, judging by the photograph, that must be she in white under the bridge. the husband and the young wife were swung together over the side to the lifting waves in a two-seated "mammy chair," like one of those _vis-à-vis_ swings you see in public playgrounds and picnic groves, and they carried with them, as a gift from captain burton, a fast melting lump of ice, the last piece of fresh meat they will taste in many a day, and the blessings of all the ship's company. and then, with inhospitable haste there was a rattle of anchor chains, a quick jangle of bells from the bridge to the engine-room, and the _bruxellesville_ swept out to sea, leaving the girl from the london suburb to find her way into the heart of africa. next morning we anchored in a dripping fog off sekondi on the gold coast, to allow an english doctor to find his way to a fever camp. for nine years he had been a coaster, and he had just gone home to fit himself, by a winter's vacation in london, for more work along the gold coast. it is said of him that he has "never lost a life." on arriving in london he received a cable telling him three doctors had died, the miners along the railroad to ashanti were rotten with fever, and that he was needed. [illustration: the "mammy chair" is like those swings you see in public playgrounds.] so he and his wife, as cheery and bright as though she were setting forth on her honeymoon, were going back to take up the white man's burden. we swung them over the side as we had the other two, and that night in the smoking-room the coasters drank "luck to him," which, in the vernacular of this unhealthy shore, means "life to him," and to the plucky, jolly woman who was going back to fight death with the man who had never lost a life. as the ship was getting under way, a young man in "whites" and a sun helmet, an agent of a trading company, went down the sea ladder by which i was leaning. he was smart, alert; his sleeves, rolled recklessly to his shoulders, showed sinewy, sunburnt arms; his helmet, i noted, was a military one. perhaps i looked as i felt; that it was a pity to see so good a man go back to such a land, for he looked up at me from the swinging ladder and smiled understanding as though we had been old acquaintances. "you going far?" he asked. he spoke in the soft, detached voice of the public-school englishman. "to the congo," i answered. he stood swaying with the ship, looking as though there were something he wished to say, and then laughed, and added gravely, giving me the greeting of the coast: "luck to you." "luck to you," i said. that is the worst of these gaddings about, these meetings with men you wish you could know, who pass like a face in the crowded street, who hold out a hand, or give the password of the brotherhood, and then drop down the sea ladder and out of your life forever. ii my brother's keeper to me, the fact of greatest interest about the congo is that it is owned, and the twenty millions of people who inhabit it are owned by one man. the land and its people are his private property. i am not trying to say that he governs the congo. he does govern it, but that in itself would not be of interest. his claim is that he owns it. though backed by all the mailed fists in the german empire, and all the _dreadnoughts_ of the seas, no other modern monarch would make such a claim. it does not sound like anything we have heard since the days and the ways of pharaoh. and the most remarkable feature of it is, that the man who makes this claim is the man who was placed over the congo as a guardian, to keep it open to the trade of the world, to suppress slavery. that, in the congo, he has killed trade and made the products of the land his own, that of the natives he did not kill he has made slaves, is what to-day gives the congo its chief interest. it is well to emphasize how this one man stole a march on fourteen powers, including the united states, and stole also an empire of one million square miles. twenty-five years ago all of africa was divided into many parts. the part which still remained to be distributed among the powers was that which was watered by the congo river and its tributaries. along the north bank of the congo river ran the french congo; the portuguese owned the lands to the south, and on the east it was shut in by protectorates and colonies of germany and england. it was, and is, a territory as large, were spain and russia omitted, as europe. were a map of the congo laid upon a map of europe, with the mouth of the congo river where france and spain meet at biarritz, the boundaries of the congo would reach south to the heel of italy, to greece, to smyrna; east to constantinople and odessa; northeast to st. petersburg and finland, and northwest to the extreme limits of scotland. distances in this country are so enormous, the means of progress so primitive, that many of the belgian officers with whom i came south and who already had travelled nineteen days from antwerp, had still, before they reached their posts, to steam, paddle, and walk for three months. in 1844 to dispose amicably of this great territory, which was much desired by several of the powers, a conference was held at berlin. there it was decided to make of the congo basin an independent state, a "free-for-all" country, where every flag could trade with equal right, and with no special tariff or restriction. the general act of this conference agreed: "the trade of all nations shall enjoy complete freedom." "no power which exercises or shall exercise sovereign rights in the above-mentioned regions shall be allowed to _grant therein a monopoly or favor of any kind in matters of trade_." "all the powers exercising sovereign rights or influence in the afore-said territories bind themselves to watch over the preservation of the native tribes, and to care for the improvement of _the condition of their moral and material welfare_, and _to help in suppressing slavery_." the italics are mine. these quotations from the act are still binding upon the fourteen powers, including the united states. for several years previous to the conference of berlin, leopold of belgium, as a private individual, had shown much interest in the development of the congo. the opening up of that territory was apparently his hobby. out of his own pocket he paid for expeditions into the congo basin, employed german and english explorers, and protested against the then existing iniquities of the arabs, who for ivory and slaves raided the upper congo. finally, assisted by many geographical societies, he founded the international association, to promote "civilization and trade" in central africa; and enlisted henry m. stanley in this service. that, in the early years, leopold's interest in the congo was unselfish may or may not be granted, but, knowing him, as we now know him, as one of the shrewdest and, of speculators, the most unscrupulous, at the time of the berlin conference, his self-seeking may safely be accepted. quietly, unostentatiously, he presented himself to its individual members as a candidate for the post of administrator of this new territory. on the face of it he seemed an admirable choice. he was a sovereign of a kingdom too unimportant to be feared; of the newly created state he undoubtedly possessed an intimate knowledge. he promised to give to the dutch, english, and portuguese traders, already for many years established on the congo, his heartiest aid, and, for those traders still to come, to maintain the "open door." his professions of a desire to help the natives were profuse. he became the unanimous choice of the conference. later he announced to the powers signing the act, that from belgium he had received the right to assume the title of king of the independent state of the congo. the powers recognized his new title. the fact that leopold, king of belgium, was king also of the état indépendant du congo confused many into thinking that the free state was a colony, or under the protection, of belgium. as we have seen, it is not. a belgian may serve in the army of the free state, or in a civil capacity, as may a man of any nation, but, although with few exceptions only belgians are employed in the free state, and although to help the king in the congo, the belgian government has loaned him great sums of money, politically and constitutionally the two governments are as independent of each other as france and spain. and so, in 1885, leopold, by the grace of fourteen governments, was appointed their steward over a great estate in which each of the governments still holds an equal right; a trustee and keeper over twenty millions of "black brothers" whose "moral and material welfare" each government had promised to protect. there is only one thing more remarkable than the fact that leopold was able to turn this public market into a private park, and that is, that he has been permitted to do so. it is true he is a man of wonderful ability. for his own ends he is a magnificent organizer. but in the fourteen governments that created him there have been, and to-day there are, men, if less unscrupulous, of quite as great ability; statesmen, jealous and quick to guard the rights of the people they represent, people who since the twelfth century have been traders, who since 1808 have declared slavery abolished. and yet, for twenty-five years these statesmen have watched leopold disobey every provision in the act of the conference. were they to visit the congo, they could see for themselves the jungle creeping in and burying their trading posts, their great factories turned into barracks. they know that the blacks they mutually agreed to protect have been reduced to slavery worse than that they suffered from the arabs, that hundreds of thousands of them have fled from the congo, and that those that remain have been mutilated, maimed, or, what was more merciful, murdered. and yet the fourteen governments, including the united states, have done nothing. some tell you they do not interfere because they are jealous one of the other; others say that it is because they believe the congo will soon be taken over by belgium, and with belgium in control, they argue, they would be dealing with a responsible government, instead of with a pirate. but so long as leopold is king of belgium one doubts if belgians in the congo would rise above the level of their king. the english, when asked why they do not assert their rights, granted not only to them, but to thirteen other governments, reply that if they did they would be accused of "ulterior motives." what ulterior motives? if you pursue a pickpocket and recover your watch from him, are your motives in doing so open to suspicion? personally, although this is looking some way ahead, i would like to see the english take over and administrate the congo. wherever i visit a colony governed by englishmen i find under their administration, in spite of opium in china and gin on the west coast, that three people are benefited: the englishman, the native, and the foreign trader from any other part of the world. of the colonies of what other country can one say the same? as a rule our present governments are not loath to protect their rights. but toward asserting them in the congo they have been moved neither by the protests of traders, chambers of commerce, missionaries, the public press, nor by the cry of the black man to "let my people go." by only those in high places can it be explained. we will leave it as a curious fact, and return to the "unjust steward." his first act was to wage wars upon the arabs. from the soudan and from the east coast they were raiding the congo for slaves and ivory, and he drove them from it. by these wars he accomplished two things. as the defender of the slave, he gained much public credit, and he kept the ivory. but war is expensive, and soon he pointed out to the powers that to ask him out of his own pocket to maintain armies in the field and to administer a great estate was unfair. he humbly sought their permission to levy a few taxes. it seemed a reasonable request. to clear roads, to keep boats upon the great rivers, to mark it with buoys, to maintain wood stations for the steamers, to improve the "moral and material welfare of the natives," would cost money, and to allow leopold to bring about these improvements, which would be for the good of all, he was permitted to levy the few taxes. that was twenty years ago; to-day i saw none of these improvements, and the taxes have increased. from the first they were so heavy that the great trade houses, which for one hundred years in peace and mutual goodwill bartered with the natives, found themselves ruined. it was not alone the export taxes, lighterage dues, port dues, and personal taxes that drove them out of the congo; it was the king appearing against them as a rival trader, the man appointed to maintain the "open door." and a trader with methods they could not or would not imitate. leopold, or the "state," saw for the existence of the congo only two reasons: rubber and ivory. and the collecting of this rubber and ivory was, as he saw it, the sole duty of the state and its officers. when he threw over the part of trustee and became the arab raider he could not waste his time, which, he had good reason to fear, might be short, upon products that, if fostered, would be of value only in later years. still less time had he to give to improvements that cost money and that would be of benefit to his successors. he wanted only rubber; he wanted it at once, and he cared not at all how he obtained it. so he spun, and still spins, the greatest of all "get-rich-quick" schemes; one of gigantic proportions, full of tragic, monstrous, nauseous details. the only possible way to obtain rubber is through the native; as yet, in teeming forests, the white man can not work and live. of even chinese coolies imported here to build a railroad ninety per cent. died. so, with a stroke of the pen, leopold declared all the rubber in the country the property of the "state," and then, to make sure that the natives would work it, ordered that taxes be paid in rubber. if, once a month (in order to keep the natives steadily at work the taxes were ordered to be paid each month instead of once a year), each village did not bring in so many baskets of rubber the king's cannibal soldiers raided it, carried off the women as hostages, and made prisoners of the men, or killed and ate them. for every kilo of rubber brought in in excess of the quota the king's agent, who received the collected rubber and forwarded it down the river, was paid a commission. or was "paid by results." another bonus was given him based on the price at which he obtained the rubber. if he paid the native only six cents for every two pounds, he received a bonus of three cents, the cost to the state being but nine cents per kilo, but, if he paid the natives twelve cents for every two pounds, he received as a bonus less than one cent. in a word, the more rubber the agent collected the more he personally benefited, and if he obtained it "cheaply" or for nothing--that is, by taking hostages, making prisoners, by the whip of hippopotamus hide, by torture--so much greater his fortune, so much richer leopold. [illustration: a village on the kasai river.] few schemes devised have been more cynical, more devilish, more cunningly designed to incite a man to cruelty and abuse. to dishonesty it was an invitation and a reward. it was this system of "payment by results," evolved by leopold sooner than allow his agents a fixed and sufficient wage, that led to the atrocities. one result of this system was that in seven years the natives condemned to slavery in the rubber forests brought in rubber to the amount of fifty-five millions of dollars. but its chief results were the destruction of entire villages, the flight from their homes in the congo of hundreds of thousands of natives, and for those that remained misery, death, the most brutal tortures and degradations, unprintable, unthinkable. i am not going to enter into the question of the atrocities. in the congo the tip has been given out from those higher up at brussels to "close up" the atrocities; and for the present the evil places in the tenderloin and along the broadway of the congo are tightly shut. but at those lonely posts, distant a month to three months' march from the capital, the cruelties still continue. i did not see them. neither, last year, did a great many people in the united states see the massacre of blacks in atlanta. but they have reason to believe it occurred. and after one has talked with the men and women who have seen the atrocities, has seen in the official reports that those accused of the atrocities do not deny having committed them, but point out that they were merely obeying orders, and after one has seen that even at the capital of boma all the conditions of slavery exist, one is assured that in the jungle, away from the sight of men, all things are possible. merchants, missionaries, and officials even in leopold's service told me that if one could spare a year and a half, or a year, to the work in the hinterland he would be an eye-witness of as cruel treatment of the natives as any that has gone before, and if i can trust myself to weigh testimony and can believe my eyes and ears i have reason to know that what they say is true. i am convinced that to-day a man, who feels that a year and a half is little enough to give to the aid of twenty millions of human beings, can accomplish in the congo as great and good work as that of the abolitionists. three years ago atrocities here were open and above-board. for instance. in the opinion of the state the soldiers, in killing game for food, wasted the state cartridges, and in consequence the soldiers, to show their officers that they did not expend the cartridges extravagantly on antelope and wild boar, for each empty cartridge brought in a human hand, the hand of a man, woman, or child. these hands, drying in the sun, could be seen at the posts along the river. they are no longer in evidence. neither is the flower-bed of lieutenant dom, which was bordered with human skulls. a quaint conceit. the man to blame for the atrocities, for each separate atrocity, is leopold. had he shaken his head they would have ceased. when the hue and cry in europe grew too hot for him and he held up his hand they did cease. at least along the main waterways. years before he could have stopped them. but these were the seven fallow years, when millions of tons of red rubber were being dumped upon the wharf at antwerp; little, roughly rolled red balls, like pellets of coagulated blood, which had cost their weight in blood, which would pay leopold their weight in gold. he can not plead ignorance. of all that goes on in his big plantation no man has a better knowledge. without their personal honesty, he follows every detail of the "business" of his rubber farm with the same diligence that made rich men of george boldt and marshall field. leopold's knowledge is gained through many spies, by voluminous reports, by following up the expenditure of each centime, of each arm's-length of blue cloth. of every belgian employed on his farm, and ninety-five per cent. are belgians, he holds the _dossier_; he knows how many kilos a month the agent whips out of his villages, how many bottles of absinthe he smuggles from the french side, whether he lives with one black woman or five, why his white wife in belgium left him, why he left belgium, why he dare not return. the agent knows that leopold, king of the belgians, knows, and that he has shared that knowledge with the agent's employer, the man who by bribes of rich bonuses incites him to crime, the man who could throw him into a belgian jail, leopold, king of the congo. the agent decides for him it is best to please both leopolds, and leopold makes no secret of what best pleases him. for not only is he responsible for the atrocities, in that he does not try to suppress them, but he is doubly guilty in that he has encouraged them. this he has done with cynical, callous publicity, without effort at concealment, without shame. men who, in obtaining rubber, committed unspeakable crimes, the memory of which makes other men uncomfortable in their presence, leopold rewarded with rich bonuses, pensions, higher office, gilt badges of shame, and rapid advancement. to those whom even his own judges sentenced to many years' imprisonment he promptly granted the royal pardon, promoted, and sent back to work in the vineyard. "that is the sort of man for _me_," his action seemed to say. "see how i value that good and faithful servant. that man collected much rubber. you observe i do not ask how he got it. i will not ask you. all you need do is to collect rubber. use our improved methods. gum copal rubbed in the kinky hair of the chief and then set on fire burns, so my agents tell me, like vitriol. for collecting rubber the chief is no longer valuable, but to his successor it is an object-lesson. let me recommend also the _chicotte_, the torture tower, the 'hostage' house, and the crucifix. many other stimulants to labor will no doubt suggest themselves to you and to your cannibal 'sentries.' help to make me rich, and don't fear the 'state.' '_l'etat, c'est moi!_' go as far as you like!" i said the degradations and tortures practised by the men "working on commission" for leopold are unprintable, but they have been printed, and those who wish to read a calmly compiled, careful, and correct record of their deeds will find it in the "red rubber" of mr. e.r. morel. an even better book by the same authority, on the whole history of the state, is his "king leopold's rule in the congo." mr. morel has many enemies. so, early in the nineteenth century, had the english abolitionists, wilberforce and granville sharp. after they were dead they were buried in the abbey, and their portraits were placed in the national gallery. people who wish to assist in freeing twenty millions of human beings should to-day support mr. morel. it will be of more service to the blacks than, after he is dead, burying him in westminster abbey. mr. morel, the american and english missionaries, and the english consul, roger casement, and other men, in belgium, have made a magnificent fight against leopold; but the powers to whom they have appealed have been silent. taking courage of this silence, leopold has divided the congo into several great territories in which the sole right to work rubber is conceded to certain persons. to those who protested that no one in the congo "free" state but the king could trade in rubber, leopold, as an answer, pointed with pride at the preserves of these foreigners. and he may well point at them with pride, for in some of those companies he owns a third, and in most of them he holds a half, or a controlling interest. the directors of the foreign companies are his cronies, members of his royal household, his brokers, bankers. you have only to read the names published in the lists of the brussels stock exchange to see that these "trading companies," under different aliases, are leopold. having, then, "conceded" the greater part of the congo to himself, leopold set aside the best part of it, so far as rubber is concerned, as a _domaine privé_. officially the receipts of this pay for running the government, and for schools, roads and wharfs, for which taxes were levied, but for which, after twenty years, one looks in vain. leopold claims that through the congo he is out of pocket; that this carrying the banner of civilization in africa does not pay. through his press bureaus he tells that his sympathy for his black brother, his desire to see the commerce of the world busy along the congo, alone prevents him giving up what is for him a losing business. there are several answers to this. one is that in the kasai company alone leopold owns 2,010 shares of stock. worth originally $50 a share, the value of each share rose to $3,100, making at one time his total shares worth $5,421,000. in the a.b.i.r. concession he owns 1,000 shares, originally worth $100 each, later worth $940. in the "vintage year" of 1900 each of these shares was worth $5,050, and the 1,000 shares thus rose to the value of $5,050,000. these are only two companies. in most of the others half the shares are owned by the king. as published in the "state bulletin," the money received in eight years for rubber and ivory gathered in the _domaine privé_ differs from the amount given for it in the market at antwerp. the official estimates show a loss to the government. the actual sales show that the government, over and above its own estimate of its expenses, instead of losing, made from the _domaine privé_ alone $10,000,000. we are left wondering to whom went that unaccounted-for $10,000,000. certainly the king would not take it, for, to reimburse himself for his efforts, he early in the game reserved for himself another tract of territory known as the _domaine de la couronne_. for years he denied that this existed. he knew nothing of crown lands. but, at last, in the belgian chamber, it was publicly charged that for years from this private source, which he had said did not exist, leopold had been drawing an income of $15,000,000. since then the truth of this statement has been denied, but at the time in the chamber it was not contradicted. to-day, grown insolent by the apathy of the powers, leopold finds disguising himself as a company, as a laborer worthy of his hire, irksome. he now decrees that as "sovereign" over the congo all of the congo belongs to him. it is as much his property as is a pheasant drive, as is a staked-out mining claim, as your hat is your property. and the twenty millions of people who inhabit it are there only on his sufferance. they are his "tenants." he permits each the hut in which he lives, and the garden adjoining that hut, but his work must be for leopold, and everything else, animal, mineral, or vegetable, belongs to leopold. the natives not only may not sell ivory or rubber to independent traders, but if it is found in their possession it is seized; and if you and i bought a tusk of ivory here it would be taken from us and we could be prosecuted. this is the law. other men rule over territories more vast even than the congo. the king of england rules an empire upon which the sun never sets. but he makes no claim to own it. against the wishes of even the humblest crofter, the king would not, because he knows he could not, enter his cottage. nor can we imagine even kaiser william going into the palm-leaf hut of a charcoal-burner in german east africa and saying: "this is my palm-leaf hut. this is my charcoal. you must not sell it to the english, or the french, or the american. if they buy from you they are 'receivers of stolen goods.' to feed my soldiers you must drag my river for my fish. for me, in my swamp and in my jungle, you must toil twenty-four days of each month to gather my rubber. you must not hunt the elephants, for they are my elephants. those tusks that fifty years ago your grandfather, with his naked spear, cut from an elephant, and which you have tried to hide from me under the floor of this hut, are my ivory. because that elephant, running wild through the jungle fifty years ago, belonged to me. and you yourself are mine, your time is mine, your labor is mine, your wife, your children, all are mine. they belong to me." [illustration: "tenants" of leopold, who claims that the congo belongs to him, and that these native people are there only as his tenants.] this, then, is the "open door" as i find it to-day in the congo. it is an incredible state of affairs, so insolent, so magnificent in its impertinence, that it would be humorous, were it not for its background of misery and suffering, for its hostage houses, its chain gangs, its _chicottes_, its nameless crimes against the human body, its baskets of dried hands held up in tribute to the belgian blackguard. iii the capital of the congo leopold's "shop" has its front door at banana. its house flag is a golden star on a blue background. banana is the port of entry to the congo. you have, no doubt, seen many ports of europe--antwerp, hamburg, boulogne, lisbon, genoa, marseilles. banana is the port of entry to a country as large as western europe, and while the imports and exports of europe trickle through all these cities, the commerce of the congo enters and departs entirely at banana. you can then picture the busy harbor, the jungle of masts, the white bridges and awnings of the steamers. by the fat funnels and the flags you can distinguish the english tramps, the german merchantmen, the french, dutch, italian, portuguese traders, the smart "liners" from liverpool, even the arab dhows with bird-wing sails, even the steel, four-masted schooners out of boston, u.s.a. you can imagine the toiling lighters, the slap-dash tenders, the launches with shrieking whistles. of course, you suspect it is not a bit like that. but were it for fourteen countries the "open door" to twenty millions of people, that is how it might look. instead, it is the private entrance to the preserves of a private individual. so what you really see is, on the one hand, islands of mangrove bushes, with their roots in the muddy water; on the other, banana, a strip of sand and palm trees without a wharf, quay, landing stage, without a pier to which you could make fast anything larger than a rowboat. in a canoe naked natives paddle alongside to sell fish; a peevish little man in a sun hat, who, in order to save leopold three salaries, holds four port offices, is being rowed to the gangway; on shore the only other visible inhabitant of banana, a man with no nerves, is disturbing the brooding, sweating silence by knocking the rust off the plates of a stranded mud-scow. welcome to our city! welcome to busy, bustling banana, the port of entry of the congo free state. [illustration: the facilities for landing at banana, the port of entry to the congo, are limited.] in a canoe we were paddled to the back yard of the café of madame samuel, and from that bower of warm beer and sardine tins trudged through the sun up one side of banana and down the other. in between the two paths were the bungalows and gardens of forty white men and two white women. many of the gardens, as was most of banana, were neglected, untidy, littered with condensed-milk tins. others, more carefully tended, were laid out in rigid lines. with all tropical nature to draw upon, nothing had been imagined. the most ambitious efforts were designs in whitewashed shells and protruding beer bottles. we could not help remembering the gardens in japan, of the poorest and the most ignorant coolies. do i seem to find fault with banana out of all proportion to its importance? it is because banana, the congo's most advanced post of civilization, is typical of all that lies beyond. from what i had read of the congo i expected a broad sweep of muddy, malaria-breeding water, lined by low-lying swamp lands, gloomy, monotonous, depressing. but on the way to boma and, later, when i travelled on the upper congo, i thought the river more beautiful than any great river i had ever seen. it was full of wonderful surprises. sometimes it ran between palm-covered banks of yellow sand as low as those of the mississippi or the nile; and again, in half an hour, the banks were rock and as heavily wooded as the mountains of montana, or as white and bold as the cliffs of dover, or we passed between great hills, covered with what looked like giant oaks, and with their peaks hidden in the clouds. i found it like no other river, because in some one particular it was like them all. between banana and boma the banks first screened us in with the tangled jungle of the tropics, and then opened up great wind-swept plateaux, leading to hills that suggested--of all places--england, and, at that, cultivated england. the contour of the hills, the shape of the trees, the shade of their green contrasted with the green of the grass, were like only the cliffs above plymouth. one did not look for native kraals and the wild antelope, but for the square, ivy-topped tower of the village church, the loaf-shaped hayricks, slow-moving masses of sheep. but this that looks like a pasture land is only coarse limestone covered with bitter, unnutritious grass, which benefits neither beast nor man. at sunset we anchored in the current three miles from boma, and at daybreak we tied up to the iron wharf. as the capital of the government boma contains the residence and gardens of the governor, who is the personal representative of leopold, both as a shopkeeper and as a king by divine right. he is a figurehead. the real administrator is m. vandamme, the secrétaire-général, the ubiquitous, the mysterious, whose name before you leave southampton is in the air, of whom all men, whether they speak in french or english, speak well. it is from boma that m. vandamme sends collectors of rubber, politely labeled inspecteurs, directeurs, judges, capitaines, and sous-lieutenants to their posts, and distributes them over one million square miles. boma is the capital of a country which is as large as six nations of the european continent. for twenty-five years it has been the capital. therefore, the reader already guesses that boma has only one wharf, and at that wharf there is no custom-house, no warehouse, not even a canvas awning under which, during the six months of rainy season, one might seek shelter for himself and his baggage. our debarkation reminded me of a landing of filibusters. a wharf forty yards long led from the steamer to the bank. down this marched the officers of the army, the clerks, the bookkeepers, and on the bank and in the street each dumped his boxes, his sword, his camp-bed, his full-dress helmet. it looked as though a huge eviction had taken place, as though a retreating army, having gained the river's edge, were waiting for a transport. it was not as though to the government the coming of these gentlemen was a complete surprise; regularly every three weeks at that exact spot a like number disembark. but in years the state has not found it worth while to erect for them even an open zinc shed. the cargo invoiced to the state is given equal consideration. "prisoners of the state," each wearing round his neck a steel ring from which a chain stretches to the ring of another "prisoner," carried the cargo to the open street, where lay the luggage of the officers, and there dropped it. mingled with steamer chairs, tin bathtubs, gun-cases, were great crates of sheet iron, green boxes of gin, bags of teneriffe potatoes, boilers of an engine. upon the scene the sun beat with vicious, cruel persistence. those officers who had already served in the congo dropped their belongings under the shadow of a solitary tree. those who for the first time were seeing the capital of the country they had sworn to serve sank upon their boxes and, with dismay in their eyes, mopped their red and dripping brows. [illustration: "prisoners" of the state in chains at matadi.] boma is built at the foot of a hill of red soil. it is a town of scattered buildings made of wood and sheet-iron plates, sent out in crates, and held together with screws. to boma nature has been considerate. she has contributed many trees, two or three long avenues of palms, and in the many gardens caused flowers to blossom and flourish. in the report of the "commission of enquiry" which leopold was forced to send out in 1904 to investigate the atrocities, and each member of which, for his four months' work, received $20,000, boma is described as possessing "the daintiness and _chic_ of a european watering-place." boma really is like a seaport of one of the central american republics. it has a temporary sufficient-to-the-day-for-to-morrow-we-die air. it looks like a military post that at any moment might be abandoned. to remove this impression the state has certain exhibits which seem to point to a stable and good government. there is a well-conducted hospital and clean, well-built barracks; for the amusement of the black soldiers even a theatre, and for the higher officials attractive bungalows, a bandstand, where twice a week a negro band plays by ear, and plays exceedingly well. there is even a lawn-tennis court, where the infrequent visitor to the congo is welcomed, and, by the courteous mr. vandamme, who plays tennis as well as he does every thing else, entertained. boma is the shop window of leopold's big store. the good features of boma are like those attractive articles one sometimes sees in a shop window, but which in the shop one fails to find--at least, i did not find them in the shop. outside of boma i looked in vain for a school conducted by the state, like the one at boma, such as those the united states government gave by the hundred to the philippines. i found not one. and i looked for such a hospital as the one i saw at boma, such as our government has placed for its employes along, and at both ends of, the isthmus of panama, and, except for the one at leopoldville, i saw none. in spite of the fact that boma is a "european watering-place," all the servants of the state with whom i talked wanted to get away from it, especially those who already had served in the interior. to appreciate what boma lacks one has only to visit the neighboring seaports on the same coast; the english towns of sierra leone and calabar, the french town of libreville in the french congo, the german seaport duala in the cameroons, but especially calabar in southern nigeria. in actual existence the new calabar is eight years younger than boma, and in its municipal government, its street-making, cleaning, and lighting, wharfs, barracks, prisons, hospitals, it is a hundred years in advance. boma is not a capital; it is the distributing factory for a huge trading concern, and a particularly selfish one. there is, as i have said, only one wharf, and at that wharf, without paying the state, only state boats may discharge cargo, so the english, dutch, and german boats are forced to "tie up" along the river front. there the grass is eight feet high and breeds mosquitoes and malaria, and conceals the wary crocodile. at night, from the deck of the steamer, all one can see of this capital is a fringe of this high grass in the light from the air ports, and on shore three gas-lamps. no cafés are open, no sailors carouse, no lighted window suggests that some one is giving a dinner, that some one is playing bridge. darkness, gloom, silence mark this "european watering-place." "you ask me," demanded a belgian lieutenant one night as we stood together by the rail, "whether i like better the bush, where there is no white man in a hundred miles, or to be stationed at boma?" he threw out his hands at the gas-lamps, rapidly he pointed at each of them in turn. "voilà, boma!" he said. from boma we steamed six hours farther up the river to matadi. on the way we stopped at noqui, the home of portuguese traders on the portuguese bank, which, as one goes up-stream, lies to starboard. here the current runs at from four to five miles an hour, and has so sharply cut away the bank that we are able to run as near to it with the stern of our big ship as though she were a canoe. to one used more to ocean than to congo traffic it was somewhat bewildering to see the five-thousand-ton steamer make fast to a tree, a sand-bank looming up three fathoms off her quarter, and the blades of her propeller, as though they were the knives of a lawn-mower, cutting the eel-grass. at matadi the congo makes one of her lightning changes. her banks, which have been low and woody, with, on the portuguese side, glimpses of boundless plateaux, become towering hills of rock. at matadi the cataracts and rapids begin, and for two hundred miles continue to stanley pool, which is the beginning of the upper congo. leopoldville is situated on stanley pool, just to the right of where the rapids start their race to the south. with leopoldville above and boma below, still nearer the mouth of the river, matadi makes a centre link in the chain of the three important towns of the lower congo. when henry m. stanley was halted by the cataracts and forced to leave the river he disembarked his expedition on the bank opposite matadi, and a mile farther up-stream. it was from this point he dragged and hauled his boats, until he again reached smooth water at stanley pool. the wagons on which he carried the boats still can be seen lying on the bank, broken and rusty. like the sight of old gun carriages and dismantled cannon, they give one a distinct thrill. now, on the bank opposite from where they lie, the railroad runs from matadi to leopoldville. the congo forces upon one a great admiration for stanley. unless civilization utterly alters it, it must always be a monument to his courage, and as you travel farther and see the difficulties placed in his way, your admiration increases. there are men here who make little of what stanley accomplished; but they are men who seldom leave their own compound, and, who, when they do go up the river, travel at ease, not in a canoe, or on foot through the jungle, but in the smoking-room of the steamer and in a first-class railroad carriage. that they are able so to travel is due to the man they would belittle. the nickname given to stanley by the natives is to-day the nickname of the government. matadi means rock. when stanley reached the town of matadi, which is surrounded entirely by rock, he began with dynamite to blast roads for his caravan. the natives called him bula matadi, the breaker of rocks, and, as in those days he was the government, the law, and the prophets, bula matadi, who then was the white man who governed, now signifies the white man's government. but it is a very different government, and a very different white man. with the natives the word is universal. they say "bula matadi wood post." "not traders' chop, bula matadi's chop." "him no missionary steamer, him bula matadi steamer." the town of matadi is of importance as the place where, owing to the rapids, passengers and cargoes are reshipped on the railroad to the _haut congo_. it is a railroad terminus only, and it looks it. the railroad station and store-houses are close to the river bank, and, spread over several acres of cinders, are the railroad yard and machine shops. above those buildings of hot corrugated zinc and the black soil rises a great rock. it is not so large as gibraltar, or so high as the flatiron building, but it is a little more steep than either. three narrow streets lead to its top. they are of flat stones, with cement gutters. the stones radiate the heat of stove lids. they are worn to a mirror-like smoothness, and from their surface the sun strikes between your eyes, at the pit of your stomach, and the soles of your mosquito boots. the three streets lead to a parade ground no larger than and as bare as a brickyard. it is surrounded by the buildings of bula matadi, the post-office, the custom-house, the barracks, and the café franco-belge. it has a tableland fifty yards wide of yellow clay so beaten by thousands of naked feet, so baked by the heat, that it is as hard as a brass shield. other tablelands may be higher, but this is the one nearest the sun. you cross it wearily, in short rushes, with your heart in your throat, and seeking shade, as a man crossing the zone of fire seeks cover from the bullets. when you reach the cool, dirty custom-house, with walls two feet thick, you congratulate yourself on your escape; you look back into the blaze of the flaming plaza and wonder if you have the courage to return. [illustration: bush boys in the plaza at matadi seeking shade.] at the custom-house i paid duty on articles i could not possibly have bought anywhere in the congo, as, for instance, a tent and a folding-bed, and for a license to carry arms. a young man with a hammer and tiny branding irons beat little stars and the number of my license to _porter d'armes_ on the stock of each weapon. without permission of bula matadi on leaving the congo, one can not sell his guns, or give them away. this is a precaution to prevent weapons falling into the hands of the native. for some reason a native with a gun alarms bula matadi. just on the other bank of the river the french, who do not seem to fear the black brother, sell him flint-lock rifles, as many as his heart desires. on the steamer there was a mild young missionary coming out, for the first time, to whom some unobserving friend had given a fox-terrier. the young man did not care for the dog. he had never owned a dog, and did not know what to do with this one. her name was "fanny," and only by the efforts of all on board did she reach the congo alive. there was no one, from the butcher to the captain, including the passengers, who had not shielded fanny from the cold, and later from the sun, fed her, bathed her, forced medicine down her throat, and raced her up and down the spar deck. consequently we all knew fanny, and it was a great shock when from the custom-house i saw her running around the blazing parade ground, her eyes filled with fear and "lost dog" written all over her, from her drooping tongue to her drooping tail. captain burton and i called "fanny," and, not seeking suicide for ourselves, sent half a dozen black boys to catch her. but fanny never liked her black uncles; on the steamer the kroo boys learned to give her the length of her chain, and so we were forced to plunge to her rescue into the valley of heat. perhaps she thought we were again going to lock her up on the steamer, or perhaps that it was a friendly game, for she ran from us as fast as from the black boys. in matadi no one ever had crossed the parade ground except at a funeral march, and the spectacle of two large white men playing tag with a small fox-terrier attracted an immense audience. the officials and clerks left work and peered between the iron-barred windows, the "prisoners" in chains ceased breaking rock and stared dumbly from the barracks, the black "sentries" shrieked and gesticulated, the naked bush boys, in from a long caravan journey, rose from the side of their burdens and commented upon our manoeuvres in gloomy, guttural tones. i suspect they thought we wanted fanny for "chop." finally fanny ran into the legs of a german trader, who grabbed her by the neck and held her up to us. "you want him? hey?" he shouted. "ay, man," gasped burton, now quite purple, "did you think we were trying to amuse the dog?" i made a leash of my belt, and the captain returned to the ship dragging his prisoner after him. an hour later i met the youthful missionary leading fanny by a rope. "i must tell you about fanny," he cried. "after i took her to the mission i forgot to tie her up--as i suppose i should have done--and she ran away. but, would you believe it, she found her way straight back to the ship. was it not intelligent of her?" i was too far gone with apoplexy, heat prostration, and sunstroke to make any answer, at least one that i could make to a missionary. the next morning fanny, the young missionary, and i left for leopoldville on the railroad. it is a narrow-gauge railroad built near matadi through the solid rock and later twisting and turning so often that at many places one can see the track on three different levels. it is not a state road, but was built and is owned by a dutch company, and, except that it charges exorbitant rates and does not keep its carriages clean, it is well run, and the road-bed is excellent. but it runs a passenger train only three times a week, and though the distance is so short, and though the train starts at 6:30 in the morning, it does not get you to leopoldville the same day. instead, you must rest over night at thysville and start at seven the next morning. that afternoon at three you reach leopoldville. for the two hundred and fifty miles the fare is two hundred francs, and one is limited to sixty pounds of luggage. that was the weight allowed by the japanese to each war correspondent, and as they gave us six months in tokio in which to do nothing else but weigh our equipment, i left matadi without a penalty. had my luggage exceeded the limit, for each extra pound i would have had to pay the company ten cents. to the belgian officers and agents who go for three years to serve the state in the bush the regulation is especially harsh, and in a company so rich, particularly mean. to many a poor officer, and on the pay they receive there are no rich ones, the tax is prohibitive. it forces them to leave behind medicines, clothing, photographic supplies, all ammunition, which means no chance of helping out with duck and pigeon the daily menu of goat and tinned sausages, and, what is the greatest hardship, all books. this regulation, which the state permitted to the concessionaires of the railroad, sends the agents of the state into the wilderness physically and mentally unequipped, and it is no wonder the weaker brothers go mad, and act accordingly. my black boys travelled second-class, which means an open car with narrow seats very close together and a wooden roof. on these cars passengers are allowed twenty pounds of luggage and permitted to collect two hundred and fifty miles of heat and dust. to a black boy twenty pounds is little enough, for he travels with much more baggage than an average "blanc." i am not speaking of the congo boy. all the possessions the state leaves him he could carry in his pockets, and he has no pockets. but wherever he goes the kroo boy, mendi boy, or sierra leone boy carries all his belongings with him in a tin trunk painted pink, green, or yellow. he is never separated from his "box," and the recognized uniform of a kroo boy at work, is his breechcloth, and hanging from a ribbon around his knee, the key to his box. if a boy has no box he generally carries three keys. in the first-class car were three french officers en route to brazzaville, the capital of the french congo, and a dog, a sad mongrel, very dirty, very hungry. on each side of the tiny toy car were six revolving-chairs, so the four men, not to speak of the dog, quite filled it. and to our own bulk each added hand-bags, cases of beer, helmets, gun-cases, cameras, water-bottles, and, as the road does not supply food of any kind, his chop-box. a chop-box is anything that holds food, and for food of every kind, for the hours of feeding, and the verb "to feed," on the west coast, the only word, the "lazy" word, is "chop." the absent-minded young missionary, with fanny jammed between his ankles, and looking out miserably upon the world, and two other young missionaries, travelled second-class. they were even more crowded together than were we, but not so much with luggage as with humanity. but as a protest against the high charges of the railroad the missionaries always travel in the open car. these three young men were for the first time out of england, and in any fashion were glad to start on their long journey up the congo to bolobo. to them whatever happened was a joke. it was a joke even when the colored "wife" of one of the french officers used the broad shoulders of one of them as a pillow and slept sweetly. she was a large, good-natured, good-looking mulatto, and at the frequent stations the french officer ran back to her with "white man's chop," a tin of sausages, a pineapple, a bottle of beer. she drank the beer from the bottle, and with religious tolerance offered it to the baptists. they assured her without the least regret that they were teetotalers. to the other blacks in the open car the sight of a white man waiting on one of their own people was a thrilling spectacle. they regarded the woman who could command such services with respect. it would be interesting to know what they thought of the white man. at each station the open car disgorged its occupants to fill with water the beer bottle each carried, and to buy from the natives kwango, the black man's bread, a flaky, sticky flour that tastes like boiled chestnuts; and pineapples at a franc for ten. and such pineapples! not hard and rubber-like, as we know them at home, but delicious, juicy, melting in the mouth like hothouse grapes, and, also, after each mouthful, making a complete bath necessary. one of the french officers had a lump of ice which he broke into pieces and divided with the others. they saluted magnificently many times, and as each drowned the morsel in his tin cup of beer, one of them cried with perfect simplicity: "c'est paris!" this reminded me that the ship's steward had placed much ice in my chop basket, and i carried some of it to another car in which were five of the white sisters. for nineteen days i had been with them on the steamer, but they had spoken to no one, and i was doubtful how they would accept my offering. but the mother superior gave permission, and they took the ice through the car window, their white hoods bristling with the excitement of the adventure. they were on their way to a post still two months' journey up the river, nearly to lake tanganyika, and for three years or, possibly, until they died, that was the last ice they would see. at bongolo station the division superintendent came in the car and everybody offered him refreshment, and in return he told us, in the hope of interesting us, of a washout, and then casually mentioned that an hour before an elephant had blocked the track. it seemed so much too good to be true that i may have expressed some doubt, for he said: "why, of course and certainly. already this morning one was at sariski station and another at sipeto." and instead of looking out of the window i had been reading an american magazine, filched from the smoking-room, which was one year old! at thysville the railroad may have opened a hotel, but when i was there to hunt for a night's shelter it turned you out bag and baggage. the french officers decided to risk a portuguese trading store known as the "ideal hotel," and the missionaries very kindly gave me the freedom of their rest house. it is kept open for those of the mission who pass between the upper and lower congo. at the station the young missionaries were met by two older missionaries--mr. weekes, who furnished the "commission of enquiry" with much evidence, which they would not, or were not allowed to, print, and mr. jennings. with them were twenty "boys" from the mission and, with each of them carrying a piece of our baggage on his head, we climbed the hill, and i was given a clean, comfortable, completely appointed bedroom. our combined chop we turned over to a black brother. he is the custodian of the rest house and an excellent cook. while he was preparing it my boys spread out my folding rubber tub. had i closed the door i should have smothered, so, in the presence of twenty interested black baptists, i took an embarrassing but one of the most necessary baths i can remember. there still was a piece of the ice remaining, and as the interest in the bathtub had begun to drag i handed it to one of my audience. he yelled as though i had thrust into his hand a drop of vitriol, and, leaping in the air, threw the ice on the floor and dared any one to touch it. from the "personal" boys who had travelled to matadi the mission boys had heard of ice. but none had ever seen it. they approached it as we would a rattlesnake. each touched it and then sprang away. finally one, his eyes starting from his head, cautiously stroked the inoffensive brick and then licked his fingers. the effect was instantaneous. he assured the others it was "good chop," and each of them sat hunched about it on his heels, stroking it, and licking his fingers, and then with delighted thrills rubbing them over his naked body. the little block of ice that at liverpool was only a "quart of water" had assumed the value of a diamond. dinner was enlivened by an incident. mr. weekes, with orders simply to "fry these," had given to the assistant of the cook two tins of sausages. the small _chef_ presented them to us in the pan in which he had cooked them, but he had obeyed instructions to the letter and had fried the tins unopened. after dinner we sat until late, while the older men told the young missionaries of atrocities of which, in the twenty years and within the last three years, they had been witnesses. already in mr. morel's books i had read their testimony, but hearing from the men themselves the tales of outrage and cruelty gave them a fresh and more intimate value, and sent me to bed hot and sick with indignation. but, nevertheless, the night i slept at thysville was the only cool one i knew in the congo. it was as cool as is a night in autumn at home. thysville, between the upper and the lower congo, with its fresh mountain air, is an obvious site for a hospital for the servants of the state. to the congo it should be what simla is to the sick men of india; but the state is not running hospitals. it is in the rubber business. all steamers for the upper congo and her great tributaries, whether they belong to the state or the missions, start from leopoldville. there they fit out for voyages, some of which last three and four months. so it is a place of importance, but, like boma, it looks as though the people who yesterday built it meant to-morrow to move out. the river-front is one long dump-heap. it is a grave-yard for rusty boilers, deck-plates, chains, fire-bars. the interior of the principal storehouse for ships' supplies, directly in front of the office of the captain of the port, looks like a junk-shop for old iron and newspapers. i should have enjoyed taking the captain of the port by the neck and showing him the water-front and marine shops at calabar; the wharfs and quays of stone, the open places spread with gravel, the whitewashed cement gutters, the spare parts of machinery, greased and labeled in their proper shelves, even the condemned scrap-iron in orderly piles; the whole yard as trim as a battleship. on the river-front at leopoldville a grossly fat man, collarless, coatless, purple-faced, perspiring, was rushing up and down. he was the captain of the port. black women had assembled to greet returning black soldiers, and the captain was calling upon the black sentries to drive them away. the sentries, yelling, fell upon the women with their six-foot staves and beat them over the head and bare shoulders, and as they fled, screaming, the captain of the port danced in the sun shaking his fists after them and raging violently. next morning i was told he had tried to calm his nerves with absinthe, which is not particularly good for nerves, and was exceedingly unwell. i was sorry for him. the picture of discipline afforded by the glazed-eyed official, reeling and cursing in the open street, had been illuminating. although at leopoldville the state has failed to build wharfs, the esthetic features of the town have not been neglected, and there is a pretty plaza called stanley park. in the centre of this plaza is a pillar with, at its base, a bust of leopold, and on the top of the pillar a plaster-of-paris lady, nude, and, not unlike the bacchante of macmonnies. not so much from the likeness as from history, i deduced that the lady must be cléo de mérode. but whether the monument is erected to her or to leopold, or to both of them, i do not know. [illustration: the monument in stanley park, erected, not to stanley, but to leopold.] i left leopoldville in the _deliverance_. some of the state boats that make the long trip to stanleyville are very large ships. they have plenty of deck room and many cabins. with their flat, raft-like hull, their paddle-wheel astern, and the covered sun deck, they resemble gigantic house-boats. of one of these boats the _deliverance_ was only one-third the size, but i took passage on her because she would give me a chance to see not only something of the congo, but also one of its great tributaries, the less travelled kasai. the _deliverance_ was about sixty-five feet over all and drew three feet of water. she was built like a mud-scow, with a deck of iron plates. amidships, on this deck, was a tiny cabin with berths for two passengers and standing room for one. the furnaces and boiler were forward, banked by piles of wood. all the river boats burn only wood. her engines were in the stern. these engines and the driving-rod to the paddle-wheel were uncovered. this gives the _deliverance_ the look of a large automobile without a tonneau. you were constantly wondering what had gone wrong with the carbureter, and if it rained what would happen to her engines. supported on iron posts was an upper deck, on which, forward, stood the captain's box of a cabin and directly in front of it the steering-wheel. the telegraph, which signalled to the openwork engine below, and a dining table as small as a chess-board, completely filled the "bridge." when we sat at table the captain's boy could only just squeeze himself between us and the rail. it was like dining in a private box. and certainly no theatre ever offered such scenery, nor did any menagerie ever present so many strange animals. we were four white men: captain jensen, his engineer, and the other passenger, captain anfossi, a young italian. before he reached his post he had to travel one month on the _deliverance_ and for another month walk through the jungle. he was the most cheerful and amusing companion, and had he been returning after three years of exile to his home he could not have been more brimful of spirits. captain jensen was a dane (almost every river captain is a swede or a dane) and talked a little english, a little french, and a little bangala. the mechanician was a finn and talked the native bangala, and anfossi spoke french. after chop, when we were all assembled on the upper deck, there would be the most extraordinary talks in four languages, or we would appoint one man to act as a clearing-house, and he would translate for the others. on the lower deck we carried twenty "wood boys," whose duty was to cut wood for the furnace, and about thirty black passengers. they were chiefly soldiers, who had finished their period of service for the state, with their wives and children. they were crowded on the top of the hatches into a space fifteen by fifteen feet between our cabin door and the furnace. around the combings of the hatches, and where the scuppers would have been had the _deliverance_ had scuppers, the river raced over the deck to a depth of four or five inches. when the passengers wanted to wash their few clothes or themselves they carried on their ablutions and laundry work where they happened to be sitting. but for anfossi and myself to go from our cabin to the iron ladder of the bridge it was necessary to wade both in the water and to make stepping stones of the passengers. i do not mean that we merely stepped over an occasional arm or leg. i mean we walked on them. you have seen a football player, in a hurry to make a touchdown, hurdle without prejudice both friends and foes. our progress was like this. but by practice we became so expert that without even awakening them we could spring lightly from the plump stomach of a black baby to its mother's shoulder, from there leap to the father's ribs, and rebound upon the rungs of the ladder. [illustration: the _deliverance_.] the river marched to the sea at the rate of four to five miles an hour. the _deliverance_ could make about nine knots an hour, so we travelled at the average rate of five miles; but for the greater part of each day we were tied to a bank while the boys went ashore and cut enough wood to carry us farther. and we never travelled at night. owing to the changing currents, before the sun set we ran into shore and made fast to a tree. i explained how in america the river boats used search-lights, and was told that on one boat the state had experimented with a searchlight, but that particular searchlight having got out of order the idea of night travelling was condemned. ours was a most lazy progress, but one with the most beautiful surroundings and filled with entertainment. from our private box we looked out upon the most wonderful of panoramas. sometimes we were closely hemmed in by mountains of light-green grass, except where, in the hollows, streams tumbled in tiny waterfalls between gigantic trees hung with strange flowering vines and orchids. or we would push into great lakes of swirling brown water, dotted with flat islands overgrown with reed grass higher than the head of a man. again the water turned blue and the trees on the banks grew into forests with the look of cultivated, well-cared-for parks, but with no sign of man, not even a mud hut or a canoe; only the strangest of birds and the great river beasts. sometimes the sky was overcast and gray, the warm rain shut us in like a fog, and the clouds hid the peaks of the hills, or there would come a swift black tornado and the rain beat into our private box, and each would sit crouched in his rain coat, while the engineer smothered his driving-rods in palm oil, and the great drops drummed down upon the awning and drowned the fire in our pipes. after these storms, as though it were being pushed up from below, the river seemed to rise in the centre, to become convex. by some optical illusion, it seemed to fall away on either hand to the depth of three or four feet. but as a rule we had a brilliant, gorgeous sunshine that made the eddying waters flash and sparkle, and caused the banks of sand to glare like whitewashed walls, and turn the sharp, hard fronds of the palms into glittering sword-blades. the movement of the boat tempered the heat, and in lazy content we sat in our lookout box and smiled upon the world. except for the throb of the engine and the slow splash, splash, splash of the wheel there was no sound. we might have been adrift in the heart of a great ocean. so complete was the silence, so few were the sounds of man's presence, that at times one almost thought that ours was the first boat to disturb the congo. although we were travelling by boat, we spent as much time on land as on the water. because the _deliverance_ burnt wood and, like an invading army, "lived on the country," she was always stopping to lay in a supply. that gave anfossi and myself a chance to visit the native villages or to hunt in the forest. to feed her steamers the state has established along the river-bank posts for wood, and in theory at these places there always is a sufficient supply of wood to carry a steamer to the next post. but our experience was either that another steamer had just taken all the wood or that the boys had decided to work no more and had hidden themselves in the bush. the state posts were "clearings," less than one hundred yards square, cut out of the jungle. sometimes only black men were in charge, but as a rule the _chef de poste_ was a lonely, fever-ridden white, whose only interest in our arrival was his hope that we might spare him quinine. i think we gave away as many grains of quinine as we received logs of wood. empty-handed we would turn from the wood post and steam a mile or so farther up the river, where we would run into a bank, and a boy with a steel hawser would leap overboard and tie up the boat to the roots of a tree. then all the boys would disappear into the jungle and attack the primeval forest. each was supplied with a machete and was expected to furnish a _bras_ of wood. a _bras_ is a number of sticks about as long and as thick as your arm, placed in a pile about three feet high and about three feet wide. to fix this measure the head boy drove poles into the bank three feet apart, and from pole to pole at the same distance from the ground stretched a strip of bark. when each boy had filled one of these openings all the wood was carried on board, and we would unhitch the _deliverance_, and she would proceed to burn up the fuel we had just collected. it took the twenty boys about four hours to cut the wood, and the _deliverance_ the same amount of time to burn it. it was distinctly a hand-to-mouth existence. as i have pointed out, when it is too dark to see the currents, the congo captains never attempt to travel. so each night at sunset captain jensen ran into the bank, and as soon as the plank was out all the black passengers and the crew passed down it and spent the night on shore. in five minutes the women would have the fires lighted and the men would be cutting grass for bedding and running up little shelters of palm boughs and hanging up linen strips that were both tents and mosquito nets. [illustration: the native wife of a _chef de poste_.] in the moonlight the natives with their camp-fires and torches made most wonderful pictures. sometimes for their sleeping place the captain would select a glade in the jungle, or where a stream had cut a little opening in the forest, or a sandy island, with tall rushes on either side and the hot african moon shining on the white sand and turning the palms to silver, or they would pitch camp in a buffalo wallow, where the grass and mud had been trampled into a clay floor by the hoofs of hundreds of wild animals. but the fact that they were to sleep where at sunrise and at sunset came buffaloes, elephants, and panthers, disturbed the women not at all, and as they bent, laughing, over the iron pots, the firelight shone on their bare shoulders and was reflected from their white teeth and rolling eyes and brazen bangles. until late in the night the goats would bleat, babies cry, and the "boys" and "mammies" talked, sang, quarrelled, beat tom-toms, and squeezed mournful groans out of the accordion of civilization. one would have thought we had anchored off a busy village rather than at a place where, before that night, the inhabitants had been only the beasts of the jungle and the river. iv americans in the congo in trying to sum up what i found in the congo free state, i think what one fails to find there is of the greatest significance. to tell what the place is like, you must tell what it lacks. one must write of the congo always in the negative. it is as though you asked: "what sort of a house is this one jones has built?" and were answered: "well, it hasn't any roof, and it hasn't any cellar, and it has no windows, floors, or chimneys. it's that kind of a house." when first i arrived in the congo the time i could spend there seemed hopelessly inadequate. after i'd been there a month, it seemed to me that in a very few days any one could obtain a painfully correct idea of the place, and of the way it is administered. if an orchestra starts on an piece of music with all the instruments out of tune, it need not play through the entire number for you to know that the instruments are out of tune. the charges brought against leopold ii, as king of the congo, are three: (_a_) that he has made slaves of the twenty million blacks he promised to protect. (_b_) that, in spite of his promise to keep the congo open to trade, he has closed it to all nations. (_c_) that the revenues of the country and all of its trade he has retained for himself. any one who visits the congo and remains only two weeks will be convinced that of these charges leopold is guilty. in that time he will not see atrocities, but he will see that the natives are slaves, that no foreigner can trade with them, that in the interest of leopold alone the country is milked. he will see that the government of leopold is not a government. it preserves the perquisites and outward signs of government. it coins money, issues stamps, collects taxes. but it assumes none of the responsibilities of government. the congo free state is only a great trading house. and in it leopold is the only wholesale and retail trader. he gives a bar of soap for rubber, and makes a "turn-over" of a cup of salt for ivory. he is not a monarch. he is a shopkeeper. and were the country not so rich in rubber and ivory, were the natives not sweated so severely, he also would be a bankrupt shopkeeper. for the congo is not only one vast trading post, but also it is a trading post badly managed. even in the republics of central america where the government changes so frequently, and where each new president is trying to make hay while he can, there is better administration, more is done for the people, the rights of other nations are better respected. were the congo properly managed, it would be one of the richest territories on the surface of the earth. as it is, through ignorance and cupidity, it is being despoiled and its people are the most wretched of human beings. in the white book containing the reports of british vice-consuls on conditions in the congo from april of last year to january of this year, mr. mitchell tells how the enslavement of the people still continues, how "they" (the conscripts, as they are called) "are hunted in the forest by soldiers, and brought in chained by the neck like criminals." they then, though conscripted to serve in the army, are set to manual labor. they are slaves. the difference between the slavery under leopold and the slavery under the arab raiders is that the arab was the better and kinder master. he took "prisoners" just as leopold seizes "conscripts," but he had too much foresight to destroy whole villages, to carry off all the black man's live stock, and to uproot his vegetable gardens. he purposed to return. and he did not wish to so terrify the blacks that to escape from him they would penetrate farther into the jungle. his motive was purely selfish, but his methods, compared with those of leopold, were almost considerate. the work the state to-day requires of the blacks is so oppressive that they have no time, no heart, to labor for themselves. in every other colony--french, english, german--in the native villages i saw vegetable gardens, goats, and chickens, large, comfortable, three-room huts, fences, and, especially in the german settlement of the cameroons at duala, many flower gardens. in bell town at duala i walked for miles through streets lined with such huts and gardens, and saw whole families, the very old as well as the very young, sitting contentedly in the shade of their trees, or at work in their gardens. in the congo native villages i saw but one old person, of chickens or goats that were not to be given to the government as taxes i saw none, and the vegetable gardens, when there were any such, were cultivated for the benefit of the _chef de poste_, and the huts were small, temporary, and filthy. the dogs in the kennels on my farm are better housed, better fed, and much better cared for, whether ill or well, than are the twenty millions of blacks along the congo river. and that these human beings are so ill-treated is due absolutely to the cupidity of one man, and to the apathy of the rest of the world. and it is due as much to the apathy and indifference of whoever may read this as to the silence of elihu root or sir edward grey. no one can shirk his responsibility by sneering, "am i my brother's keeper?" the government of the united states and the thirteen other countries have promised to protect these people, to care for their "material and moral welfare," and that promise is morally binding upon the people of those countries. how much leopold cares for the material welfare of the natives is illustrated by the prices he pays the "boys" who worked on the government steamer in which i went up the kasai. they were bound on a three months' voyage, and for each month's work on this trip they were given in payment their rice and eighty cents. that is, at the end of the trip they received what in our money would be equivalent to two dollars and forty cents. and that they did not receive in money, but in "trade goods," which are worth about ten per cent less than their money value. so that of the two dollars and eighty cents that is due them, these black boys, who for three months sweated in the dark jungle cutting wood, are robbed by this king of twenty-four cents. one would dislike to grow rich at that price. [illustration: english missionaries, and some of their charges.] in the french congo i asked the traders at libreville what they paid their boys for cutting mahogany. i found the price was four francs a day without "chop," or three and a half francs with "chop." that is, on one side of the river the french pay in cash for one day's work what leopold pays in trade goods for the work of a month. as a result the natives run away to the french side, and often, i might almost say invariably, when at the _poste de bois_ on the congo side we would find two cords of wood, on the other bank at the post for the french boats we would count two hundred and fifty cords of wood. i took photographs of the native villages in all the colonies, in order to show how they compared--of the french and belgian wood posts, the one well stocked and with the boys lying about asleep or playing musical instruments, or alert to trade and barter, and on the belgian side no wood, and the unhappy white man alone, and generally shivering with fever. had the photographs only developed properly they would have shown much more convincingly than one can write how utterly miserable is the condition of the congo negro. and the condition of the white man at the wood posts is only a little better. we found one man absolutely without supplies. he was only twenty-four hours distant from leopoldville, but no supplies had been sent him. he was ill with fever, and he could eat nothing but milk. captain jensen had six cans of condensed milk, which the state calculated should suffice for him and his passengers for three months. he turned the lot over to the sick man. we found another white man at the first wood post on the kasai just above where it meets the congo. he was in bed and dangerously ill with enteric fever. he had telegraphed the state at leopoldville and a box of medicines had been sent to him; but the state doctors had forgotten to enclose any directions for their use. we were as ignorant of medicines as the man himself, and, as it was impossible to move him, we were forced to leave him lying in his cot with the row of bottles and tiny boxes, that might have given him life, unopened at his elbow. it was ten days before the next boat would touch at his post. i do not know that it reached him in time. one could tell dozens of such stories of cruelty to natives and of injustice and neglect to the white agents. the fact that leopold has granted to american syndicates control over two great territories in the congo may bring about a better state of affairs, and, in any event, it may arouse public interest in this country. it certainly should be of interest to americans that some of the most prominent of their countrymen have gone into close partnership with a speculator as unscrupulous and as notorious as is leopold, and that they are to exploit a country which as yet has been developed only by the help of slavery, with all its attendant evils of cruelty and torture. that leopold has no right to give these concessions is a matter which chiefly concerns the men who are to pay for them, but it is an interesting fact. the act of berlin expressly states: _"no power which exercises, or shall exercise, sovereign rights in the above-mentioned regions, shall be allowed to grant therein a monopoly or favor of any kind in matters of trade."_ leopold is only a steward placed by the powers over the congo. he is a janitor. and he has no more authority to give even a foot of territory to belgians, americans, or chinamen than the janitor of an apartment house has authority to fill the rooms with his wife's relations or sell the coal in the basement. the charge that the present concessionaires have no title that any independent trader or miner need respect is one that is sure to be brought up when the powers throw leopold out, and begin to clean house. the concessionaires take a sporting chance that leopold will not be thrown out. it should be remembered that it is to his and to their advantage to see that he is not. in november of 1906, leopold gave the international forestry and mining company of the congo mining rights in territories adjoining his private park, the _domaine de la couronne_, and to the american congo company he granted the right to work rubber along the congo river to where it joins the kasai. this latter is a territory of four thousand square miles. the company also has the option within the next eleven years of buying land in any part of a district which is nearly one-half of the entire congo. of the forestry and mining company one-half of the profits go to leopold, one-fourth to belgians, and the remaining fourth to the americans. of the profits of the american congo company, leopold is entitled to one-half and the americans to the other half. this company was one originally organized to exploit a new method of manufacturing crude rubber from the plant. the company was taken over by thomas f. ryan and his associates. back of both companies are the guggenheims, who are to perform the actual work in the mines and in the rubber plantation. early in march a large number of miners and engineers were selected by john hays hammond, the chief engineer of the guggenheim exploration companies, and a. chester beatty, and were sent to explore the territory granted in the mining concession. another force of experts are soon to follow. the legal representative of the syndicates has stated that in the congo they intend to move "on commercial lines." by that we take it they mean they will give the native a proper price for his labor; and instead of offering "bonuses" and "commissions" to their white employees will pay them living wages. the exact terms of the concessions are wrapped in mystery. some say the territories ceded to the concessionaires are to be governed by them, policed by them, and that within the boundaries of these concessions the americans are to have absolute control. if this be so the syndicates are entering upon an experiment which for americans is almost without precedent. they will be virtually what in england is called a chartered company, with the difference that the englishmen receive their charter from their own government, while the charter under which the americans will act will be granted by a foreign power, and for what they may do in the congo their own government could not hold them responsible. they are answerable only to the power that issued the charter; and that power is the just, the humane, the merciful leopold. the history of the early days of chartered companies in africa, notoriously those of the congo, northern nigeria, rhodesia, and german central africa does not make pleasant reading. but until the americans in the congo have made this experiment, it would be most unfair (except that the company they choose to keep leaves them open to suspicion) not to give them the benefit of the doubt. one can at least say for them that they seem to be absolutely ignorant of the difficulties that lie before them. at least that is true of all of them to whom i have talked. the attorney of the rubber company when interviewed by a representative of a new york paper is reported to have said: "we have purchased a privilege from a sovereign state and propose to operate it along purely commercial lines. with king leopold's management of congo affairs in the past, or, with _what he may do in an administrative way in the future, we have absolutely nothing to do_." the italics are mine. when asked: "under your concessions are you given similar powers over the native blacks as are enjoyed by other concessionaires?" the answer of the attorney, as reported, was: "the problem of labor is not mentioned in the concession agreement, neither is the question of local administration. we are left to solve the labor problem in our own way, on a purely commercial basis, and with the question of government we have absolutely nothing whatever to do. the labor problem will not be formidable. our mills are simple affairs. one man can manage them, and the question of the labor on the rubber concession is reduced to the minimum." this answer of the learned attorney shows an ignorance of "labor" conditions in the congo which is, unless assumed, absolutely abject. if the american syndicates are not to police and govern the territories ceded them, but if these territories are to continue to be administered by leopold, it is not possible for the americans to have "absolutely nothing to do" with that administration. leopold's sole idea of administration is that every black man is his slave, in other words, the only men the americans can depend upon for labor are slaves. of the profits of these american companies leopold is to receive one-half. he will work his rubber with slaves. are the americans going to use slaves also, or do they intend "on commercial lines" to pay those who work for them living wages? and if they do, at the end of the fiscal year, having paid a fair price for labor, are they prepared to accept a smaller profit than will their partner leopold, who obtains his labor with the aid of a chain and a whip? [illustration: the laboring man upon whom the american concessionaires must depend.] the attorney for the company airily says: "the labor problem will not be formidable." if the man knows what he is talking about, he can mean but one thing. the motives that led leopold to grant these concessions are possibly various. the motives that induced the americans to take his offer were probably less complicated. with them it was no question of politics. they wanted the money; they did not need it, for they all are rich--they merely wanted it. but leopold wants more than the half profits he will obtain from the americans. if the powers should wake from their apathy and try to cast him out of the congo, he wants, through his american partners, the help of the united states. should he be "dethroned," by granting these concessions now on a share and share alike basis with belgians, french, and americans, he still, through them, hopes to draw from the congo a fair income. and in the meanwhile he looks to these americans to kill any action against him that may be taken in our senate and house of representatives, even in the white house and department of state. for the last two years chester a. beatty has been visiting leopold at belgium, and has obtained the two concessions, and leopold has obtained, or hopes he has obtained, the influence of many american shareholders. the fact that the people of the united states possessed no "vested interest" in the congo was the important fact that placed any action on our part in behalf of that distressed country above suspicion. if we acted, we did so because the united states, as one of the signatory powers of the berlin act, had promised to protect the natives of the congo; and we could truly claim that we acted only in the name of humanity. leopold has now robbed us of that claim. he hopes that the enormous power wielded by the americans with whom he is associated, will prevent any action against him in this country. but the deal has already been made public, and the motives of those who now oppose improvement of conditions in the congo, and who support leopold, will be at once suspected. to me the most interesting thing about the tract of land ceded to mr. ryan, apart from the number of hippopotamuses i saw on it, was that the people living along the congo say that it is of no value. they told me that two years ago, after working it for some time, leopold abandoned it as unprofitable, and they added that, when leopold cannot whip rubber out of the forest, it is hard to believe that it can be obtained there legitimately by any one else. on the bank i saw the "factories" to which the unprofitable rubber had been carried from the interior. they had formerly belonged to leopold, now they are the property of mr. ryan and of the american congo company. in only two years they already are in ruins, and the jungle has engulfed them. i was on the land owned by the company a dozen times or more, but i did not go into the interior. even had i done so, i am not an expert on rubber, and would have understood nothing of para trees, lagos silk, and liane. i am speaking not of my own knowledge, only of what was told me by people who live on the spot. i found that this particular concession was well known, because, unlike the land given to the forestry and mines company, it is not an inaccessible tract, but is situated only eight miles from leopoldville. in our language, that is about as far as is the battery to 160th street. leopoldville is the chief place on the congo river, and every one there who spoke to me of the concession knew where it was situated, and repeated that it had been given up by leopold as unprofitable, and that he had unloaded it on mr. ryan. they seem to think it very clever of the king to have got rid of it to the american millionaire. to one knowing mr. ryan only from what he reads of him in the public press, he does not seem to be the sort of man to whom leopold could sell a worthless rubber plantation. however, it is a matter which concerns only mr. ryan and those who may think of purchasing shares in the company. the guggenheims, who are to operate this rubber, say that leopold did not know how to get out the full value of the land, and that they, by using the machinery they will install, will be able to make a profit, where leopold, using only native labor, suffered a loss. to the poor the ways of the truly rich are past finding out. after a man has attained a fortune sufficient to keep him in yachts and automobiles, one would think he could afford to indulge himself in the luxury of being squeamish; that as to where he obtained any further increase of wealth, he would prefer to pick and choose. on the contrary, these americans go as far out of their way as belgium to make a partner of the man who has wrung his money from wretched slaves, who were beaten, starved, and driven in chains. this concession cannot make them rich. it can only make them richer. and not richer in fact, for all the money they may whip out of the congo could not give them one thing that they cannot now command, not an extra taste to the lips, not a fresh sensation, not one added power for good. to them it can mean only a figure in ink on a page of a bank-book. but what suffering, what misery it may mean to the slaves who put it there! why should men as rich as these elect to go into partnership with one who sweats his dollars out of the naked black? how really fine, how really wonderful it would be if these same men, working together, decided to set free these twenty million people--if, instead of joining hands with leopold, they would overthrow him and march into the congo free men, without his chain around their ankles, and open it to the trade of the world, and give justice and a right to live and to work and to sell and buy to millions of miserable human beings. these americans working together could do it. they could do it from washington. or five hundred men with two maxim guns could do it. the "kingdom" of the congo is only a house of cards. five hundred filibusters could take boma, proclaim the congo open to the traders of the world, as the act of berlin declares it to be, and in a day make of leopold the jest of europe. they would only be taking possession of what has always belonged to them. down in the congo i talked to many young officers of leopold's army. they had been driven to serve him by the whips of failure, poverty, or crime. i do not know that the american concessionaires are driven by any such scourge. these younger men, who saw the depths of their degradation, who tasted the dirty work they were doing, were daily risking life by fever, through lack of food, by poisoned arrows, and for three hundred dollars a year. their necessity was great. they had the courage of their failure. they were men one could pity. one of them picked at the band of blue and gold braid around the wrist of his tunic, and said: "look, it is our badge of shame." to me those foreign soldiers of fortune, who, sooner than starve at home or go to jail, serve leopold in the jungle, seem more like men and brothers than these truly rich, who, of their own free will, safe in their downtown offices, become partners with this blackguard king. what will be the outcome of the american advance into the congo? will it prove the salvation of the congo? will it be, if that were possible, a greater evil? e.r. morel, who is the leader in england of the movement for the improvement of the congo, has written: "it is a little difficult to imagine that the trust magnates are moulded upon the unique model of leopold ii, and are prepared for the asking to become associates in slave-driving. the trouble is that they probably know nothing about african conditions, that they have been primed by the king with his detestable theories, and are starting their enterprises on the basis that the natives of central africa must be regarded as mere 'laborers' for the white man's benefit, possessing no rights in land nor in the produce of the soil. if mr. ryan and his colleagues are going to acquire their rubber over four thousand square miles, by 'commercial methods,' we welcome their advent. but we would point out to them that, in such a case, they had better at once abandon all idea of three or four hundred per cent dividends with which the wily autocrat at brussels has doubtless primed them. no such monstrous profits are to be acquired in tropical africa under a trade system. if, on the other hand, the methods they are prepared to adopt are the methods king leopold and his other concessionaires have adopted for the past thirteen years, devastation and destruction, and the raising of more large bodies of soldiers, are their essential accompaniments; and the widening of the area of the congo hell is assured." the two things in the american invasion of the congo that promise good to that unhappy country are that our country is represented at boma by a most intelligent, honest, and fearless young man in the person of james a. smith, our consul-general, and that the actual work of operating the mines and rubber is in the hands of the guggenheims. they are well known as men upright in affairs, and as philanthropists and humanitarians of the common-sense type. like other rich men of their race, they have given largely to charity and to assist those less fortunate than themselves. for thirteen years in mines in mexico, in china, and alaska, they have had to deal with the problem of labor, and they have met it successfully. workmen of three nationalities they have treated with fairness. "why should you suppose," mr. daniel guggenheim asked me, "that in the congo we will treat the negroes harshly? in mexico we found the natives ill-paid and ill-fed. we fed them and paid them well. not from any humanitarian idea, but because it was good business. it is not good business to cut off a workman's hands or head. we are not ashamed of the way we have always treated our workmen, and in the congo we are not going to spoil our record." i suggested that in mexico he did not have as his partner leopold, tempting him with slave labor, and that the distance from broadway to his concessions in the congo was so great that as to what his agents might do there he could not possibly know. to this mr. guggenheim answered that "neither leopold nor anyone else can dictate how we shall treat the native labor," that if his agents were cruel they would be instantly dismissed, and that for what occurred in the congo on the land occupied by the american congo company his brothers and himself alone were responsible, and that they accepted that responsibility. but already on his salary list he has men who are sure to get him into trouble, men of whose _dossiers_ he is quite ignorant. from belgium, leopold has unloaded on the american companies several of his "valets du roi," press agents, and tools, men who for years have been defenders of his dirty work in the congo; and of the americans, one, who is prominently exploited by the belgians, had to leave africa for theft. that mr. guggenheim wishes and intends to give to the black in the congo fair treatment there is no possible doubt. but that on broadway, removed from the scene of operations in time some four to six months, and in actual distance eight thousand miles, he can control the acts of his agents and his partners, remains to be proved. he is attacking a problem much more momentous than the handling of mexican _peons_ or chinese coolies, and every step of the working out of this problem will be watched by the people of this country. and should they find that the example of the belgian concessionaires in their treatment of the natives is being imitated by even one of the american congo company the people of this country will know it, and may the lord have mercy on his soul! v hunting the hippo except once or twice in the zoo, i never had seen a hippopotamus, and i was most anxious, before i left the congo, to meet one. i wanted to look at him when he was free, and his own master, without iron bars or keepers; when he believed he was quite alone, and was enjoying his bath in peace and confidence. i also wanted to shoot him, and to hang in my ancestral halls his enormous head with the great jaws open and the inside of them painted pink and the small tusks hungrily protruding. i had this desire, in spite of the fact that for every hippo except the particular one whose head i coveted, i entertained the utmost good feeling. as a lad, among other beasts the hippopotamus had appealed to my imagination. collectively, i had always looked upon them as most charming people. they come of an ancient family. two thousand four hundred years ago they were mentioned by herodotus. and herodotus to the animal kingdom is what domesday book is to the landed gentry. to exist beautifully for twenty-four hundred years without a single mésalliance, without having once stooped to trade, is certainly a strong title to nobility. other animals by contact with man have become degraded. the lion, the "king of beasts," now rides a bicycle, and growls, as previously rehearsed, at the young woman in spangles, of whom he is secretly afraid. and the elephant, the monarch of the jungle, and of a family as ancient and noble as that of the hippopotamus, the monarch of the river, has become a beast of burden and works for his living. you can see him in phoenix park dragging a road-roller, in siam and india carrying logs, and at coney island he bends the knee to little girls from brooklyn. the royal proboscis, that once uprooted trees, now begs for peanuts. but, you never see a hippopotamus chained to a road-roller, or riding a bicycle. he is still the gentleman, the man of elegant leisure, the aristocrat of aristocrats, harming no one, and, in his ancestral river, living the simple life. and yet, i sought to kill him. at least, one of him, but only one. and, that i did not kill even one, while a bitter disappointment, is still a source of satisfaction. in the congo river we saw only two hippos, and both of them were dead. they had been shot from a steamer. if the hippo is killed in the water, it is impossible to recover the body at once. it sinks and does not rise, some say, for an hour, others say for seven hours. as in an hour the current may have carried the body four miles below where it sank, the steamer does not wait, and the destruction of the big beast is simple murder. there should be a law in the congo to prevent their destruction, and, no doubt, if the state thought it could make a few francs out of protecting the hippo, as it makes many million francs by preserving the elephant, which it does for the ivory, such a law would exist. we soon saw many hippos, but although we could not persuade the only other passenger not to fire at them, there are a few hippos still alive in the congo. for, the only time the captain and i were positive he hit anything, was when he fired over our heads and blew off the roof of the bridge. when first we saw the two dead hippos, one of them was turning and twisting so violently that we thought he was alive. but, as we drew near, we saw the strange convulsions were due to two enormous and ugly crocodiles, who were fiercely pulling at the body. crocodiles being man-eaters, we had no feelings about shooting them, either in the water or up a tree; and i hope we hit them. in any event, after we fired the body drifted on in peace. on my return trip, going with the stream, when the boat covers about four times the distance she makes when steaming against it, i saw many hippos. in one day i counted sixty-nine. but on our way up the congo, until we turned into the kasai river, we saw none. so, on the first night we camped in the kasai i had begun to think i never would see one, and i went ashore both skeptical and discouraged. we had stopped, not at a wood post, but at a place on the river's bank previously untouched by man, where there was a stretch of beach, and then a higher level with trees and tall grasses. driven deep in this beach were the footprints of a large elephant. they looked as though some one had amused himself by sinking a bucket in the mud, and then pulling it out. for sixty yards i followed the holes and finally lost them in a confusion of other tracks. the place had been so trampled upon that it was beaten into a basin. it looked as though every animal in the kasai had met there to hold a dance. there were the deep imprints of the hippos and the round foot of the elephant, with the marks of the big toes showing as clearly as though they had been scooped out of the mud with a trowel, the hoofs of buffalo as large as the shoe of a cart horse, and the arrow-like marks of the antelope, some in dainty little vs, others measuring three inches across, and three inches from the base to the point. they came from every direction, down the bank and out of the river; and crossed and recrossed, and beneath the fresh prints that had been made that morning at sunrise, were those of days before rising up sharply out of the sun-dried clay, like bas-reliefs in stucco. i had gone ashore in a state of mind so skeptical that i was as surprised as crusoe at the sight of footprints. it was as though the boy who did not believe in fairies suddenly stumbled upon them sliding down the moonbeams. one felt distinctly apologetic--as though uninvited he had pushed himself into a family gathering. at the same time there was the excitement of meeting in their own homes the strange peoples i had seen only in the springtime, when the circus comes to new york, in the basement of madison square garden, where they are our pitiful prisoners, bruising their shoulders against bars. here they were monarchs of all they surveyed. i was the intruder; and, looking down at the marks of the great paws and delicate hoofs, i felt as much out of place as would a grizzly bear in a fifth avenue club. and i behaved much as would the grizzly bear. i rushed back for my rifle intent on killing something. the sun had just set; the moon was shining faintly: it was the moment the beasts of the jungle came to the river to drink. anfossi, although he had spent three years in the congo and had three years' contract still to work out, was as determined to kill something as was the tenderfoot from new york. sixty yards from the stern of the _deliverance_ was the basin i had discovered; at an equal distance from her bow, a stream plunged into the river. anfossi argued the hippos would prefer to drink the clear water of the stream, to the muddy water of the basin, and elected to watch at the stream. i carried a deck chair to the edge of my basin and placed it in the shadow of the trees. anfossi went into our cabin for his rifle. at that exact moment a hippopotamus climbed leisurely out of the river and plunged into the stream. one of the soldiers on shore saw him and rushed for the boat. anfossi sent my boy on the jump for me and, like a gentleman, waited until i had raced the sixty yards. but when we reached the stream there was nothing visible but the trampled grass and great holes in the mud and near us in the misty moonlight river something that puffed and blew slowly and luxuriously, as would any fat gentleman who had been forced to run for it. had i followed anfossi's judgment and gone along the bank sixty yards ahead, instead of sixty yards astern of the _deliverance_, at the exact moment at which i sank into my deck chair, the hippo would have emerged at my feet. it is even betting as to which of us would have been the more scared. the next day, and for days after, we saw nothing but hippos. we saw them floating singly and in family groups, with generally four or five cows to one bull, and sometimes in front a baby hippo no larger than a calf, which the mother with her great bulk would push against the swift current, as you see a tugboat in the lee of a great liner. once, what i thought was a spit of rocks suddenly tumbled apart and became twenty hippos, piled more or less on top of each other. during that one day, as they floated with the current, enjoying their afternoon's nap, we saw thirty-four. they impressed me as the most idle, and, therefore, the most aristocratic of animals. they toil not, neither do they spin; they had nothing to do but float in the warm water and the bright sunshine; their only effort was to open their enormous jaws and yawn luxuriously, in the pure content of living, in absolute boredom. they reminded you only of fat gouty old gentlemen, puffing and blowing in the pool at the warm springs. the next chance we had at one of them on shore came on our first evening in the kasai just before sunset. captain jensen was steering for a flat island of sand and grass where he meant to tie up for the night. about fifty yards from the spot for which we were making, was the only tree on the island, and under it with his back to us, and leisurely eating the leaves of the lower branches, exactly as though he were waiting for us by appointment, was a big gray hippo. his back being toward us, we could not aim at his head, and he could not see us. but the _deliverance_ is not noiseless, and, hearing the paddle-wheel, the hippo turned, saw us, and bolted for the river. the hippopotamus is as much at home in the water as the seal. to get to the water, if he is surprised out of it, and to get under it, if he is alarmed while in it, is instinct. if he does venture ashore, he goes only a few rods from the bank and then only to forage. his home is the river, and he rushes to bury himself in it as naturally as the squirrel makes for a tree. this particular hippo ran for the river as fast as a horse coming at a slow trot. he was a very badly scared hippo. his head was high in the air, his fat sides were shaking, and the one little eye turned toward us was filled with concern. behind him the yellow sun was setting into the lagoons. on the flat stretch of sand he was the only object, and against the horizon loomed as large as a freight car. that must be why we both missed him. i tried to explain that the reason i missed him was that, never before having seen so large an animal running for his life, i could not watch him do it and look at the gun sights. no one believed that was why i missed him. i did not believe it myself. in any event neither of us hit his head, and he plunged down the bank to freedom, carrying most of the bank with him. but, while we still were violently blaming each other, at about two hundred yards below the boat, he again waddled out of the river and waded knee deep up the little stream. keeping the bunches of grass between us, i ran up the beach, aimed at his eye and this time hit him fairly enough. with a snort he rose high in the air, and so, for an instant, balanced his enormous bulk. the action was like that of a horse that rears on his hind legs, when he is whipped over the nose. and apparently my bullet hurt him no more than the whip the horse, for he dropped heavily to all fours, and again disappeared into the muddy river. our disappointment and chagrin were intense, and at once anfossi and i organized a hunt for that evening. to encourage us, while we were sitting on the bridge making a hasty dinner, another hippopotamus had the impertinence to rise, blowing like a whale, not ten feet from where we sat. we could have thrown our tin cups and hit him; but he was in the water, and now we were seeking only those on land. [illustration: mr. davis and native "boy," on the kasai river.] two years ago when the atrocities along the kasai made the natives fear the white man and the white man fear the natives, each of the river boats was furnished with a stand of albini rifles. three of the black soldiers, who were keen sportsmen, were served with these muskets, and as soon as the moon rose, the soldiers and anfossi, my black boy, with an extra gun, and i set forth to clear the island of hippos. to the stranger it was a most curious hunt. the island was perfectly flat and bare, and the river had eaten into it and overflowed it with tiny rivulets and deep, swift-running streams. into these rivulets and streams the soldiers plunged, one in front, feeling the depth of the water with a sounding rod, and as he led we followed. the black men made a splendid picture. they were naked but for breech-cloths, and the moonlight flashed on their wet skins and upon the polished barrels of the muskets. but, as a sporting proposition, as far as i could see, we had taken on the hippopotamus at his own game. we were supposed to be on an island, but the water was up to our belts and running at five miles an hour. i could not understand why we had not openly and aboveboard walked into the river. wading waist high in the water with a salmon rod i could understand, but not swimming around in a river with a gun. the force of the shallowest stream was the force of the great river behind it, and wherever you put your foot, the current, on its race to the sea, annoyed at the impediment, washed the sand from under the sole of your foot and tugged at your knees and ankles. to add to the interest the three soldiers held their muskets at full cock, and as they staggered for a footing each pointed his gun at me. there also was a strange fish about the size of an english sole that sprang out of the water and hurled himself through space. each had a white belly, and as they skimmed past us in the moonlight it was as though some one was throwing dinner plates. after we had swum the length of the english channel, we returned to the boat. as to that midnight hunt i am still uncertain as to whether we were hunting the hippos or the hippos were hunting us. the next morning we had our third and last chance at a hippo. it is distinctly a hard-luck story. we had just gone on the bridge for breakfast when we saw him walking slowly from us along an island of white sand as flat as your hand, and on which he loomed large as a haystack. captain jensen was a true sportsman. he jerked the bell to the engine-room, and at full speed the _deliverance_ raced for the shore. the hippo heard us, and, like a baseball player caught off base, tried to get back to the river. captain jensen danced on the deck plates: "schoot it! schoot it!" he yelled, "gotfurdamn! schoot it!" when anfossi and i fired, the _deliverance_ was a hundred yards from the hippo, and the hippo was not five feet from the bank. in another instant, he would have been over it and safe. but when we fired, he went down as suddenly as though a safe had dropped on him. except that he raised his head, and rolled it from side to side, he remained perfectly still. from his actions, or lack of actions, it looked as though one of the bullets had broken his back; and when the blacks saw he could not move they leaped and danced and shrieked. to them the death of the big beast promised much chop. but captain jensen was not so confident. "schoot it," he continued to shout, "we lose him yet! gotfurdamn! schoot it!" my gun was an american magazine rifle, holding five cartridges. we now were very near the hippo, and i shot him in the head twice, and, once, when he opened them, in the jaws. at each shot his head would jerk with a quick toss of pain, and at the sight the blacks screamed with delight that was primitively savage. after the last shot, when captain jensen had brought the _deliverance_ broadside to the bank, the hippo ceased to move. the boat had not reached the shore before the boys with the steel hawser were in the water; the gangplank was run out, and the black soldiers and wood boys, with their knives, were dancing about the hippo and hacking at his tail. their idea was to make him the more quickly bleed to death. i ran to the cabin for more cartridges. it seemed an absurd precaution. i was as sure i had the head of that hippo as i was sure that my own was still on my neck. my only difficulty was whether to hang the head in the front hall or in the dining-room. it might be rather too large for the dining-room. that was all that troubled me. after three minutes, when i was back on deck, the hippo still lay immovable. certainly twenty men were standing about him; three were sawing off his tail, and the women were chanting triumphantly a song they used to sing in the days when the men were allowed to hunt, and had returned successful with food. on the bridge was anfossi with his camera. before the men had surrounded the hippo he had had time to snap one picture of it. i had just started after my camera, when from the blacks there was a yell of alarm, of rage, and amazement. the hippo had opened his eyes and raised his head. i shoved the boys out of the way, and, putting the gun close to his head, fired pointblank. i wanted to put him out of pain. i need not have distressed myself. the bullet affected him no more than a quinine pill. what seemed chiefly to concern him, what apparently had brought him back to life, was the hacking at his tail. that was an indignity he could not brook. his expression, and he had a perfectly human expression, was one of extreme annoyance and of some slight alarm, as though he were muttering: "this is no place for _me_," and, without more ado, he began to roll toward the river. without killing some one, i could not again use the rifle. the boys were close upon him, prying him back with the gangplank, beating him with sticks of firewood, trying to rope him with the steel hawser. on the bridge captain jensen and anfossi were giving orders in danish and italian, and on the bank i swore in american. everybody shoved and pushed and beat at the great bulk, and the great bulk rolled steadily on. we might as well have tried to budge the fifth avenue hotel. he reached the bank, he crushed it beneath him, and, like a suspension bridge, splashed into the water. even then, we who watched him thought he would stick fast between the boat and the bank, that the hawser would hold him. but he sank like a submarine, and we stood gaping at the muddy water and saw him no more. when i recovered from my first rage i was glad he was still alive to float in the sun and puff and blow and open his great jaws in a luxurious yawn. i could imagine his joining his friends after his meeting with us, and remarking in reference to our bullets: "i find the mosquitoes are quite bad this morning." with this chapter is published the photograph anfossi took, from the deck of the steamer, of our hippo--the hippo that was too stupid to know when he was dead. it is not a good photograph, but of our hippo it is all we have to show. i am still undecided whether to hang it in the hall or the dining-room. [illustration: the hippopotamus that did not know he was dead.] the days i spent on my trip up the river were of delightful sameness, sunshine by day, with the great panorama drifting past, and quiet nights of moonlight. for diversion, there were many hippos, crocodiles, and monkeys, and, though we saw only their tracks and heard them only in the jungle, great elephants. and innumerable strange birds--egrets, eagles, gray parrots, crimson cranes, and giant flamingoes--as tall as a man and from tip to tip measuring eight feet. each day the programme was the same. the arrival at the wood post, where we were given only excuses and no wood, and where once or twice we unloaded blue cloth and bags of salt, which is the currency of the upper congo, and the halt for hours to cut wood in the forest. once we stopped at a mission and noted the contrast it made with the bare, unkempt posts of the state. it was the catholic mission at wombali, and it was a beauty spot of flowers, thatched houses, grass, and vegetables. there was a brickyard, and schools, and sewing-machines, and the blacks, instead of scowling at us, nodded and smiled and looked happy and contented. the father was a great red-bearded giant, who seemed to have still stored up in him all the energy of the north. while the steamer was unloaded he raced me over the vegetable garden and showed me his farm. i had seen other of the catholic missions, and i spoke of how well they looked, of the signs they gave of hard work, and of consideration for the blacks. "i am not of that order," the father said gravely. he was speaking in english, and added, as though he expected some one to resent it: "we are jesuits." no one resented it, and he added: "we have our order in your country. do you know fordham college?" did i know it? if you are trying to find our farm, the automobile book tells you to leave fordham college on your left after jerome avenue. "of course, i know it," i said. "they have one of the best baseball nines near new york; they play the giants every spring." the reverend father started. "they play with giants!" he gasped. i did not know how to say "baseball nines" in french, but at least he was assured that whatever it was, it was one of the best near new york. then captain jensen's little black boy ran up to tell me the steamer was waiting, and began in bangalese to beg something of the father. the priest smiled and left us, returning with a rosary and crucifix, which the boy hung round his neck, and then knelt, and the red-bearded father laid his fingers on the boy's kinky head. he was a very happy boy over his new possession, and it was much coveted by all the others. one of the black mammies, to ward off evil from the little naked baby at her breast, offered an arm's length of blue cloth for "the white man's fetish." [illustration: the jesuit brothers at the wombali mission.] my voyage up the kasai ended at dima, the headquarters of the kasai concession. i had been told that at dima i would find a rubber plantation, and i had gone there to see it. i found that the plantation was four days distant, and that the boat for the plantation did not start for six days. i also had been told by the english missionaries at dima, that i would find an american mission. when i reached dima i learned that the american mission was at a station further up the river, which could not be reached sooner than a month. that is the sort of information upon which in the congo one is forced to regulate his movements. as there was at dima neither mission nor plantation, and as the only boat that would leave it in ten days was departing the next morning, i remained there only one night. it was a place cut out of the jungle, two hundred yards square, and of all stations i saw in the congo, the best managed. it is the repair shop for the steamers belonging to the kasai concession, as well as the headquarters of the company and the residence of the director, m. dryepoint. he and van damme seemed to be the most popular officials in the congo. m. dryepoint was up the river, so i did not meet him, but i was most courteously and hospitably entertained by m. fumière. he gave me a whole house to myself, and personally showed me over his small kingdom. all the houses were of brick, and the paths and roads were covered with gravel and lined with flowers. nothing in the congo is more curious than this pretty town of suburban villas and orderly machine shops; with the muddy river for a street and the impenetrable jungle for a back yard. the home of the director at dima is the proud boast of the entire congo. and all they say of it is true. it did have a billiard table and ice, and a piano, and m. fumière invited me to join his friends at an excellent dinner. in furnishing this celebrated house, the idea had apparently been to place in it the things one would least expect to find in the jungle, or, without wishing to be ungracious, anywhere. so, although there are no women at dima, there are great mirrors in brass frames, chandeliers of glass with festoons and pendants of glass, metal lamps with shades of every color, painted plaster statuettes and carved silk-covered chairs. in the red glow of the lamps, surrounded by these belgian atrocities, m. fumière sat down to the pianola. the heat of africa filled the room; on one side we could have touched the jungle, on the other in the river the hippopotamus puffed and snorted. m. fumière pulled out the stops, and upon the heat and silence of the night, floated the "evening star," mascagni's "intermezzo," and "chin-chin chinaman." next morning i left for leopoldville in a boat much larger than the _deliverance_, but with none of her cheer or good-fellowship. this boat was run by the black wife of the captain. trailing her velvet gown, and cleaning her teeth with a stick of wood, she penetrated to every part of the steamer, making discipline impossible and driving the crew out of control. i was glad to escape at kinchassa to the clean and homelike bungalow and beautiful gardens of the only englishman still in the employ of the state, mr. cuthbert malet, who gave me hospitably of his scanty store of "scotch," and, what was even more of a sacrifice, of his precious handful of eggs. a week later i was again in boma, waiting for the _nigeria_ to take me back to liverpool. before returning to the west coast and leaving the subject of the congo, i wish to testify to what seemed to me the enormously important work that is being done by the missionaries. i am not always an admirer of the missionary. some of those one meets in china and japan seem to be taking much more interest in their own bodies than in the souls of others. but, in the congo, almost the only people who are working in behalf of the natives are those attached to the missions. because they bear witness against leopold, much is said by his hired men and press agents against them. but they are deserving of great praise. some of them are narrow and bigoted, and one could wish they were much more tolerant of their white brothers in exile, but compared with the good they do, these faults count for nothing. it is due to them that europe and the united states know the truth about the congo. they were the first to bear witness, and the hazardous work they still are doing for their fellow men is honest, practical christianity. vi old calabar while i was up the congo and the kasai rivers, mrs. davis had remained at boma, and when i rejoined her, we booked passage home on the _nigeria_. we chose the _nigeria_, which is an elder-dempster freight and passenger steamer, in preference to the fast mail steamer because of the ports of the west coast we wished to see as many as possible. and, on her six weeks' voyage to liverpool, the _nigeria_ promised to spend as much time at anchor as at sea. on the coast it is a more serious matter to reserve a cabin than in new york. you do not stop at an uptown office, and on a diagram of the ship's insides, as though you were playing roulette, point at a number. instead, as you are to occupy your cabin, not for one, but for six, weeks, you search, as vigilantly as a navy officer looking for contraband, the ship herself and each cabin. but going aboard was a simple ceremony. the hôtel splendide stands on the bank of the congo river. after saying "good-by" to her proprietor, i walked to the edge of the water and waved my helmet. in the congo, a white man standing in the sun without a hat is a spectacle sufficiently thrilling to excite the attention of all, and at once captain hughes of the _nigeria_ sent a cargo boat to the rescue, and on the shoulders of naked kroo boys mrs. davis and the maid, and the trunks, spears, tents, bathtubs, carved idols, native mats, and a live mongoos were dropped into it, and we were paddled to the gangway. "if that's all, we might as well get under way," said captain hughes. the anchor chains creaked, from the bank the proprietor of the splendide waved his hand, and the long voyage to liverpool had begun. it was as casual as halting and starting a cable-car. according to schedule, after leaving the congo, we should have gone south and touched at loanda. but on this voyage, outward bound, the _nigeria_ had carried, to help build the railroad at lobito bay, a deckload of camels. they had proved trying passengers, and instead of first touching at the congo, captain hughes had continued on south and put them ashore. so we were robbed of seeing both loanda and the camels. this line, until calabar is reached, carries but few passengers, and, except to receive cargo, the ship is not fully in commission. during this first week she is painted, and holystoned, her carpets are beaten, her cabins scrubbed and aired, and the passengers mess with the officers. so, of the ship's life, we acquired an intimate knowledge, her interests became our own, and the necessity of feeding her gaping holds with cargo was personal and acute. on a transatlantic steamer, when once the hatches are down, the captain need think only of navigation; on these coasters, the hatches never are down, and the captain, that sort of captain dear to the heart of the owners, is the man who fills the holds. a skipper going ashore to drum up trade was a novel spectacle. imagine the captain of one of the atlantic greyhounds prying among the warehouses on west street, demanding of the merchants: "anything going my way, this trip?" he would scorn to do it. before his passengers have passed the custom officers, he is in mufti, and on his way to his villa on brooklyn heights, or to the lambs club, and until the blue peter is again at the fore, little he cares for passengers, mails, or cargo. but the captain of a "coaster" must be sailor and trader, too. he is expected to navigate a coast, the latest chart of which is dated somewhere near 1830, and at which the waves rush in walls of spray, sometimes as high as a three-story house. he must speak all the known languages of europe, and all the unknown tongues of innumerable black brothers. at each port he must entertain out of his own pocket the agents of all the trading houses, and, in his head, he must keep the market price, "when laid down in liverpool," of mahogany, copra, copal, rubber, palm oil, and ivory. to see that the agent has not overlooked a few bags of ground nuts, or a dozen puncheons of oil, he must go on shore and peer into the compound of each factory, and on board he must keep peace between the kroo boys and the black deck passengers, and see that the white passengers with a temperature of 105, do not drink more than is good for them. at least, those are a few of the duties the captains on the ships controlled by sir alfred jones, who is elder and dempster, are expected to perform. no wonder sir alfred is popular. our first port of call was landana, in portuguese territory, but two ships of the woermann line were there ahead of us and had gobbled up all the freight. so we could but up anchor and proceed to libreville, formerly the capital of the french congo. at five in the morning by the light of a ship's lantern, we were paddled ashore to drum up trade. we found two traders, ives and thomas, who had waiting for the _nigeria_ at the mouth of the gabun river six hundred logs of mahogany, and, in consequence, there was general rejoicing, and scotch and "sparklets," and even music from a german music-box that would burst into song only after it had been fed with a copper. one of the clerks said that ives had forgotten how to extract the coppers and in consequence was using the music-box as a savings bank. in the french congo the natives are permitted to trade; in the congo free state they are not, or, rather, they have nothing with which to trade, and the contrast between the empty "factories" of the congo and those of libreville, crowded with natives buying and selling, was remarkable. there also was a conspicuous difference in the quality and variety of the goods. in leopold's congo "trade" goods is a term of contempt. it describes articles manufactured only for those who have no choice and must accept whatever is offered. when your customers must take what you please to give them the quality of your goods is likely to deteriorate. salt of the poorest grade, gaudy fabrics that neither "wear" nor "wash," bars of coarse soap (the native is continually washing his single strip of cloth), and axe-heads made of iron, are what leopold thinks are a fair exchange for the forced labor of the black. but the articles i found in the factories in libreville were what, in the congo, are called "white man's goods" and were of excellent quality and in great variety. there were even french novels and cigars. some of the latter, called the young american on account of the name and the flag on the lid, tempted me, until i saw they were manufactured by dusseldorffer and vanderswassen, and one suspected rotterdam. in ives's factory i saw for the first time a "trade" rifle, or tower musket. in the vernacular of the coast, they are "gas-pipe" guns. they are put together in england, and to a white man are a most terrifying weapon. the original tower muskets, such as, in the days of '76, were hung over the fireplace of the forefathers of the sons of the revolution, were manufactured in england, and stamped with the word "tower," and for the reigning king g.r. i suppose at that date at the tower of london there was an arsenal; but i am ready to be corrected. to-day the guns are manufactured at birmingham, but they still have the flint lock, and still are stamped with the word "tower" and the royal crown over the letters g.r., and with the arrow which is supposed to mark the property of the government. the barrel is three feet four inches long, and the bore is that of an artesian well. the native fills four inches of this cavity with powder and the remaining three feet with rusty nails, barbed wire, leaden slugs, and the legs and broken parts of iron pots. an officer of the w.a.f.f.'s, in a fight in the bush in south nigeria, had one of these things fired at him from a distance of fifteen feet. he told me all that saved him was that when the native pulled the trigger the recoil of the gun "kicked" the muzzle two feet in the air and the native ten feet into the bush. i bought a tower rifle at the trade price, a pound, and brought it home. but although my friends have offered to back either end of the gun as being the more destructive, we have found no one with a sufficient sporting spirit to determine the point. libreville is a very pretty town, but when it was laid out the surveyors just missed placing the equator in its main street. it is easy to understand why with such a live wire in the vicinity libreville is warm. from the same cause it also is rich in flowers, vines, and trees growing in generous, undisciplined abundance, making of libreville one vast botanical garden, and burying the town and its bungalows under screens of green and branches of scarlet and purple flowers. close to the surf runs an avenue bordered by giant cocoanut palms and, after the sun is down, this is the fashionable promenade. here every evening may be seen in their freshest linen the six married white men of libreville, and, in the latest paris frocks, the six married ladies, while from the verandas of the factories that line the sea front and from under the paper lanterns of the café guion the clerks and traders sip their absinthe and play dominoes, and cast envious glances at the six fortunate fellow exiles. for several days we lay a few miles south of libreville, off the mouth of the gabun river, taking in the logs of mahogany. it was a continuous performance of the greatest interest. i still do not understand why all those engaged in it were not drowned, or pounded to a pulp. just before we touched at the gabun river, two tramp steamers, chartered by americans, carried off a full cargo of this mahogany to the states. it was an experiment the result of which the traders of libreville are awaiting with interest. the mahogany that the reader sees in america probably comes from hayti, cuba, or belize, and is of much finer quality than that of the gabun river, which latter is used for making what the trade calls "fancy" cigar-boxes and cheap furniture. but before it becomes a cigar-box it passes through many adventures. weeks before the steamer arrives the trader, followed by his black boys, explores the jungle and blazes the trees. then the boys cut trails through the forest, and, using logs for rollers, drag and push the tree trunks to the bank of the river. there the tree is cut into huge cubes, weighing about a ton, and measuring twelve to fifteen feet in length and three feet across each face. a boy can "shape" one of these logs in a day. although his pay varies according to whether the tributaries of the river are full or low, so making the moving of the logs easy or difficult, he can earn about three pounds ten shillings a month, paid in cash. compared with the eighty cents a month paid only a few miles away in the congo free state, and in "trade" goods, these are good wages. when the log is shaped the mark of the trader is branded on it with an iron, just as we brand cattle, and it is turned loose on the river. at the mouth of the river there is little danger of the log escaping, for the waves are stronger than the tide, and drive the logs upon the shore. there, in the surf, we found these tons of mahogany pounding against each other. in the ship's steam-launch were iron chains, a hundred yards long, to which, at intervals, were fastened "dogs," or spikes. these spikes were driven into the end of a log, the brand upon the log was noted by the captain and trader, and the logs, chained together like the vertebræ of a great sea serpent, were towed to the ship's side. there they were made fast, and three kroo boys knocked the spike out of each log, warped a chain around it, and made fast that chain to the steel hawser of the winch. as it was drawn to the deck a senegalese soldier, acting for the customs, gave it a second blow with a branding hammer, and, thundering and smashing, it swung into the hold. [illustration: there, in the surf, we found these tons of mahogany, pounding against each other.] in the "round up" of the logs the star performers were the three kroo boys at the ship's side. for days, in fascinated horror, the six passengers watched them, prayed for them, and made bets as to which would be the first to die. one understands that a kroo boy is as much at home in the sea as on shore, but these boys were neither in the sea nor on shore. they were balancing themselves on blocks of slippery wood that weighed a ton, but which were hurled about by the great waves as though they were life-belts. all night the hammering of the logs made the ship echo like a monster drum, and all day without an instant's pause each log reared and pitched, spun like a barrel, dived like a porpoise, or, broadside, battered itself against the iron plates. but, no matter what tricks it played, a kroo boy rode it as easily as though it were a horse in a merry-go-round. it was a wonderful exhibition. it furnished all the thrills that one gets when watching a cowboy on a bucking bronco, or a trained seal. again and again a log, in wicked conspiracy with another log, would plan to entice a kroo boy between them, and smash him. at the sight the passengers would shriek a warning, the boy would dive between the logs, and a mass of twelve hundred pounds of mahogany would crash against a mass weighing fifteen hundred with a report like colliding freight cars. and then, as, breathless, we waited to see what once was a kroo boy float to the surface, he would appear sputtering and grinning, and saying to us as clearly as a kroo smile can say it: "he never touched me!" [illustration: a log of mahogany jammed in the anchor chains.] two days after we had stored away the mahogany we anchored off duala, the capital of the german cameroons. duala is built upon a high cliff, and from the water the white and yellow buildings with many pillars gave it the appearance of a city. instead, it is a clean, pretty town. with the german habit of order, it has been laid out like barracks, but with many gardens, well-kept, shaded streets, and high, cool houses, scientifically planned to meet the necessities of the tropics. at duala the white traders and officials were plump and cheerful looking, and in the air there was more of prosperity than fever. the black and white sentry boxes and the native soldiers practising the stork march of the kaiser's army were signs of a rigid military rule, but the signs of germany's efforts in trade were more conspicuous. nowhere on the coast did we see as at duala such gorgeous offices as those of the great trading house of woermann, the hated rivals of "sir alfred," such carved furniture, such shining brass railings, and nowhere else did we see plate-glass windows, in which, with unceasing wonder, the natives stared at reflections of their own persons. in the river there was a private dry dock of the woermanns, and along the wharfs for acres was lumber for the woermanns, boxes of trade goods, puncheons and casks for the woermanns, private cooper shops and private machine shops and private banks for the woermanns. the house flag of the woermanns became as significant as that of a reigning sovereign. one felt inclined to salute it. the success of the german merchant on the east coast and over all the world appears to be a question of character. he is patient, methodical, painstaking; it is his habit of industry that is helping him to close port after port to english, french, and american goods. the german clerks do not go to the east coast or to china and south america to drink absinthe or whiskey, or to play dominoes or cricket. they work twice as long as do the other white men, and during those longer office hours they toil twice as hard. one of our passengers was a german agent returning for his vacation. i used to work in the smoking-room and he always was at the next table, also at work, on his ledgers and account books. he was so industrious that he bored me, and one day i asked him why, instead of spoiling his vacation with work, he had not balanced his books before he left the coast. "it is an error," he said; "i can not find him." and he explained that in the record of his three years' stewardship, which he was to turn over to the directors in berlin, there was somewhere a mistake of a sixpence. "but," i protested, "what's sixpence to you? you drink champagne all day. you begin at nine in the morning!" "i drink champagne," said the clerk, "because for three years i have myself alone in the bush lived, but, can i to my directors go with a book not balanced?" he laid his hand upon his heart and shook his head. "it is my heart that tells me 'no!'" after three weeks he gave a shout, his face blushed with pleasure, and actual tears were in his eyes. he had dug out the error, and at once he celebrated the recovery of the single sixpence by giving me twenty-four shillings' worth of champagne. it is a true story, and illustrates, i think, the training and method of the german mind, of the industry of the merchants who are trading over all the seas. as a rule the "trade" goods "made in germany" are "shoddy." they do not compare in quality with those of england or the states; in every foreign port you will find that the english linen is the best, that the american agricultural implements, american hardware, saws, axes, machetes, are superior to those manufactured in any other country. but the german, though his goods are poorer, cuts the coat to please the customer. he studies the wishes of the man who is to pay. he is not the one who says: "take it, or leave it." the agent of one of the largest english firms on the ivory coast, one that started by trading in slaves, said to me: "our largest shipment to this coast is gin. this is a french colony, and if the french traders and i were patriots instead of merchants we would buy from our own people, but we buy from the germans, because trade follows no flag. they make a gin out of potatoes colored with rum or gin, and label it 'demerara' and 'jamaica.' they sell it to us on the wharf at antwerp for ninepence a gallon, and we sell it at nine francs per dozen bottles. germany is taking our trade from us because she undersells us, and because her merchants don't wait for trade to come to them, but go after it. before the woermann boat is due their agent here will come to my factory and spy out all i have in my compound. 'why don't you ship those logs with us?' he'll ask. "'can't spare the boys to carry them to the beach,' i'll say. "'i'll furnish the boys,' he'll answer. that's the german way. "the elder-dempster boats lie three miles out at sea and blow a whistle at us. they act as though by carrying our freight they were doing us a favor. these german ships, to save you the long pull, anchor close to the beach and lend you their own shore boats and their own boys to work your cargo. and if you give them a few tons to carry, like as not they'll 'dash' you to a case of 'fizz.' and meanwhile the english captain is lying outside the bar tooting his whistle and wanting to know if you think he's going to run his ship aground for a few bags of rotten kernels. and he can't see, and the people at home can't see, why the germans are crowding us off the coast." just outside of duala, in the native village of bell town, is the palace and the harem of the ruler of the tribe that gave its name to the country, mango bell, king of the cameroons. his brother, prince william, sells photographs and "souvenirs." we bought photographs, and on the strength of that hinted at a presentation at court. brother william seemed doubtful, so we bought enough postal cards to establish us as _étrangers de distinction_, and he sent up our names. with pivani, hatton & cookson's chief clerk we were escorted to the royal presence. the palace is a fantastic, pagoda-like building of three stories; and furnished with many mirrors, carved oak sideboards, and lamp-shades of colored glass. mango bell, king of the cameroons, sounds like a character in a comic opera, but the king was an extremely serious, tall, handsome, and self-respecting negro. having been educated in england, he spoke much more correct english than any of us. of the few "kings i have met," both tame and wild, his manners were the most charming. back of the palace is an enormously long building under one roof. here live his thirty-five queens. to them we were not presented. [illustration: the palace of the king of the cameroons.] prince william asked me if i knew where in america there was a street called fifth avenue. i suggested new york. he referred to a large bible, and finding, much to his surprise, that my guess was correct, commissioned me to buy him, from a firm on that street, just such another bible as the one in his hand. he forgot to give me the money to pay for it, but loaned us a half-dozen little princes to bear our purchases to the wharf. for this service their royal highnesses graciously condescended to receive a small "dash," and with the chief clerk were especially delighted. he, being a sleight-of-hand artist, apparently took five-franc pieces out of their sunday clothes and from their kinky hair. when we left they were rapidly disrobing to find if any more five-franc pieces were concealed about their persons. the morning after we sailed from duala we anchored in the river in front of calabar, the capital of southern nigeria. of all the ports at which we touched on the coast, calabar was the hottest, the best looking, and the best administered. it is a model colony, but to bring it to the state it now enjoys has cost sums of money entirely out of proportion to those the colony has earned. the money has been spent in cutting down the jungle, filling in swamps that breed mosquitoes and fever, and in laying out gravel walks, water mains, and open cement gutters, and in erecting model hospitals, barracks, and administrative offices. even grass has been made to grow, and the high bluff upon which are situated the homes of the white officials and government house has been trimmed and cultivated and tamed until it looks like an english park. it is a complete imitation, even to golf links and tennis courts. but the fight that has been made against the jungle has not stopped with golf links. in 1896 the death rate was ten men out of every hundred. that corresponds to what in warfare is a decimating fire, upon which an officer, without danger of reproof, may withdraw his men. but at calabar the english doctors did not withdraw, and now the death rate is as low as three out of every hundred. that calabar, or any part of the west coast, will ever be made entirely healthy is doubtful. man can cut down a forest and fill in a swamp, but he can not reach up, as to a gas jet, and turn off the sun. and at calabar, even at night when the sun has turned itself off, the humidity and the heat leave one sweating, tossing, and gasping for air. in calabar the first thing a white man learns is not to take any liberties with the sun. when he dresses, eats, drinks, and moves about the sun is as constantly on his mind, as it is on the face of the sun-dial. the chief ascent to the top of the bluff where the white people live is up a steep cement walk about eighty yards long. at the foot of this a white man will be met by four hammock-bearers, and you will see him get into the hammock and be carried in it the eighty yards. for even that short distance he is taking no chances. but while he nurses his vitality and cares for his health he does not use the sun as an excuse for laziness or for slipshod work. i have never seen a place in the tropics where, in spite of the handicap of damp, fierce heat, the officers and civil officials are so keenly and constantly employed, where the bright work was so bright, and the whitewash so white. out at the barracks of the west african frontier force, the w.a.f.f.'s, the officers, instead of from the shade of the veranda watching the non-coms. teach a native the manual, were themselves at work, and each was howling orders at the black recruits and smashing a gun against his hip and shoulder as smartly as a drill sergeant. i found the standard maintained at calabar the more interesting because the men were almost entirely their own audience. if they make the place healthy, and attractive-looking, and dress for dinner, and shy at cocktails, and insist that their tan shoes shall glow like meershaum pipes, it is not because of the refining presence of lovely women, but because the men themselves like things that way. the men of calabar have learned that when the sun is at 110, morals, like material things, disintegrate, and that, though the temptation is to go about in bath-room slippers and pajamas, one is wiser to bolster up his drenched and drooping spirit with a stiff shirt front and a mess jacket. they tell that in a bush station in upper nigeria, one officer got his d.s.o. because with an audience of only a white sergeant he persisted in a habit of shaving twice a day. [illustration: the home of the thirty queens of king mango bell.] there are very few women in calabar. there are three or four who are wives of officials, two nurses employed by the government, and the mother superior and sisters of the order of st. joseph, and, of course, all of them are great belles. for the sisters, especially the officers, the government people, the traders, the natives, even the rival missionaries, have the most tremendous respect and admiration. the sacrifice of the woman who, to be near her husband on the coast, consents to sicken and fade and grow old before her time, and of the nurse who, to preserve the health of others, risks her own, is very great; but the sacrifice of the sisters, who have renounced all thought of home and husband, and who have exiled themselves to this steaming swamp-land, seems the most unselfish. in order to support the 150 little black boys and girls who are at school at the mission, the sisters rob themselves of everything except the little that will keep them alive. two, in addition to their work at the mission, act as nurses in the english hospital, and for that they receive together $600. this forms the sole regular income of the five women; for each $120 a year. with anything else that is given them in charity, they buy supplies for the little converts. they live in a house of sandstone and zinc that holds the heat like a flat-iron, they are obliged to wear a uniform that is of material and fashion so unsuited to the tropics that dr. chichester, in charge of the hospital, has written in protest against it to rome, and on many days they fast, not because the church bids them so to do, but because they have no food. and with it all, these five gentlewomen are always eager, cheerful, sweet of temper, and a living blessing to all who meet them. what now troubles them is that they have no room to accommodate the many young heathen who come to them to be taught to wear clothes, and to be good little boys and girls. this is causing the sisters great distress. any one who does not believe in that selfish theory, that charity begins at home, but who would like to help to spread christianity in darkest africa and give happiness to five noble women, who are giving their lives for others, should send a postal money order to marie t. martin, the reverend mother superior of the catholic mission of old calabar, southern nigeria. and if you are going to do it, as they say in the advertising pages, "do it now!" [illustration: the mother superior and sisters of st. joseph and their converts at old calabar.] at calabar there is a royal prisoner, the king of benin. he is not an agreeable king like his majesty of the cameroons, but a grossly fat, sensual-looking young man, who, a few years ago, when he was at war with the english, made "ju ju" against them by sacrificing three hundred maidens, his idea being that the ju ju would drive the english out of benin. it was poor ju ju, for it drove the young man himself out of benin, and now he is a king in exile. as far as i could see, the social position of the king is insecure, and certainly in calabar he does not move in the first circles. one afternoon, when the four or five ladies of calabar and mr. bedwell, the acting commissioner, and the officers of the w.a.f.f.'s were at the clubhouse having ice-drinks, the king at the head of a retinue of cabinet officers, high priests, and wives bore down upon the club-house with the evident intention of inviting himself to tea. personally, i should like to have met a young man who could murder three hundred girls and worry over it so little that he had not lost one of his three hundred pounds, but the others were considerably annoyed and sent an a.d.c. to tell him to "move on!" as though he were an organ-grinder, or a performing bear. "these kings," exclaimed a subaltern of the w.a.f.f.'s, indignantly, "are trying to push in everywhere!" when we departed from calabar, the only thing that reconciled me to leaving it and its charming people, was the fact that when the ship moved there was a breeze. while at anchor in the river i had found that not being able to breathe by day or to sleep by night in time is trying, even to the stoutest constitution. one of the married ladies of calabar, her husband, an officer of the w.a.f.f.'s, and the captain of the police sailed on the _nigeria_ "on leave," and all calabar came down to do them honor. there was the commissioner's gig, and the marine captain's gig, and the police captain's gig, and the gig from "matilda's," the english trading house, and one from the dutch house and the french house, and each gig was manned by black boys in beautiful uniforms and fezzes, and each crew fought to tie up to the foot of the accommodation ladder. it was as gay as a regatta. on the quarter-deck the officers drank champagne, in the captain's cabin hughes treated the traders to beer, in the "square" the non-coms. of the w.a.f.f.'s drank ale. the men who were going away on leave tried not to look too happy, and those who were going back to the shore drank deep and tried not to appear too carelessly gay. a billet on the west coast is regarded by the man who accepts it as a sort of sporting proposition, as a game of three innings of nine months each, during which he matches his health against the coast. if he lives he wins; if he dies the coast wins. after calabar, at each port off which we anchored, at ponny, focardos, lagos, accra, cape coast castle, and sekonni, it was always the same. always there came over the side the man going "home," the man who had fought with the coast and won. he was as excited, as jubilant as a prisoner sentenced to death who had escaped his executioners. and always the heartiest in their congratulations were the men who were left behind, his brother officers, or his fellow traders, the men of the sun hat brigade, in their unofficial uniforms, in shirtwaists, broad belts from which dangled keys and a whistle, beautifully polished tan boots, and with a wand-like whip or stick of elephant hide. they swarmed the decks and overwhelmed the escaping refugee with good wishes. he had cheated their common enemy. by merely keeping alive he had achieved a glorious victory. in their eyes he had performed a feat of endurance like swimming the english channel. they crowded to congratulate him as people at the pit-mouth congratulate the entombed miner, who, after many days of breathing noisome gases, drinks the pure air. even the black boys seem to feel the triumph of the white master, and their paddles never flashed so bravely, and their songs never rang so wildly, as when they were racing him away from the brooding coast with its poisonous vapors toward the big white ship that meant health and home. although most of the ports we saw only from across a mile or two of breakers, they always sent us something of interest. sometimes all the male passengers came on board drunk. with the miners of the gold coast and the "palm oil ruffians" it used to be a matter of etiquette not to leave the coast in any other condition. not so to celebrate your escape seemed ungenerous and ungrateful. at sekondi one of the miners from ashanti was so completely drunk, that he was swung over the side, tied up like a plum-pudding, in a bag. when he emerged from the bag his expression of polite inquiry was one with which all could sympathize. to lose consciousness on the veranda of a café, and awake with a bump on the deck of a steamer many miles at sea, must strengthen one's belief in magic carpets. another entertainment for the white passengers was when the boat boys fought for the black passengers as they were lowered in the mammy-chair. as a rule, in the boats from shore, there were twelve boys to paddle and three or four extra men to handle and unhook the mammy-chair and the luggage. while the boys with the paddles manoeuvred to bring their boat next to the ship's side, the extra boys tried to pull their rivals overboard, dragging their hands from ropes and gunwales, and beating them with paddles. they did this while every second the boat under them was spinning in the air or diving ten feet into the hollow of the waves, and trying to smash itself and every other boat into driftwood. from the deck the second officer would swing a mammy-chair over the side with the idea of dropping it into one of these boats. but before the chair could be lowered, a rival boat would shove the first one away, and with a third boat would be fighting for its place. meanwhile, high above the angry sea, the chair and its cargo of black women would be twirling like a weathercock and banging against the ship's side. the mammies were too terrified to scream, but the ship's officers yelled and swore, the boat's crews shrieked, and the black babies howled. each baby was strapped between the shoulders of the mother. a mammy-chair is like one of those two-seated swings in which people sit facing one another. if to the shoulders of each person in the swing was tied a baby, it is obvious that should the swing bump into anything, the baby would get the worst of it. that is what happened in the mammy-chair. every time the chair spun around, the head of a baby would come "crack!" against the ship's side. so the babies howled, and no one of the ship's passengers, crowded six deep along the rail, blamed them. the skull of the ethiopian may be hard, but it is most unfair to be swathed like a mummy so that you can neither kick nor strike back, and then have your head battered against a five-thousand-ton ship. how the boys who paddled the shore boats live long enough to learn how to handle them is a great puzzle. we were told that the method was to take out one green boy with a crew of eleven experts. but how did the original eleven become experts? at accra, where the waves are very high and rough, are the best boat boys on the coast. we watched the custom house boat fight her way across the two miles of surf to the shore. the fight lasted two hours. it was as thrilling as watching a man cross niagara falls on a tight-rope. the greater part of the two hours the boat stood straight in the air, as though it meant to shake the crew into the sea, and the rest of the time it ran between walls of water ten feet high and was entirely lost to sight. two things about the paddling on the west coast make it peculiar; the boys sit, not on the thwarts, but on the gunwales, as a woman rides a side-saddle, and in many parts of the coast the boys use paddles shaped like a fork or a trident. one asks how, sitting as they do, they are able to brace themselves, and how with their forked paddles they obtained sufficient resistance. a coaster's explanation of the split paddle was that the boys did not want any more resistance than they could prevent. [illustration: the kroo boys sit, not on the thwarts, but on the gunwales, as a woman rides a side saddle.] there is no more royal manner of progress than when one of these boats lifts you over the waves, with the boys chanting some wild chorus, with their bare bodies glistening, their teeth and eyes shining, the splendid muscles straining, and the dripping paddles flashing like twelve mirrors. some of the chiefs have canoes of as much as sixty men-power, and when these men sing, and their bodies and voices are in unison, a war canoe seems the only means of locomotion, and a sixty-horse-power racing car becomes a vehicle suited only to the newly rich. i knew i had left the west coast when, the very night we sailed from sierra leone, for greater comfort, i reached for a linen bed-spread that during four stifling, reeking weeks had lain undisturbed at the foot of the berth. during that time i had hated it as a monstrous thing; as something as hot and heavy as a red flannel blanket, as a buffalo robe. and when, on the following night, i found the wind-screen was not in the air port, and that, nevertheless, i still was alive, i knew we had passed out of reach of the equator, and that all that followed would be as conventional as the "trippers" who joined us at the canary isles; and as familiar as the low, gray skies, the green, rain-soaked hills, and the complaining channel gulls that convoyed us into plymouth harbor. vii along the east coast were a man picked up on a flying carpet and dropped without warning into lorenço marquez, he might guess for a day before he could make up his mind where he was, or determine to which nation the place belonged. if he argued from the adobe houses with red-tiled roofs and walls of cobalt blue, the palms, and the yellow custom-house, he might think he was in santiago; the indian merchants in velvet and gold embroideries seated in deep, dark shops which breathe out dry, pungent odors, might take him back to bombay; the soudanese and egyptians in long blue night-gowns and freshly ironed fezzes would remind him of cairo; the dwarfish portuguese soldiers, of madeira, lisbon, and madrid, and the black, bare-legged policemen in khaki with great numerals on their chests, of benin, sierra leone, or zanzibar. after he had noted these and the german, french, and english merchants in white duck, and the dutch man-of-warsmen, who look like ship's stewards, the french marines in coal-scuttle helmets, the british jack-tars in their bare feet, and the native kaffir women, each wrapped in a single, gorgeous shawl with a black baby peering from beneath her shoulder-blades, he would decide, by using the deductive methods of sherlock holmes, that he was in the midway of the chicago fair. several hundred years ago da gama sailed into delagoa bay and founded the town of lorenço marquez, and since that time the portuguese have always felt that it is only due to him and to themselves to remain there. they have great pride of race, and they like the fact that they possess and govern a colony. so, up to the present time, in spite of many temptations to dispose of it, they have made the ownership of delagoa bay an article of their national religion. but their national religion does not require of them to improve their property. and to-day it is much as it was when the sails of da gama's fleet first stirred its poisonous vapors. the harbor itself is an excellent one and the bay is twenty-two miles along, but there is only one landing-pier, and that such a pier as would be considered inconsistent with the dignity of the larchmont yacht club. to the town itself portugal has been content to contribute as her share the gatherers of taxes, collectors of customs and dispensers of official seals. she is indifferent to the fact that the bulk of general merchandise, wine, and machinery that enter her port is brought there by foreigners. she only demands that they buy her stamps. her importance in her own colony is that of a toll-gate at the entrance of a great city. lorenço marquez is not a spot which one would select for a home. when i was first there, the deaths from fever were averaging fifteen a day, and men who dined at the club one evening were buried hurriedly before midnight, and when i returned in the winter months, the fever had abated, but on the night we arrived twenty men were robbed. the fact that we complained to the police about one of the twenty robberies struck the commandant as an act of surprising and unusual interest. we gathered from his manner that the citizens of lorenço marquez look upon being robbed as a matter too personal and selfish with which to trouble the police. it was perhaps credulous of us, as our hotel was liberally labelled with notices warning its patrons that "owing to numerous robberies in this hotel, our guests will please lock their doors." this was one of three hotels owned by the same man. one of the others had been described to us as the "tough" hotel, and at the other, a few weeks previous, a friend had found a puff-adder barring his bedroom door. the choice was somewhat difficult. on her way from lorenço marquez to beira our ship, the _kanzlar_, kept close to the shore, and showed us low-lying banks of yellow sand and coarse green bushes. there was none of the majesty of outline which reaches from table bay to durban, none of the blue mountains of the colony, nor the deeply wooded table-lands and great inlets of kaffraria. the rocks which stretch along the southern coast and against which the waves break with a report like the bursting of a lyddite shell, had disappeared, and along gazaland and the portuguese territory only swamps and barren sand-hills accompanied us in a monotonous yellow line. from the bay we saw beira as a long crescent of red-roofed houses, many of them of four stories with verandas running around each story, like those of the summer hotels along the jersey coast. it is a town built upon the sands, with a low stone breakwater, but without a pier or jetty, the lack of which gives it a temporary, casual air as though it were more a summer resort than the one port of entry for all rhodesia. it suggested coney island to one, and to others asbury park and the board-walk at atlantic city. when we found that in spite of her portuguese flags and naked blacks, beira reminded us of nothing except an american summer-resort, we set to discovering why this should be, and decided it was because, after the red dust of the colony and the transvaal, we saw again stretches of white sand, and instead of corrugated zinc, flimsy houses of wood, which you felt were only opened for the summer season and which for the rest of the year remained boarded up against driven sands and equinoctial gales. beira need only to have added to her "sea-view" and "beach" hotels, a few bathing-suits drying on a clothes-line, a tin-type artist, and a merry-go-round, to make us feel perfectly at home. beira being the port on the indian ocean which feeds mashonaland and matabeleland and the english settlers in and around buluwayo and salisbury, english influence has proclaimed itself there in many ways. when we touched, which was when the british soldiers were moving up to rhodesia, the place, in comparison with lorenço marquez, was brisk, busy, and clean. although both are ostensibly portuguese, beira is to lorenço marquez what the cleanest street of greenwich village, of new york city, is to "hell's kitchen" and the chinese quarter. the houses were well swept and cool, the shops were alluring, the streets were of clean shifting white sand, and the sidewalks, of gray cement, were as well kept as a philadelphia doorstep. the most curious feature of beira is her private tram-car system. these cars run on tiny tracks which rise out of the sand and extend from one end of the town to the other, with branch lines running into the yards of shops and private houses. the motive power for these cars is supplied by black boys who run behind and push them. their trucks are about half as large as those on the hand-cars we see flying along our railroad tracks at home, worked by gangs of italian laborers. on some of the trucks there is only a bench, others are shaded by awnings, and a few have carriage-lamps and cushioned seats and carpets. each of them is a private conveyance; there is not one which can be hired by the public. when a merchant wishes to go down town to the port, his black boys carry his private tram-car from his garden and settle it on the rails, the merchant seats himself, and the boys push him and his baby-carriage to whatever part of the city he wishes to go. when his wife is out shopping and stops at a store the boys lift her car into the sand in order to make a clear track for any other car which may be coming behind them. one would naturally suppose that with the tracks and switch-boards and sidings already laid, the next step would be to place cars upon them for the convenience of the public, but this is not the case, and the tracks through the city are jealously reserved for the individuals who tax themselves five pounds a year to extend them and to keep them in repair. after the sleds on the island of madeira these private street-cars of beira struck me as being the most curious form of conveyance i had ever seen. [illustration: going visiting in her private tram-car at beira.] beira was occupied by the companhia de mozambique with the idea of feeding salisbury and buluwayo from the north, and drawing away some of the trade which at that time was monopolized by the merchants of cape town and durban. but the tse-tse fly belt lay between beira on the coast and the boundary of the chartered company's possessions, and as neither oxen nor mules could live to cross this, it was necessary, in order to compete with the cape-buluwayo line, to build a railroad through the swamp and jungle. this road is now in operation. it is two hundred and twenty miles in length, and in the brief period of two months, during the long course of its progress through the marshes, two hundred of the men working on it died of fever. some years ago, during a boundary dispute between the portuguese and the chartered company, there was a clash between the portuguese soldiers and the british south african police. how this was settled and the honor of the portuguese officials satisfied, kipling has told us in the delightful tale of "judson and the empire." it was off beira that judson fished up a buoy and anchored it over a sand-bar upon which he enticed the portuguese gunboat. a week before we touched at beira, the portuguese had rearranged all the harbor buoys, but, after the casual habits of their race, had made no mention of the fact. the result was that the _kanzlar_ was hung up for twenty-four hours. we tried to comfort ourselves by thinking that we were undoubtedly occupying the same mud-bank which had been used by the strategic judson to further the course of empire. the _kanzlar_ could not cross the bar to go to chinde, so the _adjutant_, which belongs to the same line and which was created for these shallow waters, came to the _kanzlar_, bringing chinde with her. she brought every white man in the port, and those who could not come on board our ship remained contentedly on the _adjutant_, clinging to her rail as she alternately sank below, or was tossed high above us. for three hours they smiled with satisfaction as though they felt that to have escaped from chinde, for even that brief time, was sufficient recompense for a thorough ducking and the pains of sea-sickness. on the bridge of the _adjutant_, in white duck and pith helmets, were the only respectable members of chinde society. we knew that they were the only respectable members of chinde society, because they told us so themselves. on her lower deck she brought two french explorers, fully dressed for the part as tartarin of tarascon might have dressed it in white havelocks and gaiters buckled up to the thighs, and clasping express rifles in new leather cases. from her engine-room came stokers from egypt, and from her forward deck malays in fresh white linen, mohammedans in fez and turban, portuguese officials, chiefly in decorations, indian coolies and zanzibari boys, very black and very beautiful, who wound and unwound long blue strips of cotton about their shoulders, or ears, or thighs as the heat, or the nature of the work of unloading required. among these strange peoples were goats, as delicately colored as a meerschaum pipe, and with the horns of our red deer, strange white oxen with humps behind the shoulders, those that are exhibited in cages at home as "sacred buffalo," but which here are only patient beasts of burden, and gray monkeys, wildcats, snakes and crocodiles in cages addressed to "hagenbeck, hamburg." the freight was no less curious; assegais in bundles, horns stretching for three feet from point to point, or rising straight, like poignards; skins, ground-nuts, rubber, and heavy blocks of bees-wax wrapped in coarse brown sacking, and which in time will burn before the altars of roman catholic churches in italy, spain, and france. people of the "bromide" class who run across a friend from their own city in paris will say, "well, to think of meeting _you_ here. how small the world is after all!" if they wish a better proof of how really small it is, how closely it is knit together, how the existence of one canning-house in chicago supports twenty stores in durban, they must follow, not the missionary or the explorers, not the punitive expeditions, but the man who wishes to buy, and the man who brings something to sell. trade is what has brought the latitudes together and made the world the small department store it is, and forced one part of it to know and to depend upon the other. the explorer tells you, "i was the first man to climb kilamajaro." "i was the first to cut a path from the shores of lake nyassa into the congo basin." he even lectures about it, in front of a wet sheet in the light of a stereopticon, and because he has added some miles of territory to the known world, people buy his books and learned societies place initials after his distinguished name. but before his grandfather was born and long before he ever disturbed the waters of nyassa the phoenicians and arabs and portuguese and men of his own time and race had been there before him to buy ivory, both white and black, to exchange beads and brass bars and shaving-mirrors for the tusks of elephants, raw gold, copra, rubber, and the feathers of the ostrich. statesmen will modestly say that a study of the map showed them how the course of empire must take its way into this or that undiscovered wilderness, and that in consequence, at their direction, armies marched to open these tracts which but for their prescience would have remained a desert. but that was not the real reason. a woman wanted three feathers to wear at buckingham palace, and to oblige her a few unimaginative traders, backed by a man who owned a tramp steamer, opened up the east coast of africa; another wanted a sealskin sacque, and fleets of ships faced floating ice under the northern lights. the bees of the shire riverway help to illuminate the cathedrals of st. peters and notre dame, and back of mozambique thousands of rubber-trees are being planted to-day, because, at the other end of the globe, people want tires for their automobiles; and because the fashionable ornament of the natives of swaziland is, for no reason, no longer blue-glass beads, manufacturers of beads in switzerland and italy find themselves out of pocket by some thousands and thousands of pounds. the traders who were making the world smaller by bringing cotton prints to chinde to cover her black nakedness, her british majesty's consul at that port, and the boy lieutenant of the paddle-wheeled gunboat which patrols the zambesi river, were the gentlemen who informed me that they were the only respectable members of chinde society. they came over the side with the gratitude of sailors whom the _kanzlar_ might have picked up from a desert island, where they had been marooned and left to rot. they observed the gilded glory of the _kanzlar_ smoking-room, its mirrors and marble-topped tables, with the satisfaction and awe of the california miner, who found all the elegance of civilization in the red plush of a broadway omnibus. the boy-commander of the gunboat gazed at white women in the saloon with fascinated admiration. "i have never," he declared, breathlessly, "i have never seen so many beautiful women in one place at the same time! i'd forgotten that there were so many white people in the world." "if i stay on board this ship another minute i shall go home," said her majesty's consul, firmly. "you will have to hold me. it's coming over me--i feel it coming. i shall never have the strength to go back." he appealed to the sympathetic lieutenant. "let's desert together," he begged. [illustration: one-half of the street cleaning department of mozambique.] in the swamps of the east coast the white exiles lay aside the cloaks and masks of crowded cities. they do not try to conceal their feelings, their vices, or their longings. they talk to the first white stranger they meet of things which in the great cities a man conceals even from his room-mate, and men they would not care to know, and whom they would never meet in the fixed social pathways of civilization, they take to their hearts as friends. they are too few to be particular, they have no choice, and they ask no questions. it is enough that the white man, like themselves, is condemned to exile. they do not try to find solace in the thought that they are the "foretrekkers" of civilization, or take credit to themselves because they are the path-finders and the pioneers who bear the heat and burden of the day. they are sorry for themselves, because they know, more keenly than any outsider can know, how good is the life they have given up, and how hard is the one they follow, but they do not ask anyone else to be sorry. they would be very much surprised if they thought you saw in their struggle against native and portuguese barbarism, fever, and savage tribes, a life of great good and value, full of self-renunciation, heroism, and self-sacrifice. on the day they boarded the _kanzlar_ the pains of nostalgia were sweeping over the respectable members of chinde society like waves of nausea, and tearing them. with a grim appreciation of their own condition, they smiled mockingly at the ladies on the quarter-deck, as you have seen prisoners grin through the bars; they were even boisterous and gay, but their gayety was that of children at recess, who know that when the bell rings they are going back to the desk. a little english boy ran through the smoking-room, and they fell upon him, and quarrelled for the privilege of holding him on their knees. he was a shy, coquettish little english boy, and the boisterous, noisy men did not appeal to him. to them he meant home and family and the old nursery, papered with colored pictures from the christmas _graphic_. his stout, bare legs and tangled curls and sailor's hat, with "h.m.s. mars" across it, meant all that was clean and sweet-smelling in their past lives. "i'll arrest you for a deserter," said the lieutenant of the gunboat. "i'll make the consul send you back to the _mars_." he held the boy on his knee fearfully, handling him as though he were some delicate and precious treasure that might break if he dropped it. the agent of the oceanic development company, limited, whose business in life is to drive savage angonis out of the jungle, where he hopes in time to see the busy haunts of trade, begged for the boy with eloquent pleading. "you've had the kiddie long enough now," he urged. "let me have him. come here, mr. mars, and sit beside me, and i'll give you fizzy water--like lemon-squash, only nicer." he held out a wet bottle of champagne alluringly. "no, he is coming to his consul," that youth declared. "he's coming to his consul for protection. you are not fit characters to associate with an innocent child. come to me, little boy, and do not listen to those degraded persons." so the "innocent child" seated himself between the consul and the chartered trader, and they patted his fat calves and red curls and took his minute hands in their tanned fists, eying him hungrily, like two cannibals. but the little boy was quite unconscious and inconsiderate of their hunger, and, with the cruelty of children, pulled himself free and ran away. "he was such a nice little kiddie," they said, apologetically, as though they felt they had been caught in some act of weakness. "i haven't got a card with me; i haven't needed one for two years," said the lieutenant, genially. "but fancy your knowing sparks! he has the next station to mine; i'm at one end of the shire river and he's at the other; he patrols from fort johnson up to the top of the lake. i suppose you've heard him play the banjo, haven't you? that's where we hit it off--we're both terribly keen about the banjo. i suppose if it wasn't for my banjo, i'd go quite off my head down here. i know sparks would. you see, i have these chaps at chinde to talk to, and up at tete there's the portuguese governor, but sparks has only six white men scattered along nyassa for three hundred miles." i had heard of sparks and the six white men. they grew so lonely that they agreed to meet once a month at some central station and spend the night together, and they invited sparks to attend the second meeting. but when he arrived he found that they had organized a morphine club, and the only six white men on lake nyassa were sitting around a table with their sleeves rolled up, giving themselves injections. sparks told them it was a "disgusting practice," and put back to his gunboat. i recalled the story to the lieutenant, and he laughed mournfully. "yes," he said; "and what's worse is that we're here for two years more, with all this fighting going on at the cape and in china. still, we have our banjos, and the papers are only six weeks old, and the steamer stops once every month." [illustration: custom house, zanzibar.] fortunately there were many bags of bees-wax to come over the side, so we had time in which to give the exiles the news of the outside world, and they told us of their present and past lives: of how one as an american filibuster had furnished coal to the chinese navy; how another had sold "ready to wear" clothes in a new york department store, and another had been attaché at madrid, and another in charge of the forward guns of a great battle-ship. we exchanged addresses and agreed upon the restaurant where we would meet two years hence to celebrate their freedom, and we emptied many bottles of iced-beer, and the fact that it was iced seemed to affect the exiles more than the fact that it was beer. but at last the ship's whistle blew with raucous persistence. it was final and heartless. it rang down the curtain on the mirage which once a month comes to mock chinde with memories of english villages, of well-kept lawns melting into the thames, of london asphalt and flashing hansoms. with a jangling of bells in the engine-room the mirage disappeared, and in five minutes to the exiles of chinde the _kanzlar_ became a gray tub with a pennant of smoke on the horizon line. i have known some men for many years, smoked and talked with them until improper hours of the morning, known them well enough to borrow their money, even their razors, and parted from them with never a pang. but when our ship abandoned those boys to the unclean land behind them, i could see them only in a blurred and misty group. we raised our hats to them and tried to cheer, but it was more of a salute than a cheer. i had never seen them before, i shall never meet them again--we had just burned signals as our ships passed in the night--and yet, i must always consider among the friends i have lost, those white-clad youths who are making the ways straight for others through the dripping jungles of the zambesi, "the only respectable members of chinde society."[a] [footnote a: note--i did not lose the white-clad youths. the lieutenant now is the commander of a cruiser, and the consul, a consul-general; and they write me that the editor of the chinde newspaper, on his editorial page, has complained that he, also, should be included among the respectable members of chinde society. he claims his absence at tete, at the time of the visit of the _kanzlar_, alone prevented his social position being publicly recognized. that justice may be done, he, now, is officially, though tardily, created a member of chinde's respectable society. r.h.d.] the profession of the slave-trader, unless it be that of his contemporary, the pirate preying under his black flag, is the one which holds you with the most grewsome and fascinating interest. its inhumanity, its legends of predatory expeditions into unknown jungles of africa, the long return marches to the coast, the captured blacks who fall dead in the trail, the dead pulling down with their chains those who still live, the stifling holds of the slave-ships, the swift flights before pursuing ships-of-war, the casting away, when too closely chased, of the ship's cargo, and the sharks that followed, all of these come back to one as he walks the shore-wall of mozambique. from there he sees the slave-dhows in the harbor, the jungles on the mainland through which the slaves came by the thousands, and still come one by one, and the ancient palaces of the portuguese governors, dead now some hundreds of years, to whom this trade in human agony brought great wealth, and no loss of honor. [illustration: chain-gangs of petty offenders outside of zanzibar.] mozambique in the days of her glory was, with zanzibar, the great slave-market of east africa, and the portuguese and the arabs who fattened on this traffic built themselves great houses there, and a fortress capable, in the event of a siege, of holding the garrison and all the inhabitants as well. to-day the slave-trade brings to those who follow it more of adventure than of financial profit, but the houses and the official palaces and the fortress still remain, and they are, in color, indescribably beautiful. blue and pink and red and light yellow are spread over their high walls, and have been so washed and chastened by the rain and sun, that the whole city has taken on the faint, soft tints of a once brilliant water-color. the streets themselves are unpeopled, empty and strangely silent. their silence is as impressive as their beauty. in the heat of the day, which is from sunrise to past sunset, you see no one, you hear no footfall, no voices, no rumble of wheels or stamp of horses' hoofs. the bare feet of the native, who is the only human being who dares to move abroad, makes no sound, and in mozambique there are no carriages and no horses. two bullock-carts, which collect scraps and refuse from the white staring streets, are the only carts in the city, and with the exception of a dozen 'rikshas are the only wheeled vehicles the inhabitants have seen. i have never visited a city which so impressed one with the fact that, in appearance, it had remained just as it was four hundred years before. there is no decay, no ruins, no sign of disuse; it is, on the contrary, clean and brilliantly beautiful in color, with dancing blue waters all about it, and with enormous palms moving above the towering white walls and red tiled roofs, but it is a city of the dead. the open-work iron doors, with locks as large as letter-boxes, are closed, the wooden window-shutters are barred, and the wares in the shops are hidden from the sidewalk by heavy curtains. there is a park filled with curious trees and with flowers of gorgeous color, but the park is as deserted as a cemetery; along the principal streets stretch mosaic pavements formed of great blocks of white and black stone, they look like elongated checker-boards, but no one walks upon them, and though there are palaces painted blue, and government buildings in pompeiian red, and churches in chaste gray and white, there are no sentries to guard the palaces, nor no black-robed priests enter or leave the churches. they are like the palaces of a theatre, set on an empty stage, and waiting for the actors. it will be a long time before the actors come to mozambique. it is, and will remain, a city of the fifteenth century. it is now only a relic of a cruel and barbarous period, when the portuguese governors, the "gentlemen adventurers," and the arab slave-dealers, under its blue skies, and hidden within its barred and painted walls, led lives of magnificent debauchery, when the tusks of ivory were piled high along its water-front, and the dhows at anchor reeked with slaves, and when in the market-place, where the natives now sit bargaining over a bunch of bananas or a basket of dried fish, their forefathers were themselves bought and sold. in the five hundred years in which he has claimed the shore line of east africa from south of lorenço marquez to north of mozambique, and many hundreds of miles inland, the portuguese has been the dog in the manger among nations. in all that time he has done nothing to help the land or the people whom he pretends to protect, and he keeps those who would improve both from gaining any hold or influence over either. it is doubtful if his occupation of the east coast can endure much longer. the english and the germans now surround him on every side. even handicapped as they are by the lack of the seaports which he enjoys, they have forced their way into the country which lies beyond his and which bounds his on every side. they have opened up this country with little railroads, with lonely lengths of telegraph wires, and with their launches and gunboats they have joined, by means of the zambesi and chinde rivers, new territories to the great indian ocean. his strip of land, which bars them from the sea, is still unsettled and unsafe, its wealth undeveloped, its people untamed. he sits at his café at the coast and collects custom-dues and sells stamped paper. for fear of the native he dares not march five miles beyond his sea-port town, and the white men who venture inland for purposes of trade or to cultivate plantations do so at their own risk, he can promise them no protection. the land back of mozambique is divided into "holdings," and the rent of each holding is based upon the number of native huts it contains. the tax per hut is one pound a year, and these holdings are leased to any portuguese who promises to pay the combined taxes of all the huts. he also engages to cut new roads, to keep those already made in repair, and to furnish a sufficient number of police to maintain order. the lessees of these holdings have given rise to many and terrible scandals. in the majority of cases, the lessee, once out of reach of all authority and of public opinion, and wielding the power of life and death, becomes a tyrant and task-master over his district, taxing the natives to five and ten times the amount which each is supposed to furnish, and treating them virtually as his bondsmen. up along the shire river, the lessees punish the blacks by hanging them from a tree by their ankles and beating their bare backs with rhinoceros hide, until, as it has been described to me by a reputable english resident, the blood runs in a stream over the negro's shoulders, and forms a pool beneath his eyes. [illustration: the ivory on the right, covered only with sacking, is ready for shipment to boston, u.s.a.] you hear of no legitimate enterprise fostered by these lessees, of no development of natural resources, but, instead, you are told tales of sickening cruelty, and you can read in the consular reports others quite as true; records of heartless treatment of natives, of neglect of great resources, and of hurried snatching at the year's crop and a return to the coast, with nothing to show of sustained effort or steady development. the incompetence of portugal cannot endure. now that england has taken the transvaal from the boer, she will find the seaport of lorenço marquez too necessary to her interests to much longer leave it in the itching palms of the portuguese officials. beira she also needs to feed rhodesia, and the zambesi and chinde rivers to supply the british central african company. farther north, the germans will find that if they mean to make german central africa pay, they must control the seaboard. it seems inevitable that, between the two great empires, the little kingdom of portugal will be crowded out, and having failed to benefit either herself or anyone else on the east coast, she will withdraw from it, in favor of those who are fitter to survive her. there is no more interesting contrast along the coast of east africa than that presented by the colonies of england, germany, and portugal. of these three, the colonies of the englishmen are, as one expects to find them, the healthiest, the busiest, and the most prosperous. they thrive under your very eyes; you feel that they were established where they are, not by accident, not to gratify a national vanity or a ruler's ambition, but with foresight and with knowledge, and with the determination to make money; and that they will increase and flourish because they are situated where the natives and settlers have something to sell, and where the men can bring, in return, something the natives and colonials wish to buy. port elizabeth, durban, east london, and zanzibar belong to this prosperous class, which gives good reason for the faith of those who founded them. on the other hand, as opposed to these, there are the settlements of the portuguese, rotten and corrupt, and the german settlements of dar es salaam and tanga which have still to prove their right to exist. outwardly, to the eye, they are model settlements. dar es salaam, in particular, is a beautiful and perfectly appointed colonial town. in the care in which it is laid out, in the excellence of its sanitary arrangements, in its cleanliness, and in the magnificence of its innumerable official residences, and in their sensible adaptability to the needs of the climate, one might be deceived into believing that dar es salaam is the beautiful gateway of a thriving and busy colony. but there are no ramparts of merchandise along her wharves, no bulwarks of strangely scented bales blocking her water-front; no lighters push hurriedly from the shore to meet the ship, although she is a german ship, or to receive her cargo of articles "made in germany." on the contrary, her freight is unloaded at the english ports, and taken on at english ports. and the german traders who send their merchandise to hamburg in her hold come over the side at zanzibar, at durban, and at aden, where the english merchants find in them fierce competitors. there is nothing which goes so far to prove the falsity of the saying that "trade follows the flag" as do these model german colonies with their barracks, governor's palace, officers' clubs, public pleasure parks, and with no trade; and the english colonies, where the german merchants remain, and where, under the english flag, they grow steadily rich. the german emperor, believing that colonies are a source of strength to an empire, rather than the weakness that they are, has raised the german flag in central east africa, but the ships of the german east african company, subsidized by him, carry their merchandize to the english ports, and his german subjects remain where they can make the most money. they do not move to those ports where the flag of their country would wave over them. dar es salaam, although it lacks the one thing needful to make it a model settlement, possesses all the other things which are needful, and many which are pure luxuries. its residences, as i have said, have been built after the most approved scientific principles of ventilation and sanitation. in no tropical country have i seen buildings so admirably adapted to the heat and climatic changes and at the same time more in keeping with the surrounding scenery. they are handsome, cool-looking, white and clean, with broad verandas, high walls, and false roofs under which currents of air are lured in spite of themselves. the residences are set back along the high bank which faces the bay. in front of them is a public promenade, newly planted shade-trees arch over it, and royal palms reach up to it from the very waters of the harbor. at one end of this semicircle are the barracks of the soudanese soldiers, and at the other is the official palace of the governor. everything in the settlement is new, and everything is built on the scale of a city, and with the idea of accommodating a great number of people. hotels and cafés, better than any one finds in the older settlements along the coast, are arranged on the water-front, and there is a church capable of seating the entire white population at one time. if the place is to grow, it can do so only through trade, and when trade really comes all these palaces and cafés and barracks which occupy the entire water-front will have to be pushed back to make way for warehouses and custom-house sheds. at present it is populated only by officials, and, i believe, twelve white women. [illustration: the late sultan of zanzibar in his state carriage.] you feel that it is an experiment, that it has been sent out like a box of children's building blocks, and set up carefully on this beautiful harbor. all that dar es salaam needs now is trade and emigrants. at present it is a show place, and might be exhibited at a world's fair as an example of a model village. in writing of zanzibar i am embarrassed by the knowledge that i am not an unprejudiced witness. i fell in love with zanzibar at first sight, and the more i saw of it the more i wanted to take my luggage out of the ship's hold and cable to my friends to try and have me made vice-consul to zanzibar through all succeeding administrations. zanzibar runs back abruptly from a white beach in a succession of high white walls. it glistens and glares, and dazzles you; the sand at your feet is white, the city itself is white, the robes of the people are white. it has no public landing-pier. your rowboat is run ashore on a white shelving beach, and you face an impenetrable mass of white walls. the blue waters are behind you, the lofty fortress-like façade before you, and a strip of white sand is at your feet. and while you are wondering where this hidden city may be, a kind resident takes you by the hand and pilots you through a narrow crack in the rampart, along a twisting fissure between white-washed walls where the sun cannot reach, past great black doorways of carved oak, and out suddenly into the light and laughter and roar of zanzibar. in the narrow streets are all the colors of the orient, gorgeous, unshaded, and violent; cobalt blue, greens, and reds on framework, windows, and doorways; red and yellow in the awnings and curtains of the bazaars, and orange and black, red and white, yellow, dark blue, and purple, in the long shawls of the women. it is the busiest, and the brightest and richest in color of all the ports along the east african coast. were it not for its narrow streets and its towering walls it would be a place of perpetual sunshine. everybody is either actively busy, or contentedly idle. it is all movement, noise, and glitter, everyone is telling everyone else to make way before him; the indian merchants beseech you from the open bazaars; their children, swathed in gorgeous silks and hung with jewels and bangles, stumble under your feet, the sultan's troops assail you with fife and drum, and the black women, wrapped below their bare shoulders in the colors of the butterfly, and with teeth and brows dyed purple, crowd you to the wall. outside the city there are long and wonderful roads between groves of the bulky mango-tree of richest darkest green and the bending palm, shading deserted palaces of former sultans, temples of the indian worshippers, native huts, and the white-walled country residences and curtained verandas of the white exiles. it is absurd to write them down as exiles, for it is a mohammedan paradise to which they have been exiled. the exiles themselves will tell you that the reason you think zanzibar is a paradise, is because you have your steamer ticket in your pocket. but that retort shows their lack of imagination, and a vast ingratitude to those who have preceded them. for the charm of zanzibar lies in the fact that while the white men have made it healthy and clean, have given it good roads, good laws, protection for the slaves, quick punishment for the slave-dealers, and a firm government under a benign and gentle sultan, they have done all of this without destroying one flash of its local color, or one throb of its barbaric life, which is the showy, sunshiny, and sumptuous life of the far east. the good things of civilization are there, but they are unobtrusive, and the evils of civilization appear not at all, the native does not wear a derby hat with a kimona, as he does in japan, nor offer you souvenirs of zanzibar manufactured in birmingham; reuter's telegrams at the club and occasional steamers alone connect his white masters with the outer world, and so infrequent is the visiting stranger that the local phrase-book for those who wish to converse in the native tongue is compiled chiefly for the convenience of midshipmen when searching a slave-dhow. [illustration: h.s.h. hamud bin muhamad bin said, the late sultan of zanzibar.] zanzibar is an "arabian nights" city, a comic-opera capital, a most difficult city to take seriously. there is not a street, or any house in any street, that does not suggest in its architecture and decoration the untrammelled fancy of the scenic artist. you feel sure that the latticed balconies are canvas, that the white adobe walls are supported from behind by braces, that the sunshine is a carbon light, that the chorus of boatmen who hail you on landing will reappear immediately costumed as the sultan's body-guard, that the women bearing water-jars on their shoulders will come on in the next scene as slaves of the harem, and that the national anthem will prove to be sousa's typical tune of zanzibar. several hundred years ago the sultans of zanzibar grew powerful and wealthy through exporting slaves and ivory from the mainland. these were not two separate industries, but one was developed by the other and was dependent upon it. the procedure was brutally simple. a slave-trader, having first paid his tribute to the sultan, crossed to the mainland, and marching into the interior made his bargain with one of the local chiefs for so much ivory, and for so many men to carry it down to the coast. without some such means of transport there could have been no bargain, so the chief who was anxious to sell would select a village which had not paid him the taxes due him, and bid the trader help himself to what men he found there. then would follow a hideous night attack, a massacre of women and children, and the taking prisoners of all able-bodied males. these men, chained together in long lines, and each bearing a heavy tooth of ivory upon his shoulder, would be whipped down to the coast. it was only when they had carried the ivory there, and their work was finished, that the idea presented itself of selling them as well as the ivory. later, these bearers became of equal value with the ivory, and the raiding of native villages and the capture of men and women to be sold into slavery developed into a great industry. the industry continues fitfully to-day, but it is carried on under great difficulties, and at a risk of heavy punishments. what is called "domestic slavery" is recognized on the island of zanzibar, the vast clove plantations which lie back of the port employing many hundreds of these domestic slaves. it is not to free these from their slight bondage that the efforts of those who are trying to suppress the slave-trade is to-day directed, but to prevent others from being added to their number. what slave-trading there is at present is by arabs and indians. they convey the slaves in dhows from the mainland to madagascar, arabia, or southern persia, and to the island of pemba, which lies north of zanzibar, and only fifteen miles from the mainland. if a slave can be brought this short distance in safety he can be sold for five hundred dollars; on the mainland he is not worth more than fifteen dollars. the channels, and the mouths of rivers, and the little bays opening from the island of pemba are patrolled more or less regularly by british gunboats, and junior officers in charge of a cutter and a crew of half a dozen men, are detached from these for a few months at a time on "boat service." it seems to be an unprofitable pursuit, for one officer told me that during his month of boat service he had boarded and searched three hundred dhows, which is an average of ten a day, and found slaves on only one of them. but as, on this occasion, he rescued four slaves, and the slavers, moreover, showed fight, and wounded him and two of his boat's crew, he was more than satisfied. the trade in ivory, which has none of these restrictions upon it, still flourishes, and the cool, dark warerooms of zanzibar are stored high with it. in a corner of one little cellar they showed us twenty-five thousand dollars worth of these tusks piled up as carelessly as though they were logs in a wood-shed. one of the most curious sights in zanzibar is a line of zanzibari boys, each balancing a great tusk on his shoulder, worth from five hundred to two thousand dollars, and which is unprotected except for a piece of coarse sacking. [illustration: a german "factory" at tanga, the store below, the living apartments above.] the largest exporters of ivory in the world are at zanzibar, and though probably few people know it, the firm which carries on this business belongs to new york city, and has been in the ivory trade with india and africa from as far back as the fifties. in their house at zanzibar they have entertained every distinguished african explorer, and the stories its walls have heard of native wars, pirate dhows, slave-dealers, the english occupation, and terrible marches through the jungles of the congo, would make valuable and picturesque history. the firm has always held a semi-official position, for the reason that the united states consul at zanzibar, who should speak at least swahili and portuguese, is invariably chosen for the post from a drug-store in yankton, dakota, or a post-office in canton, ohio. consequently, on arriving at zanzibar he becomes homesick, and his first official act is to cable his resignation, and the state department instructs whoever happens to be general manager of the ivory house to perform the duties of acting-consul. so, the ivory house has nearly always held the eagle of the consulate over its doorway. the manager of the ivory house, who at the time of our visit was also consul, is harris robbins childs. mr. childs is well known in new york city, is a member of many clubs there, and speaks at least five languages. he understands the native tongue of zanzibar so well that when the prime minister of the sultan took us to the palace to pay our respects, childs talked the language so much better than did the sultan's own prime minister that there was in consequence much joking and laughing. the sultan then was a most dignified, intelligent, and charming old gentleman. he was popular both with his own people, who loved him with a religious fervor, and with the english, who unobtrusively conducted his affairs. there have been sultans who have acted less wisely than does hamud bin muhamad bin said. a few years ago one of these, said khaled, defied the british empire as represented by several gunboats, and dared them to fire on his ship of war, a tramp steamer which he had converted into a royal yacht. the gunboats were anchored about two hundred yards from the palace, which stands at the water's edge, and at the time agreed upon, they sank the sultan's ship of war in the short space of three minutes, and in a brief bombardment destroyed the greater part of his palace. the ship of war still rests where she sank, and her topmasts peer above the water only three hundred yards distant from the windows of the new palace. they serve as a constant warning to all future sultans. the new palace is of somewhat too modern architecture, and is not nearly as dignified as are the massive white walls of the native houses which surround it. but within it is a fairy palace, hung with silk draperies, tapestries, and hand-painted curtains; the floors are covered with magnificent rugs from persia and india, and the reception-room is crowded with treasures of ebony, ivory, lacquer work, and gold and silver. there were two thrones made of silver dragons, with many scales, and studded with jewels. the sultan did not seem to mind our openly admiring his treasures, and his attendants, who stood about him in gorgeous-colored silks heavy with gold embroideries, were evidently pleased with the deep impression they made upon the visitors. the sultan was very gentle and courteous and human, especially in the pleasure he took over his son and heir, who then was at school in england, and who, on the death of his father, succeeded him. he seemed very much gratified when we suggested that there was no better training-place for a boy than an english public school; as americans, he thought our opinion must be unprejudiced. before he sent us away, he gave childs, and each of us, a photograph of himself, one of which is reproduced in this book. our next port was the german settlement of tanga. we arrived there just as a blood-red sun was setting behind great and gloomy mountains. the place itself was bathed in damp hot vapors, and surrounded even to the water's edge by a steaming jungle. it was more like what we expected africa to be than was any other place we had visited, and the proper touch of local color was supplied by a trader, who gave as his reason for leaving us so early in the evening that he needed sleep, as on the night before at his camp three lions had kept him awake until morning. [illustration: soudanese soldiers under a german officer outside of tanga.] the bubonic plague prevented our landing at other ports. we saw them only through field-glasses from the ship's side, so that there is, in consequence, much that i cannot write of the east coast of africa. but the trip, which allows one merely to nibble at the coast, is worth taking again when the bubonic plague has passed away. it was certainly worth taking once. if i have failed to make that apparent, the fault lies with the writer. it is certainly not the fault of the east coast, not the fault of the indian ocean, that "sets and smiles, so soft, so bright, so blooming blue," or of the exiles and "remittance men," or of the engineers who are building the railroad from cape town to cairo, or of any lack of interest which the east coast presents in its problem of trade, of conquest, and of, among nations, the survival of the fittest. the crime of the congo the crime of the congo by a. conan doyle author of the great boer war, etc., etc. new york doubleday, page & company mcmix all rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the scandinavian copyright, 1909, by doubleday, page & company published, november, 1909 copyright, 1909, by a. conan doyle preface there are many of us in england who consider the crime which has been wrought in the congo lands by king leopold of belgium and his followers to be the greatest which has ever been known in human annals. personally i am strongly of that opinion. there have been great expropriations like that of the normans in england or of the english in ireland. there have been massacres of populations like that of the south americans by the spaniards or of subject nations by the turks. but never before has there been such a mixture of wholesale expropriation and wholesale massacre all done under an odious guise of philanthropy and with the lowest commercial motives as a reason. it is this sordid cause and the unctious hypocrisy which makes this crime unparalleled in its horror. the witnesses of the crime are of all nations, and there is no possibility of error concerning facts. there are british consuls like casement, thesiger, mitchell and armstrong, all writing in their official capacity with every detail of fact and date. there are frenchmen like pierre mille and félicien challaye, both of whom have written books upon the subject. there are missionaries of many races--harris, weeks and stannard (british); morrison, clarke and shepherd (american); sjoblom (swedish) and father vermeersch, the jesuit. there is the eloquent action of the italian government, who refused to allow italian officers to be employed any longer in such hangman's work, and there is the report of the belgian commission, the evidence before which was suppressed because it was too dreadful for publication; finally, there is the incorruptible evidence of the kodak. any american citizen who will glance at mark twain's "king leopold's soliloquy" will see some samples of that. a perusal of all of these sources of information will show that there is not a grotesque, obscene or ferocious torture which human ingenuity could invent which has not been used against these harmless and helpless people. this would, to my mind, warrant our intervention in any case. turkey has several times been interfered with simply on the general ground of humanity. there is in this instance a very special reason why america and england should not stand by and see these people done to death. they are, in a sense, their wards. america was the first to give official recognition to king leopold's enterprise in 1884, and so has the responsibility of having actually put him into that position which he has so dreadfully abused. she has been the indirect and innocent cause of the whole tragedy. surely some reparation is due. on the other hand england has, with the other european powers, signed the treaty of 1885, by which each and all of them make it responsible for the condition of the native races. the other powers have so far shown no desire to live up to this pledge. but the conscience of england is uneasy and she is slowly rousing herself to act. will america be behind? at this moment two american citizens, shepherd and that noble virginian, morrison, are about to be tried at boma for telling the truth about the scoundrels. morrison in the dock makes a finer statue of liberty than bartholdi's in new york harbour. attempts will be made in america (for the congo has its paid apologists everywhere) to pretend that england wants to oust belgium from her colony and take it herself. such accusations are folly. to run a tropical colony honestly without enslaving the natives is an expensive process. for example nigeria, the nearest english colony, has to be subsidized to the extent of $2,000,000 a year. whoever takes over the congo will, considering its present demoralized condition, have a certain expense of $10,000,000 a year for twenty years. belgium has not run the colony. it has simply sacked it, forcing the inhabitants without pay to ship everything of value to antwerp. no decent european power could do this. for many years to come the congo will be a heavy expense and it will truly be a philanthropic call upon the next owner. i trust it will not fall to england. attempts have been made too (for there is considerable ingenuity and unlimited money on the other side) to pretend that it is a question of protestant missions against catholic. any one who thinks this should read the book, "la question kongolaise," of the eloquent and holy jesuit, father vermeersch. he lived in the country and, as he says, it was the sight of the "immeasurable misery," which drove him to write. we english who are earnest over this matter look eagerly to the westward to see some sign of moral support of material leading. it would be a grand sight to see the banner of humanity and civilization carried forward in such a cause by the two great english-speaking nations. arthur conan doyle. introduction i am convinced that the reason why public opinion has not been more sensitive upon the question of the congo free state, is that the terrible story has not been brought thoroughly home to the people. mr. e. d. morel has done the work of ten men, and the congo reform association has struggled hard with very scanty means; but their time and energies have, for the most part, been absorbed in dealing with each fresh phase of the situation as it arose. there is room, therefore, as it seemed to me, for a general account which would cover the whole field and bring the matter up to date. this account must necessarily be a superficial one, if it is to be produced at such a size and such a price, as will ensure its getting at that general public for which it has been prepared. yet it contains the essential facts, and will enable the reader to form his own opinion upon the situation. should he, after reading it, desire to help in the work of forcing this question to the front, he can do so in several ways. he can join the congo reform association (granville house, arundel street, w. c.). he can write to his local member and aid in getting up local meetings to ventilate the question. finally, he can pass this book on and purchase other copies, for any profits will be used in setting the facts before the french and german public. it may be objected that this is ancient history, and that the greater part of it refers to a period before the congo state was annexed to belgium on august 10th, 1908. but responsibility cannot be so easily shaken off. the congo state was founded by the belgian king, and exploited by belgian capital, belgian soldiers and belgian concessionnaires. it was defended and upheld by successive belgian governments, who did all they could to discourage the reformers. in spite of legal quibbles, it is an insult to common sense to suppose that the responsibility for the congo has not always rested with belgium. the belgian machinery was always ready to help and defend the state, but never to hold it in control and restrain it from crime. one chance belgium had. if immediately upon taking over the state they had formed a judicial commission for the rigid inspection of the whole matter, with power to punish for all past offences, and to examine all the scandals of recent years, then they would have done something to clear the past. if on the top of that they had freed the land, given up the system of forced labour entirely, and cancelled the charters of all the concessionnaire companies, for the obvious reason that they have notoriously abused their powers, then belgium could go forward in its colonizing enterprise on the same terms as other states, with her sins expiated so far as expiation is now possible. she did none of these things. for a year now she has herself persevered in the evil ways of her predecessor. her colony is a scandal before the whole world. the era of murders and mutilations has, as we hope, passed by, but the country is sunk into a state of cowed and hopeless slavery. it is not a new story, but merely another stage of the same story. when belgium took over the congo state, she took over its history and its responsibilities also. what a load that was is indicated in these pages. the record of the dates is the measure of our patience. can any one say that we are precipitate if we now brush aside vain words and say definitely that the matter has to be set right by a certain near date, or that we will appeal to each and all of the powers, with the evidence before them, to assist us in setting it right? if the powers refuse to do so, then it is our duty to honour the guarantees which we made as to the safety of these poor people, and to turn to the task of setting it right ourselves. if the powers join in, or give us a mandate, all the better. but we have a mandate from something higher than the powers which obliges us to act. sir edward grey has told us in his speech of july 22nd, 1909, that a danger to european peace lies in the matter. let us look this danger squarely in the face. whence does it come? is it from germany, with her traditions of kindly home life--is this the power which would raise a hand to help the butchers of the mongalla and of the domaine de la couronne? is it likely that those who so justly admire the splendid private and public example of william ii. would draw the sword for leopold? both in the name of trade rights and in that of humanity germany has a long score to settle on the congo. or is it the united states which would stand in the way, when her citizens have vied with our own in withstanding and exposing these iniquities? or, lastly, is france the danger? there are those who think that because france has capital invested in these enterprises, because the french congo has itself degenerated under the influence and example of its neighbour, and because france holds a right of pre-emption, that therefore our trouble lies across the channel. for my own part, i cannot believe it. i know too well the generous, chivalrous instincts of the french people. i know, also, that their colonial record during centuries has been hardly inferior to our own. such traditions are not lightly set aside, and all will soon be right again when a strong colonial minister turns his attention to the concessionnaires in the french congo. they will remember de brazza's dying words: "our congo must not be turned into a mongalla." it is an impossibility that france could ally herself with king leopold, and certainly if such were, indeed, the case, the _entente cordiale_ would be strained to breaking. surely, then, if these three powers, the ones most directly involved, have such obvious reasons for helping, rather than hindering, we may go forward without fear. but if it were not so, if all europe frowned upon our enterprise, we would not be worthy to be the sons of our fathers if we did not go forward on the plain path of national duty. arthur conan doyle. windlesham, crowborough, september, 1909. contents page preface iii introduction vii how the congo free state came to be founded 3 the development of the congo state 9 the working of the system 22 first fruits of the system 27 further fruits of the system 39 voices from the darkness 46 consul roger casement's report 57 king leopold's commission and its report 68 the congo after the commission 87 some catholic testimony as to the congo 97 the evidence up to date 102 the political situation 114 some congolese apologies 118 solutions 123 appendix 127 the crime of the congo i how the congo free state came to be founded in the earlier years of his reign king leopold of belgium began to display that interest in central africa which for a long time was ascribed to nobility and philanthropy, until the contrast between such motives, and the actual unscrupulous commercialism, became too glaring to be sustained. as far back as the year 1876 he called a conference of humanitarians and travellers, who met at brussels for the purpose of debating various plans by which the dark continent might be opened up. from this conference sprang the so-called international african association, which, in spite of its name, was almost entirely a belgian body, with the belgian king as president. its professed object was the exploration of the country and the founding of stations which should be rest-houses for travellers and centres of civilization. on the return of stanley from his great journey in 1878, he was met at marseilles by a representative from the king of belgium, who enrolled the famous traveller as an agent for his association. the immediate task given to stanley was to open up the congo for trade, and to make such terms with the natives as would enable stations to be built and depôts established. in 1879 stanley was at work with characteristic energy. his own intentions were admirable. "we shall require but mere contact," he wrote, "to satisfy the natives that our intentions are pure and honourable, seeking their own good, materially and socially, more than our own interests. we go to spread what blessings arise from amiable and just intercourse with people who have been strangers to them." stanley was a hard man, but he was no hypocrite. what he said he undoubtedly meant. it is worth remarking, in view of the accounts of the laziness or stupidity of the natives given by king leopold's apologists in order to justify their conduct toward them, that stanley had the very highest opinion of their industry and commercial ability. the following extracts from his writings set this matter beyond all doubt: "bolobo is a great centre for the ivory and camwood powder trade, principally because its people are so enterprising." of irebu--"a venice of the congo"--he says: "these people were really acquainted with many lands and tribes on the upper congo. from stanley pool to upoto, a distance of 6,000 miles, they knew every landing-place on the river banks. all the ups and downs of savage life, all the profits and losses derived from barter, all the diplomatic arts used by tactful savages, were as well known to them as the roman alphabet to us.... no wonder that all this commercial knowledge had left its traces on their faces; indeed, it is the same as in your own cities in europe. know you not the military man among you, the lawyer and the merchant, the banker, the artist, or the poet? it is the same in africa, more especially on the congo, where the people are so devoted to trade." "during the few days of our mutual intercourse they gave us a high idea of their qualities--industry, after their own style, not being the least conspicuous." "as in the old time, umangi, from the right bank, and mpa, from the left bank, despatched their representatives with ivory tusks, large and small, goats and sheep, and vegetable food, clamorously demanding that we should buy from them. such urgent entreaties, accompanied with blandishments to purchase their stock, were difficult to resist." "i speak of eager native traders following us for miles for the smallest piece of cloth. i mention that after travelling many miles to obtain cloth for ivory and redwood powder, the despairing natives asked: 'well, what is it you do want? tell us, and we will get it for you.'" speaking of english scepticism as to king leopold's intentions, he says: "though they understand the satisfaction of a sentiment when applied to england, they are slow to understand that it may be a sentiment that induced king leopold ii. to father this international association. he is a dreamer, like his _confrères_ in the work, because the sentiment is applied to the neglected millions of the dark continent. they cannot appreciate rightly, because there are no dividends attaching to it, this ardent, vivifying and expansive sentiment, which seeks to extend civilizing influences among the dark races, and to brighten up with the glow of civilization the dark places of sad-browed africa." one cannot let these extracts pass without noting that bolobo, the first place named by stanley, has sunk in population from 40,000 to 7,000; that irebu, called by stanley the populous venice of the congo, had in 1903 a population of fifty; that the natives who used to follow stanley, beseeching him to trade, now, according to consul casement, fly into the bush at the approach of a steamer, and that the unselfish sentiment of king leopold ii. has developed into dividends of 300 per cent. per annum. such is the difference between stanley's anticipation and the actual fulfilment. untroubled, however, with any vision as to the destructive effects of his own work, stanley laboured hard among the native chiefs, and returned to his employer with no less than 450 alleged treaties which transferred land to the association. we have no record of the exact payment made in order to obtain these treaties, but we have the terms of a similar transaction carried out by a belgian officer in 1883 at palabala. in this case the payment made to the chief consisted of "one coat of red cloth with gold facings, one red cap, one white tunic, one piece of white baft, one piece of red points, one box of liqueurs, four demijohns of rum, two boxes of gin, 128 bottles of gin, twenty red handkerchiefs, forty singlets and forty old cotton caps." it is clear that in making such treaties the chief thought that he was giving permission for the establishment of a station. the idea that he was actually bartering away the land was never even in his mind, for it was held by a communal tenure for the whole tribe, and it was not his to barter. and yet it is on the strength of such treaties as these that twenty millions of people have been expropriated, and the whole wealth and land of the country proclaimed to belong, not to the inhabitants, but to the state--that is, to king leopold. with this sheaf of treaties in his portfolio the king of the belgians now approached the powers with high sentiments of humanitarianism, and with a definite request that the state which he was forming should receive some recognized status among the nations. was he at that time consciously hypocritical? did he already foresee how widely his future actions would differ from his present professions? it is a problem which will interest the historian of the future, who may have more materials than we upon which to form a judgment. on the one hand, there was a furtive secrecy about the evolution of his plans and the despatch of his expeditions which should have no place in a philanthropic enterprise. on the other hand, there are limits to human powers of deception, and it is almost inconceivable that a man who was acting a part could so completely deceive the whole civilized world. it is more probable, as it seems to me, that his ambitious mind discerned that it was possible for him to acquire a field of action which his small kingdom could not give, in mixing himself with the affairs of africa. he chose the obvious path, that of a civilizing and elevating mission, taking the line of least resistance without any definite idea whither it might lead him. once faced with the facts, his astute brain perceived the great material possibilities of the country; his early dreams faded away to be replaced by unscrupulous cupidity, and step by step he was led downward until he, the man of holy aspirations in 1885, stands now in 1909 with such a cloud of terrible direct personal responsibility resting upon him as no man in modern european history has had to bear. it is, indeed, ludicrous, with our knowledge of the outcome, to read the declarations of the king and of his representatives at that time. they were actually forming the strictest of commercial monopolies--an organization which was destined to crush out all general private trade in a country as large as the whole of europe with russia omitted. that was the admitted outcome of their enterprise. now listen to m. beernaert, the belgian premier, speaking in the year 1885: "the state, of which our king will be the sovereign, will be a sort of international colony. there will be no monopolies, no privileges.... quite the contrary: absolute freedom of commerce, freedom of property, freedom of navigation." here, too, are the words of baron lambermont, the belgian plenipotentiary at the berlin conference: "the temptation to impose abusive taxes will find its corrective, if need be, in the freedom of commerce.... no doubt exists as to the strict and literal meaning of the term 'in commercial matters.' it means ... the unlimited right for every one to buy and to sell." the question of humanity is so pressing that it obscures that of the broken pledges about trade, but on the latter alone there is ample reason to say that every condition upon which this state was founded has been openly and notoriously violated, and that, therefore, its title-deeds are vitiated from the beginning. at the time the professions of the king made the whole world his enthusiastic allies. the united states was the first to hasten to give formal recognition to the new state. may it be the first, also, to realize the truth and to take public steps to retract what it has done. the churches and the chambers of commerce of great britain were all for leopold, the one attracted by the prospect of pushing their missions into the heart of africa, the others delighted at the offer of an open market for their produce. at the congress of berlin, which was called to regulate the situation, the nations vied with each other in furthering the plans of the king of the belgians and in extolling his high aims. the congo free state was created amid general rejoicings. the veteran bismarck, as credulous as the others, pronounced its baptismal blessing. "the new congo state is called upon," said he, "to become one of the chief promoters of the work" (of civilization) "which we have in view, and i pray for its prosperous development and for the fulfilment of the noble aspirations of its illustrious founder." such was the birth of the congo free state. had the nations gathered round been able to perceive its future, the betrayal of religion and civilization of which it would be guilty, the immense series of crimes which it would perpetrate throughout central africa, the lowering of the prestige of all the white races, they would surely have strangled the monster in its cradle. it is not necessary to record in this statement the whole of the provisions of the berlin congress. two only will suffice, as they are at the same time the most important and the most flagrantly abused. the first of these (which forms the fifth article of the agreement) proclaims that "no power which exercises sovereign rights in the said regions shall be allowed to grant therein either monopoly or privilege of any kind in commercial matters." no words could be clearer than that, but the belgian representatives, conscious that such a clause must disarm all opposition, went out of their way to accentuate it. "no privileged situation can be created in this respect," they said. "the way remains open without any restriction to free competition in the sphere of commerce." it would be interesting now to send a british or german trading expedition up the congo in search of that free competition which has been so explicitly promised, and to see how it would fare between the monopolist government and the monopolist companies who have divided the land between them. we have travelled some distance since prince bismarck at the last sitting of the conference declared that the result was "to secure to the commerce of all nations free access to the centre of the african continent." more important, however, is article vi., both on account of the issues at stake, and because the signatories of the treaty bound themselves solemnly, "in the name of almighty god," to watch over its enforcement. it ran: "all the powers exercising sovereign rights or influence in these territories pledge themselves to watch over the preservation of the native populations and the improvement of their moral and material conditions of existence, and to work together for the suppression of slavery and of the slave trade." that was the pledge of the united nations of europe. it is a disgrace to each of them, including ourselves, the way in which they have fulfilled that oath. before their eyes, as i shall show in the sequel, they have had enacted one long, horrible tragedy, vouched for by priests and missionaries, traders, travellers and consuls, all corroborated, but in no way reformed, by a belgium commission of inquiry. they have seen these unhappy people, who were their wards, robbed of all they possessed, debauched, degraded, mutilated, tortured, murdered, all on such a scale as has never, to my knowledge, occurred before in the whole course of history, and now, after all these years, with all the facts notorious, we are still at the stage of polite diplomatic expostulations. it is no answer to say that france and germany have shown even less regard for the pledge they took at berlin. an individual does not condone the fact that he has broken his word by pointing out that his neighbour has done the same. ii the development of the congo state having received his mandate from the civilized world king leopold proceeded to organize the government of the new state, which was in theory to be independent of belgium, although ruled by the same individual. in europe, king leopold was a constitutional monarch; in africa, an absolute autocrat. there were chosen three ministers for the new state--for foreign affairs, for finances and for internal affairs; but it cannot be too clearly understood that they and their successors, up to 1908, were nominated by the king, paid by the king, answerable only to the king, and, in all ways, simply so many upper clerks in his employ. the workings of one policy and of one brain, as capable as it is sinister, are to be traced in every fresh development. if the ministers were ever meant to be a screen, it is a screen which is absolutely transparent. the origin of everything is the king--always the king. m. van ectvelde, one of the three head agents, put the matter into a single sentence: "c'est à votre majesté qu'appartient l'état." they were simply stewards, who managed the estate with a very alert and observant owner at their back. one of the early acts was enough to make observers a little thoughtful. it was the announcement of the right to issue laws by arbitrary decrees without publishing them in europe. there should be secret laws, which could, at any instant, be altered. the _bulletin officiel_ announced that "tous les actes du gouvernement qu'il y a intérêt à rendre publics seront insérés au _bulletin officiel_." already it is clear that something was in the wind which might shock the rather leathery conscience of a european concert. meanwhile, the organization of the state went forward. a governor-general was elected, who should live at boma, which was made the capital. under him were fifteen district commissaries, who should govern so many districts into which the whole country was divided. the only portion which was at that time at all developed was the semi-civilized lower congo at the mouth of the river. there lay the white population. the upper reaches of the stream and of its great tributaries were known only to a few devoted missionaries and enterprising explorers. grenfell and bentley, of the missions, with von wissman, the german, and the ever-energetic stanley, were the pioneers who, during the few years which followed, opened up the great hinterland which was to be the scene of such atrocious events. but the work of the explorer had soon to be supplemented and extended by the soldier. whilst the belgians had been entering the congo land from the west, the slave-dealing arabs had penetrated from the east, passing down the river as far as stanley falls. there could be no compromise between such opposite forces, though some attempt was made to find one by electing the arab leader as free state governor. there followed a long scrambling campaign, carried on for many years between the arab slavers on the one side and the congo forces upon the other--the latter consisting largely of cannibal tribes--men of the stone age, armed with the weapons of the nineteenth century. the suppression of the slave trade is a good cause, but the means by which it was effected, and the use of barbarians who ate in the evening those whom they had slain during the day, are as bad as the evil itself. yet there is no denying the energy and ability of the congo leaders, especially of baron dhanis. by the year 1894 the belgian expeditions had been pushed as far as lake tanganyika, the arab strongholds had fallen, and dhanis was able to report to brussels that the campaign was at an end, and that slave-raiding was no more. the new state could claim that they had saved a part of the natives from slavery. how they proceeded to impose upon all of them a yoke, compared to which the old slavery was merciful, will be shown in these pages. from the time of the fall of the arab power the congo free state was only called upon to use military force in the case of mutinies of its own black troops, and of occasional risings of its own tormented "citizens." master of its own house, it could settle down to exploit the country which it had won. in the meantime the internal policy of the state showed a tendency to take an unusual and sinister course. i have already expressed my opinion that king leopold was not guilty of conscious hypocrisy in the beginning, that his intentions were vaguely philanthropic, and that it was only by degrees that he sank to the depths which will be shown. this view is borne out by some of the earlier edicts of the state. in 1886, a long pronouncement upon native lands ended by the words: "all acts or agreements are forbidden which tend to the expulsion of natives from the territory they occupy, or to deprive them, directly or indirectly, of their liberty or their means of existence." such are the words of 1886. before the end of 1887, an act had been published, though not immediately put into force, which had the exactly opposite effect. by this act all lands which were not actually occupied by natives were proclaimed to be the property of the state. consider for a moment what this meant! no land in such a country is actually occupied by natives save the actual site of their villages, and the scanty fields of grain or manioc which surround them. everywhere beyond these tiny patches extend the plains and forests which have been the ancestral wandering places of the natives, and which contain the rubber, the camwood, the copal, the ivory, and the skins which are the sole objects of their commerce. at a single stroke of a pen in brussels everything was taken from them, not only the country, but the produce of the country. how could they trade when the state had taken from them everything which they had to offer? how could the foreign merchant do business when the state had seized everything and could sell it for itself direct in europe? thus, within two years of the establishment of the state by the treaty of berlin, it had with one hand seized the whole patrimony of those natives for whose "moral and material advantage" it had been so solicitous, and with the other hand it had torn up that clause in the treaty by which monopolies were forbidden, and equal trade rights guaranteed to all. how blind were the powers not to see what sort of a creature they had made, and how short-sighted not to take urgent steps in those early days to make it retrace its steps and find once more the path of loyalty and justice! a firm word, a stern act at that time in the presence of this flagrant breach of international agreement, would have saved all central africa from the horror which has come upon it, would have screened belgium from a lasting disgrace, and would have spared europe a question which has already, as it seems to me, lowered the moral standing of all the nations, and the end of which is not yet. having obtained possession of the land and its products, the next step was to obtain labour by which these products could be safely garnered. the first definite move in this direction was taken in the year 1888, when, with that odious hypocrisy which has been the last touch in so many of these transactions, an act was produced which was described in the _bulletin officiel_ as being for the "special protection of the black." it is evident that the real protection of the black in matters of trade was to offer him such pay as would induce him to do a day's work, and to let him choose his own employment, as is done with the kaffirs of south africa, or any other native population. this act had a very different end. it allowed blacks to be bound over in terms of seven years' service to their masters in a manner which was in truth indistinguishable from slavery. as the negotiations were usually carried on with the capita, or headman, the unfortunate servant was transferred with small profit to himself, and little knowledge of the conditions of his servitude. under the same system the state also enlisted its employees, including the recruits for its small army. this army was supplemented by a wild militia, consisting of various barbarous tribes, many of them cannibals, and all of them capable of any excess of cruelty or outrage. a german, august boshart, in his "zehn jahre afrikanischen lebens," has given us a clear idea of how these tribes are recruited, and of the precise meaning of the attractive word "libéré" when applied to a state servant. "some district commissary," he says, "receives instructions to furnish a certain number of men in a given time. he puts himself in communication with the chiefs, and invites them to a palaver at his residence. these chiefs, as a rule, already have an inkling of what is coming, and, if made wise by experience, make a virtue of necessity and present themselves. in that case the negotiations run their course easily enough; each chief promises to supply a certain number of slaves, and receives presents in return. it may happen, however, that one or another pays no heed to the friendly invitation, in which case war is declared, his villages are burned down, perhaps some of his people are shot, and his stores or gardens are plundered. in this way the wild king is soon tamed, and he sues for peace, which, of course, is granted on condition of his supplying double the number of slaves. these men are entered in the state books as 'libérés.' to prevent their running away, they are put in irons and sent, on the first opportunity, to one of the military camps, where their irons are taken off and they are drafted into the army. the district commissary is paid £2 sterling for every serviceable recruit." having taken the country and secured labour for exploiting it in the way described, king leopold proceeded to take further steps for its development, all of them exceedingly well devised for the object in view. the great impediment to the navigation of the congo had lain in the continuous rapids which made the river impassable from stanley pool for three hundred miles down to boma at the mouth. a company was now formed to find the capital by which a railway should be built between these two points. the construction was begun in 1888, and was completed in 1898, after many financial vicissitudes, forming a work which deserves high credit as a piece of ingenious engineering and of sustained energy. other commercial companies, of which more will be said hereafter, were formed in order to exploit large districts of the country which the state was not yet strong enough to handle. by this arrangement the companies found the capital for exploring, station building, etc., while the state--that is, the king--retained a certain portion, usually half, of the company's shares. the plan itself is not necessarily a vicious one; indeed, it closely resembles that under which the chartered company of rhodesia grants mining and other leases. the scandal arose from the methods by which these companies proceeded to carry out their ends--those methods being the same as were used by the state, on whose pattern these smaller organizations were moulded. in the meantime king leopold, feeling the weakness of his personal position in face of the great enterprise which lay before him in africa, endeavoured more and more to draw belgium, as a state, into the matter. already the congo state was largely the outcome of belgian work and of belgian money, but, theoretically, there was no connection between the two countries. now the belgian parliament was won over to advancing ten million francs for the use of the congo, and thus a direct connection sprang up which has eventually led to annexation. at the time of this loan king leopold let it be known that he had left the congo free state in his will to belgium. in this document appear the words, "a young and spacious state, directed from brussels, has pacifically appeared in the sunlight, thanks to the benevolent support of the powers that have welcomed its appearance. some belgians administer it, while others, each day more numerous, there increase their wealth." so he flashed the gold before the eyes of his european subjects. verily, if king leopold deceived other powers, he reserved the most dangerous of all his deceits for his own country. the day on which they turned from their own honest, healthy development to follow the congo lure, and to administer without any previous colonial experience a country more than sixty times their own size, will prove to have been a dark day in belgian history. the berlin conference of 1885 marks the first international session upon the affairs of the congo. the second was the brussels conference of 1889-90. it is amazing to find that after these years of experience the powers were still ready to accept king leopold's professions at their face value. it is true that none of the more sinister developments had been conspicuous, but the legislation of the state with regard to labour and trade was already such as to suggest the turn which affairs would take in future if not curbed by a strong hand. one power, and one only, holland, had the sagacity to appreciate the true situation, and the independence to show its dissatisfaction. the outcome of the sittings was various philanthropic resolutions intended to strengthen the new state in dealing with that slave trade it was destined to re-introduce in its most odious form. we are too near to these events, and they are too painfully intimate, to permit us to see humour in them; but the historian of the future, when he reads that the object of the european concert was "to protect effectually the aboriginal inhabitants of africa," may find it difficult to suppress a smile. this was the last european assembly to deal with the affairs of the congo. may the next be for the purpose of taking steps to truly carry out those high ends which have been forever spoken of and never reduced to practice. the most important practical outcome of the brussels conference was that the powers united to free the new state from those free port promises which it had made in 1885, and to permit it in future to levy ten per cent. upon imports. the act was hung up for two years owing to the opposition of holland, but the fact of its adoption by the other powers, and the renewed mandate given to king leopold, strengthened the position of the new state to such an extent that it found no difficulty in securing a further loan from belgium of twenty-five millions of francs, upon condition that, after ten years, belgium should have the option of taking over the congo lands as a colony. if in the years which immediately succeeded the brussels conference--from 1890 to 1894--a bird's-eye view could be taken of the enormous river which, with its tributaries, forms a great twisted fan radiating over the whole centre of africa, one would mark in all directions symptoms of european activity. at the lower congo one would see crowds of natives, impressed for the service and guarded by black soldiers, working at the railway. at boma and at leopoldsville, the two termini of the projected line, cities are rising, with stations, wharves and public buildings. in the extreme southeast one would see an expedition under stairs exploring and annexing the great district of katanga, which abuts upon northern rhodesia. in the furthest northeast and along the whole eastern border, small military expeditions would be disclosed, fighting against rebellious blacks or arab raiders. then, along all the lines of the rivers, posts were being formed and stations established--some by the state and some by the various concessionnaire companies for the development of their commerce. in the meantime, the state was tightening its grip upon the land with its products, and was working up the system which was destined to produce such grim results in the near future. the independent traders were discouraged and stamped out, belgium, as well as dutch, english and french. some of the loudest protests against the new order may be taken from belgian sources. everywhere, in flagrant disregard of the treaty of berlin, the state proclaimed itself to be the sole landlord and the sole trader. in some cases it worked its own so-called property, in other cases it leased it. even those who had striven to help king leopold in the earlier stages of his enterprise were thrown overboard. major parminter, himself engaged in trade upon the congo, sums up the situation in 1902 as follows: "to sum up, the application of the new decrees of the government signifies this: that the state considers as its private property the whole of the congo basin, excepting the sites of the natives' villages and gardens. it decrees that all the products of this immense region are its private property, and it monopolizes the trade in them. as regards the primitive proprietors, the native tribes, they are dispossessed by a simple circular; permission is graciously granted to them to collect such products, but only on condition that they bring them for sale to the state for whatever the latter may be pleased to give them. as regards alien traders, they are prohibited in all this territory from trading with the natives." everywhere there were stern orders--to the natives on the one hand, that they had no right to gather the products of their own forests; to independent traders on the other hand, that they were liable to punishment if they bought anything from the natives. in january, 1892, district commissary baert wrote: "the native of the district of ubangi-welle are not authorized to gather rubber. it has been notified to them that they can only receive permission to do so on condition that they gather the produce for the exclusive benefit of the state." captain le marinel, a little later, is even more explicit: "i have decided," he says, "to enforce rigorously the rights of the state over its domain, and, in consequence, cannot allow the natives to convert to their own profit, or to sell to others, any part of the rubber or ivory forming the fruits of the domain. traders who purchase, or attempt to purchase, such fruits of this domain from the natives--which fruits the state only authorizes the natives to gather subject to the condition that they are brought to it--render themselves, in my opinion, guilty of receiving stolen goods, and i shall denounce them to the judicial authorities, so that proceedings may be taken against them." this last edict was in the bangala district, but it was followed at once by another from the more settled equateur district, which shows that the strict adoption of the system was universal. in may, 1892, lieutenant lemaire proclaims: "considering that no concession has been granted to gather rubber in the domains of the state within this district, (1) natives can only gather rubber on condition of selling the same to the state; (2) any person or persons or vessels having in his or their possession, or on board, more than one kilogramme of rubber will have a _procèsverbal_ drawn up against him, or them, or it; and the ship can be confiscated without prejudice to any subsequent proceedings." the sight of these insignificant lieutenants and captains, who are often non-commissioned officers of the belgian army, issuing proclamations which were in distinct contradiction to the expressed will of all the great powers of the world, might at the time have seemed ludicrous; but the history of the next seventeen years was to prove that a small malignant force, driven on by greed, may prove to be more powerful than a vague general philanthropy, strong only in good intentions and platitudes. during these years--from 1890 to 1895--whatever indignation might be felt among traders over the restrictions placed upon them, the only news received by the general public from the congo free state concerned the founding of new stations, and the idea prevailed that king leopold's enterprise was indeed working out upon the humanitarian lines which had been originally planned. then, for the first time, incidents occurred which gave some glimpse of the violence and anarchy which really prevailed. the first of these, so far as great britain is concerned, lay in the treatment of natives from sierra leone, lagos, and other british settlements, who had been engaged by the belgians to come to congoland and help in railway construction and other work. coming from the settled order of such a colony as sierra leone or lagos, these natives complained loudly when they found themselves working side by side with impressed congolese, and under the discipline of the armed sentinels of the force publique. they were discontented and the discontent was met by corporal punishment. the matter grew to the dimensions of a scandal. in answer to a question asked in the house of commons on march 12th, 1896, mr. chamberlain, as secretary of state for the colonies, stated that complaints had been received of these british subjects having been employed without their consent as soldiers, and of their having been cruelly flogged, and, in some cases, shot; and he added: "they were engaged with the knowledge of her majesty's representatives, and every possible precaution was taken in their interests; but, in consequence of the complaints received, the recruitment of labourers for the congo has been prohibited." this refusal of the recruitment of labourers by great britain was the first public and national sign of disapproval of congolese methods. a few years later, a more pointed one was given, when the italian war ministry refused to allow their officers to serve with the congo forces. early in 1895 occurred the stokes affair, which moved public opinion deeply, both in this country and in germany. charles henry stokes was an englishman by birth, but he resided in german east africa, was the recipient of a german decoration for his services on behalf of german colonization, and formed his trading caravans from a german base, with east african natives as his porters. he had led such a caravan over the congo state border, when he was arrested by captain lothaire, an officer in command of some congolese troops. the unfortunate stokes may well have thought himself safe as the subject of one great power and the agent of another, but he was tried instantly in a most informal manner upon a charge of selling guns to the natives, was condemned, and was hanged on the following morning. when captain lothaire reported his proceedings to his superiors they signified their approbation by promoting him to the high rank of commissaire-général. the news of this tragedy excited as much indignation in berlin as in london. faced with the facts, the representatives of the free state in brussels--that is, the agents of the king--were compelled to admit the complete illegality of the whole incident, and could only fall back upon the excuse that lothaire's action was _bona-fide_, and free from personal motive. this is by no means certain, for as baron von marschall pointed out to the acting british ambassador at berlin, stokes was known to be a successful trader in ivory, exporting it by the east route, and so depriving the officers of the congo government of a ten per cent. commission, which would be received by them if it were exported by the west route. "this was the reason," the report continued, quoting the german statesman's words, "that he had been done away with, and not on account of an alleged sale of arms to arabs, his death being, in fact, not an act of justice, but one of commercial protection, neither more nor less." this was one reading of the situation. whether it was a true one or not, there could be no two opinions as to the illegality of the proceedings. under pressure from england, lothaire was tried at boma and acquitted. he was again, under the same pressure, tried at brussels, when the prosecuting counsel thought it consistent with his duty to plead for an acquittal and the proceedings became a fiasco. there the matter was allowed to remain. a blue book of 188 pages is the last monument to charles henry stokes, and his executioner returned to high office in the congo free state, where his name soon recurred in the accounts of the violent and high-handed proceedings which make up the history of that country. he was appointed director of the antwerp society for the commerce of the congo--an appointment for which king leopold must have been responsible--and he managed the affairs of that company until he was implicated in the mongalla massacres, of which more will be said hereafter. it has been necessary to describe the case of stokes, because it is historical, but nothing is further from my intention than to address national _amour propre_ in the matter. it was a mere accident that stokes was an englishman, and the outrage remains the same had he been a citizen of any state. the cause i plead is too broad, and also too lofty, to be supported by any narrower appeals than those which may be addressed to all humanity. i will proceed to describe a case which occurred a few years later to show that men of other nationalities suffered as well as the english. stokes, the englishman, was killed, and his death, it was said by some congolese apologists, was due to his not having, after his summary trial, announced that he would lodge an immediate appeal to the higher court at boma. rabinck, the austrian, the victim of similar proceedings, did appeal to the higher court at boma, and it is interesting to see what advantage he gained by doing so. rabinck was, as i have said, an austrian from olmutz, a man of a gentle and lovable nature, popular with all who knew him, and remarkable, as several have testified, for his just and kindly treatment of the natives. he had, for some years, traded with the people of katanga, which is the southeastern portion of the congo state where it abuts upon british central africa. the natives were at the time in arms against the belgians, but rabinck had acquired such influence among them that he was still able to carry on his trade in ivory and rubber for which he held a permit from the katanga company. shortly after receiving this permit, for which he had paid a considerable sum, certain changes were made in the company by which the state secured a controlling influence in it. a new manager, major weyns, appeared, who represented the new régime, superseding m. lévêque, who had sold the permits in the name of the original company. major weyns was zealous that the whole trade of the country should belong to the concessionnaire company, which was practically the government, according to the usual, but internationally illegal, habit of the state. to secure this trade, the first step was evidently to destroy so well-known and successful a private trader as m. rabinck. in spite of his permits, therefore, a charge was trumped up against him of having traded illegally in rubber--an offence which, even if he had no permit, was an impossibility in the face of that complete freedom of trade which was guaranteed by the treaty of berlin. the young austrian could not bring himself to believe that the matter was serious. his letters are extant, showing that he regarded the matter as so preposterous that he could not feel any fears upon the subject. he was soon to be undeceived, and his eyes were opened too late to the character of the men and the organization with which he was dealing. major weyns sat in court-martial upon him. the offence with which he was charged, dealing illegally in rubber, was one which could only be punished by a maximum imprisonment of a month. this would not serve the purpose in view. major weyns within forty minutes tried the case, condemned the prisoner, and sentenced him to a year's imprisonment. there was an attempt to excuse this monstrous sentence afterward by the assertion that the crime punished was that of selling guns to the natives, but as a matter of fact there was at the time no mention of anything of the sort, as is proved by the existing minutes of the trial. rabinck naturally appealed against such a sentence. he would have been wiser had he submitted to it in the nearest guard-house. in that case he might possibly have escaped with his life. in the other, he was doomed. "he will go," said major weyns, "on such a nice little voyage that he will act like this no more, and others will take example from it." the voyage in question was the two thousand miles which separated katanga from the appeal court at boma. he was to travel all this way under the sole escort of black soldiers, who had their own instructions. the unfortunate man felt that he could never reach his destination alive. "rumours have it," he wrote to his relatives, "that europeans who have been taken are poisoned, so if i disappear without further news you may guess what has become of me." nothing more was heard from him save two agonized letters, begging officials to speed him on his way. he died, as he had foreseen, on the trip down the congo, and was hurriedly buried in a wayside station when two hours more would have brought the body to leopoldville. if it is possible to add a darker shadow to the black business it lies in the fact that the apologists of the state endeavoured to make the world believe that their victim's death was due to his own habit of taking morphia. the fact is denied by four creditable witnesses, who knew him well, but most of all is it denied by the activity and energy which had made him one of the leading traders of central africa--too good a trader to be allowed open competition with king leopold's huge commercial monopoly. as a last and almost inconceivable touch, the whole of the dead man's caravans and outfits, amounting to some £15,000, were seized by those who had driven him to his death, and by the last reports neither his relatives nor his creditors have received any portion of this large sum. consider the whole story and say if it is exaggeration to state that gustav maria rabinck was robbed and murdered by the congo free state. having shown in these two examples the way in which the congo free state has dared to treat the citizens of european states who have traded within her borders, i will now proceed to detail, in chronological order, some account of the dark story of that state's relations to the subject races, for whose moral and material advantage we and other european powers have answered. for every case i chronicle there are a hundred which are known, but which cannot here be dealt with. for every one known, there are ten thousand, the story of which never came to europe. consider how vast is the country, and how few the missionaries or consuls who alone would report such matters. consider also that every official of the congo state is sworn neither at the time nor _afterward_ to reveal any matter that may have come to his knowledge. consider, lastly, that the missionary or consul acts as a deterrent, and that it is in the huge stretch of country where neither are to be found that the agent has his own unfettered way. with all these considerations, is it not clear that all the terrible facts which we know are but the mere margin of that welter of violence and injustice which the jesuit, father vermeersch, has summed up in the two words, "immeasurable misery!" iii the working of the system having claimed, as i have shown, the whole of the land, and therefore the whole of its products, the state--that is, the king--proceeded to construct a system by which these products could be gathered most rapidly and at least cost. the essence of this system was that the people who had been dispossessed (ironically called "citizens") were to be forced to gather, for the profit of the state, those very products which had been taken from them. this was to be effected by two means; the one, taxation, by which an arbitrary amount, ever growing larger until it consumed almost their whole lives in the gathering, should be claimed for nothing. the other, so-called barter by which the natives were paid for the stuff exactly what the state chose to give, and in the form the state chose to give it, there being no competition allowed from any other purchaser. this remuneration, ridiculous in value, took the most absurd shape, the natives being compelled to take it, whatever the amount, and however little they might desire it. consul thesiger, in 1908, describing their so-called barter, says: "the goods he proceeds to distribute, giving a hat to one man, or an iron hoe-head to another, and so on. each recipient is then at the end of a month responsible for so many balls of rubber. no choice of the objects is given, no refusal is allowed. if any one makes any objection, the stuff is thrown down at his door, and whether it is taken or left, the man is responsible for so many balls at the end of the month. the total amounts are fixed by the agents at the maximum which the inhabitants are capable of producing." but is it not clear that no natives, especially tribes who, as stanley has recorded, had remarkable aptitude for trade, would do business at all upon such terms? that is just where the system came in. by this system some two thousand white agents were scattered over the free state to collect the produce. these whites were placed in ones and twos in the more central points, and each was given a tract of country containing a certain number of villages. by the help of the inmates he was to gather the rubber, which was the most valuable asset. these whites, many of whom were men of low _morale_ before they left europe, were wretchedly paid, the scale running from 150 to 300 francs a month. this pay they might supplement by a commission or bonus on the amount of rubber collected. if their returns were large it meant increased pay, official praise, a more speedy return to europe, and a better chance of promotion. if, on the other hand, the returns were small, it meant poverty, harsh reproof and degradation. no system could be devised by which a body of men could be so driven to attain results at any cost. it is not to the absolute discredit of belgians that such an existence should have demoralized them, and, indeed, there were other nationalities besides belgians in the ranks of the agents. i doubt if englishmen, americans, or germans could have escaped the same result had they been exposed in a tropical country to similar temptations. and now, the two thousand agents being in place, and eager to enforce the collection of rubber upon very unwilling natives, how did the system intend that they should set about it? the method was as efficient as it was absolutely diabolical. each agent was given control over a certain number of savages, drawn from the wild tribes, but armed with firearms. one or more of these was placed in each village to ensure that the villagers should do their task. these are the men who are called "capitas," or head-men in the accounts, and who are the actual, though not the moral, perpetrators of so many horrible deeds. imagine the nightmare which lay upon each village while this barbarian squatted in the midst of it. day or night they could never get away from him. he called for palm wine. he called for women. he beat them, mutilated them, and shot them down at his pleasure. he enforced public incest in order to amuse himself by the sight. sometimes they plucked up spirit and killed him. the belgian commission records that 142 capitas had been killed in seven months in a single district. then came the punitive expedition, and the destruction of the whole community. the more terror the capita inspired, the more useful he was, the more eagerly the villagers obeyed him, and the more rubber yielded its commission to the agent. when the amount fell off, then the capita was himself made to feel some of those physical pains which he had inflicted upon others. often the white agent far exceeded in cruelty the barbarian who carried out his commissions. often, too, the white man pushed the black aside, and acted himself as torturer and executioner. as a rule, however, the relationship was as i have stated, the outrages being actually committed by the capitas, but with the approval of, and often in the presence of, their white employers. it would be absurd to suppose that the agents were all equally merciless, and that there were not some who were torn in two by the desire for wealth and promotion on the one side and the horror of their daily task upon the other. here are two illustrative extracts from the letters of lieutenant tilkens, as quoted by mr. vandervelde in the debate in the belgian chamber: "the steamer _v. d. kerkhove_ is coming up the nile. it will require the colossal number of fifteen hundred porters--unhappy blacks! i cannot think of them. i ask myself how i shall find such a number. if the roads were passable it would make some difference, but they are hardly cleared of morasses where many will meet their death. hunger and weariness will make an end of many more in the eight days' march. how much blood will the transport make to flow? already i have had to make war three times against the chieftains who will not take part in this work. the people prefer to die in the forest instead of doing this work. if a chieftain refuses, it is war, and this horrible war--perfect firearms against spear and lance. a chieftain has just left me with the complaint: 'my village is in ruins, my women are killed.' but what can i do? i am often compelled to put these unhappy chieftains into chains until they collect one or two hundred porters. very often my soldiers find the villages empty, then they seize the women and children." to his mother he writes: "com. verstraeten visited my station and highly congratulated me. he said the attitude of his report hung upon the quantity of rubber i would bring. my quantity rose from 360 kilos in september to 1,500 in october, and from january it will be 4,000 per month, which gives me 500 francs over my pay. am i not a lucky fellow? and if i continue, in two years i shall have reached an additional 12,000 francs." but a year later he writes in a different tone to major leussens: "i look forward to a general rising. i warned you before, i think, already in my last letter. the cause is always the same. the natives are weary of the hitherto _régime_--transport labour, collection of rubber, preparation of food stores for blacks and whites. again for three months i have had to fight with only ten days' rest. i have 152 prisoners. for two years now i have been carrying on war in this neighbourhood. but i cannot say i have subjected the people. they prefer to die. what can i do? i am paid to do my work, i am a tool in the hands of my superiors, and i follow orders as discipline requires." let us consider now for an instant the chain of events which render such a situation not only possible, but inevitable. the state is run with the one object of producing revenue. for this end all land and its produce are appropriated. how, then, is this produce to be gathered? it can only be by the natives. but if the natives gather it they must be paid their price, which will diminish profits, or else they will refuse to work. then they must be made to work. but the agents are too few to make them work. then they must employ such sub-agents as will strike most terror into the people. but if these sub-agents are to make the people work all the time, then they must themselves reside in the villages. so a capita must be sent as a constant terror to each village. is it not clear that these steps are not accidental, but are absolutely essential to the original idea? given the confiscation of the land, all the rest must logically follow. it is utterly futile, therefore, to imagine that any reform can set matters right. such a thing is impossible. until unfettered trade is unconditionally restored, as it now exists in every german and english colony, it is absolutely out of the question that any specious promises or written decrees can modify the situation. but, on the other hand, if trade be put upon this natural basis, then for many years the present owners of the congo land, instead of sharing dividends, must pay out at least a million a year to administer the country, exactly as england pays half a million a year to administer the neighbouring land of nigeria. to grasp that fact is to understand the root of the whole question. and one more point before we proceed to the dark catalogue of the facts. where did the responsibility for these deeds of blood, these thousands of cold-blooded murders lie? was it with the capita? he was a cannibal and a ruffian, but if he did not inspire terror in the village he was himself punished by the agent. was it, then, with the agent? he was a degraded man, and yet, as i have already said, no men could serve on such terms in a tropical country without degradation. he was goaded and driven to crime by the constant clamour from those above him. was it, then, with the district commissary? he had reached a responsible and well-paid post, which he would lose if his particular district fell behind in the race of production. was it, then, with the governor-general at boma? he was a man of a hardened conscience, but for him also there was mitigation. he was there for a purpose with definite orders from home which it was his duty to carry through. it would take a man of exceptional character to throw up his high position, sacrifice his career, and refuse to carry out the evil system which had been planned before he was allotted a place in it. where, then, was the guilt? there were half a dozen officials in brussels who were, as shown already, so many bailiffs paid to manage a property upon lines laid down for them. trace back the chain from the red-handed savage, through the worried, bilious agent, the pompous commissary, the dignified governor-general, the smooth diplomatist, and you come finally, without a break, and without a possibility of mitigation or excuse, up the cold, scheming brain which framed and drove the whole machine. it is upon the king, always the king, that the guilt must lie. he planned it, knowing the results which must follow. they did follow. he was well informed of it. again and again, and yet again, his attention was drawn to it. a word from him would have altered the system. the word was never said. there is no possible subterfuge by which the moral guilt can be deflected from the head of the state, the man who went to africa for the freedom of commerce and the regeneration of the native. iv first fruits of the system the first testimony which i shall cite is that of mr. glave, which covers the years 1893 up to his death in 1895. mr. glave was a young englishman, who had been for six years in the employ of the state, and whose character and work were highly commended by stanley. four years after the expiration of his engagement he travelled as an independent man right across the whole country, from tanganyika in the east to matadi near the mouth of the river, a distance of 2,000 miles. the agent and rubber systems were still in their infancy, but already he remarked on every side that violence and disregard of human life which were so soon to grow to such proportions. remember that he was himself a stanleyman, a pioneer and a native trader, by no means easy to shock. here are some of his remarks as taken from his diary. dealing with the release of slaves by the belgians, for which so much credit has been claimed, he says (_cent. mag._, vol. 53): "they are supposed to be taken out of slavery and freed, but i fail to see how this can be argued out. they are taken from their villages and shipped south, to be soldiers, workers, etc., on the state stations, and what were peaceful families have been broken up, and the different members spread about the place. they have to be made fast and guarded for transportation, or they would all run away. this does not look as though the freedom promised had any seductive prospects. the young children thus 'liberated' are handed over to the french mission stations, where they receive the kindest care, but nothing justifies this form of serfdom. i can understand the state compelling natives to do a certain amount of work for a certain time; but to take people forcibly from their homes, and despatch them here and there, breaking up families, is not right. i shall learn more about this on the way and at kabambare. if these conditions are to exist, i fail to see how the anti-slavery movement is to benefit the native." with regard to the use of barbarous soldiers he says: "state soldiers are also employed without white officers. this should not be allowed, for the black soldiers do not understand the reason of the fighting, and instead of submission being sought, often the natives are massacred or driven away into the hill.... but the black soldiers are bent on fighting and raiding; they want no peaceful settlement. they have good rifles and ammunition, realize their superiority over the natives with their bows and arrows, and they want to shoot and kill and rob. black delights to kill black, whether the victim be man, woman, or child, and no matter how defenceless. this is no reasonable way of settling the land; it is merely persecution. blacks cannot be employed on such an errand unless under the leadership of whites." he met and describes one lieutenant hambursin, who seems to have been a capable officer: "yesterday the natives in a neighbouring village came to complain that one of hambursin's soldiers had killed a villager; they brought in the offender's gun. to-day at roll-call the soldier appeared without his gun; his guilt was proved, and without more to do, he was hanged on a tree. hambursin has hanged several for the crime of murder." had there been more hambursins there might have been fewer scandals. glave proceeds to comment on treatment of prisoners: "in stations in charge of white men, government officers, one sees strings of poor emaciated old women, some of them mere skeletons, working from six in the morning till noon, and from half-past two till six, carrying clay water-jars, tramping about in gangs, with a rope round the neck, and connected by a rope one and a half yards apart. they are prisoners of war. in war the old women are always caught, but should receive a little humanity. they are naked, except for a miserable patch of cloth of several parts, held in place by a string round the waist. they are not loosened from the rope for any purpose. they live in the guard-house under the charge of black native sentries, who delight in slapping and ill-using them, for pity is not in the heart of the native. some of the women have babies, but they go to work just the same. they form, indeed, a miserable spectacle, and one wonders that old women, although prisoners of war, should not receive a little more consideration; at least, their nakedness might be hidden. the men prisoners are treated in a far better way." describing the natives he says: "the natives are not lazy, good-for-nothing fellows. their fine powers are obtained by hard work, sobriety and frugal living." he gives a glimpse of what the chicotte is like, the favourite and universal instrument of torture used by the agents and officers of the free state: "the 'chicotte' of raw hippo hide, especially a new one, trimmed like a corkscrew, with edges like knife-blades, and as hard as wood, is a terrible weapon, and a few blows bring blood; not more than twenty-five blows should be given unless the offence is very serious. though we persuaded ourselves that the african's skin is very tough it needs an extraordinary constitution to withstand the terrible punishment of one hundred blows; generally the victim is in a state of insensibility after twenty-five or thirty blows. at the first blow he yells abominably; then he quiets down, and is a mere groaning, quivering body till the operation is over, when the culprit stumbles away, often with gashes which will endure a lifetime. it is bad enough the flogging of men, but far worse is this punishment when inflicted on women and children. small boys of ten or twelve, with excitable, hot-tempered masters, often are most harshly treated. at kasnogo there is a great deal of cruelty displayed. i saw two boys very badly cut. i conscientiously believe that a man who receives one hundred blows is often nearly killed, and has his spirit broken for life." he has a glimpse of the treatment of the subjects of other nations: "two days before my arrival (at wabundu) two sierra leoneans were hanged by laschet. they were sentries on guard, and while they were asleep allowed a native chief, who was a prisoner and in chains, to escape. next morning laschet, in a fit of rage, hanged the two men. they were british subjects, engaged by the congo free state as soldiers. in time of war, i suppose, they could be executed, after court-martial, by being shot; but to hang a subject of any other country without trial seems to me outrageous." talking of the general unrest he says: "it is the natural outcome of the harsh, cruel policy of the state in wringing rubber from these people without paying for it. the revolution will extend." he adds: "the post (isangi) is close to the large settlement of an important coast man, kayamba, who now is devoted to the interests of the state, catching slaves for them, and stealing ivory from the natives of the interior. does the philanthropic king of the belgians know about this? if not, he ought to." as he gets away from the zone of war, and into that which should represent peace, his comments become more bitter. the nascent rubber trade began to intrude its methods upon his notice: "formerly the natives were well treated, but now expeditions have been sent in every direction, forcing natives to make rubber and to bring it to the stations. up the ikelemba, we are taking down one hundred slaves, mere children, all taken in unholy wars against the natives.... it was not necessary in the olden times, when we white men had no force at all. this forced commerce is depopulating the country.... left equateur at eleven o'clock this morning, after taking on a cargo of one hundred small slaves, principally boys, seven or eight years old, with a few girls among the batch, all stolen from the natives. the commissary of the district is a violent-tempered fellow. while arranging to take on the hundred small slaves a woman who had charge of the youngsters was rather slow in understanding his order, delivered in very poor kabanji. he sprang at her, slapped her in the face, and as she ran away, kicked her. they talk of philanthropy and civilization! where it is, i do not know." and again: "most white officers out on the congo are averse to the india-rubber policy of the state, but the laws command it. therefore, at each post one finds the natives deserting their homes, and escaping to the french side of the river when possible." as he goes on his convictions grow stronger: "everywhere," he said, "i hear the same news of the doings of the congo free state--rubber and murder, slavery in its worst form. it is said that half the libérés sent down die on the road.... in europe we understand from the word libérés slaves saved from their cruel masters. not at all! most of them result from wars made against the natives because of ivory or rubber." on all sides he sees evidence of the utter disregard of humanity: "to-day i saw the dead body of a carrier lying on the trail. there could have been no mistake about his being a sick man; he was nothing but skin and bones. these posts ought to give some care to the porters; the heartless disregard for life is abominable.... native life is considered of no value by the belgians. no wonder the state is hated." finally, a little before his death, he heard of that practice of mutilation which was one of the most marked fruits of the policy of "moral and material advantage of the native races" promised at the berlin conference: "mr. harvey heard from clarke, who is at lake mantumba, that the state soldiers have been in the vicinity of his station recently fighting and taking prisoners; and he himself had seen several men with bunches of hands signifying their individual skill. these, i presume, they must produce to prove their success! among the hands were those of men and women, and also those of little children. the missionaries are so much at the mercy of the state that they do not report these barbaric happenings to the people at home. i have previously heard of hands, among them children's, being brought to the stations, but i was not so satisfied of the truth of the former information as of the reports received just now by mr. harvey from clarke. much of this sort of thing is going on at the equateur station. the methods employed are not necessary. years ago, when i was on duty at the equateur without soldiers, i never had any difficulty in getting what men i needed, nor did any other station in the old, humane days. the stations and the boats then had no difficulty in finding men or labour, nor will the belgians, if they introduce more reasonable methods." a sentence which is worth noting is that "the missionaries are so much at the mercy of the state that they do not report these barbaric happenings to the people at home." far from the question being one, which, as the apologists for king leopold have contended, has been fomented by the missionaries, it has actually been held back by them, and it is only the courage and truthfulness of a handful of englishmen and americans which have finally brought it to the front. so much for mr. glave's testimony. he was an english traveller. mr. murphy, an american missionary, was working in another part of the country, the region where the ubangi joins the congo, during the same years. let us see how far his account, written entirely independently (_times_, november 18, 1895), agrees with the other: "i have seen these things done," he said, "and have remonstrated with the state in the years 1888, 1889, and 1894, but never got satisfaction. i have been in the interior and have seen the ravages made by the state in pursuit of this iniquitous trade. let me give an incident to show how this unrighteous trade affects the people. one day a state corporal, who was in charge of the post of solifa, was going round the town collecting rubber. meeting a poor woman, whose husband was away fishing, he asked: 'where is your husband?' she answered by pointing to the river. he then asked: 'where is his rubber?' she answered: 'it is ready for you.' whereupon he said 'you lie,' and lifting up his gun, shot her dead. shortly afterward the husband returned and was told of the murder of his wife. he went straight to the corporal, taking with him his rubber, and asked why he had shot his wife. the wretched man then raised his gun and killed the corporal. the soldiers ran away to the headquarters of the state, and made representations of the case, with the result that the commissary sent a large force to support the authority of the soldiers; the town was looted, burned, and many people were killed and wounded." again: "in november last (1894) there was heavy fighting on the bosira, because the people refused to give rubber, and i was told upon the authority of a state officer that no less than eighteen hundred people were killed. upon another occasion in the same month some soldiers ran away from a state steamer, and, it was said, went to the town of bombumba. the officer sent a message telling the chief of the town to give them up. he answered that he could not, as the fugitives had not been in his town. the officer sent the messenger a second time with the order: 'come to me at once, or war in the morning.' the next morning the old chief went to meet the belgians, and was attacked without provocation. he himself was wounded, his wife was killed before his eyes, and her head cut off in order that they might possess the brass necklet that she wore. twenty-four of the chief's people were also killed, and all for the paltry reason given above. again the people of lake mantumba ran away on account of the cruelty of the state, and the latter sent some soldiers in charge of a coloured corporal to treat with them and induce them to return. on the way the troops met a canoe containing seven of the fugitives. under some paltry pretext they made the people land, shot them, cut off their hands and took them to the commissary. the mantumba people complained to the missionary at irebu, and he went down to see if the story was true. he ascertained the case to be just as they had narrated, and found that one of the seven was a little girl, who was not quite dead. the child recovered, and she lives to-day, the stump of the handless arm witnessing against this horrible practice. these are only a few things of many that have taken place in one district." it was not merely for rubber that these horrors were done. much of the country is unsuited to rubber, and in those parts there were other imposts which were collected with equal brutality. one village had to send food and was remiss one day in supplying it: "the people were quietly sleeping in their beds when they heard a shot fired, and ran out to see what was the matter. finding the soldiers had surrounded the town, their only thought was escape. as they raced out of their homes, men, women and children, they were ruthlessly shot down. their town was utterly destroyed, and is a ruin to this day. the only reason for this fight was that the people had failed to bring kwanga (food) to the state upon that one day." finally mr. murphy says: "the rubber question is accountable for most of the horrors perpetrated in the congo. it has reduced the people to a state of utter despair. each town in the district is forced to bring a certain quantity to the headquarters of the commissary every sunday. it is collected by force; the soldiers drive the people into the bush; if they will not go they are shot down, their left hands being cut off and taken as trophies to the commissary. the soldiers do not care whom they shoot down, and they most often shoot poor, helpless women and harmless children. these hands--the hands of men, women and children--are placed in rows before the commissary, who counts them to see the soldiers have not wasted the cartridges. the commissary is paid a commission of about a penny per pound upon all the rubber he gets; it is, therefore, to his interest to get as much as he can." here is corroboration and amplification of all that mr. glaves had put forward. the system had not been long established, and was more efficient ten or twelve years later, but already it was bearing some notable first fruits of civilization. king leopold's rule cannot be said to have left the country unchanged. there is ample evidence that mutilations of this sort were unknown among the native savages. knowledge was spreading under european rule. having heard the testimony of an english traveller and of an american missionary, let us now hear that of a swedish clergyman, mr. sjoblom, as detailed in _the aborigines' friend_, july, 1897. it covers much the same time as the other two, and is drawn from the equateur district. here is the system in full swing: "they refuse to bring the rubber. then war is declared. the soldiers are sent in different directions. the people in the towns are attacked, and when they are running away into the forest, and try to hide themselves, and save their lives, they are found out by the soldiers. then their gardens of rice are destroyed, and their supplies taken. their plantains are cut down while they are young and not in fruit, and often their huts are burned, and, of course, everything of value is taken. within my own knowledge forty-five villages were altogether burned down. i say altogether, because there were many others partly burned down. i passed through twenty-eight abandoned villages. the natives had left their places to go further inland. in order to separate themselves from the white men they go part of the way down the river, or else they cross the river into french territory. sometimes, the natives are obliged to pay a large indemnity. the chiefs often have to pay with brass wire and slaves, and if the slaves do not make up the amount their wives are sold to pay. i was told that by a belgian officer. i will give you," mr. sjoblom continues, "an instance of a man i saw shot right before my eyes. in one of my inland journeys, when i had gone a little farther, perhaps, than the commissary expected me to go, i saw something that perhaps he would not have liked me to see. it was at a town called ibera, one of the cannibal towns to which no white man had ever been before. i reached it at sunset, after the natives had returned from the various places in which they had been looking for india-rubber. they gathered together in a great crowd, being curious to see a white man. besides, they had heard i had some good news to tell them, which came through the gospel. when that large crowd gathered, and i was just ready to preach, the sentinels rushed in among them to seize an old man. they dragged him aside a little from the crowd, and the sentinel in charge came to me and said, 'i want to shoot this man, because he has been in the river fishing to-day. he has not been on the river for india-rubber.' i told him: 'i have not authority to stop you, because i have nothing to do with these palavers, but the people are here to hear what i have to say to them, and i don't want you to do it before my eyes.' he said: 'all right, i will keep him in bonds, then, until to-morrow morning when you have gone. then i will kill him.' but a few minutes afterward the sentinel came in a rage to the man and shot him right before my eyes. then he charged his rifle again and pointed it at the others, who all rushed away like chaff before the wind. he told a little boy, eight or nine years of age, to go and cut off the right hand of the man who had been shot. the man was not quite dead, and when he felt the knife he tried to drag his hand away. the boy, after some labour, cut the hand off and laid it by a fallen tree. a little later this hand was put on a fire to smoke before being sent to the commissary." here we get the system at its highest. i think that picture of the child hacking off the hand of the dying man at the order of the monster who would have assuredly murdered him also had he hesitated to obey, is as diabolical a one as even the congo could show. a pretty commentary upon the doctrine of christ which the missionary was there to preach! mr. sjoblom seems to have been unable to believe at first that such deeds were done with the knowledge and approval of the whites. he ventured to appeal to the commissary. "he turned in anger on me," he adds, "and in the presence of the soldiers said that he would expel me from the town if i meddled with matters of that kind any more." it would, indeed, have been rather absurd for the commissary to interfere when the severed hand had actually been cut off in order to be presented to him. the whole procedure is explained in the following paragraph: "if the rubber does not reach the full amount required, the sentinels attack the natives. they kill some and bring the hands to the commissary. others are brought to the commissary as prisoners. at the beginning they came with their smoked hands. the sentinels, or else the boys in attendance on them, put these hands on a little kiln, and after they had been smoked, they by and by put them on the top of the rubber baskets. i have on many occasions seen this done." then we read in the latest state papers of the belgian diplomatists that they propose to continue the beneficent and civilizing work which they have inherited. yet another paragraph from mr. sjoblom showing the complicity of the belgian authorities, and showing also that the presence of the missionaries was some deterrent against open brutality. if, then, they saw as much as they did, what must have been the condition of those huge tracts of country where no missions existed? "at the end of 1895, the commissary--all the people were gathering the rubber--said he had often told the sentinels not to kill the people. but on the 14th of december a sentinel passed our mission station and a woman accompanied him, carrying a basket of hands. mr. and mrs. banks, besides myself, went down the road, and they told the sentinel to put the hands on the road that they might count them. we counted eighteen right hands smoked and from the size of the hands we could judge that they belonged to men, women and children. we could not understand why these hands had been collected, as the commissary had given orders that no more natives were to be killed for their hands. on my last journey i discovered the secret. one monday night, a sentinel who had just returned from the commissary, said to me: 'what are the sentinels to do? when all the people are gathered together, the commissary openly tells us not to kill any more people, but when the people have gone he tells us privately that if they do not bring plenty of india-rubber we must kill some, but not bring the hands to him.' some sentinels, he told me, had been put in chains because they killed some natives who happened to be near a mission station; but it was only because he thought it might become known that the commissary, to justify himself, had put the men in chains. i said to the sentinel: 'you should obey the first command, never to kill any more.' 'the people,' he answered, 'unless they are frightened, do not bring in the rubber, and then the commissary flogs us with the hippopotamus hide, or else he puts us in chains, or sends us to boma.' the sentinel added that the commissary induced him to hide cruelty while letting it go on, and to do this in such a way that he might be justified, in case it should become known and an investigation should be made. in such a case the commissary could say, 'why, i told him openly not to kill any more' and he might put the blame on the soldier to justify himself, though the blame and the punishment in all its force ought to have been put on himself, after he had done such a terrible act in order to disguise or mislead justice. if the sentinels were puzzled about this message, what would the natives be?" i have said that there was more to be said for the cannibal murderers than for those who worked the system. the capitas pleaded the same excuse. "don't take this to heart so much," said one of them to the missionary. "they kill us if we do not bring rubber. the commissary has promised us if we bring plenty of hands he will shorten our service. i have brought plenty already, and i expect my time will soon be finished." that the commissaries are steeped to the lips in this horrible business has been amply shown in these paragraphs. but mr. sjoblom was able to go one stage further along the line which leads to the palace at brussels. m. wahis, the governor-general, a man who has played a sinister part in the country, came up the river and endeavoured to get the outspoken swede to contradict himself, or, failing that, to intimidate him. to get at the truth or to right the wrong seems to have been the last thing in his mind, for he knew well that the wrong was essential to the system, and that without it the wheels would move more slowly and the head engineer in europe would soon wish to know what was amiss with his rubber-producing machine. "you may have seen all these things that you have stated," said he, "but nothing is proved." the commissary meanwhile had been holding a rifle to the head of witnesses so as to make sure that nothing would be proved. in spite of this mr. sjoblom managed to collect his evidence, and going to the governor, asked him when he could listen to it. "i don't want to hear any witnesses," said he, and then: "if you continue to demand investigation in these matters we will make a charge against you.... that means five years' imprisonment." such is mr sjoblom's narrative involving governor wahis in the general infamy. "it is not true," cries the congolese apologist. strange how swedes, americans, and british, laymen and clergy, all unite in defaming this innocent state! no doubt the wicked children lop off their own hands in order to cast a slur upon "the benevolent and philanthropic enterprise of the congo." tartuffe and jack the ripper--was ever such a combination in the history of the world! one more anecdote of mr. wahis, for it is not often that we can get a governor of the congo in person face to face with the results of his own work. as he passed down the river, mr. sjoblom was able to report another outrage to him: "mr. banks told the governor that he had seen it himself, whereupon m. wahis summoned the commandant in charge--the officer who had ordered the raid had already gone elsewhere--and asked him in french if the story were true. the belgian officer assured m. wahis that it was, but the latter, thinking mr. banks did not understand french, said: 'after all, you may have seen this; but you have no witnesses.' 'oh,' said mr. banks, 'i can call the commandant, who has just told you that it is true.' m. wahis then tried to minimize the matter, when, to his great surprise, mr. banks added: 'in any case i have, at his own request, furnished to the british consul, who passed through here lately, a signed statement concerning it.' m. wahis rose from his chair, saying: 'oh, then, it is all over europe!' then for the first time he said that the responsible commissary must be punished." it need not be added that the punishment was the merest farce. these successive reports, each amplifying the other, coming on the top of the killing of mr. stokes, and the action of the british colonial office in prohibiting recruiting for congoland, had the effect of calling strong attention to the condition of that country. the charges were met partly by denial, partly by general phrases about morality, and partly by bogus reform. m. van eetvelde, in brussels, and m. jules houdret, in london, denied things which have since been proved up to the hilt. the reform took the shape of a so-called natives' protection commission. like all these so-called reforms, it was utterly ineffectual, and was only meant for european consumption. no one knew so well as the men at brussels that no possible reform could have any effect whatever unless the system was itself abolished, for that system produced outrages as logically and certainly as frost produces ice. the sequel will show the results of the natives' protection commission. v further fruits of the system for a moment i must interrupt the narrative of the long, dismal succession of atrocities in order to explain certain new factors in the situation. it has already been shown that the congo state, unable to handle the whole of its vast domain, had sublet large tracts of it to monopolist companies, in absolute contradiction to article v. of the berlin treaty. up to the year 1897, these companies were registered in belgium, and had some pretence to being international in scope. the state had no open or direct control over them. this was now altered. the state drew closer the bonds which united it to these commercial undertakings. they were, for the most part, dissolved, and then reconstructed under congo law. in most cases, in return for the monopoly, the state was given control, sometimes to the extent of appointing all managers and agents. half the shares of the company or half the profits were usually made over to the state. thus one must bear in mind in future that whether one talks of the abir company, of the kasai, the katanga, the anversoise, or any other, it is really with the state--that is, with king leopold--that one has to do. he owned the companies, but paid them fifty per cent. commission for doing all the work. as their profits were such as might be expected where nothing was paid either for produce or for labour (varying from fifty to seven hundred per cent. per annum), all parties to the bargain were the gainers. another new factor in the situation was the completion, in 1898, of the lower congo railway, which connects boma with stanley pool, and so outflanks the cataracts. the enterprise itself was beneficent and splendid. the means by which it was carried out were unscrupulous and inhuman. had civilization no complaint against the congo state save the history of its railway construction with its forced labour, so different to the tradition of the tropical procedure of other european colonies, it would be a heavy indictment. now it sinks to insignificance when compared with the enslavement of a whole people and the twenty years of uninterrupted massacre. as a sketch of the condition of the railway district here is a little pen picture by m. edouard picard, of the belgian senate, who saw it in the building: "the cruel impression conveyed by the mutilated forests," he wrote, "is heightened in the places where, till lately, native villages nestled, hidden and protected by thick and lofty foliage. the inhabitants have fled. they have fled in spite of encouraging palavers and promises of peace and kind treatment. they have burnt their huts, and great heaps of cinders mark the sites, amid deserted palm-groves and trampled-down banana fields. the terrors caused by the memory of inhuman floggings, of massacres, of rapes and abductions, haunt their poor brains, and they go as fugitives to seek shelter in the recesses of the hospitable bush, or, across the frontiers, to find it in french or portuguese congo, not yet afflicted with so many labours and alarms, far from the roads traversed by white men, those baneful intruders, and their train of strange and disquieting habits." the outlook was as gloomy when he wandered along the path trodden by the caravans to the pool and back again. "we are constantly meeting these carriers, either isolated or in indian file; blacks, blacks, miserable blacks, with horribly filthy loin-clothes for their only garments; their bare and frizzled heads supporting their loads--chest, bale, ivory-tusk, hamper of rubber, or barrel; for the most part broken down, sinking under the burdens made heavier by their weariness and insufficiency of food, consisting of a handful of rice and tainted dried fish; pitiful walking caryatids; beasts of burden with the lank limbs of monkeys, pinched-up features, eyes fixed and round with the strain of keeping their balance and the dulness of exhaustion. thus they come and go by thousands, organized in a system of human transport, requisitioned by the state armed with its irresistible _force publique_, supplied by the chiefs whose slaves they are and who pounce on their wages; jogging on, with knees bent and stomach protruding, one arm raised up and the other resting on a long stick, dusty and malodorous; covered with insects as their huge procession passes over mountains and through valleys; dying on the tramp, or, when the tramp is over, going to their villages to die of exhaustion." it will be remembered that captain lothaire, having been acquitted of the murder of mr. stokes, was sent out by king leopold to act as managing-director of the anversoise trust. in 1898, he arrived in the mongalla district, and from then onward there came to europe vague rumours of native attacks and bloody reprisals, with those other symptoms of violence and unrest which might be expected where a large population accustomed to freedom is suddenly reduced to slavery. how huge were the rubber operations which were carried through under the ferocious rule of captain lothaire, may be guessed from the fact that the profits of the company, which had been 120,000 francs in 1897, rose to 3,968,000 in 1899--a sum which is considerably more than twice the total capital. m. mille tells of a belgian agent who showed 25,000 cartridges and remarked, "i can turn those into 25,000 pounds of rubber." captain lothaire believed in the same trade methods, for his fighting and his output increased together. it is worth while to slaughter one-fourth of the population if the effect is to drive the others to frenzied and unceasing work. no definite details might ever have reached europe of those doings had not lothaire made the capital mistake of quarrelling with his subordinates. one of these, named lacroix, sent a communication to the _nieuw gazet_, of antwerp, which, with the _petit bleu_, acted an honourable and independent part at this epoch. the congo press bureau, which has stifled the voice of the more venal portion of the belgian and parisian press, had not at that time attained the efficiency which it afterward reached. this letter from lacroix was published on april 10th, 1900, and shed a lurid light upon what had been going on in the mongalla district. it was a confession, but a confession which involved his superiors as well as himself. he told how he had been instructed by his chief to massacre all the natives of a certain village which had been slow in bringing its rubber. he had carried out the order. later, his chief had put sixty women in irons, and allowed nearly all of them to die of hunger because the village--mummumbula--had not brought enough rubber. "i am going to be tried," he wrote, "for having murdered one hundred and fifty men, for having crucified women and children, and for having mutilated many men and hung the remains on the village fence." at the same moment as this confession of lacroix, _le petit bleu_ published sworn affidavits of soldiers employed by the trust, telling how they had put to death whole villages for being short with their rubber. moray, another agent, published a confession in _le petit bleu_, from which this is an extract: "at ambas we were a party of thirty, under van eycken, who sent us into a village to ascertain if the natives were collecting rubber, and in the contrary case to murder all, including men, women and children. we found the natives sitting peaceably. we asked them what they were doing. they were unable to reply, thereupon we fell upon them all, and killed them without mercy. an hour later we were joined by van eycken, and told him what had been done. he answered: 'it is well, but you have not done enough!' thereupon he ordered us to cut off the heads of the men and hang them on the village palisades, also their sexual members, and to hang the women and children on the palisades in the form of a cross." in the face of these fresh revelations there was an outburst of feeling in belgium, showing that it is only their ignorance of the true facts which prevents the inhabitants of that country from showing the same humanity as any other civilized nation would do. they have not yet realized the foul things which have been done in their name. surely when they do realize it there will be a terrible reckoning! some were already very alive to the question. mm. vandervelde and lorand fought bravely in the chamber. the officials, with mm. liebrichts and de cuvelier at their head, made the usual vague professions and general denials. "ah, you can rest assured light will be forthcoming, complete, striking!" cried the former. light was indeed forthcoming, though not so complete as might be wished, for some, at least, of the scoundrels implicated were tried and condemned. in any other european colony they would have been hanged offhand, as the villainous murderers that they were. but they do not hang white men in the congoland, even with the blood of a hundred murders on their hands. the only white man ever hanged there was the englishman stokes for competing in trade. what is to be remarked, however, is that only subordinates were punished. van eycken was acquitted; lacroix had imprisonment; mattheys, another agent accused of horrible practices, got twelve years--which sounded well at the time, but he was liberated at the end of three. in the sentence upon this man the judge used the words, "seeing that it is just to take into account the example which his superiors gave him in showing no respect for the lives or rights of the natives." brave words, but how helpless is justice when such words can be said, and no result follow! they referred, of course, to captain lothaire, who had, in the meanwhile, fled aboard a steamer at matadi, and made his escape to europe. his flight was common knowledge, but who would dare to lay his hand upon the favourite of the king. lothaire has had occasion several times since to visit the congo, but justice has indeed sat with bandaged eyes where that man was concerned! there is one incident which should be marked in the story of this trial. moray, whose testimony would have been of great importance, was found dead in his bed just before the proceedings. there have been several such happenings in congo history. commandant dooms, having threatened to expose the misdeeds of lieutenant massard before europe, was shortly afterward declared to have been mysteriously drowned by a hippopotamus. dr. barotti, returning hot with anger after an inspection of the state, declares vehemently that he was poisoned. there is much that is of the sixteenth century in this state, besides its views of its duties to the natives. before passing these revelations with the attendant burst of candour in the belgian press, it may be well to transcribe the following remark in an interview from a returned congo official which appeared in the _antwerp nieuw gazet_ (april 10th, 1900). he says: "when first commissioned to establish a fort, i was given some native soldiers and a prodigious stock of ammunition. my chief gave me the following instructions: 'crush every obstacle!' i obeyed, and cut through my district by fire and sword. i had left antwerp thinking i was simply to gather rubber. great was my stupefaction when the truth dawned on me." this, with the letter of lieutenant tilken, as quoted before, gives some insight into the position of the agent. indeed, there is something to be said for these unfortunate men, for it is a more awful thing to be driven to crime than to endure it. consider the sequence of events! the man sees an advertisement offering a commercial situation in the tropics. he applies to a bureau. he is told that the salary is some seventy-five pounds a year, with a bonus on results. he knows nothing of the country or conditions. he accepts. he is then asked if he has any money. he has not. one hundred pounds is advanced to him for expenses and outfit, and he is pledged to work it off. he goes out and finds the terrible nature of the task before him. he must condone crime to get his results. suppose he resigns? "certainly," say the authorities; "but you must remain there until you have worked off your debt!" he cannot possibly get down the river, for the steamers are all under government control. what can he do then? there is one thing which he very frequently does, and that is to blow out his brains. the statistics of suicide are higher than in any service in the world. but suppose he takes the line: "very well, i will stay if you make me do so, but i will expose these misdeeds to europe." what then? the routine is a simple one. an official charge is preferred against him of ill-treating the natives. ill-treating of some sort is always going forward, and there is no difficulty with the help of the sentries in proving that something for which the agent is responsible does not tally with the written law, however much it might be the recognized custom. he is taken to boma, tried and condemned. thus it comes about that the prison of boma may at the same time contain the best men and the worst--the men whose ideas were too humane for the authorities as well as those whose crimes could not be overlooked even by a congolese administration. take warning, you who seek service in this dark country, for suicide, the boma prison, or such deeds as will poison your memory forever are the only choice which will lie before you. here is the sort of official circular which descends in its thousands upon the agent. this particular one was from the commissioner in the wille district: "i give you _carte blanche_ to procure 4,000 kilos of rubber a month. you have two months in which to work your people. employ gentleness at first, and if they persist in resisting the demands of the state, employ force of arms." and this state was formed for the "moral and material advantage of the native." while dealing with trials of boma i will give some short account of the caudron case, which occurred in 1904. this case was remarkable as establishing judicially what was always clear enough: the complicity between the state and the criminal. caudron was a man against whom 120 cold-blooded murders were charged. he was, in fact, a zealous and efficient agent of the anversoise society, that same company whose red-edged securities rose to such a height when manager lothaire taught the natives what a minister in the belgian house described as the christian law of work. he did his best for the company, and he did his best for himself, for he had a three per cent. commission upon the rubber. why he should be chosen among all his fellow-murderers is hard to explain, but it was so, and he found himself at boma with a sentence of twenty years. on appealing, this was reduced to fifteen years, which experience has shown to mean in practice two or three. the interesting point of his trial, however, is that his appeal, and the consequent decrease of sentence which justified that appeal, were based upon the claim that the government was cognisant of the murderous raids, and that the government soldiers were used to effect them. the points brought out by the trial were: 1. the existence of a system of organized oppression, plunder, and massacre, in order to increase the output of india-rubber for the benefit of a "company," which is only a covering name for the government itself. 2. that the local authorities of the government are cognisant, and participatory in this system. 3. that local officials of the government engage in these rubber raids, and that government troops are regularly employed there on. 4. that the judicature is powerless to place the real responsibility on the proper shoulders. 5. that, consequently, these atrocities will continue until the system itself is extirpated. caudron's counsel called for the production of official documents to show how the chain of responsibility went, but the president of the appeal court refused it, knowing as clearly as we do, that it could only conduct to the throne itself. one might ask how the details of this trial came to europe when it is so seldom that anything leaks out from the courts of boma. the reason was that there lived in boma a british coloured subject named shanir, who was at the pains to attend the court day by day in order to preserve some record of the procedure. this he dispatched to europe. the sequel is interesting. the man's trade, which was a very large one, was boycotted, he lost his all, brooded over his misfortunes, and finally took his own life--another martyr in the cause of the congo. vi voices from the darkness i will now return to the witnesses of the shocking treatment of the natives. rev. joseph clark was an american missionary living at ikoko in the crown domain, which is king leopold's own special private preserve. these letters cover the space between 1893 and 1899. this is ikoko as he found it in 1893: "irebo contains say 2,000 people. ikoko has at least 4,000 and there are other towns within easy reach, several as large as irebo, and two probably as large as ikoko. the people are fine-looking, bold and active." in 1903 there were 600 people surviving. in 1894 ikoko in the crown domain began to feel the effects of "moral and material regeneration." on may 30th of that year mr. clark writes: "owing to trouble with the state the irebo people fled and left their homes. yesterday the state soldiers shot a sick man who had not attempted to run away, and others have been killed by the state (native) soldiers, who, in the absence of a white man, do as they please." in november, 1894: "at ikoko quite a number of people have been killed by the soldiers, and most of the others are living in the bush." in the same month he complained officially to commissaire fievez: "if you do not come soon and stop the present trouble the towns will be empty.... i entreat you to help us to have peace on the lake.... it seems so hard to see the dead bodies in the creek and on the beach, and to know why they are killed.... people are living in the bush like wild beasts without shelter or proper food, and afraid to make fires. many died in this way. one woman ran away with three children--they all died in the forest, and the woman herself came back a wreck and died before long--ruined by exposure and starvation. we knew her well. my hope in 1894 was to get the facts put before king leopold, as i was sure he knew nothing of the awful conditions of the collection of the so-called 'rubber tax.'" on november 28th he writes: "the state soldiers brought in seven hands, and reported having shot the people in the act of running away to the french side, etc." * * * * * "we found all that the soldiers had reported was untrue, and that the statements made by the natives to me were true. we saw only six bodies; a seventh had evidently fallen into the water, and we learned in a day or two that an eighth body had floated into the landing-place above us--a woman that had either been thrown or had fallen into the water after being shot." on december 5th, he says: "a year ago we passed or visited between here and ikoko the following villages: probable population lobwaka 250 boboko 250 bosungu 100 kenzie 150 bokaka 200 mosenge 150 ituta 80 ngero 2,000 ---- total 3,180 "a week ago i went up, and only at ngero were there any people: there we found ten. ikoko did not contain over twelve people other than those employed by frank. beyond ikoko the case is the same." april 12th, 1895, he writes: "i am sorry that rubber palavers continue. every week we hear of some fighting, and there are frequent 'rows,' even in our village, with the armed and unruly soldiers.... during the past twelve months it has cost more lives than native wars and superstition would have sacrificed in three to five years. the people make this comparison among themselves.... it seems incredible and awful to think of these savage men armed with rifles and let loose to hunt and kill people, because they do not get rubber to sell at a mere nothing to the state, _and it is blood-curdling to see them returning with hands of the slain and to find the hands of young children, amongst bigger ones, evidencing their 'bravery.'_" the following was written on may 3rd, 1895: "the war on account of rubber. the state demands that the natives shall make rubber and sell same to its agents at a very low price. the natives do not like it. it is hard work and very poor pay, and takes them away from their homes into the forest, where they feel very unsafe, as there are always feuds among them.... the rubber from this district has cost hundreds of lives, and the scenes i have witnessed while unable to help the oppressed have been almost enough to make me wish i were dead. the soldiers, are themselves savages, some even cannibals, trained to use rifles and in many cases they are sent away without supervision, and they do as they please. when they come to any town no man's property or wife is safe, and when they are at war they are like devils. "_imagine them returning from fighting some 'rebels'; see, on the bow of the canoe is a pole and a bundle of something on it.... these are the hands (right hands) of sixteen warriors they have slain. 'warriors!' don't you see among them the hands of little children and girls (young girls or boys)? i have seen them. i have seen where even the trophy has been cut off while yet the poor heart beat strongly enough to shoot the blood from the cut arteries to a distance of fully four feet._" "a young baby was brought here one time; its mother was taken prisoner, and before her eyes they threw the infant in the water to drown it. the soldiers coolly told me and my wife that their white man did not want them to bring infants to their place. they dragged the women off and left the infant beside us, but we sent the child to its mother, and said we would report the matter to the chief of the post. we did so, but the men were not punished. the principal offender was told before me he would get fifty lashes, but i heard the same mouth send a message to say he would not be flogged." compare with this the following extracts from king leopold's _officiel bulletin_, referring to this very tract of country: "the exploitation of the rubber vines of this district was undertaken barely three years ago by m. fievez. the results he obtained have been unequalled. the district produced in 1895 more than 650 tons of rubber, bought (_sic_) for 2-1/2_d._ (european price), and sold at antwerp for 5_s._ 5_d._ per kilo (2 lbs.)." a later bulletin adds: "with this development of general order is combined an inevitable amelioration in the native's condition of existence _wherever he comes into contact with the european element_.... "such is, in fact, one of the ends of the general policy of the state, to _promote the regeneration of the race by instilling into him a higher idea of the necessity of labour_." truly, i know nothing in history to match such documents as these--pirates and bandits have never descended to that last odious abyss of hypocrisy. it stands alone, colossal in its horror, colossal, too, in its effrontery. a few more anecdotes from the worthy mr. clark. this is an extract from a letter to the chief of the district, mueller: "there is a matter i want to report to you regarding the nkake sentries. you remember some time ago they took eleven canoes and shot some ikoko people. as a proof they went to you with some hands, of which three were the hands of little children. we heard from one of their paddlers that one child was not dead when its hand was cut off, but did not believe the story. three days after we were told the child was still alive in the bush. i sent four of my men to see, and they brought back a little girl whose right hand had been cut off, and she left to die from the wound. the child had no other wound. as i was going to see dr. reusens about my own sickness i took the child to him, and he has cut the arm and made it right and i think she will live. but i think such awful cruelty should be punished." mr. clark still clung to the hope that king leopold did not know of the results of his own system. on march 25th, 1896, he writes: "_this rubber traffic is steeped in blood, and if the natives were to rise and sweep every white person on the upper congo into eternity there would still be left a fearful balance to their credit._ is it not possible for some american of influence to see the king of the belgians, and let him know what is being done in his name? _the lake is reserved for the king_--no traders allowed--and _to collect rubber for him hundreds of men, women and children have been shot_." at last the natives, goaded beyond endurance, rose against their oppressors. who can help rejoicing that they seem to have had some success? _extracts from letter-book commencing january 29th, 1897_: "the native uprising. this was brought about at last by sentries robbing and badly treating an important chief. _in my presence_ he laid his complaint before m. mueller, reporting the seizure of his wives and goods and the personal violence he had suffered at the hands of m. mueller's soldiers stationed in his town. _i saw m. mueller kick him off his veranda._ within forty-eight hours there were no 'sentries' or their followers left in that chief's town--they were killed and mutilated--and soon after m. mueller, with another white officer and many soldiers, were killed, and the revolt began." such is some of the evidence, a very small portion of the whole narrative furnished by mr. clark. remember that it is extracted from a long series of letters written to various people during a succession of years. one could conceive a single statement being a concoction, but the most ingenious apologist for the congo methods could not explain how such a document as this could be other than true. so much for mr. clark, the american. the evidence of mr. scrivener, the englishman, covering roughly the same place and date, will follow. but lest the view should seem too anglo-saxon, let me interpolate a paragraph from the travels of a frenchman, m. leon berthier, whose diary was published by the colonial institute of marseilles in 1902: "belgian post of imesse well constructed. the chef de poste is absent. he has gone to punish the village of m'batchi, guilty of being a little late in paying the rubber tax.... a canoe full of congo state soldiers returns from the pillage of m'batchi.... thirty killed, fifty wounded.... at three o'clock arrive at m'batchi, the scene of the bloody punishment of the chef de poste at imesse. poor village! the débris of miserable huts.... one goes away humiliated and saddened from these scenes of desolation, filled with indescribable feelings." in showing the continuity of the congo horror and the extent of its duration (an extent which is the shame of the great powers who acquiesced in it by their silence), i have marshalled witnesses in their successive order. messrs. glave, murphy and sjoblom have covered the time from 1894 to 1897; mr. clark has carried it on to 1900; we have had the deeds of 1901-4 as revealed in the boma law courts. i shall now give the experience of rev. mr. scrivener, an english missionary, who in july, august and september, 1903, traversed a section of the crown domain, that same region specially assigned to king leopold in person, in which mr. clark had spent so many nightmare years. we shall see how far the independent testimony of the englishman and the american, the one extracted from a diary, the other from a succession of letters, corroborate each other: "at six in the morning woke up to find it still raining. it kept on till nine, and we managed to get off by eleven. all the cassava bread was finished the day previous, so a little rice was cooked, but it was a hungry crowd that left the little village. i tried to find out something about them. they said they were runaways from a district a little distance away, where rubber was being collected. they told us some horrible tales of murder and starvation, and when we heard all we wondered that men so maltreated should be able to live without retaliation. the boys and girls were naked, and i gave them each a strip of calico, much to their wonderment.... "four hours and a half brought us to a place called sa.... on the way we passed two villages with more people than we had seen for days. there may have been 120. close to the post was another small village. we decided to stay there the rest of the day. three chiefs came in with all the adult members of their people, and altogether there were not 300. and this where, not more than six or seven years ago, there were at least 3,000! it made one's heart heavy to listen to the tales of bloodshed and cruelty. and it all seemed so foolish. to kill the people off in the wholesale way in which it has been done in this lake district, because they would not bring in a sufficient quantity of rubber to satisfy the white man--and now here is an empty country and a very much diminished output of rubber as the inevitable consequence...." finally mr. scrivener emerged in the neighbourhood of a "big state station." he was hospitably received, and had many chats with his host, who seems to have been a very decent sort of man, doing his best under very trying circumstances. his predecessor had worked incalculable havoc in the country, and the present occupant of the post was endeavouring to carry out the duties assigned to him (those duties consisting, as usual, of orders to get all the rubber possible out of the people) with as much humanity as the nature of the task permitted. in this he, no doubt, did what was possible as one whom the system had not yet degraded to its level--one of the rare few: and one cannot wonder that they should be rare, seeing the nature of the bonds, and the helplessness in which an official is placed who does not carry out the full desires of his superiors. but he had only succeeded in getting himself into trouble with the district commander in consequence. he showed mr. scrivener a letter from the latter upbraiding him for not using more vigorous means, telling him to talk less and shoot more, and reprimanding him for not killing more than one man in a district under his care where there was a little trouble. mr. scrivener had the opportunity while at this state post, under the _régime_ of a man who was endeavouring to be as humane as his instructions allowed, to actually see the process whereby the secret revenues of the "crown domain" are obtained. he says: "everything was on a military basis, but, so far as i could see, the one and only reason for it all was rubber. it was the theme of every conversation, and it was evident that the only way to please one's superiors was to increase the output somehow. i saw a few men come in, and the frightened look even now on their faces tells only too eloquently of the awful time they have passed through. as i saw it brought in, each man had a little basket, containing, say, four or five pounds of rubber. this was emptied into a larger basket and weighed, and being found sufficient, each man was given a cupful of coarse salt, and to some of the head-men a fathom of calico.... i heard from the white men and some of the soldiers some most gruesome stories. the former white man (i feel ashamed of my colour every time i think of him) would stand at the door of the store to receive the rubber from the poor trembling wretches, who after, in some cases, weeks of privation in the forest, had ventured in with what they had been able to collect. a man bringing rather under the proper amount, the white man flies into a rage, and seizing a rifle from one of the guards, shoots him dead on the spot. very rarely did rubber come in but one or more were shot in that way at the door of the store--'to make the survivors bring more next time.' men who had tried to run from the country and had been caught, were brought to the station and made to stand one behind the other, and an albini bullet sent through them. 'a pity to waste cartridges on such wretches.' only the roads to and fro from the various posts are kept open, and large tracts of country are abandoned to the wild beasts. the white man himself told me that you could walk on for five days in one direction, and not see a single village or a single human being. and this where formerly there was a big tribe!... "as one by one the surviving relatives of my men arrived, some affecting scenes were enacted. there was no falling on necks and weeping, but very genuine joy was shown and tears were shed as the losses death had made were told. how they shook hands and snapped their fingers! what expressions of surprise--the wide-opened mouth covered with the open hand to make its evidence of wonder the more apparent.... so far as the state post was concerned, it was in a very dilapidated condition.... on three sides of the usual huge quadrangle there were abundant signs of a former population, but we only found three villages--bigger, indeed, than any we had seen before, but sadly diminished from what had been but recently the condition of the place.... soon we began talking, and, without any encouragement on my part, they began the tales i had become so accustomed to. they were living in peace and quietness when the white men came in from the lake with all sorts of requests to do this and to do that, and they thought it meant slavery. so they attempted to keep the white men out of their country, but without avail. the rifles were too much for them. so they submitted, and made up their minds to do the best they could under the altered circumstances. first came the command to build houses for the soldiers, and this was done without a murmur. then they had to feed the soldiers, and all the men and women--hangers-on--who accompanied them. "then they were told to bring in rubber. this was quite a new thing for them to do. there was rubber in the forest several days away from their home, but that it was worth anything was news to them. a small reward was offered, and a rush was made for the rubber; 'what strange white men, to give us cloth and beads for the sap of a wild vine.' they rejoiced in what they thought was their good fortune. but soon the reward was reduced until they were told to bring in the rubber for nothing. to this they tried to demur, but to their great surprise several were shot by the soldiers, and the rest were told, with many curses and blows, to go at once or more would be killed. terrified, they began to prepare their food for the fortnight's absence from the village, which the collection of the rubber entailed. the soldiers discovered them sitting about. 'what, not gone yet?' bang! bang! bang! bang! and down fell one and another, dead, in the midst of wives and companions. there is a terrible wail, and an attempt made to prepare the dead for burial, but this is not allowed. all must go at once to the forest. and off the poor wretches had to go, without even their tinderboxes to make fires. many died in the forests from exposure and hunger, and still more from the rifles of the ferocious soldiers in charge of the post. in spite of all their efforts, the amount fell off, and more and more were killed.... "i was shown around the place, and the sites of former big chiefs' settlements were pointed out. a careful estimate made the population, of say, seven years ago, to be 2,000 people in and about the post, within a radius of, say a quarter of a mile. all told, they would not muster 200 now, and there is so much sadness and gloom that they are fast decreasing.... lying about in the grass, within a few yards of the house i was occupying, were numbers of human bones, in some cases complete skeletons. i counted thirty-six skulls, and saw many sets of bones from which the skulls were missing. i called one of the men, and asked the meaning of it. 'when the rubber palaver began,' said he, 'the soldiers shot so many we grew tired of burying, and very often we were not allowed to bury, and so just dragged the bodies out into the grass and left them. there are hundreds all round if you would like to see them.' but i had seen more than enough, and was sickened by the stories that came from men and women alike of the awful time they had passed through. the bulgarian atrocities might be considered as mildness itself when compared with what has been done here.... "in due course we reached ibali. there was hardly a sound building in the place.... why such dilapidation? the commandant away for a trip likely to extend into three months, the sub-lieutenant away in another direction on a punitive expedition. in other words, the station must be neglected, and rubber-hunting carried out with all vigour. i stayed here two days, and the one thing that impressed itself upon me was the collection of rubber. i saw long files of men come, as at mbongo, with their little baskets under their arms, saw them paid their milk-tin full of salt, and the two yards of calico flung to the head-men; saw their trembling timidity, and, in fact, a great deal more, to prove the state of terrorism that exists, and the virtual slavery in which the people are held.... "so much for the journey to the lake. it has enlarged my knowledge of the country, and also, alas! my knowledge of the awful deeds enacted in the mad haste of men to get rich. so far as i know, i am the first white man to go into the _domaine privé_ of the king, other than the employees of the state. i expect there will be wrath in some quarters, but that cannot be helped." so far mr. scrivener. but perhaps the reader may think that there really was a missionary plot to decry the free state. let us have some travellers, then. here is mr. grogan from his "cape to cairo": "the people were terrorized and were living in marshes." this was on the british frontier. "the belgians have crossed the frontier, descended into the valley, shot down large numbers of natives, british subjects, driven off the young women and cattle, and actually tied up and burned the old women. i do not make these statements without having gone into the matter. i remarked on the absence of women and the reason was given. it was on further inquiry that i was assured by the natives that white men had been present when the old women had been burned.... they even described to me the personal appearance of the white officers with the troops.... the wretched people came to me and asked me why the british had deserted them." further on he says: "every village had been burned to the ground, and as i fled from the country i saw skeletons, skeletons everywhere. and such postures! what tales of horror they told." just a word in conclusion from another witness, mr. herbert frost: "the power of an armed soldier among enslaved people is absolutely paramount. by chief or child, every command, wish, or whim of the soldier must be obeyed or gratified. at his command with rifle ready a man will ... outrage his own sister, give to his persecutor the wife he loves most of all, say or do anything, indeed, to save his life. the woes and sorrows of the race whom king leopold has enslaved have not decreased, for his commissaire officers and agents have introduced and maintain a system of deviltry hitherto undreamed of by his victims." does this all seem horrible? but in the face of it is there not something more horrible in a sentence of this kind?- "our only programme, i am anxious to repeat, is the work of moral and material regeneration, and we must do this among a population whose degeneration in its inherited conditions it is difficult to measure. the many horrors and atrocities which disgrace humanity give way little by little before our intervention." it is king leopold who speaks. vii consul roger casement's report up to this time the published reports as to the black doings of king leopold and his men were, with the exception of a guarded document from consul pickersgill, in 1898, entirely from private individuals. no doubt there were official reports but the government withheld them. in 1904, this policy of reticence was abandoned, and the historic report of consul roger casement confirmed, and in some ways amplified, all that had reached europe from other sources. a word or two as to mr. casement's own personality and qualifications may not be amiss, since both were attacked by his belgian detractors. he is a tried and experienced public servant, who has had exceptional opportunities of knowing africa and the natives. he entered the consular service in 1892, served on the niger till 1895, was consul at delagoa bay to 1898, and was finally transferred to the congo. personally, he is a man of the highest character, truthful, unselfish--one who is deeply respected by all who know him. his experience, which deals with the crown domain districts in the year 1903, covers some sixty-two pages, to be read in full in "white book, africa, no. 1, 1904." i will not apologize for the length of the extracts, as this, the first official exposure, was an historical document and from its publication we mark the first step in that train of events which is surely destined to remove the congo state from hands which have proved so unworthy, and to place it in conditions which shall no longer be a disgrace to european civilization. it may be remarked before beginning that at some of these conversations with the natives mr. scrivener was present, and that he corroborates the account given by the consul. the beginning of mr. casement's report shows how willing he was to give praise where praise was possible, and to say all that could be said for the administration. he talks of "energetic european intervention," and adds, "that very much of this intervention has been called for no one who formerly knew the upper congo could doubt." "admirably built and admirably kept stations greet the traveller at many points." "to-day the railway works most efficiently." he attributes sleeping sickness as "one cause of the seemingly wholesale diminution of human life which i everywhere observed in the regions re-visited; a prominent place must be assigned to this malady. the natives certainly attribute their alarming death-rate to this as one of the inducing causes, although they attribute, and i think principally, their rapid decrease in numbers to other causes as well." the government work shop "was brightness, care, order, and activity, and it was impossible not to admire and commend the industry which had created and maintained in constant working order this useful establishment." these are not the words of a critic who has started with a prejudiced mind or the desire to make out a case. in the lower reaches of the river above stanley pool casement found no gross ill-usage. the natives were hopeless and listless, being debarred from trade and heavily taxed in food, fish and other produce. it was not until he began to approach the cursed rubber zones that terrible things began to dawn upon him. casement had travelled in 1887 in the congo, and was surprised to note the timidity of the natives. soon he had his explanation: "at one of these village, s----, after confidence had been restored and the fugitives had been induced to come in from the surrounding forest, where they had hidden themselves, i saw women coming back, carrying their babies, their household utensils, and even the food they had hastily snatched up, up to a late hour of the evening. meeting some of these returning women in one of the fields i asked them why they had run away at my approach, and they said, smiling, 'we thought you were bula matadi' (_i. e._, 'men of the government'). fear of this kind was formerly unknown on the upper congo; and in much more out-of-the-way places visited many years ago the people flocked from all sides to greet a white stranger. but to-day the apparition of a white man's steamer evidently gave the signal for instant flight." "... men, he said, still came to him whose hands had been cut off by the government soldiers during those evil days, and he said there were still many victims of this species of mutilation in the surrounding country. two cases of the kind came to my actual notice while i was in the lake. one, a young man, both of whose hands had been beaten off with the butt-ends of rifles against a tree, the other a young lad of eleven or twelve years of age, whose right hand was cut off at the wrist. this boy described the circumstances of his mutilation, and, in answer to my inquiry, said that although wounded at the time he was perfectly sensible of the severing of his wrist, but lay still fearing that if he moved he would be killed. in both these cases the government soldiers had been accompanied by white officers whose names were given to me. of six natives (one a girl, three little boys, one youth, and one old woman) who had been mutilated in this way during the rubber _régime_, all except one were dead at the date of my visit. the old woman had died at the beginning of this year, and her niece described to me how the act of mutilation in her case had been accomplished." the fines inflicted upon villages for trifling offences were such as to produce the results here described: "the officer had then imposed as further punishment a fine of 55,000 brass rods (2,750 fr.)--£110. this sum they had been forced to pay, and as they had no other means of raising so large a sum they had, many of them, been compelled to sell their children and their wives. i saw no live-stock of any kind in w---save a very few fowls--possibly under a dozen--and it seemed, indeed, not unlikely that, as these people asserted, they had great difficulty in always getting their supplies ready. a father and mother stepped out and said that they had been forced to sell their son, a little boy called f, for 1,000 rods to meet their share of the fine. a widow came and declared that she had been forced, in order to meet her share of the fine, to sell her daughter g, a little girl whom i judged from her description to be about ten years of age. she had been sold to a man in y----, who was named, for 1,000 rods, which had then gone to make up the fine." the natives were broken in spirit by the treatment: "one of them--a strong, indeed, a splendid-looking man--broke down and wept, saying that their lives were useless to them, and that they knew of no means of escape from the troubles which were gathering around them. i could only assure these people that their obvious course to obtain relief was by appeal to their own constituted authorities, and that if their circumstances were clearly understood by those responsible for these fines i trusted and believed some satisfaction would be forthcoming." these fines, it may be added, were absolutely illegal. it was the officer, not the poor, harried natives, who had broken the law. "these fines, it should be borne in mind, are illegally imposed; they are not 'fines of court'; are not pronounced after any judicial hearing, or for any proved offence against the law, but are quite arbitrarily levied according to the whim or ill-will of the executive officers of the district, and their collection, as well as their imposition, involves continuous breaches of the congolese laws. they do not, moreover, figure in the account of public revenues in the congo 'budgets'; they are not paid into the public purse of the country, but are spent on the needs of the station or military camp of the officer imposing them, just as seems good to this official." here is an illustrative anecdote: "one of the largest congo concession companies had, when i was on the upper river, addressed a request to its directors in europe for a further supply of ball-cartridge. the directors had met this demand by asking what had become of the 72,000 cartridges shipped some three years ago, to which a reply was sent to the effect that these had all been used in the production of india-rubber. i did not see this correspondence, and cannot vouch for the truth of the statement; but the officer who informed me that it had passed before his own eyes was one of the highest standing in the interior." another witness showed the exact ratio between cartridges and rubber: "'the s. a. b. on the bussira, with 150 guns, get only ten tons (rubber) a month; we, the state, at momboyo, with 130 guns, get thirteen tons per month.' 'so you count by guns?' i asked him. 'partout,' m. p. said. 'each time the corporal goes out to get rubber cartridges are given to him. he must bring back all not used; and for every one used, he must bring back a right hand.' m. p. told me that sometimes they shot a cartridge at an animal in hunting; they then cut off a hand from a living man. as to the extent to which this is carried on, he informed me that in six months they, the state, on the momboyo river, had used 6,000 cartridges, which means that 6,000 people are killed or mutilated. it means more than 6,000 for the people have told me repeatedly that the soldiers kill children with the butt of their guns." that the statement about the cutting off of living hands is correct is amply proved by the kodak. i have photographs of at least twenty such mutilated negroes in my own possession. here is a copy of a dispatch from an official quoted in its naked frankness: "le chef ngulu de wangata est envoyé dans la maringa, pour m'y acheter des esclaves. prière a mm. les agents de l'a.b.i.r. de bien vouloir me signaler les méfaits que celui-ci pourrait commettre en route. "le capitaine-commandant, (signé) "sarrazzyn." "_colquilhatville, le 1er mai, 1896._" pretty good for the state which boasts that it has put down the slave trade. there is a passage showing the working of the rubber system which is so clear and authoritative that i transcribe it in full: "i went to the homes of these men some miles away and found out their circumstances. to get the rubber they had first to go fully a two days' journey from their homes, leaving their wives, and being absent for from five to six days. they were seen to the forest limits under guard, and if not back by the sixth day trouble was likely to ensue. to get the rubber in the forests--which, generally speaking, are very swampy--involves much fatigue and often fruitless searching for a well-flowing vine. as the area of supply diminishes, moreover, the demand for rubber constantly increases. some little time back i learned the bongandanga district supplied seven tons of rubber a month, a quantity which it was hoped would shortly be increased to ten tons. the quantity of rubber brought by the three men in question would have represented, probably, for the three of them certainly not less than seven kilog. of pure rubber. that would be a very safe estimate, and at an average of 7fr. per kilog. they might be said to have brought in £2 worth of rubber. in return for this labour, or imposition, they had received goods which cost certainly under 1_s._, and whose local valuation came to 45 rods (1_s._ 10_d._). as this process repeats itself twenty-six times a year, it will be seen that they would have yielded £52 in kind at the end of the year to the local factory, and would have received in return some 24_s._ or 25_s._ worth of goods, which had a market value on the spot of £2 7_s._ 8_d._ in addition to these formal payments they were liable at times to be dealt with in another manner, for should their work, which might have been just as hard, have proved less profitable in its yield of rubber, the local prison would have seen them. the people everywhere assured me that they were not happy under this system, and it was apparent to a callous eye that in this they spoke the strict truth." again i insert a passage to show that casement was by no means an ill-natured critic: "it is only right to say that the present agent of the a.b.i.r. society i met at bongandanga seemed to me to try, in very difficult and embarrassing circumstances, to minimize as far as possible, and within the limits of his duties, the evils of the system i there observed at work." speaking of the mongalla massacres--those in which lothaire was implicated--he quotes from the judgment of the court of appeal: "that it is just to take into account that, by the correspondence produced in the case, the chiefs of the concession company have, if not by formal orders, at least by their example and their tolerance, induced their agents to take no account whatever of the rights, property, and lives of the natives; to use the arms and the soldiers which should have served for their defence and the maintenance of order to force the natives to furnish them with produce and to work for the company, as also to pursue as rebels and outlaws those who sought to escape from the requisitions imposed upon them.... that, above all, the fact that the arrest of women and their detention, to compel the villages to furnish both produce and workmen, was tolerated and admitted even by certain of the administrative authorities of the region." yet another example of the workings of the system: "in the morning, when about to start for k----, many people from the surrounding country came in to see me. they brought with them three individuals who had been shockingly wounded by gun fire, two men and a very small boy, not more than six years of age, and a fourth--a boy child of six or seven--whose right hand was cut off at the wrist. one of the men, who had been shot through the arm, declared that he was y of l----, a village situated some miles away. he declared that he had been shot as i saw under the following circumstances: the soldiers had entered his town, he alleged, to enforce the due fulfilment of the rubber tax due by the community. these men had tied him up and said that unless he paid 1,000 brass rods to them they would shoot him. having no rods to give them they had shot him through the arm and had left him." i may say that among my photographs are several with shattered arms who have been treated in this fashion. this is how the natives were treated when they complained to the white man: "in addition, fifty women are required each morning to go to the factory and work there all day. they complained that the remuneration given for these services was most inadequate, and that they were continually beaten. when i asked the chief w why he had not gone to d f to complain if the sentries beat him or his people, opening his mouth he pointed to one of the teeth which was just dropping out, and said: 'that is what i got from the d f four days ago when i went to tell him what i now say to you.' he added that he was frequently beaten, along with others of his people, by the white man." one sentry was taken almost red-handed by mr. casement: "after some little delay a boy of about fifteen years of age appeared, whose left arm was wrapped up in a dirty rag. removing this, i found the left hand had been hacked off by the wrist, and that a shot hole appeared in the fleshy part of the forearm. the boy, who gave his name as i i, in answer to my inquiry, said that a sentry of the la lulanga company now in the town had cut off his hand. i proceeded to look for this man, who at first could not be found, the natives to a considerable number gathering behind me as i walked through the town. after some delay the sentry appeared, carrying a cap-gun. the boy, whom i placed before him, then accused him to his face of having mutilated him. the men of the town, who were questioned in succession, corroborated the boy's statement. the sentry, who gave his name as k k, could make no answer to the charge. he met it by vaguely saying some other sentry of the company had mutilated i i; his predecessor, he said, had cut off several hands, and probably this was one of the victims. the natives around said that there were two other sentries at present in the town, who were not so bad as k k, but that he was a villain. as the evidence against him was perfectly clear, man after man standing out and declaring he had seen the act committed, i informed him and the people present that i should appeal to the local authorities for his immediate arrest and trial." the following extract must be my final quotation from consul casement's report: "i asked then how this tax was imposed. one of them, who had been hammering out an iron neck-collar on my arrival, spoke first. he said: "'i am n n. these other two beside me are o o and p p, all of us y----. from our country each village had to take twenty loads of rubber. these loads were big: they were as big as this....' (producing an empty basket which came nearly up to the handle of my walking-stick.) 'that was the first size. we had to fill that up, but as rubber got scarcer the white man reduced the amount. we had to take these loads in four times a month.' "_q._ 'how much pay did you get for this?' "_a._ (entire audience.) 'we got no pay! we got nothing!' "and then n n, whom i asked again, said: "'our village got cloth and a little salt, but not the people who did the work. our chiefs eat up the cloth; the workers got nothing. the pay was a fathom of cloth and a little salt for every big basketful, but it was given to the chief, never to the men. it used to take ten days to get the twenty baskets of rubber--we were always in the forest and then when we were late we were killed. we had to go further and further into the forest to find the rubber vines, to go without food, and our women had to give up cultivating the fields and gardens. then we starved. wild beasts--the leopards--killed some of us when we were working away in the forest, and others got lost or died from exposure and starvation, and we begged the white man to leave us alone, saying we could get no more rubber, but the white men and their soldiers said: "go! you are only beasts yourselves; you are nyama (meat)." we tried, always going further into the forest, and when we failed and our rubber was short, the soldiers came to our towns and killed us. many were shot, some had their ears cut off: others were tied up with ropes around their necks and bodies and taken away. the white men sometimes at the posts did not know of the bad things the soldiers did to us, but it was the white men who sent the soldiers to punish us for not bringing in enough rubber.' "here p p took up the tale from n n: "'we said to the white men, "we are not enough people now to do what you want us. our country has not many people in it and we are dying fast. we are killed by the work you make us do, by the stoppage of our plantations, and the breaking up of our homes." the white man looked at us and said: "there are lots of people in mputu"' (europe, the white man's country). '"if there are lots of people in the white man's country there must be many people in the black man's country." the white man who said this was the chief white man at f f----; his name was a b; he was a very bad man. other white men of bula matadi who had been bad and wicked were b c, c d, and d e.' 'these had killed us often, and killed us by their own hands as well as by their soldiers. some white men were good. these were e f, f g, g h, h i, i k, k l.' "these ones told them to stay in their homes and did not hunt and chase them as the others had done, but after what they had suffered they did not trust more any one's word, and they had fled from their country and were now going to stay here, far from their homes, in this country where there was no rubber. "_q._ 'how long is it since you left your homes, since the big trouble you speak of?' "_a._ 'it lasted for three full seasons, and it is now four seasons since we fled and came into the k---country.' "_q._ 'how many days is it from n---to your own country?' "_a._ 'six days of quick marching. we fled because we could not endure the things done to us. our chiefs were hanged, and we were killed and starved and worked beyond endurance to get rubber.' "_q._ 'how do you know it was the white men themselves who ordered these cruel things to be done to you? these things must have been done without the white man's knowledge by the black soldiers.' "_a._ (p p): 'the white men told their soldiers: "you kill only women; you cannot kill men. you must prove that you kill men." so then the soldiers when they killed us' (here he stopped and hesitated, and then pointing to the private parts of my bulldog--it was lying asleep at my feet), he said: 'then they cut off those things and took them to the white men, who said: "it is true, you have killed men."' "_q._ 'you mean to tell me that any white man ordered your bodies to be mutilated like that, and those parts of you carried to him?' "p p, o o, and all (shouting): 'yes! many white men. d e did it.' "_q._ 'you say this is true? were many of you so treated after being shot?' "all (shouting out): 'nkoto! nkoto!' (very many! very many!) "there was no doubt that these people were not inventing. their vehemence, their flashing eyes, their excitement, was not simulated. doubtless they exaggerated the numbers, but they were clearly telling what they knew and loathed. i was told that they often became so furious at the recollection of what had been done to them that they lost control over themselves. one of the men before me was getting into this state now." such is the story--or a very small portion of it--which his majesty's consul conveyed to his majesty's government as to the condition of those natives, who, "in the name of almighty god," we had pledged ourselves to defend! the same damning white book contained a brief account of lord cromer's experience upon the upper nile in the lado district. he notes that for eighty miles the side of the river which is british territory was crowded with native villages, the inhabitants of which ran along the bank calling to the steamer. the other bank (congolese territory), was a deserted wilderness. the "tuquoque" argument which king leopold's henchmen are so fond of advancing will find it hard to reconcile the difference. lord cromer ends his report: "it appears to me that the facts which i have stated above afford amply sufficient evidence of the spirit which animates the belgian administration, if, indeed, administration it can be called. the government, so far as i could judge, is conducted almost exclusively on commercial principles, and, even judged by that standard, it would appear that those principles are somewhat short-sighted." in the same white book which contains these documents there is printed the congolese defence drawn up by m. de cuvelier. the defence consists in simply ignoring all the definite facts laid before the public, and in making such statements as that the british have themselves made war upon natives, as if there were no distinction between war and massacre, and that the british have put a poll-tax upon natives, which, if it be reasonable in amount, is a perfectly just proceeding adopted by all colonial nations. let the possessors of the free state use this system, and at the same time restore the freedom of trade by throwing open the country to all, and returning to the natives that land and produce which has been taken from them. when they have done this--and punished the guilty--there will be an end of anti-congo agitation. beyond this, a large part (nearly half) of the congo reply (_notes sur le rapport de mr. casement, de dec. 11, 1903_), is taken up by trying to show that in one case of mutilation the injuries were, in truth, inflicted by a wild boar. there must be many wild boars in congo land, and their habits are of a singular nature. it is not in the congo that these boars are bred. viii king leopold's commission and its report the immediate effect of the publication as a state paper of the general comment of lord cromer, and of the definite accusations of consul casement, was a demand both in belgium and in england for an official inquiry. lord landsdowne stipulated that this inquiry should be impartial and thorough. it was also suggested by the british government that it should be international in character, and separated from the local administration. very grudgingly and under constant pressure the king appointed a commission, but whittled down its powers to such a point that its proceedings must lose all utility. such were the terms that they provoked remonstrance from men like m. a. j. wauters, the belgian historian of the congo free state, who protested in the _mouvement géographique_ (august 7th, 1904) that such a body could serve no useful end. finally, their functions were slightly increased, but they possessed no punitive powers and were hampered in every direction by the terms of their reference. the _personnel_ of the commission was worthy of the importance of the inquiry. m. janssens, a well-known jurist of belgium, was the president. he impressed all who came in contact with him as a man of upright and sympathetic character. baron nisco's appointment was open to criticism, as he was himself a congo functionary, but save for that fact there was no complaint to make against him. dr. schumacher, a distinguished swiss lawyer, was the third commissioner. the english government applied to have a representative upon the tribunal, and with true congo subtlety the request was granted after the three judges had reached the congo. the englishman, mr. mackie, hurried out, but was only in time to attend the last three sittings, which were held in the lower part of the river, far from the notorious rubber agents. it is worth noting that on his arrival he applied for the minutes of the previous meetings and that his application was refused. in belgium the evidence of the commission has never been published, and it is safe to say that it never will be. fortunately the congo missionaries took copious notes of the proceedings and of the testimony which came immediately under their own notice. it is from their evidence that i draw these accounts. if the congo authorities contest the accuracy of those accounts, then let them confute them forever and put their accusers to confusion by producing the actual minutes which they hold. the first sitting of any length of which there are records is that at bolobo, and extended from november 5th to 12th, 1904. the veteran, mr. grenfell, gave evidence at this sitting, and it is useful to summarize his views as he was one of the men who held out longest against the condemnation of king leopold, and because his early utterances have been quoted as if he were a supporter of the system. he expressed to the commissioners his disappointment at the failure of the congo government to realize the promises with which it inaugurated its career. he declared he could no longer wear the decorations which he had received from the sovereign of the congo state. he gave it as his opinion that the ills the country was suffering from were due to the haste of a few men to get rich, and to the absence of anything like a serious attempt to properly police the country in the interests of the people. he instanced the few judicial officers, and the virtual impossibility of a native obtaining justice, owing to witnesses being compelled to travel long distances, either to leopoldville or boma. mr. grenfell spoke out emphatically against the administrative _régime_ on the upper river, so far as it had been brought under his notice. mr. scrivener, a gentleman who had been twenty-three years on the congo, was the next witness. his evidence was largely the same as the "diary" from which i have already quoted, concerning the condition of the crown domain. many witnesses were examined. "how do you know the names of the men murdered?" a lad was asked. "one of them was my father," was the dramatic reply. "men of stone," wrote mr. scrivener, "would be moved by the stories that are unfolded as the commission probes this awful history of rubber collection." mr. gilchrist, another missionary, was a new witness. his testimony was concerned with the state domain and the concessionnaire area, principally on the lulanga river. he said: "i also told them what we had seen on the ikelemba, of the signs of desolation in all the districts, of the heartrending stories the people told us, of the butcheries wrought by the various white men of the state and companies who had, from time to time, been stationed there among whom a few names were notorious. i pointed out to them the fact that the basin of the ikelemba was supposed to be free-trade territory also, but that everywhere the people of the various districts were compelled to serve the companies of these respective districts, in rubber, gum copal or food. at one out-of-the-way place where we were on the south bank, two men arrived just as we were leaving, with their bodies covered with marks of the chicotte, which they had just received from the trader of bosci because their quantity had been short. i said to the commissaire, given favourable conditions, particularly freedom, there would soon be a large population in these interior towns, the ngombe and mongo." in answer to questions the following facts were solicited: "_unsettled condition of the people._ the older people never seem to have confidence to build their houses substantially. if they have any suspicion of the approach of a canoe or steamer with soldiers they flee. "_chest disease, pneumonia, etc._ these carry off very many. the people flee to the islands, live in the open air, expose themselves to all kinds of weather, contract chills, which are followed by serious lung troubles, and die. for years we never saw a new house because of the drifting population. they have a great fear of soldiers. in the case of many the absence from the villages is temporary; in the case of a few they permanently settle on the north bank of the river. "_want of proper nourishment._ i have witnessed the collecting of the state imposition, and after this was set aside the natives had nothing but leaves to eat." also, that fines, which the commission at once declared to be illegal, were constantly levied on the people, and that these fines had continued after the matter had been reported to the governor-general. in spite of this declaration of illegality, no steps were taken in the matter, and m. de bauw, the chief offender, was by last accounts the supreme executive official of the district. at every turn one finds that there is no relation at all between law and practice in the congo. law is habitually broken by every official from the governor-general downward if the profits of the state can be increased thereby. the only stern enforcement of the laws is toward the foreigner, the austrian rubinck, or the englishman stokes, who is foolish enough to think that an international agreement is of more weight than the edicts of boma. these men believed it, and met their death through their belief without redress, and even, in the case of the austrian, without public remonstrance. the next considerable session of the commission was at baringa. mr. harris and mr. stannard, the missionaries at this station, had played a noble part throughout in endeavouring within their very limited powers to shield the natives from their tormentors. in both cases, and also in that of mrs. harris, this had been done at the repeated risk of their lives. their white neighbours of the rubber factories made their lives miserable also by preventing their receipt of food from the natives, and harassing them in various ways. on one occasion a chief and his son were both murdered by the order of the white agent because they had supplied the harris household with the fore-quarter of an antelope. before giving the terrible testimony of the missionaries--a testimony which was admitted to be true by the chief agent of the a.b.i.r. company on the spot, it would be well to show the exact standing of this corporation and its relation to the state. these relations are so close that they become to all intents and purposes the same. the state holds fifty per cent. of the shares; it places the government soldiers at the company's disposal; it carries up in the government steamers and supplies licenses for the great number of rifles and the quantity of cartridges which the company needs for its murderous work. whatever crimes are done by the company, the state is a close accomplice. finally, the european directors of this bloodstained company are, or were at the time, the senator van der nest, who acted as president; and as council: count john d'oultremont, grand marshal of the belgian court; baron dhanis, of congo fame, and m. van eetevelde, the creature of the king, and the writer of so many smug despatches to the british government about the mission of civilization and the high purpose of the congo state. now listen to some of the testimony as condensed by mr. harris: "first, the specific atrocities during 1904 were dealt with, including men, women, and children; then murders and outrages, including cannibalism. from this i passed on to the imprisonment of men, women and children. following this i called attention to the destruction of the baringa towns and the partial famine among the people in consequence. also the large gangs of prisoners--men, women and children--imprisoned to carry out this work; the murder of two men whilst it was being done. next followed the irregularities during 1903. the expedition conducted by an a.b.i.r. agent against samb'ekota, and the arming continually of a.b.i.r. sentries with albini rifles. following this i drew attention to the administration of mons. forcie, whose _régime_ was a terrible one, including the murder of isekifasu, the principal chief of bolima; the killing, cutting up and eating of his wives, son and children; the decorating of the chief houses with the intestines, liver and heart of some of the killed, as stated by 'veritas' in the _west african mail_. "i confirmed in general the letter published in the _west african mail_ by 'veritas.' "following this i came to mons. tagner's time, and stated that no village in this district had escaped murders under this man's _régime_. "next we dealt with irregularities common to all agents, calling attention to and proving by specific instances the public floggings of practically any and every one; quoting, for instance, seeing with my own eyes six ngombe men receive one hundred strokes each, delivered simultaneously by two sentries. "next, the normal condition has always been the imprisoning of men, women and children, all herded together in one shed, with no arrangement for the demands of nature. further, that very many, including even chiefs, had died either in prison or immediately on their release. "next, the mutilation of the woman boaji, because she wished to remain faithful to her husband, and refused to subject herself to the passions of the sentries. the woman's footless leg and hernia testify to the truth of her statement. she appeared before the commission and doctor. "next, the fact that natives are imprisoned for visiting friends and relatives in other villages, and the refusal to allow native canoes to pass up and down river without carrying a permit signed by the rubber agent; pointing out that even missionaries are subject to these restrictions, and publicly insulted, in an unprintable manner, when they do so. "next point dealt with was responsibility--maintaining that responsibility lay not so much in the individual as in the system. the sentry blames the agent, he in turn the director, and so on. "i next called attention to the difficulties to be faced by natives in reporting irregularities. the number of civil officials is too small; the practical impossibility of reaching those that do exist--the native having first to ask permission of the rubber agent. "the relations that are at present necessary between the a.b.i.r. and the state render it highly improbable that the natives will ever report irregularities. i then pointed out that we firmly believe that but for us these irregularities would never have come to light. "following on this the difficulties to be faced by missionaries were dealt with, pointing out that the a.b.i.r. can and do impose on us all sorts of restrictions if we dare to speak a word about their irregularities. i then quoted a few of the many instances which found their climax in mrs. harris and i almost losing our lives for daring to oppose the massacres by van caelcken. it was also stated that we could not disconnect the attitude of the state in refusing us fresh sites with our action in condemning the administration. i then mentioned that the forests are exhausted of rubber, pointing out that during a five days' tour through the forests i did not see a single vine of any size. this is solely because the vines have been worked in such a manner that all the rubber roots need many years' rest, whereas the natives now are actually reduced to digging up those roots in order to get rubber. "the next subject dealt with was the clear violation both of the spirit and letter of the berlin act. in the first place we are not allowed to extend the mission, and, further, we are forbidden to trade even for food. "next the statement was made that, so far as we are aware, no single sentry had ever been punished by the state till 1904 for the many murders committed in this district. "i next pointed out that one reason why the natives object to paddle for the a.b.i.r. is because of the sentries who travel in the a.b.i.r. canoes, and whose only business is to flog the paddlers in order to keep them going. "after mr. stannard had been heard, sixteen esanga witnesses were questioned one by one. they gave clearly the details of how father, mother, brother, sister, son or daughter were killed in cold blood for rubber. these sixteen represented over twenty murders in esanga alone. then followed the big chief of all bolima, who succeeded isekifasu (murdered by the a.b.i.r.). what a sight for those who prate about lying missionaries! he stood boldly before all, pointed to his twenty witnesses, placed on the table his one hundred and ten twigs, each twig representing a life for rubber. 'these are chiefs' twigs, these are men's, these shorter are women's, these smaller still are children's.' he gives the names of scores, but begs for permission to call his son as a reminder. the commission, though, is satisfied with him, that he is telling the truth, and therefore say that it is unnecessary. he tells how his beard of many years' growth, and which nearly reached his feet, was cut off by a rubber agent, merely because he visited a friend in another town. asked if he had not killed a.b.i.r. sentries, he denied it, but owned to his people spearing three of the sentry's boys. he tells how the white man fought him, and when the fight was over handed him his corpses, and said: 'now you will bring rubber, won't you?' to which he replied: 'yes.' the corpses were cut up and eaten by mons. forcie's fighters. he also told how he had been chicotted and imprisoned by the a.b.i.r. agent, and further put to the most menial labour by the agent. "here bonkoko came forward and told how he accompanied the a.b.i.r. sentries when they went to murder isekifasu and his wives and little ones; of finding them peacefully sitting at their evening meal; of the killing as many as they could, also the cutting up and eating of the bodies of isekifasu's son and his father's wives; of how they dashed the baby's brains out, cut the body in half, and impaled the halves. "again he tells how, on their return, mons. forcie had the sentries chicotted because they had not killed enough of the bolima people. "next came bongwalanga, and confirmed bonkoko's story; this youth went to 'look on.' after this the mutilated wife of lomboto, of ekerongo, was carried by a chief, who showed her footless leg and hernia. this was the price she had to pay for remaining faithful to her husband. the husband told how he was chicotted because he was angry about his wife's mutilation. "then longoi, of lotoko, placed eighteen twigs on the table, representing eighteen men, women and children murdered for rubber. next, inunga laid thirty-four twigs on the table and told how thirty-four of his men, women and children had been murdered at ekerongo. he admits that they had speared one sentry, iloko, but that, as in every other such instance, was because iloko had first killed their people. lomboto shows his mutilated wrist and useless hand, done by the sentry. isekansu shows his stump of a forearm, telling the same pitiful story. every witness tells of floggings, rape, mutilations, murders, and of imprisonments of men, women and children, and of illegal fines and irregular taxes, etc., etc. the commission endeavours to get through this slough of iniquity and river of blood, but finding it hopeless, asks how much longer i can go on. i tell them i can go on until they are satisfied that hundreds of murders have been committed by the a.b.i.r. in this district alone; murders of chiefs, men, women and little children, and that multitudes of witnesses only await my signal to appear by the thousand. "i further point out that we have only considered about two hundred murders from the villages of bolima, esanga, ekerongo, lotoko; that by far the greater majority still remain. the following districts are as yet untouched: bokri, nson-go, boru-ga, ekala, baringa, linza, lifindu, nsongo-mboyo, livoku, boendo, the lomako river, the ngombe country, and many others, all of whom have the same tale to tell. every one saw the hopelessness of trying to investigate things fully. to do so, the commission would have to stay here for months." what comment can be added to such evidence as this! it stands in its naked horror, and it is futile to try to make it more vivid. what can any of those english apologists of the congo who have thrown a doubt upon the accounts of outrages because in passing through a section of this huge country upon a flying visit they had not happened to see them--what can lord mountmorris, captain boyd alexander, or mrs. french sheldon say in the face of a mass of evidence with the actual mutilated limbs and excoriated backs to enforce it? can they say more than the man actually incriminated, m. le jeune, the chief agent at the spot? "what have you to say?" asked the president. m. le jeune shrugged his shoulders. he had nothing to say. the president, who had listened, to his honour be it spoken, with tears running down his cheeks to some of the evidence, cried out in amazement and disgust. "there is one document i would put in," said the agent. "it is to show that 142 of my sentinels were slain by the villagers in the course of seven months." "surely that makes the matter worse!" cried the sagacious judge. "if these well-armed men were slain by the defenceless villagers, how terrible must the wrongs have been which called for such desperate reprisals!" you will ask what was done with this criminal agent, a man whose deeds merited the heaviest punishment that human law could bestow. nothing whatever was done to him. he was allowed to slip out of the country exactly as captain lothaire, in similar circumstances, was allowed to slip from the country. an insignificant agent may be occasionally made an example of, but to punish the local manager of a great company would be to lessen the output of rubber, and what are morality and justice compared to that? why should one continue with the testimony given before the commission? their wanderings covered a little space of the country and were confined to the main river, but everywhere they elicited the same tale of slavery, mutilation, and murder. what scrivener and grenfell said at bolobo was what harris and stannard said at baringa, what gilchrist said at lulanga, what rushin and gamman said at bongadanga, what mr. and mrs. lower said at ikan, what padfield said at bonginda, what weeks said at monscombe. the place varied, but the results of the system were ever the same. here and there were human touches which lingered in the memory; here and there also episodes of horror which stood out even in that universal golgotha. one lad testified that he had lost every relative in the world, male or female, all murdered for rubber. as his father lay dying he had given him the charge of two infant brothers and enjoined him to guard them tenderly. he had cared for them until he had been compelled at last to go himself into the forest to gather the rubber. one week their quantity had been short. when he returned from the wood the village had been raided in his absence, and he found his two little brothers lying disembowelled across a log. the company, however, paid 200 per cent. four natives had been tortured until they cried out for some one to bring a gun and shoot them. the chiefs died because their hearts were broken. mr. gamman knew no village where it took them less than ten days out of fifteen to satisfy the demands of the a.b.i.r. as a rule, the people had four days in a month to themselves. by law the maximum of forced labour was forty hours in a month. but, as i have said, there is no relation at all between law and practice in the congo. one witness appeared with a string knotted in forty-two places, and with a packet of fifty leaves. each knot represented a murder and each leaf a rope in his native village. the son of a murdered chief took the body of his father (all names, dates and place specified) to show it to the white agent, in the hope of justice. the agent called his dog and set it on him, the dog biting the son on the leg as he carried the corpse of his father. the villagers brought their murdered men to m. spelier, director of the la lulanga company. he accused them of lying and ordered them off. one chief was seized by two white agents, one of whom held him while the other beat him. when they had finished they kicked him to make him get up, but the man was dead. the commission examined ten witnesses in their investigation of this story. the chief was jonghi, the village bogeka, the date october, 1904. such is a fractional sample of the evidence which was laid before the commission, corroborated by every detail of name, place and date which could enforce conviction. there is no doubt that it did enforce thorough conviction. the judges travelled down the river sadder and wiser men. when they reached boma, they had an interview with governor-general constermann. what passed at that interview has not been published, but the governor-general went forth from it and cut his own throat. the fact may, perhaps, give some indication of how the judges felt when the stories were still fresh in their minds, and their nerves wincing under the horror of the evidence. a whole year elapsed between the starting of the commission and the presentation of their report, which was published upon october 31st, 1905. the evidence which would have stirred europe to its foundations was never published at all, in spite of an informal assurance to lord lansdowne that nothing would be held back. only the conclusions saw the light, without the document upon which they were founded. the effect of that report, when stripped of its courtly phrases, was an absolute confirmation of all that had been said by so many witnesses during so many years. it is easy to blame the commissioners for not having the full courage of their convictions, but their position was full of difficulty. the report was really a personal one. the state was, as no one knew better than themselves, a fiction. it was the king who had sent them, and it was to the king himself that they were reporting upon a matter which deeply affected his personal honour as well as his material interests. had they been, as had been suggested, an international body, the matter would have been simple. but of the three good care had been taken that two should be men who would have to answer for what was said. mr. janssens was a more or less independent man, but a belgian, and a subject all the same. baron nisco was in the actual employ of the king, and his future was at stake. on the whole, i think that the commissioners acted like brave and honest men. naturally they laid all stress upon what could be said in favour of the king and his creation. they would have been more than human had they not done so. they enlarged upon the size and the traffic of the cities at the mouth of the congo--as if the whole loot of a nation could pass down a river without causing commerce and riches at its mouth. very early in the report they indicated that the question of the state appropriation of the land had forced itself upon their notice. "if the state wishes to avoid the principle of the state appropriation of vacant lands resulting in abuse," says the report, "it should place its agents and officials on their guard against too restrictive interpretation and too rigorous applications." weak and trimming, it is true, but it was the cornerstone of all that the king had built, and how were they to knock it rudely out? their attitude was not heroic. but it was natural. they go on: "as the greater portion of the land in the congo is not under cultivation, this interpretation concedes to the state a right of absolute and exclusive ownership over virtually the whole of the land, with this consequence: that it can dispose--itself and solely--of all the products of the soil; prosecute as a poacher any one who takes from that land the least of its fruits, or as a receiver of stolen goods any one who receives such fruit: forbid any one to establish himself on the greater part of the territory. the activity of the natives is thus limited to very restricted areas, and their economic condition is immobilized. thus abusively applied, such legislation would prevent any development of native life. in this manner, not only has the native been often forbidden to shift his village, but he has even been forbidden to visit, even temporarily, a neighbouring village without special permit. a native displacing himself without being the bearer of such an authorization, would leave himself open to arrest, to be taken back and even punished." who could possibly deny, after reading this passage, that the congo native has been reduced from freedom into slavery? there follows a curious sentence: "let us hasten," says the report, "to say that in actual fact so great a rigour has not been shown. almost everywhere certain products of the domain have been abandoned to the natives, notably palm kernels, which form the object of an important export trade in the lower congo." this palm kernel trade is an old-established one, affecting only the mouth of the river, which could not be disturbed without obvious international complications, and which bears no relation to the great upper congo populations, whose inhuman treatment was the question at issue. the report then proceeds to point out very clearly, the all-important fact which arises from the expropriation of the native from the land. "apart from the rough plantations," it says, "which barely suffice, to feed the natives themselves and to supply the stations, all the fruits of the soil are considered as the property of the state or of the concessionnaire societies." this being so, there is an end forever of free trade, or, indeed, of any trade, save an export by the government itself, or by a handful of companies which really represent the government, of the whole wealth of the country to europe for the benefit of a ring of millionaires. having dealt with the taking of the land and the taking of its products, the commission handles with kid gloves the third great root proposition, the forcing of the natives, for nothing, under the name of taxes, for trifles under the absurd name of trade, to work for the sake of their oppressors. it expends many words in showing that natives do not like work, and that, therefore, compulsion is necessary. it is sad to see just and learned men driven to such straits in defending what is indefensible. do the blacks of the rand gold mines like work? do the kimberley diamond hunters like work? do the carriers of an east german caravan like work? no more than the congolese. why, then, do they work? because they are paid a fair wage to do so. because the money earned by their work can bring them more pleasure than the work does pain. that is the law of work the whole world over. notably it is the law on the congo itself, where the missionaries, who pay honestly for work, have no difficulty in getting it. of course, the congolese, like the englishman, or the belgian, does not like work when it is work which brings a benefit to others and none to himself. but in spite of this preamble, the commission cannot escape the actual facts. "numbers of agents only thought of one thing: to obtain as much as possible in the shortest possible time, and their demands were often excessive. this is not at all astonishing, at any rate as regards the gathering of the produce of the domain.... that is to say, the revenues for government; for the agents themselves who regulated the tax and saw to its collection, had a direct interest in increasing its amount, since they received proportional bonuses on the produce thus collected." no more definite statement could be made of the system which had been attacked by the reformers and denied by the congo officials for so many years. the report then goes on to tell that when the state, in one of those pretended reforms which were meant for european, not for congolese, use, allotted forty hours of forced labour per month as the amount which the native owed the state, the announcement was accompanied by a private intimation from the governor-general to the district commissioners, dated february 23rd, 1904, that this new law must have the effect, not of lessening, but "of bringing about a constant increase in the resources of the treasury." could they be told in plainer terms that they were to disregard it? the land is taken, the produce is taken, the labour is taken. in old days the african slave was exported, but we progress with the ages and now a higher intelligence has shown the folly of the old-fashioned methods when it is to easy to enslave him in his own home. we may pass the report of the commission in so far as it deals with the taxation of the natives, food taxes, porterage taxes and other imposts. it brings out very clearly the curse of the parasitic army, with their families, which have to be fed by the natives, and the difficulty which it causes them with their limited plantations to find the means for feeding themselves. even the wood to the state steamers is not paid for, but is taken as a tax. such demands "force the natives in the neighbourhood of the stations in certain cases to an almost continuous labour"--a fresh admission of slave conditions. the report describes the result of the rubber tax in the following terms: "this circumstance [exhaustion of the rubber] explains the repugnance of the native for rubber work, which in itself is not particularly painful. in the majority of cases the native must go one or two days' march every fortnight, until he arrives at that part of the forest where the rubber vines can be met with in a certain degree of abundance. there the collector passes a number of days in a miserable existence. he has to build himself an improvised shelter, which cannot, obviously, replace his hut. he has not the food to which he is accustomed. he is deprived of his wife, exposed to the inclemencies of the weather and the attacks of wild beasts. when once he has collected the rubber he must bring it to the state station or to that of the company, and only then can he return to his village, where he can sojourn for barely more than two or three days, because the next demand is upon him.... it is hardly necessary to add that this state of affairs is a flagrant violation of the forty hours' law." the report deals finally with the question of the punishments meted out by the state. these it enumerates as "the taking of hostages, the imprisonment of the chiefs, the institution of sentries or capitas, fines and military expeditions," the latter being a euphemism for cold-blooded massacres. it continues: "whatever one may think of native ideas, acts such as taking women as hostages outrage too much our ideas of justice to be tolerated. the state has prohibited this practice long ago, but without being able to suppress it." the state prohibits, but the state not only condones, but actually commands it by private circular. again the gap which lies betwixt law and fact where the interest of gain is concerned. "it was barely denied," the report continues, "that in the various posts of the a.b.i.r. which we visited, the imprisonment of women hostages, the subjection of the chiefs to servile labour, the humiliations meted out to them, the flogging of rubber collectors, the brutality of the black employés set over the prisoners, were the rule commonly followed." then follows an illuminative passage about the sentries, capitas or "forest guards," or messengers, as they are alternatively called. it is a wonder that they were not called hospital orderlies in the efforts to make them seem inoffensive. what they actually were was, as we have seen, some twenty thousand cannibals armed with albini repeating rifles. the report says: "this system of native supervisors (_surveillants_) has given rise to numerous criticisms, even on the part of state officials. the protestant missionaries heard at bolobo, ikoko (lake mantumba), lulonga, bonginda, ikau, baringa and bongandanga, drew up formidable accusations against the acts of these intermediaries. they brought before the commission a multitude of native witnesses, who revealed a large number of crimes and excesses alleged to have been committed by the sentinels. according to the witnesses these auxiliaries, especially those stationed in the villages, abuse the authority conferred upon them, convert themselves into despots, claiming the women and the food, not only for themselves but for the body of parasites and creatures without any calling which a love of rapine causes to become associated with them, and with whom they surround themselves as with a veritable bodyguard; they kill without pity all those who attempt to resist their exigencies and whims. the commission was obviously unable in all cases to verify the exactitude of the allegations made before it, the more so that the facts were often several years old. however, truth of the charges is borne out by a mass of evidence and official reports." it adds: "of how many abuses have these native sentinels been guilty it would be impossible to say, even approximately. several chiefs of baringa brought us, according to the native custom, bundles of sticks, each of which was meant to show one of their subjects killed by the capitas. one of them showed 120 murders in his village committed during the last few years. whatever one may think of the confidence with which this native form of book-keeping may inspire one, a document handed to the commission by the director of the a.b.i.r. does not allow any doubt to remain as to the sinister character of the system. it consisted of a list showing that from 1st january to 1st august, 1905--that is to say, within a space of seven months--142 sentries of the society had been killed or wounded by the natives. now, it is to be assumed that in many cases these sentries had been attacked by the natives by way of revenge. one may judge by this of the number of bloody affrays to which their presence had given rise. on the other hand, the agents interrogated by the commission, or who were present at the audiences, did not even attempt to deny the charges brought against the sentinels." that last sentence seems the crown of the arch. if the agents on the spot did not attempt before the commission to deny the outrages who shall venture to do it in their name? the remainder of the report, though stuffed with courtly platitudes and with vague recommendations of reform which are absolutely unpractical, so long as the root causes of all the trouble remain undisturbed, contains a few positive passages which are worth preserving. talking of the want of definite instructions to military expeditions, it says: "the consequences are often very murderous. and one must not be astonished. if in the course of these delicate operations, whose object it is to seize hostages and to intimidate the natives, constant watch cannot be exercised over the sanguinary instincts of the soldiers when orders to punish are given by superior authority, it is difficult that the expedition should not degenerate into massacres, accompanied by pillage and incendiarism." again: "the responsibility for these abuses must not, however, always be placed upon the commanders of military expeditions. in considering these facts one must bear in mind the deplorable confusion still existing in the upper congo between a state of war and a state of peace; between administration and repression; between those who may be regarded as enemies and those who have the right to be regarded as citizens of the state and treated in accordance with its laws. the commission was struck with the general tone of the reports relating to operations described above. often, while admitting that the expedition had been sent out solely for shortage in taxation, and without making allusion to an attack or resistance on the part of the natives, which alone would justify the use of arms, the authors of these reports speak of 'surprising villages,' 'energetic pursuit,' 'numerous enemies killed and wounded,' 'loot,' 'prisoners of war,' 'conditions of peace.' evidently these officers thought themselves at war, acted as though at war." again: "the course of such expeditions grave abuses have occurred; men, women and children have been killed even at the very time they sought safety in flight. others have been imprisoned. women have been taken as hostages." there is an interesting passage about the missionaries: "often also, in the regions where evangelical stations are established, the native, instead of going to the magistrate, his natural protector, adopts the habit when he thinks he has a grievance against an agent or an executive officer, to confide in the missionary. the latter listens to him, helps him according to his means, and makes himself the echo of all the complaints of a region. hence the astounding influence which the missionaries possess in some parts of the territory. it exercises itself not only among the natives within the purview of their religious propaganda, but over all the villages whose troubles they have listened to. the missionary becomes, for the native of the region, the only representative of equity and justice; he adds to the ascendancy acquired from his religious zeal, the prestige which, in the interest of the state itself, should be invested in the magistrates." i will now turn for a moment to contemplate the document as a whole. with the characteristic policy of the congo authorities, it was originally given to the world as being a triumphant vindication of king leopold's administration, which would certainly have been the greatest whitewashing contract ever yet carried through upon this planet. looked at more closely, it is clearly seen that behind the veil of courtly phrase and complimentary forms, every single thing that the reformers have been claiming has been absolutely established. that the land has been taken. that the produce has been taken. that the people are enslaved. that they are reduced to misery. that the white agents have given the capitas a free hand against them. that there have been illegal holdings of hostages, predatory expeditions, murders and mutilations. all these things are absolutely admitted. i do not know that anything more has ever been claimed, save that the commission talks coldly of what a private man must talk of hotly, and that the commission might give the impression that they were isolated acts, whereas the evidence here given and the general depopulation of the country show that they are general, universal, and parts of a single system extending from leopoldville to the great lakes, and from the french border to katanga. be it private domain, crown domain, or concessionnaire territory, be it land of the kasai, the anversoise, the abir, or the katanga companies, the tale still tells of bloodshed and horror. where the commission differs from the reformers is in their estimate of the gravity of this situation and of the need of absolute radical reforms. it is to be borne in mind that of the three judges two had never been in africa before, while the third was a direct servant of the attacked institution. they seem to have vaguely felt that these terrible facts were necessary phases of colonial expansion. had they travelled, as i have done, in british west africa, and had it been brought home to them that a blow to a black man, sierra leone, for example, would mean that one would be taken by a black policeman before a black judge to be handed over to a black gaoler, they would understand that there are other methods of administration. had they ever read of that british governor of jamaica, who, having in the face of dangerous revolt, executed a negro without due forms of law, was recalled to london, tried, and barely escaped with his life. it is by such tension as this that europeans in the tropics, whatever be their nation, must be braced up to maintain their civilized _morale_. human nature is weak, the influence of environment is strong. germans or english would yield and in isolated cases have yielded, to their surroundings. no nation can claim much individual superiority in such a matter. but for both germany and england (i would add france, were it not for the french congo) can claim that their system works as strongly against outrage as the belgian one does in favour of it. these things are not, as the commissioners seemed to think, necessary evils, which are tolerated elsewhere. how can their raw opinion weigh for a moment upon such a point when it is counterbalanced by the words of such reformers as sir harry johnston or lord cromer? the fact is that the running of a tropical colony is, of all tests, the most searching as to the development of the nation which attempts it; to see helpless people and not to oppress them, to see great wealth and not to confiscate it, to have absolute power and not to abuse it, to raise the native instead of sinking yourself--these are the supreme trials of a nation's spirit. we have all failed at times. but never has there been failure so hopeless, so shocking, bearing such consequences to the world, such degradation to the good name of christianity and civilization as the failure of the belgians in the congo. and all this has happened and all this has been tolerated in an age of progress. the greatest, deepest, most wide-reaching crime of which there is any record, has been reserved for these latter years. some excuse there is for racial extermination where, as with saxons and celts, two peoples contend for the same land which will but hold one. some excuse, too, for religious massacre when, like mahomet the second at constantinople, or alva in the lowlands, the bigoted murderers honestly conceived that their brutal work was in the interest of god. but here the real doers have sat remote with cold blood in their veins, knowing well from day to day what they were doing, and with the sole object of adding more to wealth which was already enormous. consider this circumstance and consider also the professions of philanthropy with which the huge massacre was inaugurated, the cloud of lies with which it has been screened, the persecution and calumny of the few honest men who uncovered it, the turning of religion against religion and of nation against nation in the attempt to perpetuate it, and having weighed all this, tell me where in the course of history there is any such story. what is progress? is it to run a little faster in a motor-car, to listen to gabble in a gramophone?--these are the toys of life. but if progress is a spiritual thing, then we do _not_ progress. such a horror as this of belgium and the congo would not have been possible fifty years ago. no european nation would have done it, and if it had, no other one would have failed to raise its voice in protest. there was more decorum and principle in life in those slower days. we live in a time of rush, but do not call it progress. the story of the congo has made the idea a little absurd. ix the congo after the commission the high hopes which the advent of the commission raised among the natives and the few europeans who had acted as their champions, were soon turned to bitter disappointment. the indefatigable mr. harris had sent on after the commission a number of fresh cases which had come to his notice. in one of these a chief deposed that he had been held back in his village (boendo) in order to prevent him from reaching the commission. he succeeded in breaking away from his guards, but was punished for his enterprise by having his wife clubbed to death by a sentry. he brought with him, in the hope that he might lay them before the judges, one hundred and eighty-two long twigs and seventy-six smaller ones, to represent so many adults and children who had been murdered by the a.b.i.r. company in his district during the last few years. his account of the methods by which these unfortunate people met their deaths will not bear printing. the wildest dreams of the inquisition were outdone. women had been killed by thrusting stakes into them from below. when the horrified missionary asked the chief if this was personally known to him, his answer was, "they killed my daughter, nsinga, in this manner; i found the stake in her." and a reputable belgian statesman can write in this year of grace that they are carrying on the beneficent and philanthropic mission which has been handed down to them. in a later communication mr. harris gives the names of men, women and children killed by the sentries of a m. pilaet. "last year," he says, "or the year before, the young woman, imenega, was tied to a forked tree and chopped in half with a hatchet, beginning at the left shoulder, chopping down through the chest and abdomen and out at the side." again, with every detail of name and place, he dwelt upon the horrible fact that public incest had been enforced by the sentries--brother with sister, and father with daughter. "oh, inglesia," cried the chief in conclusion, "don't stay away long; if you do, they will come, i am sure they will come, and then these enfeebled legs will not support me, i cannot run away. i am near my end; try and see to it that they let me die in peace; don't stay away." "i was so moved, your excellency, at these people's story that i took the liberty of promising them, in the name of the congo free state, that you will only kill them in future for crimes. i told them the inspector royal was, i hoped, on his way, and that i was sure he would listen to their story, and give them time to recover themselves." it is terrible to think that such a promise, through no fault of mr. harris, has not been fulfilled. are the dreams of the commissioners never haunted by the thought of those who put such trust in them, but whose only reward has been that they have been punished for the evidence they gave and that their condition has been more miserable than ever. the final practical result of the commission was that upon the natives, and not upon their murderers, came the punishment. m. malfeyt, a royal high commissioner, had been sent out on pretence of reform. how hollow was this pretence may be seen from the fact that at the same time m. wahis had been despatched as governor-general in place of that constermann who had committed suicide after his interview with the judges of the commission. wahis had already served two terms as governor, and it was under his administration that all the abuses the commission had condemned had actually grown up. could king leopold have shown more clearly how far any real reform was from his mind? m. malfeyt's visit had been held up as a step toward improvement. the british government had been assured that his visit would be of a nature to effect all necessary reforms. on arriving in the country, however, he announced that he had no power to act, and only came to see and hear. thus a few more months were gained before any change could be effected. the only small consolation which we can draw from all this succession of impotent ambassadors and reforming committees, which do not, and were never intended to, reform, is that the game has been played and exposed, and surely cannot be played again. a government would deservedly be the laughing-stock of the world which again accepted assurances from the same source. what, in the meanwhile, was the attitude of that a.b.i.r. company, whose iniquities had been thoroughly exposed before the commission, and whose manager m. le jeune, had fled to europe? was it ashamed of its bloodthirsty deeds? was it prepared in any way to modify its policy after the revelations which its representatives had admitted to be true? read the following interview which mr. stannard had with m. delvaux, who had visited the stations of his disgraced colleague: "he spoke of the commission of inquiry in a contemptuous manner, and showed considerable annoyance about the things we had said to the commission. he declared the a.b.i.r. had full authority and power to send out armed sentries, and force the people to bring in rubber, and to imprison those who did not. a short time ago, the natives of a town brought in some rubber to the agent here, but he refused it because it was not enough, and the men were thrashed by the a.b.i.r. employees, and driven away. the director justified the agent in refusing the rubber because the quantity was too small. the commissioners had declared that the a.b.i.r. had no power to send armed sentries into the towns in order to flog the people and drive them into the forests to seek rubber; they were 'guards of the forest,' and that was their work. when we pointed this out to m. delvaux, he pooh-poohed the idea, and said the name had no significance; some called the sentries by one name, some by another. we pointed out that the people were not compelled to pay their taxes in rubber only, but could bring in other things, or even currency. he denied this, and said that the alternative tax only meant that an agent could impose whatever tax he thought fit. it had no reference whatever to the natives. the a.b.i.r. preferred the taxes to be paid in rubber. this is what the a.b.i.r. says, in spite of the interpretation by baron nisco, the highest judicial authority in the state, that the natives could pay their taxes in what they were best able. all these things were said in the presence of the royal high commissioner, who, whether he approved or not, certainly did not contradict or protest against them." within a week or two of the departure of the commission the state of the country was as bad as ever. it cannot be too often repeated that it was not local in its origin, but that it occurred there, as elsewhere, on account of pressure from the central officials. if further proof were needed of this it is to be found in the van caelchen trial. this agent, having been arrested, succeeded in showing (as was done in the caudron case) that the real guilt lay with his superior officers. in his defence he "bases his power on a letter of the commissaire-général de bauw (the supreme executive officer in the district), and in a circular transmitted to him by his director, and signed 'constermann' (governor-general), which he read to the court, deploring the diminished output in rubber, and saying that the agents of the a.b.i.r. should not forget that they had the same powers of '_contrainte par corps_' (bodily detention) as were delegated to the agent of the société commerciale anversoise au congo for the increase of rubber production; that if the governor-general or his commissaire-général did not know what they were writing and what they signed, he knows what orders he had to obey; it was not for him to question the legality or illegality of these orders; his superiors ought to have known and have weighed what they wrote before giving him orders to execute; that bodily detention of natives for rubber was no secret, seeing that at the end of every month a statement of '_contrainte par corps_' (bodily detention) during the month has to be furnished in duplicate, the book signed, and one of the copies transmitted to the government." whilst these organized outrages were continuing in the congo, king leopold, at belgium, had taken a fresh step, which, in its cynical disregard for any attempt at consistency, surpassed any of his previous performances. feeling that something must be done in the face of the finding of his own delegates, he appointed a fresh commission, whose terms of reference were "to study the conclusions of the commission of inquiry, to formulate the proposals they call for, and to seek for practical means for realizing them." it is worth while to enumerate the names of the men chosen for this work. had a european areopagus called before it the head criminals of this terrible business, all of these men, with the exception of two or three, would have been standing in the dock. take their names in turn: van maldeghem, the president--a jurist, who had written on congo law, but had no direct complicity in the crimes; janssens, the president of the former commission, a man of integrity; m. davignon, a belgian politician--so far the selection is a possible one--now listen to the others! de cuvelier, creature of the king, and responsible for the congo horrors; droogmans, creature of the king, administrator of the secret funds derived from his african estates, and himself president of a rubber trust; arnold, creature of the king; liebrechts, the same; gohr, the same; chenot, a congo commissioner; tombeur, the same; fivé, a congo inspector; nys, the chief legal upholder of the king's system; de hemptinne, president of the kasai rubber trust; mobs, an administrator of the a.b.i.r. is it not evident that, save the first three, these were the very men who were on their trial? the whole appointment is an example of that cynical humour which gives a grotesque touch to this inconceivable story. it need not be added that no result making for reform ever came from such an assembly. one can but rejoice that the presence of the small humane minority may have prevented the others from devising some fresh methods of oppression. it cannot be said, however, that no judicial proceedings and no condemnation arose from the actions of the congo commission. but who could ever guess who the man was who was dragged to the bar. on the evidence of natives and missionaries, the whole white hierarchy, from governor-general to subsidized cannibal, had been shown to be blood-guilty. which of them was punished? none of them, but mr. stannard, one of the accusing witnesses. he had shown that the soldiers of a certain m. hagstrom had behaved brutally to the natives. this was the account of lontulu the chief: "lontulu, the senior chief of bolima, came with twenty witnesses, which was all the canoe would hold. he brought with him one hundred and ten twigs, each of which represented a life sacrificed for rubber. the twigs were of different lengths and represented chiefs, men, women and children, according to their length. it was a horrible story of massacre, mutilation and cannibalism that he had to tell, and it was perfectly clear that he was telling the truth. he was further supported by other eye-witnesses. these crimes were committed by those who were acting under the instructions and with the knowledge of white men. on one occasion the sentries were flogged because they had not killed enough people. at one time, after they had killed a number of people, including isekifasu, the principal chief, his wives and children, the bodies, except that of isekifasu, were cut up, and the cannibalistic fighters attached to the a.b.i.r. force were rationed on the meat thus supplied. the intestines, etc., were hung up in and about the house, and a little child who had been cut in halves was impaled. after one attack, lontulu, the chief, was shown the dead bodies of his people, and asked by the rubber agent if he would bring in rubber now. he replied that he would. although a chief of considerable standing, he has been flogged, imprisoned, tied by the neck with men who were regarded as slaves, made to do the most menial work, and his beard, which was of many years' growth, and reached almost to the ground, was cut off by the rubber agent because he visited another town." lontulu was cross-examined by the commission and his evidence was not shaken. here are some of the questions and answers: "president janssens: 'm. hagstrom leur a fait la guerre. il a tué beaucoup d'hommes avec ses soldats.' "to lontulu: 'were the people of monji, etc., given the corpses to eat?' "lontulu: 'yes, they cut them up and ate them.' "baron nisco: 'did they flog you?' "lontulu: 'repeatedly.' "baron nisco: 'who cut your beard off?' "lontulu: 'm. hannotte.' "president janssens: 'did you see sentries kill your people? did they kill many?' "lontulu: 'yes, all my family is finished.' "president: 'give us names.' "lontulu: 'chiefs bokomo, isekifasu, botamba, longeva, bosangi, booifa, eongo, lomboto, loma, bayolo.' "then followed names of women and children and ordinary men (not chiefs). "lontulu: 'may i call my son lest i make a mistake?' "president: 'it is unnecessary; go on.' "lontulu: 'bomposa, beanda, ekila.' "president: 'are you sure that each of your twigs (110) represents one person killed?' "lontulu: 'yes.' "president: 'was isekifasu killed at this time?' "reply not recorded. "president: 'did you see his entrails hanging on his house?' "lontulu: 'yes.' "_question_: 'were the sentries and people who helped given the dead bodies to eat?' "_answer_: 'yes, they ate them. those who took part in the fight cut them up and ate them.... he was _chicotted_ (flogged), and said, "why do you do this? is it right to flog a chief?"' gave a very full account of his harsh treatment and sufferings." the action was taken for criminal libel by m. hagstrom against mr. stannard, for saying that this evidence had been given before the commission. of course, the only way to establish the fact was a reference to the evidence itself which lay at brussels. but as hagstrom was only a puppet of the higher government of the congo (which means the king himself), in their attempt to revenge themselves upon the missionaries it was not very likely that official documents would be produced for the mere purpose of serving the end of justice. the minutes then were not forthcoming. how, then, was mr. stannard to produce evidence that his account was correct? obviously by producing lontulu, the chief. but the wretched lontulu, beaten and tortured, with his beard plucked off and his spirit broken, had been cast into gaol before the trial, and knew well what would be his fate if he testified against his masters. he withdrew all that he had said at the commission--and who can blame him? so m. hagstrom obtained his verdict and the belgian reptile press proclaimed that mr. stannard had been proved to be a liar. he was sentenced to three months' imprisonment, with the alternative of a £40 fine. even as i write, two more of these lion-hearted missionaries, americans this time--mr. morrison and mr. shepherd--are undergoing a similar prosecution on the congo. this time it is the kasai company which is the injured innocent. but the eyes of europe and america are on the transaction, and m. vandervelde, the fearless belgian advocate of liberty, has set forth to act for the accused. what m. labori was to dreyfus, m. vandervelde has been to the congo, save that it is a whole nation who are his clients. he and his noble comrade, mr. lorand, are the two men who redeem the record of infamy which must long darken the good name of belgium. i will now deal swiftly with the records of evil deeds which have occurred since the time which i have already treated. i say "swiftly" not because there is not much material from which to choose, but because i feel that my reader must be as sated with horrors as i who have to write them. here are some notes of a journey undertaken by w. cassie murdoch, as recently as july and september, 1907. this time we are concerned with the crown domain, king leopold's private estate, of which we have such accounts from mr. clark and mr. scrivener dating as far back as 1894. thirteen years had elapsed and no change! what do these thirteen represent in torture and murder? could all these screams be united, what a vast cry would have reached the heavens. in the congo hell the most lurid glow is to be found in the royal domain. and the money dragged from these tortured people is used in turn to corrupt newspapers and public men--that it may be possible to continue the system. so the devil's wheel goes round and round! here are some extracts from mr. murdoch's report: "i remarked to the old chief of the largest town i came across that his people seemed to be numerous. 'ah,' said he, 'my people are all dead. these you see are only a very few of what i once had.' and, indeed, it was evident enough that his town had once been a place of great size and importance. there cannot be the least doubt that this depopulation is directly due to the state. everywhere i went i heard stories of the raids made by the state soldiers. the number of people they shot, or otherwise tortured to death, must have been enormous. perhaps as many more of those who escaped the rifle died from starvation and exposure. more than one of my carriers could tell of how their villages had been raided, and of their own narrow escapes. they are not a warlike people, and i could hear of no single attempt at resistance. they are the kind of people the state soldiers are most successful with. they would rather any day run away than fight. and in fact, they have nothing to fight with except a few bows and arrows. i have been trying to reckon the probable number of people i met with. i should say that five thousand is, if anything, beyond the mark. a few years ago the population of the district i passed through must have been four times that number. on my return march i was desirous of visiting mbelo, the place where lieutenant massard had been stationed, and in which he committed his unspeakable outrages. on making inquiries, however, i was told that there were no people there now, and that the roads were all 'dead.' on reaching one of the roads that led there, it was evident enough that it had not been used for a long time. later on, i was able to confirm the statement that what had once been a district with numerous large towns, was now completely empty.... "with the exception of a few people living near the one state post now existing on this side of the lake, who supply the state with _kwanga_ and large mats, all the people i saw are taxed with rubber. the rubber tax is an intolerable burden--how intolerable i should have found it almost impossible to believe had i not seen it. it is difficult to describe it calmly. what i found was simply this: the _'tax' demands from twenty to twenty-five days' labour every month_. there never was a 'forty hours per month labour law' in the crown domain, and so long as the tax is demanded in rubber, there never will be--at least in the section of it i visited. if that law were applied, no rubber would, or could possibly, be produced, for the simple reason that _there is no rubber left in this section of the domain_. "it was some time before i made the discovery that in the domaine de la couronne west of lake leopold there is no rubber. on my way through i was continually meeting numbers of men going out on the hunt for rubber, and heard with amazement the distance they had to walk. it seemed so impossible that i was somewhat sceptical of the truth of what i was told. but i heard the same story so often, and in so many different places, that i was at last obliged to accept it. on my return i followed up this track, and found that it was all true. and i found also that the rubber is collected from the domaine privé in forests from ten to forty miles beyond the boundary of the crown domain. "once the vines had been found the working of the rubber is a small part of the labour. i have made a careful calculation of the distance the people i met have to walk, and i find that the average _cannot be less than 300 miles there and back_. but walking to the forest and back does not occupy from twenty to twenty-five days per month. they will cover the 300 miles in ten or twelve days. the rest of the time is used in hunting for the vines, and in tapping them when found. i met a party returning with their rubber who had been six nights in the forest. this was the lowest number. _most of them have to spend ten, some as many as fifteen, nights in the forest._ two days after i left the domain on my way back i saw some men returning empty-handed. they had been hunting for over eight days and had found nothing. what the poor wretches would do i cannot imagine. if they failed to produce the usual amount of rubber on the appointed day they would be put in '_bloc_' (imprisoned). "the workmen of the _chef de poste_ at mbongo described a concoction which is sometimes administered to capitas when their tale of rubber is short. the white man chops up green tobacco leaves and soaks them in water. red peppers are added, and a dose of the liquid is administered to defaulting capitas. this wily official manages to get thirteen monthly 'taxes' in the year. at one village i bought a contrivance by which the natives reckon when the tax falls due. pieces of wood are strung on a piece of cane. one piece is moved up every day. on counting them i found there were only twenty-eight. i asked why, and was told that originally there were thirty pieces, but the white man had so often sent on the twenty-eighth day to say the time was up, that at last they took off two. "individual acts of atrocity here have for the most part ceased. the state agents seem to have come to the conclusion that it is a waste of cartridges to shoot down these people. but the whole system is a vast atrocity involving the people in a state of unimaginable misery. one man said to me, 'slaves are happy compared with us. slaves are protected by their masters, they are fed and clothed. as for us--the capitas do with us what they like. our wives have to plant the cassava gardens and fish in the stream to feed us while we spend our days working for bula matadi. no, we are not even slaves.' and he is right. _it is not slavery as slavery was generally understood: it is not even the uncivilized african's idea of slavery. there never was a slavery more absolute in its despotism or more fiendish in its tyranny._" it will be seen that, so far as the people are concerned, the problem is largely solved, the bitterness of death is past. no european intervention can save them. in many places they have been utterly destroyed. but they were the wards of europe, and surely europe, if she is not utterly lost to shame, will have something to say to their fate! x some catholic testimony as to the congo it must be admitted that the roman catholic church, as an organized body, has not raised her voice as she should in the matter of the congo. never was there such a field for a las casas. it was the proudest boast of that church that in the dark days of man's history she was the one power which stood with her spiritual terrors between the oppressor and the oppressed. this noble tradition has been sadly forgotten in the congo, where the missions have themselves, as i understand, done most excellent work, but where the power of the church has never been invoked against the constant barbarities of the state. in extenuation, it may be stated that the chief catholic establishments are down the river and far from the rubber zones. it is important, however, to collect under a separate heading such testimony as exists, for an unworthy attempt has been made to represent the matter as a contest between rival creeds, whereas it is really a contest between humanity and civilization on one side and cruel greed upon the other. the organization of the catholic church is more disciplined, and admits of less individualism than that of those religious bodies which supplied the valiant champions of right in the congo. the simple priests were doubtless as horrified as others, within the limit of their knowledge, but the means of expression were denied them. m. colfs, himself a catholic, said in the belgian chamber: "our missionaries have less liberty than foreign missionaries. they are expected to keep silence.... there is a gag. this gag is placed in the mouth of belgian missionaries." signor santini, the catholic and royalist deputy for rome, has been one of the leaders in the anti-congo movement, and has done excellent work in italy. from his own sources of information he confirms and amplifies all that the english and americans have asserted. speaking in the italian parliament on february 4th, 1907, signor santini said: "i am proud to have been the first to bring the question of the congo before this house. if at the present day we are spared the shame of seeing again officers of our army, valorous and perfectly stainless, serving under and at the orders of an association of sweaters, slave-holders and barbarians, it is legitimate for me to declare that i have, if only modestly, at least efficaciously, co-operated in this result." there is no conflict of creeds in such an utterance as that. catholic papers have occasionally spoken out bravely upon the subject. _le patriote_, of brussels (royalist and catholic), in its issue of february 28th, 1907, has an indignant editorial: "the rebellion in the a.b.i.r. territory extends. the government itself forces the rubber, and delivers it on the antwerp quay to the brokers of the a.b.i.r.... nothing is altered on the congo. the same abominable measures are adopted; the same outrages take place.... the government is adopting the same measures as in the mongalla, flooding the a.b.i.r. territory with soldiers to utterly smash the people, whom it thinks will then work, and the rubber output be increased.... the memory of these deeds will remain graven in the memory of men, and in the memory of divine vengeance. sooner or later the executioners will have to render an account to god and to history." there is one order of the catholic church which has always had a most noble record in its treatment of native races. these are the jesuits. no one who has read the "history of paraguay," or studied the records of the missions to the red indians of the eighteenth century, can forget the picture of unselfish devotion which they exhibit. father vermeersch, a worthy successor of such predecessors, has published a book, "la question congolaise," in which he finds nothing incompatible between his position as a catholic and his exposure of the abuses of the congo. in all points the position of father vermeersch and of the english reformers appears to be identical. on the rightful possession of the land by the natives he writes in terms which might be a paragraph from mr. morel: "on the congo the land cannot be supposedly vacant. presumption is in favour of occupation, of a full occupation. by this is meant that it is not sufficient to recognize to the natives rights of tenure over the land they actually cultivate, or certain rights of usage--wood-cutting, hunting, fishing--on the remainder of the territory; but these rights of usage, which are much more important than with us, appear to imply a full _animus domini_, and to signify a complete appropriation, which is carried out amongst us in different fashion. it is not, in effect, indispensable in natural law that i should exhaust the utility of an article or of land in order to be able to claim it as my own; it suffices that i should make use of it in a positive manner, but of my own will, personally, and that i should have the will to forbid any stranger to use it without my consent. hence effective occupation is joined to intention, and all the constituent elements to a valid title of property exist. let us suppose, moreover, that some great belgian landowner wishes to convert portions of his property into sporting land--that land, nevertheless, remains in his entire possession. amongst the congo natives, no doubt, occupation is usually collective; but such occupation is as worthy of respect as no matter what individual appropriation." he continues: "to whom does the rubber belong which grows upon the land occupied by the congo natives? to the natives, and to no one else, without their consent and just compensation." again: "to sum up, we recognize it with much regret, the state's appropriation of so-called vacant land on the congo confronts us with an immense expropriation." he makes a bold attack upon king leopold's own preserve: "humanity, whose cause we plead, christian rights, whose principles we endeavour to inculcate, compel us to touch briefly upon a curious and mysterious creation which is peculiar to the congo state--the _domaine de la couronne_." "what are the revenues of this mysterious civil personality? estimates, more or less conjectural in nature, elaborated by m. cattier appear to establish the profits from the exploitation of rubber alone, at eight to nine millions of francs per annum. m. le comte de smet de naeyer reduces this figure to four or five millions. short of positive data one can only deal in conjectures. but we regret still more that an impenetrable veil hides from sight all that takes place in the territory of this _domaine_. it is eight or ten times the size of belgium, and throughout this vast extent of territory there is neither missionary nor magistrate." only one missionary at that date had entered this dark land, and his exclamation was: "the bulgarian atrocities are child's play to what has taken place here." father vermeersch then proceeds to deal with the congo balance-sheets. his criticism is most destructive. he shows at considerable length, and with a fine grasp of his subject, that there is really no connection at all between the so-called estimate and the actual budget. in the course of the state's development there is an excess running to millions of pounds which has never been accounted for. in this father vermeersch is in agreement with the equally elaborate calculations of professor cattier, of brussels. he puts the economical case in a nutshell thus: "x----, district commissioner, commits every day dozens of offences against individual liberty. what can be done? these violations of the law are necessitated by a great enterprise which must have workmen. in such cases the intervention of the magistrate would be a ruinous imprudence, calculated to bring trouble into the region." "but the law?" "oh, law in the congo is not applicable!" "but if you offered a decent remuneration, would you not get free labour?" "that is precisely what the state will not listen to. it maintains that the enterprise must be carried out for nothing!" and disposes once again of the "forty hours a month" fiction: "it is impossible for the state to obtain the amount of rubber it sells annually, by labour limited to forty hours a month, especially when it is borne in mind that a number of these hours are absorbed in other _corvées_. of two things one, therefore. either the surplus is furnished freely; and if so, how can coercion be logically argued? or this supplementary labour is forced; and if so, the law of forty hours is shown to be merely a fraud." he shows the root causes of the evil: "so long as an inflexible will fixes in advance the quantity of rubber to be obtained; so long as instructions are given in this form: 'increase by five tons your rubber output per month' (instance given by father cus and van hencxthoven in their report), we cannot await with confidence a serious improvement, which is the desire of all...." "the governor-general dismisses and appoints magistrates at his will, suspends the execution of penalties; even sends back, if need be, gentlemen of the gown to europe. who does not realize the grave inconvenience of this dependence? that is not all. no proceedings can be attempted against a european without the authority of the governor-general." and, finally, his reasons for writing his book: "the contemplation of an immeasurable misery has caused us to publish this book. the gravity of the evil, its roots causes, had long escaped us. when we knew them we could not retain within ourselves the compassion with which we were imbued, and we resolved to tell the citizens of a generous country, appealing to their religion, to their patriotism, to their hearts." surely after such evidence from such a source there must be some heart-searchings among those higher members of the catholic hierarchy, including both cardinals and bishops, who have done what they could to cripple the efforts of the reformers. misinformed through their own want of care in searching for the truth, they have stood before the whole world as the defenders of that which will be described by the historian as the greatest crime in history. xi the evidence up to date i shall now append some extracts from the reports of several british vice-consuls and consuls sent in during the last few years. these bear less upon outrages, which have admittedly greatly decreased, but mainly upon the general condition of the people, which is one of deplorable poverty and misery--a slavery without that care which the owner was bound to exercise over the health and strength of the slave. i shall give without comment some extracts from the reports of vice-consul mitchell, which date from july, 1906: "most of the primitive bridges over the numerous creeks and marshes had rotted away, and we had some difficulty in crossing on fallen trees or a few thin sticks. this was the case all the way to banalya, and i may here state that this condition of the roads, even of the most frequented, is universal in this province. the reason is that the local authorities have neither men, means, nor time at their disposal for the making of decent roads. _the parsimony of the state in this respect is the more remarkable in the 'domaine privé,' whence large amounts are derived, and where next to nothing is expended._ "so long as the policy of the state government is to extract all it can from the country, while using only local materials, and spending the least possible amount on development and improvements, no increase in the general well-being can be expected.... "... at all the posts on the north (right) bank, between yambuya and basoko, i found the european agents absent in the interior, and at basoko itself only the doctor was left in charge, all the rest of the staff _being away_ '_en expédition_,' that is, on punitive expeditions. "i stayed at basoko for five days, partly at dr. grossule's request, and partly in the endeavour to learn something of the operations going on in the interior. three canoe-loads of prisoners arrived, all heavily loaded with chains. but all i could learn was that they were sent in by lieutenant baron von otter, who had been sent to the promontory lying between the mouth of the aruwimi and the congo to enforce the labour ordinances. "in all the basenji villages through which i have passed on my two journeys, the natives assert that it _takes them three weeks every month to find and make their tale of rubber, besides taking it once every three months to the state post, from four to six days distant_. "this country is taxed to the utmost, not one penny of the proceeds of which is spent on the roads. this condition of the most important highway in the province is nothing less than disgraceful, and yet this is the road of which the authorities are really proud. "thus, with the exception of a trivial payment for some things, the government carries on the work of the country at no expense beyond the wages and the european rations of the white agents, and these are excessively few in number. it is true there are the _force publique_ and some _travailleurs_. these are recruited by conscription and receive pay and rations, but it is at the lowest possible rate.... "coming to the basenji, the following particulars of a village in the forest will show their liabilities. this village has fourteen adult males; its neighbour, which works with it, the chiefs being brothers, has nine. each man has to take to the state post a large basket, holding about twenty-five pounds of rubber, once every month and a half. to get this rubber, though they find it only one day's journey distant, takes them thirty days. it then takes them five days to carry it to the state post, and three days to return. thus they spend thirty-eight days out of forty-five in the compulsory service of the state. for the basket of rubber they receive 1 kilog. of salt, nominally worth 1 fr. the chief receives 1 kilog. of salt for the whole. if the rubber is deficient in quality or quantity, the man is liable to be whipped and imprisoned without trial. as it is supposed to be the equivalent of the forty hours' monthly labour, i fail to see by what right the man can be held responsible for the quality, even if he wilfully adulterates it with other substances. "the people are all disheartened, and are unanimously of the opinion that they were better off under the arabs, whose rule was intermittent, and from whom they could run away.... "i must say that during more than nineteen years' experience in northern and central africa, _i have never seen such a miserably poor lot as the basenji in this state_.... "it is perfectly clear that the inspectors, however conscientious, hard-working, and faithful they may be, _cannot remedy the excessive impositions on the natives under the present system_.... "the grant of land and seed to the natives is of _absolutely no use_ to them _till they are left time to use them_.... "to say that the state cannot afford the expense is absurd. the congo is taxed unmercifully, and i do not suppose any country has less money spent upon it. the taxpayer gets literally nothing in return for the life of practical slavery he has to spend in the support of the government. "if trade and navigation were really free, and guarded by proper police, german trade through ujiji, which already exists to some extent, might be greatly developed, as well as that with the british colonies and zanzibar. "the operations of the dutch traders, who up to a few months ago had quite a considerable fleet of steamers on the upper congo and its affluents, and of the french at brazzaville, and of the portuguese, would also benefit greatly. "_all these have practically disappeared from the upper congo._ "here, as elsewhere, the natives appeared to me to be so heavily taxed as to be depressed and to regard themselves as practically enslaved by the 'bula matadi.' the incessant call for rubber, food and labour, leaves them no respite nor peace of mind." the following are extracts from vice-consul armstrong's report, dated october, 1906: "as the result of my journey through this portion of the country, i am forced to the conclusion that the condition of the people in the a.b.i.r. territory _is deplorable_, and although those living in the vicinity of the mission stations are, comparatively speaking, safe from ill-treatment by the rubber agents and their armed sentries, those in other parts are subjected to the gravest abuses. "there is no free labour, the natives being forced to work at a totally inadequate wage. in visiting the various rubber-working towns, one would expect to see some signs of european commodities that had been given in exchange for the millions of pounds' worth of rubber that has been extracted from them, but the native residents possess actually nothing at all. "_their conditions of living are deplorable_, and the filth and squalor of their villages is only too apparent. _the people live in a state of uncertainty as to the advent of police officers and soldiers, who invariably chase them from their abodes and destroy their huts, and for this reason it is impossible for them to better their condition of living by the construction of suitable dwellings._ "_no change of system to be looked for._ "no change in the existing system can be looked for until a more reasonable method of taxation is adopted. the present system permits the rubber agents to extract the largest possible quantity of rubber from the native at the lowest possible wage, and allows the employment of armed sentries to enforce this deplorable system." in these despatches vice-consul armstrong gives evidence of a plot against the sturdy mr. stannard upon the part of the infamous a.b.i.r. company. their idea, no doubt, was to break down his health and embitter his existence by successive law-suits. in may of 1906, the natives of a village called lokongi rose up against his murderous sentries and burned their houses. a charge was at once made against mr. stannard of having instigated them to this very natural and commendable action. natives had been suborned or terrified into giving evidence against him, and it might have gone ill with him had it not been for the prompt action of the consul. he set off for the village, accompanied by mr. stannard and the a.b.i.r. director. the natives were assembled and asked to speak the truth. they said, without hesitation, that mr. stannard had had nothing to do with the matter, but that the representatives of the company had threatened to torture them unless they said that he had. the a.b.i.r. director held his peace before these revelations and had no explanation to offer. consul armstrong then pointed out to the public prosecutor in good, straight terms, which his official superiors might well imitate, that the matter had gone far enough, that english patience was almost exhausted, and that mr. stannard should be baited no longer. the case was dropped. i shall pass straight on now to the most recent reports received from the congo, to show that there is no difference at all in the general condition, so far as it is reported by the impartial men at the spot, save that the actual killings and maimings have decreased. the great oppression and misery of the people seem to grow rather than abate. the following extracts are from consul thesiger's report of his experiences in the kasai company's district. this company, it may be worth remarking, has paid the enormous dividend of seven hundred per cent. the first paragraph may be commended to the consideration of those british or american travellers who, on the strength of a flying visit, venture to contradict the experience of those white men who spend their lives in the country: "although from the evidence of state officials it has been proved that individual cases of abuses are not infrequent even at these posts, the chance traveller will certainly see nothing of them, and when he judges of the condition of the country by what he actually sees at these stations, his opinions may be perfectly honest, but they are absolutely worthless. it is as though some well-meaning person, who had heard that a certain fashionable firm was making a fortune by sweated labour, were to venture to deny the facts because a cursory visit to the west end establishment showed that the salesmen behind the counter were well-dressed and well-nourished, ignoring altogether the festering misery of the sweaters' dens in which every article sold over that counter was made up." after showing that the kasai company, in their haste for wealth (and, perhaps, in their foresight, as knowing that their occupancy may be brought to an end), are cutting down the rubber vines instead of tapping them (illegal, of course, but what does that matter where belgian concessionnaires are in question), goes on to show the pressure on the people: "the work is compulsory; it is also incessant. the vines have to be sought out in the forest, cut down and disentangled from the high-growing branches, divided into lengths, and carried home. this operation has to be continually repeated, as no man can carry a larger quantity of the heavy vine lengths than will keep him occupied for two or three days. accidents are frequent, especially among the bakuba, who are large-built men, hunters and agriculturists by nature, and unaccustomed to tree climbing. large as the bakuba villages still are, the population is diminishing. here there is no sleeping sickness to account for the decrease, there have been no epidemics of late years; exposure, overwork, and shortage of proper food alone are responsible for it. the bakuba district was formerly one of the richest food-producing regions in the country, maize and millet being the staple crops, together with manioc and other plants. so much so was this the case that the mission at luebo used to send there to buy maize. under the present _régime_ the villagers are not allowed to waste in cultivating, hunting or fishing--time which should be occupied in making rubber. "in a few villages they were cultivating by stealth small patches in the forest, where they were supposed to be out cutting the rubber vines; but everywhere else it was the same story: the capitas would not allow them time to clear new ground for cultivation, or permit them to hunt or fish; if they tried to do so their nets and implements were destroyed. the majority of the capitas, when questioned, acknowledged quite frankly that they had orders to that effect. these villages are living on the produce of the old manioc fields, and are buying food from the bakette. under these circumstances it is not surprising that the population is diminishing. as one woman expressed it: 'the men go out hungry into the forest; when they come back they get sick and die.' the village of ibunge, where formerly the largest market of the district was held weekly, now consists of a collection of hovels, eight of which are habitable, and the market is all but dead." so the capitas are at their old work the same as ever. the congo idea of reforming them has always been to change their name--so by calling a burglar a policeman a great reformation is effected. read, however, the following passage, which shows that if the capita is the same, so also is the agent. the white race is certainly superior, for when the savage sentry's heart relented the white man was able to scourge him back to his inhuman task: "once i had got outside the zone surrounding ibanj, where the villages are not taxed in rubber, i found the capitas, with very few exceptions, were all armed with cap-guns. i met them frequently, escorting the rubber caravans to the company post, or going from village to village collecting the rubber from the centres under their charge and distributing the trade goods for the coming month. i noticed that they invariably carried their guns, and, in fact, i have seldom seen a capita stir outside his own home without his gun. these are the men who are appointed by the kasai company agents to enforce the rubber tax. chosen always from a different race, they have no sympathy with the natives placed under them, and having the authority of the agent behind them they can do as they please, so long as they insure the rubber being brought at the proper times and in sufficient quantities. in the villages they are absolute masters, and the villagers have to supply them gratis with a house, food, palm wine, and a woman. they exercise freely the right of beating or imprisoning the villagers for any imaginary offences or for neglecting their work in any way, and even go as far as imposing fines in cowries on their own account, and confiscating for their own use the cowries paid over by the plaintiff or defendant's family in the case of trial by poison, which, in spite of statements to the contrary recently made in the belgian chamber, are of frequent occurrence in this country. the native cannot complain or obtain satisfaction in any way, as the capita acts in the name of the company, and the company's agent is always threatening them in the name of 'bula-matadi.' if the authorities wish to act in the matter, they might profitably make inquiry into the doings of the capitas at bungueh, bolong, and into those of the zappo zap capita, who appears to exercise the chief control over the villages near ibunge, though he does not live in the latter town. these appear to me to be among the worst where most are bad. the capitas, however, are scarcely to be blamed, as, if they do not extort enough rubber, they are liable in their turn to suffer at the hands of the agent. witness a case at sangela, when it was reported that the capita had some time back been chicotted in the village itself by the agent for not bringing in rubber sufficient. endless cases could be quoted, but these will probably be sufficient to show the methods pursued under the auspices of the kasai company. yet in a letter dated the eighth of march, 1908, we find dr. dreypondt writing reproachfully: "'you know we have no armed sentries, but only tradesmen going, with goods of every kind, and unarmed, through the villages for the purchasing of rubber. we use only one trading principle--_l'offre et la demande_.'" the laws at all points are completely ignored, "and many of the agents not only punish the natives in these ways themselves, but allow their capitas the same privileges. it is only by these means that the natives can be kept at their incessant work." suicide is not natural with african, as it is with some oriental races. but it has come in with the other blessings of king leopold. "at ibanj, for instance, only a day's march from a state post, two bakette from the village of baka-tomba were not long ago imprisoned for shortage of rubber, and were daily taken out under the charge of an armed native to work in the fields with ropes round their necks. one of them, tired of captivity, pretended one day that he saw some animal in a tree and obtained leave from the guard to try and get it. he climbed the tree, tied the rope which was round his neck to a branch and hung himself. he was cut down, and, after a considerable time, was resuscitated, thanks to the medical experience of one of the missionaries. i was able to question the man myself at his village, and the story was also confirmed by the capita." the american flag presents no refuge for the persecuted. "about the same time this same man had the effrontery to take some seven armed natives on to the station of the american mission, during the absence of the missionaries, and demand from the native who was left in charge that he should hand over to him a native, not in his own employ, who had run away in consequence of some dispute, and who he declared was hiding at the mission. the overseer, a sierra leone man, very rightly declared his inability to do so, and said he must await the return of the missionaries. an altercation followed, and the agent struck him twice in the face. the man being a british subject, i told him if he chose to prosecute i would support him, or else i would insist on the agent paying him an indemnity in cloth. as a prosecution would have entailed his going to lusambo, a fifteen days' journey, with every prospect of being kept there some four to six months with all the witnesses while awaiting the hearing of his case, he chose the latter method. the cloth was paid." he continues: "these cases can all be substantiated, and are typical of a certain class of agent which is unfortunately, although not general, far too common. numerous complaints were also made to me in different villages against an agent, not only that he beat and imprisoned the natives for shortage of rubber, but also that he obliged them to supply him with alcohol distilled from palm wine, and was in the habit of taking any of the village women that struck his fancy at the weekly market held on or near his own post. the company, i believe, promised the american mission last may that this man should be removed, but when i passed through he was still there. placed in the power of men like these the natives dare not complain to the authorities, and are entirely helpless." nominally the company makes no punitive expeditions. as a matter of fact they have engaged lukenga, a warlike chief of the neighbourhood, to do it for them. nominally the capitas are not supplied with guns. as a matter of fact they all carry guns, which are declared to be their personal property. at every corner one meets hypocrisy and evasion of law. speaking of the bakuba, the consul says: "although not wanting in physical courage or strength, they are rather an agricultural than a warlike race, and their villages were formerly noted for their well-built and artistically decorated houses and their well-cultivated fields. "it is, however, their misfortune to live in a forest country rich in rubber vines, and they have consequently come under the curse of the concessionary company in the shape of the kasai trust. as a result their native industries are dying out, their houses and fields are neglected, and the population is not only decreasing, but also sinking to the dead-level of the less advanced and less capable races. "there is no doubt that the bakuba are the most oppressed race to-day in the kasai. harassed by their own king in the interest of the rubber company, driven by the agents and their capitas, disarmed and deprived even of the most ordinary rights, they will, if nothing is done to help them, sink to the level of the vicious and degraded bakette. "one asks oneself in vain what benefits these people have gained from the boasted civilization of the free state. one looks in vain for any attempt to benefit them or to recompense them in any way for the enormous wealth which they are helping to pour into the treasury of the state. their native industries are being destroyed, their freedom has been taken from them, and their numbers are decreasing. "the only efforts made to civilize them have been made by the missionaries, who are hampered at every turn." consul thesiger winds up with the remark that as the company has behaved illegally at every turn it has forfeited all claims to consideration and that there is no hope for the country so long as it exists. straight words--but how much more forcibly do they apply to that congo state of which these particular companies are merely an outcome. until it is swept from the map there is no hope for the country. you cannot avoid the rank products while the putridity remains. the next document bearing upon the question is from the rev. h. m. whiteside, from the notorious a.b.i.r. district. i give it in full, that the reader may judge for himself how far the direct belgian rule has altered the situation. "i should like to bring to your notice a few facts regarding the condition of this (a.b.i.r.) district. "after this extensive journey made through the district recently, and particularly the bompona neighbourhood, i found the people working rubber in all the towns visited with the exception of those taxed in provisions. "it is difficult to know which 'tax,' rubber or provisions, is hardest. the rubber workers implored us to free them from rubber, and at one village upon our departure they followed us a considerable distance, and it was difficult to get away from them. the amount of rubber collected is small compared with what was formerly demanded, but i have no doubt it requires one-third of the time of the people to collect it. many of the people of the villages behind bompona were away collecting rubber. we met many of the ionji people in the forest, either actually engaged in their work or hunting for a district where the vines might have escaped other collectors. we also met other villagers in the bush in quest of rubber. almost all the village migrates to the forest--men, many women and children--when rubber is required. "in the light of these facts, how worthless are the assertions that rubber 'tax' has been stopped in the a.b.i.r. territory. "with regard to the provision tax, it was difficult to get any data, but it is easy for one to see the oppressed condition of the people when one comes into contact with them. between the provision tax, porterage and paddlers, i believe that the people of bompona have got very little time to themselves. there is one thing that one cannot help seeing, viz., the mean, miserable appearance of the people residing around the state post of bompona. the houses or huts are in keeping with the owners of them. a very small bale of cloth could take the place of all i saw worn. in all the district i never saw a single brass rod, nor any domestic animals except a few miserable chickens. the extreme poverty of the people is most remarkable. there is no doubt as to their desire to possess european goods, but they have nothing with which to buy except rubber and ivory, which is claimed by the state. "it may be thought that i am painting their condition in too dark colours, but i feel it requires strong words to give a fair idea of the utter hopelessness and abject appearance of the people of bompona, of the people of the villages behind the state post some twenty-five miles away, and in a lesser degree of the rubber workers opposite bompona. "h. m. whiteside. "ikau, "june 15th, 1909." finally, there is the following report from the extreme other end of the country. it is dated june 1st, 1909. the name of the sender, though not published, was sent to the foreign office. he is an american citizen: "i am sorry to say there is need for agitation for the reform of the belgian kwango territory along this frontier. robbing and murder are still being carried on under the rule of the belgian official from popocabacca. last month he came with an armed force to the district of mpangala nlele, two days west of here, to decorate with the congo medal a new chief in the stead of our old friend nlekani. nlekani left a number of sons, but none of them were willing to take the responsibility of the medal chieftainship. they, therefore, placed their villages under the authority of a powerful chief living to the north of them. "the official of the congo government had been insisting for a year that a younger son of the old chief should consent to be the medal chief. this young man, named kingeleza, was a fine, bright fellow, but thinking that, as a younger son, he would lack the necessary authority over the people and would get into trouble with the government if he could not satisfy its requirements, he declined. the belgian official was, however, so insistent that kingeleza had finally agreed in order to avoid a clash with the government. "on his way to make the 'investiture,' the belgian official robbed some villages and killed two men. kingeleza's people, who had gathered together to witness the investiture, hearing of the treatment meted out to the other villages, took fright and fled from their own villages, which the belgians, upon arriving, found deserted. whereupon the soldiers proceeded to ferret the fugitives out of the woods, where they were hiding. twenty were seized, among whom was one of kingeleza's sisters, a young and attractive looking girl. four of the villagers were subsequently released, and the balance marched off with other spoils to popocabacca. the evangelist attached to the american mission, who was absent in the lower congo, had his house broken open and a tent and school materials carried off. "as for kingeleza, some of the belgian soldiers met him in the path and shot him. they did not know that he was kingeleza, and kingeleza is still being sought for by the belgian official. "this same 'chief of brigands,' as i prefer to call him, has just been on another raid for which he even entered portuguese territory within a few hours of where i am writing, wantonly destroying all that he could not carry off. the people had, happily, all escaped before he arrived. the portuguese are reporting this outrage to the governor-general at loanda." xii the political situation i have not in this statement touched upon the financial side of the congo state. a huge scandal lies there--so huge that the limits of it have not yet been defined. i will not go into that morass. if belgians wish to be hoodwinked in the matter, and to have their good name compromised in finance as well as in morality, it is they who in the end will suffer. one may merely indicate the main points, that during the independent life of the congo state all accounts have been kept secret, that no budgets of the last year but only estimates of the coming one have ever been published, that the state has made huge gains, in spite of which it has borrowed money, and that the great sums resulting have been laid out in speculations in china and elsewhere, that sums amounting in the aggregate to at least £7,000,000 of money have been traced to the king, and that this money has been spent partly in buildings in belgium, partly in land in the same country, partly in building on the riviera, partly in the corruption of public men, and of the european and american press (our own being not entirely untarnished, i fear), and, finally, in the expenses of such a private life as has made king leopold's name notorious throughout europe. of the guilty companies the poorest seem to pay fifty and the richest seven hundred per cent. per annum. there i will leave this unsavoury side of the matter. it is to humanity that i appeal, and that is concerned with higher things. before ending my task, however, i would give a short account of the evolution of the political situation as it affected, first, great britain and the congo state; secondly, great britain and belgium. in each case great britain was, indeed, the spokesman of the civilized world. so far as one can trace, no strong protest was raised by the british government at the time when the congo state took the fatal step, the direct cause of everything which has followed, of leaving the honest path, trodden up to that time by all european colonies, and seizing the land of the country as their own. only in 1896 do we find protests against the ill-usage of british coloured subjects, ending in a statement in parliament from mr. chamberlain that no further recruiting would be allowed. for the first time we had shown ourselves in sharp disagreement with the policy of the congo state. in april, 1897, a debate was raised on congo affairs by sir charles dilke without any definite result. our own troubles in south africa (troubles which called forth in belgium a burst of indignation against wholly imaginary british outrages during the war) left us little time to fulfil our treaty obligations toward the natives on the congo. in 1903 the matter forced itself to the front again, and a considerable debate took place in the house of commons, which ended by passing a resolution with almost complete unanimity to the following effect: "that the government of the congo free state, having, at its inception, guaranteed to the powers that its native subjects should be governed with humanity, and that no trading monopoly or privilege should be permitted within its dominions; this house requests his majesty's government to confer with the other powers, signatories of the berlin general act, by virtue of which the congo free state exists, in order that measures may be adopted to abate the evils prevalent in that state." in july of the same year there occurred the famous three days' debate in the belgian house, which was really inaugurated by the british resolution. in this debate the two brave reformers, vandervelde and lorand, though crushed by the voting power of their opponents, bore off all the honours of war. m. de favereau, the minister of foreign affairs, alternately explained that there was no connection at all between belgium and the congo state, and that it was a breach of belgian patriotism to attack the latter. the policy of the congo state was upheld and defended by the belgian government in a way which must forever identify them with all the crimes which i have recounted. no member of the congo administration could ever have expressed the intimate spirit of congo administration so concisely as m. de smet de naeyer, when he said, speaking of the natives: "they are not entitled to anything. what is given them is a pure gratuity." was there ever in the world such an utterance as that from a responsible statesman! in 1885 a state is formed for the "moral and material improvement of the native races." in 1903 the native "is not entitled to anything." the two phrases mark the beginning and the end of king leopold's journey. in 1904 the british government showed its continued uneasiness and disgust at the state of affairs on the congo by publishing the truly awful report of consul casement. this document, circulated officially all over the globe, must have opened the eyes of the nations, if any were still shut, to the true object and development of king leopold's enterprise. it was hoped that this action upon the part of great britain would be the first step toward intervention, and, indeed, lord lansdowne made it clear in so many words that our hand was outstretched, and that if any other nation chose to grasp it, we would proceed together to the task of compulsory reform. it is not to the credit of the civilized nations that not one was ready to answer the appeal. if, finally, we are forced to move alone, they cannot say that we did not ask and desire their co-operation. from this date remonstrances were frequent from the british government, though they inadequately represented the anger and impatience of those british subjects who were aware of the true state of affairs. the british government refrained from going to extremes because it was understood that there would shortly be a belgian annexation, and it was hoped that this would mark the beginning of better things without the necessity for our intervention. delay followed delay, and nothing was done. a liberal government was as earnest upon the matter as its unionist predecessor, but still the diplomatic etiquette delayed them from coming to a definite conclusion. note followed note, while a great population was sinking into slavery and despair. in august, 1906, sir edward grey declared that we "could not wait forever," and yet we see that he is waiting still. in 1908 the long looked-for annexation came at last, and the congo state exchanged the blue flag with the golden star for the tricolour of belgium. immediate and radical reforms were promised, but the matter ended as all previous promises have done. in 1909 m. renkin, the belgian colonial minister, went out to inspect the congo state, and had the frankness before going to say that nothing would be changed there. this assurance he repeated at boma, with a flourish about the "genial monarch" who presided over their destinies. by the time this pamphlet is printed m. renkin will be back, no doubt with the usual talk of minor reforms, which will take another year to produce, and will be utterly futile when reduced to practice. but the world has seen this game too often. surely it will not be made a fool of again. there is some limit to european patience. meanwhile, in this very month of august, 1909, a full year after the annexation by belgium (an annexation, be it mentioned, which will not be officially recognized by great britain until she is satisfied in the matter of reforms), prince albert, the heir to the throne, has returned from the congo. he says: "the congo is a marvellous country, which offers unlimited resources to men of enterprise. in my opinion our colony will be an important factor in the welfare of our country, whatever sacrifices we will have to make for its development. what we must do is to work for the moral regeneration of the natives, ameliorate their material situation, suppress the scourge of sleeping sickness, and build new railways." "moral regeneration of the natives!" moral regeneration of his own family and of his own country--that is what the situation demands. xiii some congolese apologies it only remains to examine some of the congolese attempts to answer the unanswerable. it is but fair to hear the other side, and i will set down such points as they advance as clearly as i can: 1.--_that the congo state is independent and that it is no one else's business what occurs within its borders._ i have, i trust, clearly shown that by the berlin treaty of 1885 the state was formed on certain conditions, and that these conditions as affecting both trade and the natives have not been fulfilled. therefore we have the right to interfere. apart from the treaty this right might be claimed on the general grounds of humanity, as has been done more than once with turkey. 2.--_that the french congo is as bad, and that we do not interfere._ the french colonial system has usually been excellent, and there is, therefore, every reason to believe that this one result of evil example will soon be amended. there, at least, we have no treaty obligation to interfere. 3.--_that the english agitation is due to jealousy of belgian success._ we do not look upon it as success, but the most stupendous failure in history. what is there to be jealous of? is it the making of money? but we could do the same at once in any tropical colony if we stooped to the same methods. 4.--_that it is a plot of the liverpool merchants._ this legend had its origin in the fact that mr. morel, the leader and hero of the cause, was in business in liverpool, and was afterward elected to be a member of the liverpool chamber of commerce. there is, indeed, a connection between liverpool and the movement, because it was while engaged in the shipping trade there that mr. morel was brought into connection with the persons and the facts which moved him to generous indignation, and started him upon the long struggle which he has so splendidly and unselfishly maintained. as a matter of fact, all business men in england have very good reason to take action against a system which has kept their commerce out of a country which was declared to be open to international trade. but of all towns liverpool has the least reason to complain, as it is the centre of that shipping line which (alas! that any english line should do so) conveys the congo rubber from boma to antwerp. 5.--_that it is a protestant scheme in order to gain an advantage over the catholic missions._ in all british colonies catholic missions may be founded and developed without any hindrance. if the congo were british to-morrow, no catholic church, or school would be disturbed. what advantage, then, would the protestants gain by any change? these charges are, as a matter of fact, borne out by catholics as well as by protestants. father vermeersch is as fervid as any english or american pastor. 6.--_that travellers who have passed through the country, and others who reside in the country, have seen no trace of outrages._ such a defence reminds one of the ancient pleasantry of the man who, being accused on the word of three men who were present and saw him do the crime, declared that the balance of evidence was in his favour, since he was prepared to produce ten men who were not present and did not see it. of the white people who live in the country the great majority are in the lower congo, which is not affected by the murderous rubber traffic. their evidence is beside the question. when a traveller passes up the main river his advent is known and all is ready for him. captain boyd alexander passed, as i understand, along the frontier, where naturally one would expect the best conditions, since a discontented tribe has only to cross the line. to show the fallacy of such reasoning i would instance the case of the reverend john howell, who for many years travelled on one of the mission boats upon the main river and during that time never saw an outrage. no doubt he had formed the opinion that his brethren had been exaggerating. then one day he heard an outburst of firing, and turned his little steamer to the spot. this is what he saw: "they were horrified to find the native soldiers of the government under the eyes of their white officers engaged in mutilating the dead bodies of the natives who had just been killed. three native bodies were lying near the river's edge and human limbs were lying within a few yards from the steamer. a state soldier was seen drawing away the legs and other portions of a human body. another soldier was seen standing by a large basket in which were the viscera of a human body. the missionaries were promptly ordered off the beach by the two officers presiding over this human shambles." and this was on the main river, twenty years after the european occupation. 7.--_that land has been claimed by government in uganda and other british colonies._ where land has been so claimed, it has been worked by free labour for the benefit of the african community itself, and not for the purpose of sending the proceeds to europe. this is a vital distinction. 8.--_that odious incidents occur in all colonies._ it is true that no colonial system is always free from such reproach. but the object of the normal european system is to discourage and to punish such abuses, especially if they occur in high places. i have already given the instance of eyre, governor of jamaica, who was tried for his life in england because he had executed a half-caste at a time when there was actual revolt among the black population, of which he was the leader. germany also has not hesitated to bring to the bar of justice any of her officers who have lowered her prestige by their conduct in the tropics. but in the congo, after twenty years of unexampled horror and brutality, not one single officer above the rank of a simple clerk has ever been condemned, or even, so far as i can learn, tried for conduct which, had they been british, would assuredly have earned them the gallows. what chance would lothaire or le jeune have before a middlesex jury? there lies the difference between the systems. 9.--_that the british charges did not begin until the congo became a flourishing state._ since the congo's wealth sprang from this barbarous system, it is natural that they both attracted attention at the same time. rising wealth meant a more rigidly enforced system. 10.--_that the congo state deserves great credit for having prohibited the sale of alcohol to the natives._ it is true that the sale of alcohol to natives should be forbidden in all parts of africa. it is caused by the competition of trade. if a chief desires gin for his ivory, it is clear that the nation which supplies that gin will get the trade, and that which refuses will lose it. this by way of explanation, not of apology. but as there is no trade competition in the congo, they have no reason to introduce alcohol, which would simply detract front the quality and value of their slave population. when compared with the absolute immorality of other congo proceedings, it is clear that the prohibition of alcohol springs from no high motive, but is purely dictated by self-interest. 11.--_that the depopulation is due to sleeping sickness._ sleeping sickness is one of the contributory causes, but all the evidence in this book will tend to show that the great wastage of the people has occurred where the congo rule has pressed heavily upon them. so i bring my task to an end. i look at my statement of the facts and i wince at its many faults of omission. how many specific examples have i left out, how many deductions have i missed, how many fresh sides to the matter have i neglected. it is hurried and broken, as a man's speech may be hurried and broken when he is driven to it by a sense of burning injustice and intolerable wrong. but it is true--and i defy any man to read it without rising with the conviction of its truth. consider the cloud of witnesses. consider the minute and specific detail in the evidence. consider the undenied system which must _prima facie_ produce such results. consider the admissions of the belgian commission. not one shadow of doubt can remain in the most sceptical mind that the accusations of the reformers have been absolutely proved. it is not a thing of the past. it is going on at this hour. the belgian annexation has made no difference. the machinery and the men who work it are the same. there are fewer outrages it is true. the spirit of the unhappy people is so broken that it is a waste of labour to destroy them further. that their conditions have not improved is shown by the unanswerable fact that the export of rubber has not decreased. that export is the exact measure of the terrorism employed. many of the old districts are worked out, but the new ones must be exploited with greater energy to atone. the problem, i say, remains as ever. but surely the answer is at hand. surely there is some limit to the silent complicity of the civilized world? xiv solutions but what can be done? what course should we pursue? let us consider a few possible solutions and the reasons which bear upon them. there is one cardinal fact which dominates everything. it is that _any_ change must be for the better. under their old savage _régime_ as stanley found them the tribes were infinitely happier, richer and more advanced than they are to-day. if they should return undisturbed to such an existence, the situation would, at least, be free from all that lowering of the ideals of the white race which is implied by a belgian occupation. we may start with a good heart, therefore, since whatever happens must be for the better. can a solution be found through belgium? no, it is impossible, and that should be recognized from the outset. the belgians have been given their chance. they have had nearly twenty-five years of undisturbed possession, and they have made it a hell upon earth. they cannot disassociate themselves from this work or pretend that it was done by a separate state. it was done by a belgian king, belgian soldiers, belgian financiers, belgian lawyers, belgian capital, and was endorsed and defended by belgian governments. it is out of the question that belgium should remain on the congo. nor, in face of reform, would belgium wish to be there. she could not carry the burden. when the country is restored to its inhabitants together with their freedom, it will be in the same position as those german and english colonies which entail heavy annual expenditure from the mother country. it is a proof of the honesty of german colonial policy, and the fitness of germany to be a great land-owning power, that nearly all her tropical colonies, like our own, show, or have shown, a deficit. it is easy to show a profit if a land be exploited as spain exploited central america, or belgium the congo. it would always be more profitable to sack a business than to run it. now, if the forced revenue of the congo state disappeared, it would, at a moderate estimate, take a minimum of a million a year for twenty years to bring the demoralized state back to the normal condition of a tropical colony. would belgium pay this £20,000,000? it is certain that she would not. reform, then, is an absolute impossibility so long as belgium holds the congo. what, then, should be done? that is for the statesmen of europe and america to determine. america hastened before all the rest of the world in 1884 to recognize this new state, and her recognition caused the rest of the world to follow suit. but since then she has done nothing to control what she created. american citizens have suffered as much as british, and american commerce has met with the same impediments, in spite of the shrewd attempt of king leopold to bribe american complicity by allowing some of her citizens to form a concessionnaire company and so to share in the unholy spoils. but america has a high moral sense, and when the true facts are known to her, and when she learns to distinguish the outcome of king leopold's dollars from the work of honest publicists, she will surely be ready to move in the matter. it was in crushing pirates that america made her first international appearance upon the world's stage. may it be a precedent. but to bring the matter to a head the british government should surely act with no further delay. the obvious course would appear to be that having prepared the ground by sounding each of the great powers, they should then lay before each of them the whole evidence, and ask that a european congress should meet to discuss the situation. such a congress would surely result in the partition of the congo lands--a partition in which great britain, whose responsibilities of empire are already too vast, might well play the most self-denying part. if france, having given a pledge to rule her congo lands in the same excellent fashion as she does the rest of her african empire, were to extend her borders to the northern bank of the river along its whole course until it turns to the south, then an orderly government might be hoped for in those regions. germany, too, might well extend her east african protectorate, so as to bring it up to the eastern bank of the congo, where it runs to the south. with these large sections removed it would not be difficult to arrange some great native reservation in the centre, which should be under some international guarantee which would be less of a fiasco than the last one. the lower congo and the boma railway would, no doubt, present difficulties, but surely they are not above solution. and always one may repeat that any change is a change for good. such a partition would form one solution. another, less permanent and stable--and to that extent, as it seems to me, less good--is that which is advanced by mr. morel and others. it is an international control of the river, some provision for which is, as i understand, already in existence. the trouble is that what belongs to all nations belongs to no nation, and that when the native risings and general turmoil come, which will surely succeed the withdrawal of belgian pressure, something stronger and richer than an international riverine board will be needed to meet them. i am convinced that partition affords the only chance of solid, lasting amendment. let us suppose, however, that the powers refuse to convene a meeting, and that we are deserted even by america. then it is our duty, as it has often been in the world's history, to grapple single-handed with that which should be a common task. we have often done so before, and if we are worthy of our fathers, we will do it again. a warning and a date must be fixed, and then we must decide our course of action. and what shall that action be? war with belgium? on them must rest the responsibility for that. our measures must be directed against the congo state, which has not yet been recognized by us as being a possession of belgium. if belgium take up the quarrel then so be it. there are many ways in which we can bring the congo state to her knees. a blockade of the congo is one, but it has the objection of the international complications which might ensue. an easier way would be to proclaim this guilty land as an outlaw state. such a proclamation means that to no british subject does the law of that land apply. if british traders enter it, they shall be stopped at the peril of those who stop them. if british subjects are indicted, they shall be tried in our own consular courts. if complications ensue, as is likely, then boma shall be occupied. this would surely lead to that european conference which we are supposing to have been denied us. yet another solution. let a large trading caravan start into the congoland from northern rhodesia. we claim that we have a right to free trade by the berlin treaty. we will enforce our claim. to do so would cut at the very roots of the congo system. if the caravan be opposed, then again boma and a conference. many solutions could be devised, but there is one which will come of itself, and may bring about a very sudden end of the congo power. northern rhodesia is slowly filling up. the railhead is advancing. the nomad south african population, half boers, half english, adventurers and lion hunters, are trekking toward the katanga border. they are not men who will take less than those rights of free entry and free commerce which are, in fact, guaranteed them. only last year twelve boer wagons appeared upon the katanga border and were, contrary to all international law, warned off. they are the pioneers of many more. no one has the right, and no one, save their own government, has the force to keep them out. let the powers of europe hasten to regulate the situation, or some day they may find themselves in the presence of a _fait accompli_. better an orderly partition conducted from paris or berlin, than the intrusion of some piet joubert, with his swarthy followers, who will see no favour in taking that which they believe to be their right. but whichever solution is adopted, the conscience of europe should not be content merely with the safeguarding of the future. surely there should be some punishment for those who by their injustice and violence have dragged christianity and civilization in the dirt. surely, also, there should be compulsory compensation out of the swollen moneybags of the three hundred per cent. concessionnaires for the widows and the orphans, the maimed and the incapacitated. justice cannot be satisfied with less. an international commission, with punitive powers, may be exceptional, but the whole circumstances are exceptional, and europe must rise to them. the fear is, however, that it is the wretched agents on the spot, the poor driven bonus-hunters who will be offered up as victims, whereas the real criminals will escape. the curse of blood and the scorn of every honest man rest upon them already. would that they were within the reach of human justice also! they have been guilty of the sack of a country, the spoliation of a nation, the greatest crime in all history, the greater for having been carried out under an odious pretence of philanthropy. surely somehow, somewhere, they will have their reward! appendix note i--the chicotte chicotting is alluded to in congo annals as a minor punishment, freely inflicted upon women and children. it is really a terrible torture, which leaves the victim flayed and fainting. there is a science in the administration of it. félicien challaye tells of a belgian officer who became communicative upon the subject. "one can hardly believe," said the brute, "how difficult it is to administer the chicotte properly. one should spread out the blows so that each shall give a fresh pang. then we have a law which forbids us to give more than twenty-five blows in one day, and to stop when the blood flows. one should, therefore, give twenty-four of the blows vigorously, but without risking to stop; then at the twenty-fifth, with a dexterous twist, one should make the blood spurt." ("le congo français," challaye.) the twenty-five lash law, like all other laws, has no relation at all to the proceedings in the upper congo. monsieur stanislas lefranc, judge on the congo, and one of the few men whose humanity seems to have survived such an experience, says: "every day, at six in the morning and two in the afternoon, at each state post can be seen, to-day, as five or even ten years ago, the savoury sight which i am going to try to depict, and to which new recruits are specially invited. "the chief of the post points out the victims; they leave the ranks and come forward, for at the least attempt at flight they would be brutally seized by the soldiers, struck in the face by the representative of the free state and the punishment would be doubled. trembling and terrified, they stretch themselves face down before the captain and his colleagues; two of their companions, sometimes four, seize them by their hands and feet and take off their waistcloth. then, armed with a lash of hippopotamus hide, similar to what we call a cow-hide, but more flexible, a black soldier, who is only required to be energetic and pitiless, flogs the victims. "every time the executioner draws away the chicotte a reddish streak appears upon the skin of the wretched victims who, although strongly built, gasp in terrible contortions. "often the blood trickles, more rarely fainting ensues. regularly and without cessation the chicotte winds round the flesh of these martyrs of the most relentless and loathsome tyrants who have ever disgraced humanity. at the first blows the unhappy victims utter terrible shrieks which soon die down to low groans. in addition, when the officer who orders the punishment is in a bad humour, he kicks those who cry or struggle. some (i have witnessed the thing), by a refinement of brutality, require that, at the moment when they get up gasping, the slaves should graciously give the military salute. this formality, not required by the regulations, is really a part of the design of the vile institution which aims at debasing the black in order to be able to use him and abuse him without fear."--"le régime congolais," liége, lefranc. note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see 15240-h.htm or 15240-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/5/2/4/15240/15240-h/15240-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/dirs/1/5/2/4/15240/15240-h.zip) a journal of a tour in the congo free state by marcus r. p. dorman, m.a. author of _a history of the british empire in the nineteenth century. the mind of the nation_, a study of political thought in the nineteenth century; _ignorance_, a study of the causes and effects of popular thought; and _from matter to mind_. originally published in 1905 by j. lebègue and co., brussels and kegan paul, trench, trübner & co., ltd., london dedicated by permission to his majesty leopold ii, king of belgium and sovereign of the congo free state. preface. this journal is practically my diary reproduced with the minimum of editing in order that the impressions gained on the spot should be described without modification. it was never intended for publication, and was written only as an aid to memory. consequently it is little more than a collection of rough notes. having left england with a prejudice against the government of the congo free state and returned with a very strong feeling in its favour, i feel however that it is my duty to publish an account of what i did see for the benefit of those whose opinions are not already formed beyond recall. as in all controversies where feelings subordinate reason and people judge more by their emotions than by evidence, many are too quick to-day to attribute interested motives to those whose opinions are not similar to their own. since a great number of people in the congo and at home are curious to know whether i was sent out by the congo government, the british government or the _times_, i will state here once for all that i went to the congo entirely to please myself and with the hope of shooting big game. in order indeed to satisfy curiosity, i will go further and state that not only was i not paid for telling the truth, but that the trip cost me a great deal of money. it is however delightful to remember that wherever i went i was treated with the greatest kindness and courtesy by all whether they approved of the system of the congo government or not and it gives me great pleasure to thank here the state officials, missionaries of all denominations and traders of various nationalities for their hospitality, friendship and valuable assistance. m.r.p.d. london 1905. [illustration: map--itinerary of marcus r.p. dorman in the congo free state] [illustration: the steamer _florida_.] chapter i. london to banana. there was no time to spare. the ship sailed from southampton in forty eight hours and i had only just arranged to accompany lord mountmorres on a tour in the congo free stale. he was going out for the purpose of discovering the true condition of affairs in that country and of writing articles thereupon for the _globe_ but incidentally hoped to have some big game shooting. after one has read much about a country it is always interesting to visit it and as the prospect of good sport was added in this case, i at once decided to brave the cannibals, wild beasts, and--most dangerous of all--the climate, and to seize the opportunity to visit the congo. it was necessary to purchase a complete camp outfit, suitable clothes and much food-stuff and to arrange certain affairs at home. the first part was however rendered easy for it was only necessary to duplicate the order already given by lord mountmorres, and with a rapidity which could not be equalled anywhere else, the army and navy stores and messrs. silvers packed and despatched tent, furniture and cases in a few hours. as there are many and varied discomforts which cannot be avoided when travelling in the congo, or any other tropical and half-civilised country, it is just as well not to add to their number by omitting to benefit by the experience of others. a few hints may therefore be inserted here without apology for the benefit of other travellers. the first articles to be considered are a tent, bed, and mosquito-net. now when the usual oblong tent with a penthouse roof is pitched and the bed made, surmounted by the mosquito-net, the only place in which there is room for it, is in the middle of the tent between the two poles. the result is that as the roof slopes, it is absolutely impossible to stand upright on either side and much space is therefore wasted. it would be better to arrange for the bed to stand close to one side of the tent and for the net to be attached to the sloping roof leaving the middle and the other side free for table and chair. circles of hooks for clothes should be attached to the poles and large pockets in the walls of the tent itself are useful. it is needless to specify particulars about furniture, and i will only say that the folding or concertina pattern bed, bath, washhandstand and table proved very comfortable and withstood the great strain of being packed and unpacked nearly every day for six months without breaking down. a strong, long lounge chair is absolutely necessary. in climates where there is much glare, everything should be made of green canvas. the well-known lord's patent petrol lamp is certainly the best and although it necessitates carrying a good supply of oil, is cleaner and more convenient than candles. there is not space here to give a list of all the necessities for travelling and camping in the forests of africa and it is enough to say that one has to carry a complete house, furniture, kitchen utensils and much food. wheat and milk cows do not exist in the forest and very little grows which is edible. it is therefore necessary to carry sufficient flour, butter, lard, condiments, tinned meats, vegetables and fruits in order to cook, and to make a variety from the antelopes, fish, game, goats and chickens which are procurable on the spot. water bottles and filters are very necessary, but for africa the best change at home--those which have porcelain cores--are of no use for the water is very muddy, and the minute pores at once become blocked. the charcoal filters, although bulky to carry, are therefore the best for the forest. the question of alcohol must be left to the individual himself, but it must be remembered that there are only a very few places where it can be purchased in the congo and that the state officials are only permitted to have a limited amount for themselves. undoubtedly the best wine for the climate is good claret or burgundy, and the healthiest spirit, whisky. it is however, well to have some medical comforts in the shape of champagne and brandy to take after attacks of fever. excellent native coffee can be purchased; tea and sugar must be carried. drugs, especially iron, quinine, arsenic and phenacetin are essential as also splints, bandages and dressings in case of accidents. now it must be remembered that the climate is hot and humid. metals rust at once, leather and cloth become mouldy, food stuffs will keep one or two days only after the tins are opened, and cigars, tobacco and cigarettes become damp and ferment. in packing therefore, all the food, cigars, cigarettes and tobacco should be soldered airtight and in tins so arranged that when once opened, it is possible _to shut_ them again. a tin of sardines or condensed milk once opened cannot be carried in a case liable to be upside down at any moment. there are however, some bottles with screw tops and india-rubber rings in which messrs. crosse and blackwell send out jam. these are airtight and so very useful for when they are empty they can be cleaned and used for milk, sardines, or anything else again and again. messrs. huntley and palmer pack biscuits in their usual tins but with an inner lid soldered, and these are also very convenient. above all things, remember curry powder, pickles, chutney and worcester sauce, for even goat's flesh can be rendered pleasant if it tastes of something else. all this may sound trivial, but it is really very important, for the appetite is easily lost in the congo and if the strength is not maintained by plenty of food, sickness is certain to follow. leather cases for rifles and guns are not good as they deteriorate. the best case i have ever seen was made for me by a ship's boatswain. it was of strong sail canvas made to fit the rifle and covered outside with ordinary ship's paint; the inside speedily became lined with oil and the whole formed an excellent guard against the damp. it is however, necessary to have firearms cleaned and oiled nearly every day whether used or not. clothes of cloth are not necessary. drill, khaki and flannel are sufficient with light helmets and plenty of strong boots. it must be remembered that everything has to be carried by porters. clothes, blankets, etc. should be packed in tin boxes with rubber edges so that when shut they are airtight; tents pack in bales and every article of furniture should fold up. the whole equipment must be arranged so that each load is about 50 or 60 lbs and is conveniently shaped for carrying on the head or shoulder. we were careful to choose the lightest articles, whenever consistent with strength, and thus our baggage when completed weighed only a little more than two tons. all was ready when we left waterloo at 10.25 a.m. on friday june 24th 1904 accompanied by sir alfred jones and sir ralph moor who saw us off at southampton. the latter has had much experience of africa and told some blood-curdling stories of the manners of the natives. adulterers used to be punished in a most barbarous way. a youth who had erred with one of the numerous wives of a chief, was nailed by the ears to a tree in the forest and left to starve. women also were treated with equal severity and all manner of mutilations were practised. such atrocities have of course been suppressed by the congo free state. having reached southampton, we went on board the s.s. _leopoldville_, a ship of about 5,000 tons burden, very clean and well-found. she belongs to the _compagnie maritime belge_ which runs a ship every third week from antwerp and southampton to boma and matadi. we sailed about 2 p.m. and a savoury smell from the galley reminded us that it was about seven hours since we had breakfasted. some of the passengers were english military officers and miners bound for the gold coast, but most were evidently officials of the congo free state. the conversation soon turned upon the agitation in europe against the congo government, and it was extraordinary with what sorrowful indignation the various charges were refuted. this impressed me greatly at the time for it was in marked contrast with the indifference shown by an average englishmen when his country and methods are abused by foreigners. probably the explanation is, that we are so used to unmerited abuse, that we regard it as part of the normal order of things. the congo state on the other hand, has only recently become sufficiently prosperous to attract attention. one of the passengers dressed as a catholic priest, proved a veritable mine of information. this was mgr. derikx, prefet apostolique of uele in the upper congo. he had had five years' experience of the country and was well versed in all its institutions and ways. another was a young military officer, m. arnold, already of the rank of commandant, for he had shown distinguished service in the field--or rather the forest--and also as an administrator at a state post. there were also many other officials, soldiers, lawyers and commercial agents on board. i determined therefore, to read the various books and reports written against the congo--whether the writers had ever been in the country or not--then to question the officials who had worked there, and finally to see the actual condition of affairs for myself. we tumbled about in the bay of biscay a little and the motion did not much aid the digestion of the contents of histories and blue and white books. a welcome break was therefore made when we reached teneriffe on june 29th. it is early afternoon and the view of santa crus from the sea is very beautiful. in the foreground is ultra-marine coloured water; on shore, bright yellow houses with red roofs dotted among palms and other foliage of vivid green, and behind all, frowns the great grey mountain 12,000 feet high. the hills stretching up from the sea are in many cases terraced for gardens and vineyards and a new hotel stands out prominently on one side. it is a glorious picture, but if the eye is delighted as the boat approaches the shore, the nose is offended immediately on landing. streets, houses and people near the harbour are dirty and odoriferous and as the shops are all shut for a saint's day, the town looks dismal in spite of the bright sun. after changing some money at the shop of a jew who gave us the wrong amount and looked injured when we insisted upon the right, we took an open carriage and drove to the cathedral. the building is not imposing from the outside, but is highly gilded within where is the famous holy cross which gives the town its name. there are also many wax figures representing saints, mostly dressed in the costume of the seventeenth century and enclosed in glass cases. the boy who acted as our guide having discovered our nationality, pointed out with great glee _english organ_, _english clock_. and finally with satirical humour--probably unconscious--_english flags_. these flags are those lost by nelson at the siege of santa crus where he lost his arm and a good story is told about them. an ambitious british middy stole them from the cathedral and was very disappointed, when instead of being at once promoted, he was forced to apologize and restore them. we next drive up a broad, fairly well kept, boulevard to the bull ring situated in an open space behind the town. a woman conducts us into the ring and shows us the stables in which the infuriated beasts are kept before they are asked to shed their blood for the idle amusement of the spectators. on the walls are many names which look like british, and the guide is quite astonished when we refuse to add ours to their number. commandant arnold here takes on board six camels, for it is hoped these ships of the desert will also sail equally well in the forest. the experiment is at any rate not expensive, for they only cost £16 each and will carry several hundred pounds weight of baggage. from time to time the congo government has been charged with forcing the natives to work against their will and with ill-treating them, and it has also been alleged that the native soldiers committed many atrocities during the wars against the revolting tribes. many of these charges have been collected and published in _civilisation in congoland_ written by mr. h.r. fox-bourne, the secretary of the aborigines protection society. the author has not travelled in the country himself, but relies chiefly upon the evidence of the late mr. edward glave, at one time an official of the congo international association, and of the late mr. sjöblom who was a swedish missionary in the congo. the book is not cheerful reading, for indeed it is chiefly a record of crimes which have been committed in the past. it has been frequently stated that acting under the orders, or at least with the connivance of the agents of the congo state and those of the commercial companies in the country, the native police or sentries have punished in a most barbarous manner all those natives who refused to work. it is alleged indeed, that these sentries have actually cut off the hands of those who did not collect the rubber or food-stuff demanded by the agents. to even read of such sickening horrors is terrible, and i was therefore much relieved to find that none of the state officials on board had ever seen natives maimed in that or any other manner by the soldiers of the state. there seems however, to be no doubt that the native chiefs in the past mutilated both the living and dead as punishment for crime. mgr. derikx told me that he had heard of a case where a chief had ordered that the hand of his own son should be cut off because he had committed adultery with one of his numerous wives. we arrived at dakar, the capital of the french colony of senegambia, at daylight on july 3rd. navigation is not easy here, for a reef runs parallel to the coast and the channel between, is neither broad nor deep. the town is built on the shores of a bay and faces an island strongly fortified. the whole colony is being rapidly developed; a railway runs to st. louis and roads are being constructed across the desert towards timbuctoo and the northern coasts. a flourishing industry in palm oil is carried on and dakar is also an important military centre. several of the officers however, were engaged in the peaceful pursuit of fishing at the end of the breakwater when we arrived. at dakar, commandant and madame sillye come on board. the former has served for ten years in the congo and is now taking out ten horses purchased in senegambia, from which he hopes to breed. they are a fine looking set, very quiet and well behaved, and take up their quarters opposite the camels without creating any disturbance. we have now quite a menagerie on board. besides the camels and horses, there are pigeons to be trained as carriers, guinea pigs with which the doctors investigating the terrible disease the sleeping sickness, will experiment and several dogs belonging to the passengers. various kinds of rubber and other living plants also occupy an appreciable part of the promenade deck. passengers and cargo indeed, are strong evidence of the earnest way in which the congo is being developed. it is necessary now to turn from the actual visual facts and to study the statements of others. while doing so however, we must bear in mind the main outlines of the history of the congo free state. the opening up of the congo was entirely due to the initiative of king leopold of belgium aided by the explorations of the late sir h.m. stanley. in 1878, after stanley's first descent of the congo, a society of philanthropists was formed called the _comité d'études du haut-congo_ but this was changed in 1882 to the _association internationale du congo_. stanley and a french officer, m. de brazza, then both worked up from the coast at the same time and the former reached lake leopold on june 1st 1882, while the latter concluded treaties with the chiefs on the north bank of the river and founded the french congo. the international association of the congo at once organised itself into an independent state and on april 22nd 1884 a declaration was made by the government of the united states of america that it recognized the flag of the international association as that of a friendly government. at the end of 1884 and the beginning of 1885, conventions were arranged between the governments of austria, germany, great britain, belgium, denmark, spain, france, italy, holland, portugal, russia and sweden and norway and the international association of the congo in which all those countries recognised the flag of the international association as that of a friendly government. it is therefore clear that the chief powers of the world regarded the association as an independent state and negotiated with it as such. at the same time the powers of europe were annexing various parts of africa, and with the idea of regulating in a spirit of mutual goodwill the conditions most favourable for the development of civilisation and commerce, a conference was arranged at berlin by prince bismarck. all the powers of europe and the united states of america sent plenipotentiaries who sat from november 15th 1884 to february 26th 1885 and agreed to the general act of berlin of the latter date. in this it is decreed that all nations should enjoy complete liberty of commerce in all the territories constituting the basin of the congo and its tributaries, and also in other parts of central africa mentioned, that slavery should be abolished and that the congo river should be open to general navigation. we shall have to refer to this treaty later, but it is important to note here that the united states of america and all the great powers of europe had recognised the international association as an independent state before it was signed. furthermore, before this date, conventions had been signed with france and portugal to arrange the frontiers between the territories of those powers and the international association. the general act of berlin had however nothing to do with frontiers at all, but stated the general principles which it seemed were best suited to the needs of the people and territories in central africa, to which all the african powers, and among them the international association, voluntarily agreed. it is therefore clear that the clauses of the act apply to all the powers in the territories defined, and that the act itself was not concerned with founding or regulating the system of government of the international association, which six months later took the name of the _état indépendant du congo_ with his majesty ring leopold ii. as sovereign. while engaged in studying these treaties, we arrived at free town, sierra leone on july 5th. here again the place forms a beautiful picture from the sea. a reef runs far out and is marked by a lighthouse, while the town itself, protected by a fort with grass ramparts, lies on the south side of a kind of bay, which, however, has more the appearance of the mouth of a large river. palms and other tropical plants grow to the water's edge and among them are yellow and red houses while higher up the hills behind, are isolated bungalows and the barracks, at this time occupied by the west african regiment. in the distance, bleak and bare mountains passively regard the scene. on landing, one meets faces showing every shade from ivory white to jet black and clothes of every known colour. the roads are not paved in any way, as there are neither horses nor wheeled vehicles here. indeed, the houses are built in rows facing each other, a gutter is cut in front and the space between forms a street. the custom house is an imposing structure near the beach and the cathedral is a handsome gothic church, but as one end was covered with scaffolding, it was not looking its best. a light railway runs up the hill to the barracks of the native regiment and a special train was arranged for the passengers of the _leopoldville_. hotel accommodation in sierra leone is, like the demand for it, limited. it is, however, possible to obtain a meal at the _victoria_. altogether free town leaves the impression that it could be developed into a most attractive watering place if it were nearer europe and had a better climate. it is now getting rather hot and tropical, while the sea is as smooth as a mirror and equally reflects the glare. i continue to read up the congo controversy. the report of mr. casement, at one time british consul at boma, created quite a sensation when it appeared. he stated that the congo free state had granted concessions to trading companies, which is a fact, and that the agents of these companies compelled the natives by force to collect rubber, which however, he does not attempt to prove by his own experience, but relies entirely upon reports of natives and hearsay evidence. he quoted one case which illustrates the extreme difficulty of discovering the truth from natives. he examined a boy named epondo who stated that his left hand had been cut off by a native sentry. not knowing the native dialect, mr. casement employed an interpreter, but he was convinced by the manner and gestures of the villagers that the boy's story was true. when the report appeared, the boy was again examined by some officials of the state, when he at once contradicted the first statement and said that his arm and hand had been severely bitten by a wild boar when he was a child and that the hand afterwards fell off. now one of these tales is obviously false and there is evidence to show which, for the scar of a clean cut wound is different from that following gangrene. however, at this time i had not seen the boy, so of course could give no opinion. this is the only case of reputed mutilation which could be discovered for the benefit of mr. casement and was a very unfortunate example of an atrocity, for in the first place it was the _left_ hand that was missing and the soldiers were supposed always to cut off the _right_, and in the second, there was great doubt whether it was the result of an accident or not. we were now coasting off liberia and captain sparrow who was in command of the _leopoldville_ cheered us up with the statement that the charts of this part had not been revised for eighty years, that there were many rocks and that ships frequently went ashore here. wreckers then went out and looted everything on board. it is not therefore, a pleasant place in which to make an enforced landing. liberia itself however, must be interesting to visit, for it is an independent republic of negroes with an elected president, senate and house of representatives. it sells palm oil to other countries and buys alcohol, arms and ammunition, thus exchanging a peaceful luminant and lubricant for the elements of moral and physical strife. fortunately no rocks appear through the bottom of the ship and commandant sillye relieves the monotony of the voyage by describing the constitution of the congo state, which however, like other constitutions, is occasionally revised. at its head is the sovereign of the state aided by ministers at brussels, next in rank comes the governor-general and vice-governor-generals, one of whom is always at boma. there are also royal commissioners and inspectors of the state who are very high officials, but whose duties are not easily defined. the whole country is divided into districts which are governed by district commissioners. the districts are divided into zones ruled by zone chiefs under the control of the district commissioners. finally the posts and stations are commanded by post-commanders. all these may be described as civil administrative officials who, subject to the general system and laws have practical control over more or less limited areas. the officers of the force publique rank as commandant, captain, lieutenant and under-lieutenant, and there are also several white non-commissioned officers. the natives rank as sergeants, corporals and privates. on july 8th we arrive at sekondi, gold coast colony. the town from the sea seems to consist of white houses and huts with the usual red roofs. on a hillock near the shore is an old dutch fort now used as a signalling station, and on the left, half way up a hill, an hotel has been built. the place is not very pretty or attractive-looking for there is not much colour and no mountains are visible. we anchor some distance from the beach and several open boats at once put off. these are each propelled by ten or twelve natives, who sit on the sides of the boat and ply their paddles, lustily singing as they work together and with a will. the paddles are shaped somewhat like those of a canadian canoe, except that the blade is star shaped. all the cargo is swung overboard into these boats or canoes as they are called, and the passengers are lowered in a kind of chair. as there is a heavy ground swell running, the canoes are bobbing up and down like corks alongside. the chair is suspended in mid air and lowered rapidly as the canoe washes up, while all hope that it and its occupant will descend at the right moment. one of the passengers was an english officer, captain wheeler, with whom we had played many games of deck cricket on the voyage. first his regulation seventy cubic feet of baggage was lowered--an extraordinary amount, for no one without the aid of a slide rule and logarithms could possibly calculate it--and then he himself made the perilous descent--without a ducking. he would next have 240 miles of train journey to coomassie and then a walk--or rather a journey in a hammock--for another 300 miles to his station. we now travel parallel to the gold coast which looks hot and uninviting, for there are but few patches of green or trees until cape coast castle is reached. here is a fort which must have impressed natives and slave dealers greatly in the past, a few houses and an imposing looking church dotted in the red sand. the whole line of the coast here, somewhat recalls the atlantic sea board of georgia, u.s.a. and the towns look as though they would be as hot as aden at its best or rather worst. after leaving the gold coast, our course is shaped across the bight of benin straight for the congo. there is plenty of time therefore, to study the system of justice in the congo. this, like everything else in the country, is essentially simple and practical. there is a court of première instance at boma and others called territorial courts at matadi, stanley pool, east kwango, the equator, bangalas, aruwimi, stanley falls and kassai[1]. in each court is a judge, an officer of the public ministry and a registrar, but in the territorial courts, the judge may assume the functions of all. these courts hear all civil cases, whether european or native, but the court at boma is alone competent to hear trials for capital offences, whether committed by soldiers or civilians. the court of appeal consists of the president, two judges, an officer of the public ministry and a registrar, and hears all appeals from the judgments of the other courts, and also from those given by courts martial against civilians who are not natives in those regions subjected to special rule. natives who commit offences against other natives, are left to be dealt with by the local chief[2]. the public minister can however interfere if he thinks the crime will not be punished if left to the chief. the public ministry consists of a procureur d'état appointed by the sovereign, who acts in the court of appeal and of substitutes appointed by the governor general, who act in the other courts. their duty is to discover all infractions of the law in the whole territory of the state and to see that all decrees, arrests, ordinances and penal regulations are carried out. they are especially instructed to arrange that any native who has been injured receives full compensation before any fine is taken to the profit of the state. any region can be placed under military law by a decree of the governor general. civilians however, are only subject to the ordinary penal laws, and those who are not natives, can appeal against any decision of a court martial. in practice these simple methods work admirably and it is difficult to understand why they should not be equally successful in old civilised countries and a good substitute for the complicated and cumbrous machinery of to-day. [illustration: the native hospital at boma.] footnotes: [1] this list is taken from _justice repressive (état indépendant du congo)_ and is based on a decree of 1896. since then other territorial courts have been or are about to be added. [2] some of the greater chiefs and sultans have the power to inflict the death sentence. chapter ii. banana to leopoldville. the amount of sand in the bath water on the morning of july 12th indicated that we were approaching the mouth of a large river. the atlantic indeed, which had varied in colour from dirty green near the english channel to ultra marine at teneriffe, was now of a fine amber tint. as yet land was not in sight; it was comparatively cool and a slight breeze was blowing. about midday the low lying coast of central africa became visible as a dark line and half an hour afterwards a simple break could be seen in this line which was the clearly defined mouth of the congo. on reference to the chart it became clear that although the lower congo forms a delta in some places twenty miles in width, all the streams coalesce and flow through an opening not more than five miles wide. on both sides the coast is low lying and well wooded. as we approach nearer, the northern point resolves itself into the extremity of a peninsula, for one branch of the river turns northward thus leaving a strip of land a few hundred yards wide. we pass through the mouth of the river, thread our way between several buoys, turn up this northern channel and arrive at an anchorage in which eight or nine small ships are riding. as we take up our position a boat leaves the shore flying the congo flag, a blue ground with a golden star in the centre. soon after we go ashore in a _dug out_. propelled by kru boys to the town of banana, which is built on this sandy peninsula and is thus guarded by sharks on one side and crocodiles on the other. we land at a wooden pier used chiefly for loading canoes. on each side are magnificent palms, some being more than fifty feet high and all bearing many cocoa nuts at this season about half ripe. these palms are not indigenous, but flourish here. the main highway of banana is a path of clean yellow sand about ten feet wide, shaded by an avenue of these palms and crosses at intervals small tidal streams by rustic wooden bridges. many tropical trees and shrubs grow on each side of the avenue, and in the bright sunshine the whole forms a very beautiful picture. it is unfortunate that the effect reminds one somewhat forcibly of a transformation scene of a pantomime and thus appears artificial although in reality, it is absolutely natural. the resemblance is still further strengthened by the numerous ladies of the ballet who leisurely stroll along clothed in nature's ebony black. no one seems to know the origin of the name of the town, for the banana palm is not found here at all. at the extreme end of the point, and extending inwards for several hundred yards, are the grounds of the dutch trading company, which has been established here for more than fifty years and ships many of the products of the country. the wooden sheds painted white are very picturesque amid the vivid green foliage. beyond this area is the house of dr. carre, the commissaire of the district of banana, which like all the other houses in the town is raised on piles above the level of the sand, for the double purpose of ensuring a current of air beneath and of keeping it dry when the peninsula is flooded. it faces the sea and behind is a small garden in which are many meteorological instruments. among these are an anemometer slowly revolving in the light air, maximum and minimum bulbs in the shade, on the ground and beneath it, a most ingenious sun dial, and a heliometer. walking inland along the central avenue, we pass some native shops, one of which bears the interesting name of _williams brothers_. in many of the verandahs, native women wrapped in highly coloured cloths but with bare feet and legs, are working sewing machines or tending their children. further on is a space laid out in regular squares, in each of which is a well built wooden house raised on piles, and an ornamental garden, the flower beds being bordered either with sea shells or with glass bottles pushed neck downwards into the sand, leaving about two inches projecting above the surface. a little further on is an hotel facing the sea in which is apparently poor accommodation and not much to eat or drink. beyond this is the native village, consisting of square huts and rough gardens in which some potatoes seem to be growing in spite of the soil and temperature. only about twenty europeans live at banana and their chief excitement is the arrival of the steamer. most of them indeed came off to dinner and held a kind of concert in the saloon afterwards. all night long winches and men were creaking, groaning, and shouting, as some of the cargo was put overboard into two large lighters. it was not however, destined for banana and was transshipped here only to lighten the _leopoldville_ so that she could pass a certain bar higher up the river. the cargo consisted of coal in the shape of brickets, cement, rice, oil, cloth, clothes, beads, salt and general provisions. as soon as sufficient had been removed, the two lighters were attached one to each side of the ship and we started up the main stream, which here runs between the south or portuguese bank and a series of islands. all these are covered with dense forest the only living things visible being great black eagles with white wings. on the left bank of the river we pass malela, a station for collecting bamboos, and soon after kissange on the opposite side where palm oil is made and shipped. a little higher up, the country opens out and a range of hills becomes visible in the distance, the plain between being covered with coarse grass six or seven feet high, relieved at intervals by solitary palm trees. this is all portuguese territory, the congo state here possessing only a narrow strip of land along the northern bank. the course of the river here is very sinuous, winding in and out among the hills, the curves being cut more sharply each day as the water eats into the sand and carries it to be digested in the great stomach of the atlantic. in this district both the state and the portuguese have started large farms for breeding european cattle which thrive here satisfactorily. higher up a solitary rock overhangs the left bank. this is known as fetish rock from the legend that the natives used to throw live people from it into the river as sacrifices. this is possibly true but there is little evidence to show that the natives of the congo ever sacrificed either living or dead to propitiate anyone or anything. near here we anchor for the night and are welcomed by a host of most noisy and vicious mosquitoes who have a particular partiality to good healthy european-fed blood. again we are delayed to unload and this time into a small steamer the _lagoon_--for the ship is still too deep in the water to cross the bar. this sandy obstruction has an unpleasant habit of shifting its position and it is necessary therefore to make careful soundings every voyage at this time of the year when the water is low. these are carried out by captain sparrow and mr. wright the chief congo pilot with the aid of a most ingenious sounding machine. it consists of a simple pulley wheel raised on a standard about ten feet above the deck of a small pilot steamer. over this passes a line weighted at both ends but unequally, and both weights hang down in the water, the heavier naturally being on the bottom of the river. to prevent this line--which corresponds to the ordinary lead line--trailing, as the boat moves forward, a second line is fixed to the weight and passes under water to the bows of the vessel where it is attached as the vessel passes slowly through the water, the weight rises and falls according to the level of the bottom, and the counterweight hauls in the slack of the line, which is marked in the usual way by coloured tapes. at any moment therefore, the depth of water can be determined by observing the tapes. there is now only 15-1/2 feet on the bar, so it is necessary to lighten the _leopoldville_ still more before it will be possible to cross. thus early one of the chief difficulties in the congo the transport of goods--is demonstrated. a fine crocodile lies asleep on the bank within easy range as we go back to the ship in the launch, but no one has a rifle so his dreams are undisturbed. as the _leopoldville_ will not be able to reach boma until the morrow, we decide to go on in the _heron_, a small ship which calls for all the state passengers. after fetish rock, the river bends sharply to the right and soon after boma is in sight. at this distance however, the town merely appears as groups of white houses amid trees backed by green hills. guarding the approach is a strong looking fort which already has a history, for it was captured by rebels and held for one or two days a few years ago. as the sun was seeking his couch we arrive at the iron pier at boma on which we find mr. underwood, the director of the well known english trading house of messrs. hatton and cookson. with him we walk down the main business street of the town; a wide shady road lined with shops, hotels, and restaurants and traversed by a steam tram. at the end of this street the road continues to the right, up an incline and opposite to the corner is one of the entrances to the residency. passing this we leave a catholic church, constructed of corrugated iron, on the right and enter a shady avenue in which is the secretariat. we are then introduced to mr. vandamme, the secretaire general, who at once takes us to the residency and presents us to mr. costermans, the governor general of the congo free state, who hopes we shall travel wherever we feel inclined and see anything we desire. the residency is a large two storey house surrounded by a wide verandah and is built of iron plates bolted together. it is raised about ten feet from the ground on iron pillars and approached by a wide staircase with wooden steps. it is surrounded by a well kept garden in which are some statues and many tropical plants. the view from the verandah, looking up and down the river is very pretty. although the house is in good condition and the dining room large enough to seat thirty people, it is thought not to be worthy of its function, and another large building will soon be erected on the same site. after this visit we proceed to a house which is kept for the use of the higher state officials when they pass through boma and which was now placed at our disposal. it is constructed in a similar manner to the residency and although smaller, contains three lofty reception and two bed rooms. two _boys_. are told off to attend to our wants and after a rest we take a stroll round the town with mr. vandamme. most of the official residencies are situated in one avenue and are surrounded by gardens in which palms, bulbous trees, and acacias give welcome shade to the roses beneath. the avenue du plateau leads up a gentle incline to the law courts in which once a week sits the court of première instance. near by is the prison and the terminus of the tramway. from the summit of the hill a grand view is obtained of the river winding between the hills to the east, and at one's feet is a native village nestling in a valley, for the natives dislike wind and cold almost as much as they do rain. separated from it is another native village in which the government has placed the educated people who can read and write and many are now ambitions to qualify for admission. it is now time to return to dinner with mr. vandamme where we meet mr. gohr, the director of justice, and mr. underwood. everyone here dines in white, which is both cool and picturesque. our host has an excellent native cook who gives us some very good vegetable soup, one of the numerous congo fishes, all of which are nice, a very tender chicken, an excellent salad and a well made omelette, all of which are products of the country. flour and butter have however, to be imported, as no wheat will grow in this part of the country and the cows give scarcely enough milk for their calves. everyone retires and rises early, so at 9 p.m. we seek our house guided by a boy with a lantern, for most of the streets of boma are not lighted artificially. next day we call on mr. nightingale who is at present acting as british consul. the consulate is about a mile from the town situated on the banks of the river and is well constructed of wood. mr. nightingale offers kindly to lend us any assistance on our voyage that we may require. afterwards we buy many things which will be necessary up country, among which are bags of salt, a very popular form of money in some parts, and tins of petrol for the lanterns. everyone in boma works hard, from the secretaire general who is at his office from 7 a.m. to midday and from 2.30 to 5 p.m. to the hardy healthy-looking native who wields his pick as he chats with his fellows. roads are being made and gardens laid out in various places. one very noticeable feature of the natives here, is that they nearly all bear wellmarked vaccination marks. here and there a policeman patrols in an effective costume of blue and red and armed with a short sword. everywhere is order, method, and cleanliness, and it is very difficult to realise that a quarter of a century ago only three trading houses stood on the site of this prosperous and well-regulated little town. in the evening we dined with the governor general who has both a good cook and butler; the wines being excellent. outside, the band of the force publique played selections of music, rendered the more interesting by the fact that not one of the players could read a note of music and each learnt his part entirely by ear. most of the guests were our fellow travellers and well known to us. the conversation turned upon the sleeping sickness, beri beri, the difficulty of growing wheat in the congo, and the climate. it is not very hot in boma about this time, for it is the winter or dry season and the nights are so cold that only the very hardy mosquitoes are sufficiently wide awake to prevent people sleeping. still it is hotter, than we ever experience in england, and with forethought for the comfort of his guests, mr. costermans usually commands white costumes instead of european dress. the native hospital is a newly-built stone and brick structure and is under the charge of an italian, dr. zerbini. the wards are well arranged in separate wings, permitting good ventilation and isolation. the beds are iron with bamboos stretched lengthwise, thus forming a kind of spring mattress. there are many cases of sleeping sickness in the hospital exhibiting various symptoms. in the early stages the patient has many fits of emotional excitement and these alternate with periods of physical and mental languor. afterwards he lies for weeks or months as if dead and can only be persuaded to eat with great difficulty. ultimately complete coma supervenes. a motile bacillus has been discovered which is supposed to cause the disease and there is evidence that this may be carried by a mosquito or fly, but until the discoveries of the doctors, sent out by the liverpool school of tropical medicine, are published, it is premature to give an opinion. up to the present many remedies have been prescribed without success. there is no small pox and little phthisis, and it is interesting to learn that appendicitis is unknown in africa. rupture is very common among the natives and venereal diseases are frequent. as i was destined to become well acquainted with the _croix rouge_, the hospital for europeans, i will describe this institution later. on the reverse slope of the central hill of boma are the quarters of the army, the force publique. the soldiers are fine looking fellows with a very pretty uniform; blue wide cut breeches to the knee, the legs and feet being bare, blue shirt with red facings and belt, and a red fez. they are armed with albini rifles, a very strong weapon which will stand any amount of rough usage. everything is scrupulously clean and the married quarters especially look very comfortable. each couple has a room fitted with bed, table and chairs. they are recruited from all over the country and the service is so popular that in many parts far more men volunteer to serve than are required. the force does not exceed 13,600 in number and is recruited for long or short service. the prison is situated on the plateau in an open, airy place. the building is constructed of iron plates and the separate cells and rooms are lofty and clean. there are one or two europeans here who have been sentenced for theft or for cruelty to natives, for the state is determined that all its subjects should be well treated. these are of course kept entirely separate from the natives. only the natives who have been sentenced to more than one year are sent here and then after a time they are forwarded to the penal settlements. some are cannibals, but most are thieves, and all wear light chains. it is somewhat warm walking about boma but there is no alternative, for there are no carriages and only a horse or two for the governor general. the state regulates very strictly the importation of arms. permission has to be obtained from the governor general before any fire arms can be landed; then each one is stamped on the butt with the star of the state and a number which is registered. if anyone in the country wishes to purchase a weapon from another, both buyer and seller have to obtain permission from the governor general. these laws are very excellent for they effectually keep modern weapons out of the hands of the natives. having complied with the regulations and declared our ammunition, our rifles and guns are restored to us with pretty little souvenir marks on the butts. we next apply for a special licence to shoot big game, and this is promised, but as it takes time to prepare will be sent up country after us. the import duly on alcohol is very heavy and runs up to 47 per cent. _ad valorem_ and no still of any kind is permitted to be set up in the country. beyond matadi indeed, special permission has to be obtained before europeans can carry any spirituous liquors, and then they have to declare that it is not for sale to the natives. heads of commercial houses are made responsible for the observance of this law by their employés and the state officials themselves are only permitted to have three litres of spirits each month, while absinthe is entirely prohibited. every white man, however, is given one litre of red wine each day as a ration and there seems to be no limit to the amount of beer which may be drunk, except its great price, for a bottle of lager costs 3 francs at leopoldville and twice that amount higher up the river. it is indeed becoming apparent that the government is a veritable parent and a stern one also. however, as we promise to be good boys we are permitted to carry a few cases of whisky and wine--after paying the duty--to act as _medical comforts_. in case of sickness. these medical comforts are also a feature of the state, each white being allowed a bottle or two of champagne and port every three months. every official indeed receives much kindness and consideration from the state but is severely punished any lapse of duty. the whites are fined for carelessness or negligence, by stopping their pay for a certain number of days, and for serious offences any official may be revocated, when he will perhaps lose six months' or even a years' pay. offences against the penal laws are of course punished by imprisonment. an excellent institution in boma is the _colonie scolaire_ where foundlings are reared and educated. orphans, deserted children, half-castes, all are received and trained for some useful purpose, some entering the army, some engaging on the plantations, some becoming servants to the officials. it is impossible to form any idea of the congo native in boma, for the blacks are of very different nationalities. natives from lagos, sierra-leone, portuguese and french territory, all are attracted by the high wages to be earned in the town. indeed at present most of the positions of responsibility, requiring a fair education, are held by foreign blacks, for very few true congolese can be trusted. the personal servants we engaged were thus all foreigners in the state service. two rejoiced in the names of chikaia and jean, and acted as _boys_. _i.e._ as valets, butlers and general servants while luembo was cook, and mavunga, washerman. each one had a formal contract of five articles signed by us, by a delegate for the governor general, and by the judge of première instance, whose duty it was to see the contract was not broken. the state indeed, superintends everything even to the finding and engaging of private servants for travellers. the wages earned by these boys are very much higher than servants receive in india or china. the cook was paid 35 francs and the others 25 francs per month and all found. the customs, the post office, and the land office, are all conveniently situated in one building on the beach near to the landing pier. in the latter, all the landowners in the state are registered, careful maps being prepared showing the extent and position of each plot of land. the land laws are very simple. the villages are the absolute freehold property of the natives, and are registered in the names of the chiefs. vacant lands as usual are the property of the state and the chartered companies, missionaries, and traders, as a rule, are annual leaseholders but the lease is always renewed if the conditions on which it is granted are observed. on sunday we lunched with the governor general, mr. gohr, the director of justice--who at present is in the unenviable position of having many critics in europe, usually imperfectly informed of the details and evidence laid before the judges--mr. vandamme, who knows everyone and everything connected with the state, commandant and madame sillye, judge and madame webber, and some others. afterwards, mr. webber, the judge of the court of première instance, who is an excellent pianist, gives us proof of his talent. this is the last pleasant music we are fated to hear for many a month, for nothing but concertinas and gramophones are found in the interior. [illustration: the cataracts railway near matadi.] having obtained bundles of permits to do various things, and arranged for letters and parcels to be sent after us into the interior, we left boma on the morning of july 19th for matadi in the _leopoldville_.. the congo just above boma somewhat resembles the highlands of scotland, and the similarity was emphasised by the fact that it was raining hard. the hills were bare of trees, the current ran rapidly, forming whirlpools, while many sleepy crocodiles lazily flopped into the water as we passed. after ascending some twenty miles, the river turns sharply to the right and runs between cliffs which descend sheer into the water, forming a narrow chasm not more than half a mile broad. as the whole of the immense volume of water in the congo has to pass through this gorge, it is enormously deep and the current is very rapid. the depth has not been accurately ascertained, but it is certainly 500 feet, if not more, and the flow of the water is at the rate of nearly ten knots an hour, so that the smaller steamers cannot ascend at all, and the larger only creep slowly up. [illustration: the railway station at matadi.] matadi is soon after in sight. it is built on the south side of the congo valley, for, as a glance at the map will explain, the state owns both banks at this point, but further up, the river becomes the frontier with the french congo. matadi is an ancient--if the word may be used in connection with the congo at all--settlement, constructed at the point where navigation on the river is interrupted by cataracts and rapids for some two hundred miles until smooth water is reached again at stanley pool. a caravan route runs from matadi to leopoldville, and it was during the march of twenty days over the mountains that in the early days, so much trouble was occasioned by the native porters. all this is abolished now by the railway. the town itself stands on the side of a steep hill and consists of narrow streets paved with cobbles. here as usual in the congo, man is restricted to his primeval method of locomotion. two iron piers jut into the stream and at their ends the european steamers discharge their cargoes into the railway trucks alongside. high up on the hill stands a capacious stone structure, the house of the commissioner of the matadi district, mr. de rache, with whom we dine, after arranging to leave by the train which starts next day. the distance to be traversed is 220 miles and the fare is £8 each 1st. class and £1 second for the boys. besides this, baggage over a hundred kilos, is charged at the rate of one franc a kilo, which is probably the highest rate paid for railway travelling in the world. our fares indeed cost us about £80. early in the morning of the 20th, we leave matadi. the train consists of two engines, two open covered carriages for the second class passengers, who are mostly natives, a saloon and baggage wagon. the gauge is a very narrow one, so space is all-important, but the man who designed the chairs in the saloon must have exercised the most fiendish ingenuity to make them as uncomfortable as possible. there are six on each side, arranged in pairs with a small bracket table in between, and each one is on a pivot. the back is straight upright and the seat is of cane, cone-shaped, the highest point being in the centre. now as the curves and gradients of the line are very sharp indeed, it is necessary to hold fast the whole time, to prevent slipping on to the floor. if one puts a foot on the opposite seat to steady oneself, it at once revolves, leaving the leg in mid air. however, we fix ourselves in as well as possible and enjoy the magnificent scenery. for a few hundred yards the line runs along the valley of the congo and a good view of the lowest cataract is obtained, the brown water dashing over the rocks and throwing up spray which is converted into brilliant jewels by the youthful sun not yet an hour old. then turning sharply to the right, the train runs up the valley of the posu, a mountain torrent which rushes and roars through a narrow defile. snorting angrily, the engines climb up this steep gradient, cross the river by an iron bridge and then groaning under the brakes, slide down into another valley. the main direction however, is upwards, and as the country opens out below, one gets a first impression of the enormity and grandeur of central africa. as far as the eye reaches, are ranges of hills, the palabala mountains crowned by a great cone which appears first on one side then the other, as we cork-screw our way up. the line indeed is a marvel of engineering construction, for a most difficult piece of country is traversed without a single tunnel and with very few cuttings and embankments. the length of the railway is, of course, very much greater than a straight line would be between the same points, for it frequently countermarches backwards and forwards up a hill side, and after a detour of perhaps a quarter of a mile, comes back to the same place, but thirty or forty feet higher up. the company which undertook the task of building the line met with many difficulties, but finished it at a cost of £3,000,000 and many native lives. it was built between the years 1891 and 1897 and the workmen were recruited from senegal and the british colonies of africa. frequent stops are necessary for the engines to drink and gain their second winds, for their work here is very arduous. after two or three hours, however, a plateau is reached and the line runs for miles through dense forests of palms, acacias and _parasol_ trees (native motumbi). the name exactly describes these trees, for the branches are arranged like the ribs, and the leaves spread out and form the covering of the sunshade. between the belts of forests the country is covered with coarse grass, six or seven feet high, dotted here and there with palms. no vestige of animal life is visible and only a few natives who are engaged on the railway. these inhabit villages near at hand, formed of huts built of reeds or bamboo and thatched with grass. the men wear a loin cloth only, but the women are wrapped in a plain piece of richly coloured cloth which reaches from the neck to the ankle leaving the arms and feet bare. this is evidently a simple length of stuff some three or four feet wide and, to the masculine eye at least, its method of support remains a mystery, for no trace of button, hook or pin is apparent. their faces are of the negroid type with broad noses and thick lips and the figures of the women approach the shape of an s reversed thus [backwards s] and are similar to those which our american cousins have so largely developed. the men are as a rule thin and tall with very long legs and all appear to have only small arches to their feet. on the lower congo however, there are many foreigners and several other types are visible. as far as one can judge by the railway cuttings, the soil on the plateau is coarse sand and gravel containing iron and quite unsuitable for agricultural purposes under such a hot sun. the air however, as we approach tumba, about 2000 feet above sea level, is dry and fresh and at 4 p.m. we halt there for the night. we are met by commandant delhaz, the commissaire of the cataracts district, who kindly places a bungalow at our disposal for the night and shows us round the settlement. there is only a small native village here, but large barracks consisting of lines of clean, clay huts constructed by the soldiers. tumba is indeed an important military centre and here again the appearance of the troops is very fine as they march to the strains of the band which renders snatches from _faust_, _carmen_ and other well known airs with a few native variations. a farm has been established in the neighbourhood to feed the garrison and an automobile road is in course of construction. next morning, we dress by candle light and make a hasty breakfast, in the midst of which, at 6 a.m., reveille sounds and the troops assemble in the square in front of the residency. half an hour afterwards, the train starts, and having perched ourselves on the summits of the seats, we soon reach sonna gongo the half-way house for travellers of the future. here is a depot for locomotives and carriages and wooden hotels are being constructed to accommodate travellers who, after august, will stop here for the night instead of at tumba. leaving sonna gongo, the line rapidly searches for a lower level and the view is magnificent, as a great endless expanse of land is unfolded. here and there are banks of smoke caused by the veldt fires and often close to the railway the high dry grass has been lighted by a chance spark from an engine, and is burning furiously. we now zigzag down hill instead of up and far beneath, can be seen the thin line of rails glistening in the sun like fillets of silk. having reached this level, we plunge through inviting looking forests at one time full of elephants, buffaloes and other game, but practically deserted now save by monkeys and parrots. soon after the train stops at a station where the natives have assembled to sell fruit and kwanga, a kind of bread made from the flour of the manioc root and the chief article of native diet. it consists chiefly of starch and is not unpleasant when fresh and toasted. the natives however, prefer all food in a high stage of decomposition and it is some time before the very smell of it ceases to make one feel ill. to see them eating kwanga fish or the flesh of elephants, monkeys, antelopes or other animals generally both rotten and raw is most disgusting and brings home the fact sharply that man here is of a very low type. the oranges the natives sell are very acid, more resembling grape-fruit than the orange of florida, but the bananas are as good as any in the world and the pine apples--three of which can be bought for half a franc--are equal to the finest hot-house variety. [illustration: the steamer _flandre_.] the line now descends again until it reaches a flat hot, sandy and uninteresting plain across which it runs absolutely straight for seven miles until it reaches kinshasa on the south bank of stanley pool. a few miles further on, is the rail head, leopoldville. like everything else in the congo, this town has been arranged and built for practical use. the railway runs along the beach so as to facilitate the loading and unloading of the steamers of the upper river, and in a very short time all our baggage is taken from the train and carried straight on board the _flandre_ where we find cabins booked for us. this is an excellent arrangement and saves much trouble, for although the steamer does not sail for two days, passengers are allowed to live on board while in port. indeed it is very necessary, for there are no hotels in the town, and no accommodation for visitors except a few rooms in the commercial houses. some traits of the native's character were now to be demonstrated to us. his main idea always is, to do as little work as possible and he will often take the greatest trouble in his effort to accomplish this object. each native endeavoured to put his load as near the gangway as possible which was soon blocked and then he had to come back, hoist the package on his head again and carry it to its proper place. although this performance took place every day, unless an officer was constantly on the watch, the foolish fellows in their attempts to shirk duty brought upon themselves extra work. the cabins were unfurnished, for everyone carries his own bed on the congo, and most also their own tent. it was therefore necessary to unpack a bed. here was a difficulty. all the bags and boxes were carefully numbered by the army and navy stores and the invoice no doubt sent to my london address but i left before it arrived, and there was no possibility of discovering which number meant bed. seizing a likely looking bale, the boys unlace it, and find a part of a tent, and a second attempt brings to light another part of a tent. it is now growing dark and a light is necessary, but in which of these seventy odd cases is the lamp? not knowing the native mind, i explain that it is necessary to hurry and find the bed before dark. this evidently conveys no meaning at all to the boys, for in the first place it was not their bed and so it mattered nothing to them, and in the second, they had never hurried before in their lives, and could not do so now, even if they wished. lacing the first bales up slowly and deliberately, they open another and find a canvas bath and washhandstand. these are at any rate useful, and encouraged by success we try again and come across hand-irons and starch. at length we find a thing like a large concertina which is really a folding bed with pillows and blankets, complete. by great good luck a mosquito curtain is then found and the steward kindly lends a candle. hot, sticky, tired and cross we prepare for our first meal on a congo steamer. it consisted of a soup of mystery, chicken, which had been washed in the river close to a group of natives bathing and a goat, killed an hour before dinner, whose flesh was thrown quivering into the pot. however, there was some bread and tinned peaches and it was no use being fastidious in central africa. this was washed down with the regulation half litre of red wine, a kind of claret which is quite drinkable and some native coffee which had a delicate and fine aroma, but was badly made. the captain--as indeed are nearly all the officers of the river steamers--was a scandinavian and spoke english very well. he explained that the ship was not very clean or inviting-looking, which was the truth, but as the lower deck was lumbered up with the horses of commandant sillye and was swarming with natives, it was only to be expected. then to bed, but not to sleep, for the boys to save themselves trouble, had not fixed the mosquito net properly. in my innocence i merely ordered them to do it and had not stood by and watched. it is indeed necessary always to see that the native does as he is told, for the moment one's back is turned, he is eating if there is anything rotten enough at hand to tempt him and if not, he quietly goes to sleep. even these state servants who speak the native language and also a kind of french, really live the lives of animals, for they eat, drink, and sleep if left alone and only work when they are shown how, and watched all the time. the result was that i spent a most horrible night, for the mosquitoes were terribly hostile and evidently recognised a new european with some healthy blood. in the morning, my head, which i had had shaved in the congo fashion, was covered with large bumps and face, neck, hands and wrists were all blotches. it was therefore with little appetite that i sat down to a breakfast of bread, dutch cheese, curious tinned butter and weak coffee without milk. little however, did i think then that in six short months a congo steamer would seem like a first class hotel, so entirely is everything altered by comparison. [illustration: cataracts at leopoldville.] chapter iii. the higher congo. next day we make a formal call on mr. mahieu, inspecteur d'etat of the congo state, whose headquarters are at leopoldville. he is a very busy man with a multitude of duties, for the paternal system is continued all through the state and the most trivial matters are always referred to the highest official in the neighbourhood. as we are to lunch at the residency, we do not stay long, but take a ride with commandant and mme. sillye on four of the horses the former purchased at dakar. although a little stiff after their holiday of a month, they have not been otherwise affected by their sea voyage and two days in the train. along the beach are many steamers charging and discharging and others on the slips being repaired or partly built. these steamers are all brought out in sections and put together on the beach. they are flat bottomed, are driven by stern wheels and only draw three or four feet of water. they all burn wood, and special depots are formed at intervals on the rivers where stores of this fuel are collected. should however, a steamer run short, it is only necessary to stop and send the crew ashore with knives for the banks are lined with forest. leaving the beach we ride through avenues of palms and mango trees to higher ground, whence a beautiful view can be obtained of stanley pool. this is really a part of the river about sixteen miles wide, shut in by hills on each side, but its size is not apparent from the water itself, as a great number of islands cut the stream into numerous narrow channels. towards the south, the river narrows again and at this point is the uppermost of the cataracts, the water hurling itself against the rocks in its efforts to escape and recoiling in spray high into the air. from just below leopoldville all the way to matadi, the river indeed rushes down narrow gorges, but above, for nearly a thousand miles, it is navigable for steamers. on a hill above the rapid, is a large tree under which stanley pitched his tent and which still bears his name. many native villages exist near leopoldville, consisting of huts formed of wooden frames and thatched with grass. there are no plantations or factories here but great numbers of natives are at present employed in road making and in constructing a new slip for launching the steamers. evidently our little party gives rise to much comment for several of the natives have probably never seen a horse before, and a cavalcade of four of these strange animals is something entirely new. on our way back to the ship we pass down the main street in which are the administrative offices, the mess, the doctors' and other private houses and close to the beach, the residency, over which flies the state flag and in front of which patrols a sentry. at first one thought the sentry in front of the chief official's house in each town, was merely a symbol of authority as in europe, afterwards however, it becomes apparent that the system of government in the congo is based on absolute uniformity. every post, however big or small, has its state flag and every chief official, from the governor to the chief of a wood post, has a sentry at his door. each morning at sunrise the flag is hoisted, while the guard presents arms and every evening at sunset it is lowered with like ceremony. indeed, the whole system is military, for everyone rises, works, eats and sleeps at the command of the clarion. it is a custom at most official and private parties in the congo, to hand round port wine and cigars before sitting down to table. at first this seemed a strange kind of _aperative_., but soon the glass of port became very agreeable after the morning's work. ten or twelve guests were assembled on the verandah when we arrived, and soon mr. armarni joined the group. he is an italian, an ex-naval officer of distinction and now commissaire du roi of the congo, a position which ranks with, but after, that of governor general. by a simple and practical device, the relative rank of all the administrative and military officials can be determined at a glance. each wears a blue gauntlet on each wrist and forearm over the white sleeve of his coat and affixed on this are a number of gold bands. a captain of a river steamer, perhaps has three or four bands, a chef de poste, four or five, a commissaire of a zone or district, seven or eight, an inspecteur d'etat, nine or ten, and the governor general, eleven. in order however, to economise space and perhaps to facilitate counting, when more than three stripes are worn, a broad strip is substituted which corresponds to the original three. thus an official with five stripes wears one broad and two narrow ones, while the governor general wears three broad stripes and two narrow ones. the chief decoration, the order of the lion, can only be gained by belgians, but the congo star is given to all after a certain term of service. those who hold purely civil appointments such at judges, secretaries and directors of transport, wear no stripes at all. at 2.30 p.m. a bugle sounded and a chattering throng of natives hurried past the inspector's house towards the beach to resume work, which is always interrupted for three hours at 11.30 a.m. during the heat of the day. in order to feed these people and the soldiers of the force publique at leopoldville, about a ton and a half of kwanga is prepared every day from the manioc grown in the villages around, and every able bodied native has to contribute his or her quota of work. each person indeed is supposed to work for at least forty hours each month, and whether engaged on roads, buildings, or other public work, or in collecting rubber, wood for the steamers, or kwanga for food, is paid at the current rate. the principle of the system of government, although entirely novel, is undoubtedly sound and suited to the country and the condition of the native. the whole territory is divided into two great parts, the lands of the native chiefs and the vacant lands called here the domaine privé. the government has however, disposed of part of these to concessionary companies in this sense, that the companies have the right to exploit all the products of the forest in these areas. other portions have been leased to missions, to commercial houses and to private people. the government collects the rubber, ivory, food stuffs, and other produce from the domain lands and with the proceeds, constructs roads, navigates the rivers, maintains the government and army and generally develops the country and civilises the natives. trading relations are formed with the chiefs as follows: agents are sent into their districts with brass wire, cloth, salt, beads, or other things likely to attract the natives, and these are exchanged for rubber, ivory, gum copal, manioc, fish, fowl or other produce; thus the value of rubber, ivory or any other substance is determined in terms of brass wire, cloth or salt and so its value in sterling. similarly, the value of native labour is discovered and the native paid accordingly. the brass wire is cut into lengths called mitakos, this form of currency having been introduced by the late sir h.m. stanley. the length of the mitako, and so its value, varies in different parts of the country. at present there seems to be no limit to the amount of wire cut into mitakos, but as the natives use great quantities to make brass rings for the arms and legs of both sexes, it is difficult to say to what extent the currency is being debased. the pay of skilled labour here is high, and unskilled workers receive about as much as similar labourers in india. the natives pay no taxes in money or its equivalent, but instead are compelled to do this 40 hours' work per month for the state. in the afternoon we cross the neck of stanley pool and visit brazzaville, the capital of the french congo. the town is situated close to the beach, but the government offices are high up on a hill above. having found the secretariat, we explain that we are british travellers and desire to pay our respects to the governor. the secretary telephones as we wait in the office and presumably the governor asks whether we have introductions and what we want, for the answer goes back _non, ils sont venus, pop!!!_ however, the governor, mr. gentil, who has spent many years in the congo, receives us very kindly, offers to help us with steamers on the river, gives us some letters of introduction to french officials on the ubangi and permits to shoot game. every where indeed one meets with kindness, help and consideration from the officials in africa, which is in marked contrast to the hide bound system of formalities which it is necessary to observe and maintain in europe. [illustration: steamers and docks at leopoldville.] a great blowing of the steamer's whistle now takes place, for it is getting late and it is impossible to navigate the congo after sunset. the captain is therefore becoming anxious, but enough light remains to see the buoys and we reach leopoldville soon after 6 p.m. we have arranged to dine at the mess, an excellent institution wherein all the europeans of every rank, except the very highest officials, sit down together. the commandant of the force publique, the commandant of the port, the directors of transports and posts, and the doctors, all take their dinner with the working artisans. altogether about 130 men attend the mess, where the cooking and service is excellent while each has a small bottle of wine and a cup of coffee. by this means, every man is ensured good wholesome food, and the necessity of restaurants, in which indiscriminate drinking might take place, is avoided. next morning, july 23rd. the _flandre_ leaves leopoldville and steams to kinshasa where we stop and land. here as usual the keynote is development. roads are being made, avenues of palms, mangoes and pine apples planted and store houses, factories and plantations constructed. at the coffee factory here, the beans are extracted from the shells, sorted into sizes and qualities and packed in bags. many kinds of coffee have been planted in the congo, but none are equal to the wild variety found in the forest, which is as good as any in the world when properly made. near at hand is a brick field, where the bricks are made in metal moulds, the clay being forced in by long levers. they are not made as quickly as those fashioned by a machine but the process is a great improvement on the old-fashioned method of brick making in wooden moulds. it is already apparent that beer is regarded as a luxury here so we order some dozens at three francs a bottle and having taken some photos return to the ship. on the beach were some fine elephant tusks which have been collected by the agents of the _société anonyme belge_. when a native finds a pair of tusks in the territory of the company, the state takes one as a royalty and the company buys the other for a certain quantity of cloth. this only represents a fraction of the value in europe, but is gladly accepted by the native who has no use for it except to make war horns. indeed in the old days, the chiefs used to form a kind of fence round their huts by sticking the points in the ground, little thinking that in another part of the world, not even the millionaire of fiction ever constructed such an expensive railing. then the arab slave raiders came and stole both the native women and the ivory, so that the white man who gives beautiful coloured cloth for these useless elephants' tusks is regarded as a very generous trader. in the afternoon the _flandre_ continued her journey threading her way between the numerous islands in stanley pool, and finally tied up to the bank of the island of bamu which is french territory. this island enjoys the distinction of being the only one in the congo which has an owner, for all the rest are declared to be no man's land by international treaty. it is reputed to be full of game, and we go ashore to look for it, but return without seeing anything. as the mosquitoes prevent all sleep in the cabin, we arrange to make up a bed on deck and obtain a better night's rest, for it is comparatively cool here in the evening in the open. i am very anxious to bathe next morning, but the captain strongly disadvises for the currents are very strong here, and the river is full of crocodiles. in the midst of breakfast we are startled by the report that the ship is on fire, and smoke is seen to be issuing from the fore hatch, under which much of the wood used for fuel is stored. none of the europeans however, are more excited than the natives, who, leisurely and with due deliberation, hand up buckets of water. nothing indeed could make a native hurry. the captain seems a trifle upset, and states that it may be necessary to run on a rock, and thus make a hole in the bows and flood the hold. this seems to be rather a desperate remedy, but no one shows the slightest interest. this appeared curious at the time; since however, it has transpired that fires in the holds are of common occurrence, and that as the ships are all of iron, they usually burn themselves out without harming anything. soon after however, the captain with an alarmed look, rushes up on deck and said that a terrible crime or a great mistake had been committed. it appeared that by some error, our cases of beer and some others belonging to commandant sillye had been left on the beach at kinshasa. immediately we anchored last night a native boatswain, or capita, was sent with six men in a canoe to fetch them and ought to have returned by midnight. nothing however, was heard of the boat until now when the capita appeared and told a harrowing story. he found the cases all right and started to return across the river, but as it began to blow hard, he thought it better to make for land and wait until the morning before trying to find the ship. he succeeded in landing on the island of bamu and soon after a white man appeared with some senegalese soldiers and demanded to know what was in the cases. he explained, when the white man fired and killed all the crew, but he ran away and escaped. the affair seemed serious so lord mountmorres and commandant sillye left for brazzaville to discover the truth, while i stayed on the ship to superintend the landing of our cargo if the fire extended. soon after the commandant of the port of leopoldville arrived in a steamer and asked if we wanted assistance as another ship had run on the rocks higher up and sunk and he was hastening to rescue any possible survivors. sunday, july 24th indeed, seemed to be a veritable day of horrors, but still no one appeared at all excited. by midday the fire in the forehold was extinguished and thus one danger was removed. later in the afternoon just before sunset, an immense flock of ducks and geese crossed the river, but as they were flying nearly a hundred feet up in the air, it was impossible to shoot them. soon after mountmorres and sillye returned and reported they had found all the crew safe, except one man who had probably deserted and had also brought back the cases of beer. the white man was a french officer of customs, who had naturally thought the crew of the canoe were engaged in smuggling and had fired blank cartridges to frighten them. so passed an eventful day with much smoke but little fire. it was indeed becoming apparent that the congo was a true land of exaggerations. on all sides were great hills, great plains, great forests, great rivers, great beasts, great trees, and great lies. next day we continued our course up stanley-pool, which meant threading our way up narrow channels between uninteresting sandbanks covered with forest or grass. in the distance could be seen the hills forming the boundaries of the pool and at its upper end _dover cliffs_ so called from their resemblance to that part of the english coast. about midday we sighted the _anversville_, the vessel which was supposed to have been sunk, comfortably lying on a sand bank, and the _brugesville_ which had gone to her assistance, also resting on the same bank. one of the passengers came off to the _flandre_ and told us that no one was hurt and all the baggage was safe and that he had heard we had been burnt out, attacked by natives and all killed. truly the congo is a wonderful place. as the _flandre_ moors we decide to go ashore hunting. within a few yards of the bank is the lair of a hippopotamus and the spoor of elephants. it is however, very difficult walking, for patches of land are covered with long grass seven or eight feet high and the rest is bog. after struggling along for a few minutes, i hear a curious noise like a very asthmatic fog horn not above five yards away. nothing is however, visible, for the grass forms a complete cover. again the grunt with a suspicious after-sniff and at the same moment chikaia, who is carrying my gun snaps his fingers--the usual sign to indicate game--and beckons me to follow. i endeavour to do so, and at once sink in the bog up to the knees, but fortunately keep my rifle dry. by clutching the grass, i get out and we follow the spoor of the hippo as rapidly as possible. this is very clearly marked, for the grass has been recently thrust aside and there are great holes in the soft mud over a foot wide and deep, made by the great feet of the beast. these holes were in pairs lying close together, showing that the hippo was galloping as he passed and unfortunately they led straight to the river. next day we leave the pool and enter a part of the river called the channel. here there are no islands and both banks are visible all the time, the width not being more than a mile in some places. a low range of hills covered with acacias or coarse grass, exists on each side. as usual, we stop at a wood post to take fuel on board. this is cut in logs three or four feet long and stacked in heaps about the same in width and height. sticks are placed in the ground connected by lines at the required height and the logs are laid in rows until the space is filled. the result is a cubic yard of wood known in the congo as a _bras_, but the bras differs in size and price considerably, in some cases the cost being 5 mitakos and in others double that amount. a native can easily collect a bras of wood in the forest and carry it to the bank in a day and in some of the wood posts fifty or sixty natives are employed. even then however, the demand for wood by the big steamers is sometimes greater than the supply. at 6 p.m. every day the steamer stops for the night and makes fast to a tree on the bank. all the native passengers at once go ashore, light fires and arrange their beds for the night. they sleep on mats or with the whole body, and head also, wrapped up closely in rugs. either their feet or heads are always within a few inches of the fire and their bodies radiate out like the spokes of a wheel. until 9.30 p.m., however, when all lights on the steamer must be put out, a ceaseless chatter proceeds with an occasional angry discussion as the natives take their meal of kwanga, fish, and any odd piece of meat they can procure. it is a somewhat weird sight, the black forms showing dimly in the ruddy light of the fires under the trees. the bell on the steamer rings the command and everyone goes to bed, and then one appreciates the real silence of the equatorial forest which one has heard about at home. within a few yards, hundreds of frogs commence to croak loudly and continue steadily, with a few pauses to breathe, until daybreak. hundreds of monkeys screech shrilly in the trees and millions of mosquitoes hum steadily within an inch or two of one's ears. all manner of animal cries are heard in the forest and the hippos blow loudly as they rise to the surface to breathe. as a matter of fact, the noise at midnight in the forest, when every beast, bird and insect is busy hunting for food, is greater than at any other time, and at midday only, one enjoys comparative quiet when all the animal kingdom is asleep. [illustration: the american mission house at leopoldville.] one evening i went ashore with chikaia for a stroll on the beach, carrying only a gun. we soon found a number of ducks and as they had never been fired at before probably, they were not scared away by the noise of the gun, but kept wheeling round and round overhead affording very easy shots. it would indeed have been easy to shoot them all. there was, however, no reason to do so and having collected a couple or two to make a welcome change from the daily goat of the steamer, we started back when a fine antelope-cheval rushed from the wood across the sandy beach towards the water. chikaia at once became very excited and wished me to fire, but it was useless, as the beast was more than a hundred yards away. it was satisfactory to find the boy was a keen sportsman, even though he did not appreciate the different capacities of a gun and a rifle. however, i made a mental note never to go, even for a casual stroll in africa, without both weapons. on returning to the ship, we hear that the captain's boy has killed a hippo and that dozens of others are waiting to be shot. we therefore determine to try some shooting by moonlight and chikaia is delighted when he sees the _gras_ as he calls my lee-metford come out of its case. it is a beautiful night with clear, cool air. streams of silver flow from the moon on the water, while the palms tower high with majestic crowns. here we are in the very midst of real nature and yet again it unpleasantly recalls the scenery of a theatre. it is indeed extraordinary with what accuracy scenic artists construct tropical scenes. the surroundings tend to make one sentimental and regret that this veritable garden of eden should be exploited to make billiard balls and rubber tyres for automobiles and bicycles. the native also, instead of hunting elephant and hippos, eating his fill and sleeping, and eating again and sleeping again until the carcase has disappeared and then hunting again, now has to collect rubber juice and cut wood for an ugly looking steam flat. such however, is civilisation in the congo. spoor of elephants and hippos abound and the grunt of the latter can frequently be heard, but they are not sitting up on their haunches waiting to be shot. the clear, shrill chirp of the sentry bird is indeed warning the big beasts that something strange is moving and we shall have to lie still for a long while probably before getting a chance at the great heads as they are raised from the water. after a walk of about a mile, we arrive at the place where the captain's boy was supposed to have killed the hippo. the truth was he had _fired at_ a beast who, as the spoor clearly showed, had walked calmly into the river and not a trace of blood could be seen. after a time, with practice perhaps, one will be able to gauge the truth from an ordinary congo statement. next day we reach the mouth of the kasai, a large tributary which drains much of the equatorial district of the congo. here is a state post, kwamouth, with a few well constructed houses and a catholic mission where pretty walking sticks with ivory handles can be purchased and where the fathers make a few cigars from congo tobacco which are not at all bad smoking. a little further up the river, is the deserted catholic mission of st. marie which has evidently been at one time well arranged with a large manioc plantation and garden. here however, the sleeping sickness appeared and the mortality was so heavy that the place was abandoned. the disease had no doubt existed before, but it was this terrible epidemic which first attracted the serious notice of europeans. it is becoming clear that there are a great number of nationalities represented in the congo. most of the political and military appointments are held by belgians, but there are many italian military officers also. nearly all the marine are scandinavians and the language of the river is therefore, chiefly english, although every state official must speak a certain amount of french. a few germans also hold appointments, and the trading houses are run chiefly by english and dutch, while there are missionaries of several nationalities. in the army, orders are given in french, but on the ships and in the stations, the native is commanded in a kind of jargon based on the bangala dialect. the danish captain of a congo steamer thus as a rule, speaks, besides his own language, english, french and bangala and can make himself understood in all. on pay day, rolls of brass wire are cut up into mitakos, which become longer the higher one travels up the river, this arrangement having been introduced by stanley and never altered. here the mitako is 28 centimetres long and it is worth 5 cents, while at basoko it is 40 centimetres long and worth 10 cents. the native crew are paid three mitakos for their food per day which would purchase twice as much kwanga as they could possibly eat. the capitas and wheelman are also paid monthly wages which vary with the nature of their work. by july 28th we have passed through the channel into a portion of the river which is very wide and has the appearance of a great lake studded with islands. the banks are invisible, for the country here is absolutely flat and continues so for many hundreds of miles until the province orientale is reached. between these islands, which are usually well wooded, we pass slowly up the river, for the current is still strong although the surface of the water appears absolutely still and the light glares as from a mirror. some of the islands are however, only covered with grass and a herd of buffaloes on one come charging down to the river to drink. unfortunately one of the passengers fires a kind of saloon rifle, which might possibly have killed a rabbit at twenty yards, and frightens them back. this is a great pity, for if we had had time, we could easily have bagged one or two and had some fresh beef for dinner. at midday on the 29th we reach mopolenga and stop for wood. the land in the neighbourhood is well cultivated and manioc, sweet potatoes, bananas and pineapples flourish. the manioc plant has a green stem, reddish branches and green leaves arranged in clusters of six which turn downwards forming the shape of a parasol, evidently a popular, as it is an appropriate, pattern for vegetable life in this hot country. the root of the manioc yields the flour, which is made into kwanga and unless it is well boiled, is supposed to be very injurious. the animals here consist chiefly of monkeys, parrots and finches, but many ducks fly from a swamp near the water. in the afternoon we reach bolobo, the head quarters of the baptist mission, which is presided over by mr. grenfell, a missionary who has resided for over twenty years in the congo. he has taught the natives to make bricks and build houses and has erected a mission hall, a hospital and a printing house. the mission enclosure is well laid out with mango trees and other useful fruits and many fat ducks and fowls pass a contented existence there. unfortunately mr. grenfell was not at home, but we were fortunate in finding mr. scrivener, another missionary, who has resided some years in africa. he stated that the natives were emigrating from the district of lake leopold, which lies behind bolobo and is domain land, because they were forced to collect rubber and were flogged if they refused. he had never himself seen a native who had been ill treated, but had been told so by natives. asked whether the people were ever mutilated, mr. scrivener looked very surprised and answered "oh no, there is nothing of that kind now!" bolobo is very populous and many natives flocked down to the beach immediately the steamer arrived and at once held an outdoor market on the beach selling manioc, fish, clothes, pots of various kinds and other articles to the crew and passengers. a congo flat fish of the perch family is found here, smoke dried and sold for food and is very good eating indeed. two of the crew were _chicotted_. to-day by order of the captain. one had attacked another boy with a knife and wounded him and the other had stolen, and then falsely blamed another. the _chicotte_ is a plain strip of hippo hide and the punishment was administered publicly by the capita on the bridge of the steamer and did not appear to be more painful than an ordinary birching at a public school. at 10 p.m. we decide to take the big iron boat of the steamer and go hunting. the natives are exceedingly skilful and know all the likely places for hippo. they first paddle hard up stream and having arrived at the hunting ground allow the boat to drift down with the current in perfect silence. it is clear moonlight, but it is necessary to cover the fore sight of the rifle with white paper in order to see it clearly. after a time, up rises a great head with a great pant and there is just time for a shot before it sinks again. hippos frequent shallow water and are indifferent swimmers. they walk about on the bottom and rise at intervals to breathe. it is thus impossible to know in which direction a beast will next appear or whether he will come up under the boat and capsize it. this night there were great numbers and we had excellent sport. one shot in the head is sufficient to kill a hippo which then sinks and the body does not rise again for some hours. one unfortunate animal was however, shot in the back and rearing straight up on his hind legs rushed for some yards in that attitude until a second shot in the head put him out of his misery. next day we reach lukolela, a wood post and telegraph station. the line runs along the bank all the way from leopoldville to coquilhatville and was very difficult to erect. a space had to be cleared in the forest nearly two hundred feet wide and the line erected in the centre on iron posts, so that any falling trees would not destroy it. at first, the elephants strongly resented these novel posts and frequently knocked them down as easily as if they had been nine pins, but have since become used to them. at lukolela there is excellent teak wood which is fashioned into doors and windows and shipped to various places ready for building. the nights are quite cool, although we are near the equator and the heat in the day time is not nearly as oppressive as it is at aden or shanghai in the summer. cultivation is much more advanced here than in the lower congo and the physique of the natives is remarkably fine. the navigation of the river here becomes very difficult, for the water is shallow at this season of the year and there are many sand banks which frequently change their position. charts are therefore, practically useless and each skipper has to feel his way each voyage. indeed, the whole time two boys sit on the bows of the vessel with long poles sounding the water and shouting out the depth. it is curious that when the vessel is travelling in shallow water, the engines at once go slow of their own accord. one of the engineers explained that this phenomena was produced by the difficulty the wheels experienced in dragging away, so to speak, the water from under the ship when there was little depth. still the ships, frequently run on the banks, but as they are flat bottomed, are not usually injured. the method of mooring is very rudimentary although practical. one of the crew jumps overboard with a steel rope, swims ashore and makes it fast to a tree. all of them are expert swimmers and seem to enjoy their frequent dips, and as their clothes consist of a loin cloth only, they do not require to undress. on august 1st at sunset we reach irebu, an exceedingly beautiful place. an avenue of palms stretches parallel to the river and about twenty yards from it the bank itself being fenced by white wooden rails. this leads to a large open square around which are the brick houses of the european officers. beyond, along the river front, are more brick houses, the mess and the magazines, and gardens are laid out the whole length of the town. this is one of the large military training centres, where about a dozen officers prepare more than a thousand recruits for the force publique. in the evening the place was illuminated by very simple, but effective, means. stakes were driven into the ground and on each was placed a tin which presumably had contained condensed milk. these were filled with palm oil and pieces of wood to serve as wicks. the mosquitoes here are very bad indeed and it is necessary to take quinine every day to counteract the effects of their poison. at daybreak next morning most of the troops were exercising in the square and their precision and manoeuvring were really marvellous. any european colonel might indeed be proud to hear such a single click as his regiment shouldered arms. the officers state that the natives attend very carefully all the time for the word of command and act very quickly after it is given. the native corporals evidently make good instructors and the raw recruit is soon converted into a smart and responsible soldier. this military education is certainly the best that could be given to a savage; it teaches him punctuality, regularity, obedience and collective responsibility; it shows him how to build houses and keep them clean and it gives him an idea of justice for he knows he will be punished for wrong doing. the soldier therefore soon becomes an altogether different person and realises that he is no longer an animal-man living wild in the forest, but a soldier-man and a friend of the great _bulamatadi_. who governs the country. what we may call the caste feeling has indeed contributed greatly to civilising the country. anyone who is brought into direct contact with the whites as a soldier, a worker in the plantation or on the roads, soon feels that he is superior to the wild bushman and then becomes more attached to his new master than to his own cousins. it is rather amusing to hear the native domestics or _boys_. who probably rank higher than any other natives on the social ladder, speaking of the _indigenes_. with great contempt as though they were quite another and an inferior species. speaking of _bulamatadi_, it may be of interest to state the origin and meaning of the term--it means literally in the native tongue _one who breaks stones_. and was given to stanley, when he blasted rocks to make roads the term being afterwards buried with him on his coffin. since then it has been applied to all officials of the state and is used to connote anything and everything connected with the state. thus the state side of the river is bulamatadi, a state post is bulamatadi, a state steamer is bulamatadi, anything indeed belonging to the state is bulamatadi. white men traders and hunters, not state officials, are _mundellas_, but the native at once has a nick name for everyone which describes his chief characteristic. lord mountmorres usually wore long hunting boots and was named _big boots_. and as i wore eyeglasses, i became _double eyes_. we left irebu on august 2nd and at once disturbed many crocodiles and hippos, which abound in this district. an unfortunate accident happened in the afternoon. one of the crew fell overboard and must have been drawn under the stern wheel and struck by a paddle, for he never re-appeared and no sign of the poor fellow could be found, although diligent search was made for a long time. just before sunset a canoe comes alongside and fastens to the ship, although it is travelling at full speed. it is indeed wonderful to see the way the natives manipulate these narrow dug-outs not two feet wide. in this one were three fishermen with some fish which looked like trout for sale. at once a great clamouring takes place among the native passengers and it soon becomes plain that the chief fisherman was a good man of business. having taken an empty bottle for one fish and a piece of cloth for another, he refused more of those articles and demanded either salt or mitakos for his goods. in a short time however, he had disposed of his cargo and paddled contentedly away. [illustration: natives of the upper congo.] the natives are very vain and take much trouble over their personal appearance. as their clothes are very simple this is concentrated on their tatooage and on their hair dressing. from a hopeless looking tangle of black tow a very pretty erection is created by the barbers who are of both sexes. often the hair has five or six separate partings and quills or feathers are inserted into the ridges in between. all the women here wear a simple piece of cloth as they do in the lower congo and sometimes a plain leather belt is worn round the waist. the arms and legs are bare and covered with plain bangles made of mitakos. the women wear no hat of any kind, but the men ape the europeans and appear in old helmets or straw hats. both sexes are very clean personally, and bathe frequently in the river, but never dry themselves afterwards. the men keep on their loin cloths, but if they wear also shirts or trousers, take these off, while the women bathe in a white linen loin cloth and everyone afterwards pulls on his other clothes without drying. many natives rub a red powder into the skin made from cam-wood and thus acquire a copper colour, while others paint their faces with various stripes of red, yellow or white. on the congo however, where the natives are becoming civilised, this custom seems to be dying out. on august 3rd we cross the equator marked by a post on one side of the river and the point of an island in the centre. here used to be a settlement, but most of the people have moved higher up. there is still a mission near the place and a good road runs along the bank between plantations of bananas and gardens to coquilhatville which we reach in the afternoon. [illustration: botanical gardens at eala.] chapter iv. the equator district. coquilhatville, the capital of this important district is the largest town in the upper congo. the roads are formed by bamboos laid in rows, upon which sand and mud are placed the whole forming an effective pavement for foot passengers and no other is required for there are no carriages and only a few horses. all the officers don white uniforms with full dress, badges and medals, and together we proceed to make a formal call on captain stevens, the commissaire of the district with whom is staying mr. malfeyt, commissaire du roi. some of the officers take their dogs with them, which at once make a furious onslaught on the numerous cats of the commissaire and have to be suppressed. mgr. derikx places a particularly pugnacious fox-terrier under the basket work of his chair the little animal being literally sat upon by the dignitary of the church. the residency is a large brick building situated on a low hill and raised above the ground, the space beneath being enclosed and loop-holed, thus forming a small fort. the gardens are particularly pretty and well kept. beer is handed round and we sit chatting on the verandah until mr. grenfell, the head of the baptist mission, arrives. he has travelled up the river in the mission steamer from bolobo and was on his way when we stopped at that place. as he has been in the congo for more than twenty years, he knows the country well and thus speaks with authority. he thinks the system of government excellent, but that it is administered better in the lower than the upper congo, because there are not enough officials in the latter. he is convinced the population has greatly decreased on the riverside of the bangala district, and attributes it chiefly to sleeping sickness for he cannot say if emigration to the french congo has been extensive or not. no case of ill-treatment of natives has come to his notice during the last three years, but he thinks the state does not give them enough work to do. he has seen natives without hands, but does not believe that any atrocities have occurred for many years. generally speaking, he thinks it would be better if the state acquired all the property of the companies. although he does not know of any definite cases of ill-treatment, he has heard reports and thinks there is "no smoke without fire." however, he is quite prepared to agree that a very little fire in the congo makes a great deal of smoke. altogether, mr. grenfell spoke very calmly, and is evidently not carried away by emotionalism or strong prejudice against the state. at coquilhatville, as elsewhere in the state, the prisoners are given useful work to do. near by a party were digging a hole by the roadway. they were chained together but the chain was so long that it did not hamper their movements. two policemen were on guard, but the whole gang were evidently taking matters very easily. in the evening we dine with the commissaire and a party of sixteen or eighteen, including many of our fellow travellers, mr. grenfell and dr. button, of the liverpool school of tropical medicine, who is here studying the sleeping sickness. everyone we meet who has travelled in other countries and also visited the congo, is astonished at the wonderful development of the place. it is indeed becoming more and more apparent that the state has gone ahead very fast and that the stress has been great, both for europeans and natives. probably, now the machine is fairly set rolling, it will proceed more steadily in the future. next day we decide to leave the _flandre_ and stay for a week or so at coquilhatville. commandant ankström, the adjoint superieur to the commissaire, kindly lends us his house and we at once move in, glad to leave the mosquitoes of the river and to sleep in a room once more. everything in the house and garden is scrupulously clean and tidy, characteristics which i may add were found in nearly every post and house in the whole country. the sanitary arrangements are the perfection of simplicity. there are no drains, but simple receptables which are emptied and cleaned every morning while carbolic acid is used liberally. this admirable system is carried out in every post, however large or small, and i never once found it unobserved. the natives themselves are also very cleanly in their habits, so that although the heat is great and decomposition proceeds very rapidly, bad smells are absolutely unknown. near the residency is a well kept farm and the mutton tasted particularly nice after the diet of goat on the steamer. the effect of the climate on my digestion is curious. in europe all forms of starch and sugar give me indigestion and i have therefore to avoid bread, potatoes, jam, sugar and kindred substances. here however, i have a craving for these things and never have indigestion. i mention this personal trait, because many other travellers in the tropics have often stated that they could march on rice and jam for days without desiring meat of any kind. no doubt the system is working at, so to speak, high pressure, but it is curious that a complete change in one's idiosyncrasies should take place even in the first month. on august 5th the _flandre_ proceeds up the river, and we bid farewell to our travelling companions, who seem to have become old friends in the last six weeks. everyone, is always most kind and courteous, and not only gives every information, but also the benefit of his experience, and thus affords much valuable assistance. the town of coquilhatville consists of rows of brick houses standing in their own gardens and fronting on avenues. it may seem that one insists unnecessarily on the fact that the houses are brick in all the towns, a fact which the european would accept as a matter of course. the traveller however knows that in most tropical countries, wood is usually employed instead, as being easier to obtain and work. indeed in the united states, the country seats of even the very wealthy are generally constructed chiefly of that substance. bricks however, are by no means easily made in the congo, for in many places the soil is very sandy and it is therefore difficult to make the brick bind. again, lime is very scarce and all manner of substances are used to make mortar. among these the ant hills are much in favour, for it has been observed that these structures which are often thirty feet high and in proportion great in diameter, never disintegrate in the heaviest rain. when dug out and mixed with sand their substance makes an excellent mortar. again, the shells of oysters, which abound in some parts of the river are also used to make mortar with good results. the roofs are thatched with palm leaves wherever obtainable, and if well constructed are quite water tight. glass windows are not much used, for as much air as possible is desirable and the verandahs are so broad that rain rarely enters. the openings are thus closed only by shutters or by wire gauze to keep out the numerous insects. living here is very expensive. the usual money is the mitako, but the native likes salt and will sometimes take cloth if he fancies it. he is however, very independent, and on one occasion a native refused 14/in cloth for a single duck. fowls and eggs are about the same price as in the west end of london, but the latter are very scarce. fruit is however, cheap, as it is abundant. near the town is a large coffee and cocoa plantation arranged in square fields, separated by avenues of palms, which both form grateful shade and yield much palm oil. on each field is a large board on which is painted the number of bushes. papye, coeur de boeuf, bananas and pineapples abound. the system of work in every post is exactly the same, so that a description of it as witnessed in coquilhatville would equally do for every place in the congo. at 5.30 a.m. reveille and at 6 a.m. roll call of all the europeans and native workers who then, led by a bugler, march off to their respective duties. at 11.15 a.m. bugle call and all the natives march to the river and bathe. at 11.30 a.m. bathing ceases and they march off behind the bugler to dinner and rest. at 2.30 p.m. they assemble again and at 5.30 p.m. finish for the day. the native thus works eight hours and a half and rests in the hottest portion of the day. the workers in the plantations are entirely volunteers and so do not come under the 40 hours' rule, which is only applied to those who live in the villages and are not in the state service. the women do the light work in the plantations and thus fare much better, than when forced to do all the work by their husbands, which happens in all the villages. it is curious to see them brushing the roads with palm leaves. six or eight women walk abreast and push away the dust and dead leaves which are then collected in baskets and thrown into the river. as our house looks into the square where the force publique drill, we witness the methods employed. at first the recruit is taught which is right and which is left. _droite_ and up goes the right hand, _gauche_ and the left follows. the native corporal, however, has corrupted these words into _hi hoo_ so that, as is usual in military commands, no mere civilian can possibly understand them. afterwards when he comes to mount guard and relieve sentries, the order _présentez armes!_ might be anything from the sound. the band practices also close at hand. first the cornet picks out some air he has heard, note by note, and like a child who is learning the piano, always goes back to the beginning of the piece when he strikes a false note. after many trials the whole air is discovered. then the trombones and bass instruments put in the accompaniment also by experiment, and in the end the result is really quite good for africans unlike asiatics, take kindly to european music. the method of moving heavy weights is necessarily very primitive, for, with the exception of a few wheel-barrows, there are no vehicles of any kind here. a huge tree trunk was carried into the square one day; pieces of wood had been lashed across it about two feet apart throughout its length. one or two men on each side of each piece then lifted it and the whole eighty or hundred men marched the trunk along with ease at a jog trot. it would indeed be impossible to use heavy trolleys in this part of the congo, for the roads are sandy and the wheels would at once sink deeply into them. a walk through the plantation, which extends over some square miles, is very pleasant, as the palms spread their leaves across the avenues until they nearly touch each other thus forming beautiful shady groves. ferns grow round the stems and the whole is extremely pretty and cool-looking. beyond the plantation is the cemetery for the whites. each grave is covered with bricks and has a wooden cross at the head on which is inscribed the name and date of death. the age however, is omitted and this is perhaps as well, for the congo exacts a heavy toll of young lives and new comers are often depressed already by the accounts of the climate which have reached europe. further on is a forest through which runs a narrow native tract. this demonstrates well the extreme indolence of the native. if a small branch of a tree falls across the path, he steps over it, if a large one, he walks round it. time is no object, so the length of the road is immaterial. no attempt is made to form bridges, for the streams are not deep and are easily fordable, nor even to break off the branches of trees which obstruct the way. it is easier to stoop and pass beneath. the forest paths have indeed been made simply by the pressure of bare feet on the soil and undergrowth. a few monkeys and parrots chatter overhead and an occasional pigeon coos, but the chief forms of animal life here, are thousands of the most lovely butterflies. these are coloured to suit the surroundings and are therefore usually of subdued tints. occasionally however, a great insect nearly as large as one's hand, flies by exhibiting the most vivid greens, reds, and blues. bananas, rubber plants, palms and acacias crowd each other in the forest through which we walk for three or four miles, until we reach a native village consisting of a few square huts in a clearing. a handsome looking fellow comes up to us, salutes and desires to know if we wish to buy anything. having neither mitakos, salt, nor cloth except the pyjamas we are wearing, we cannot deal and leave the man wondering probably--if the native ever does wonder--why we walked all that distance if we did not require anything. on august 8th we visit the botanical gardens at eala, which is about three miles from coquilhatville. mr. pinard, the director of the gardens, shows us the various plants indigenous and imported which he has collected, and although the place has only been formed for three years, almost everything which could possibly grow has been planted. the soil is sandy, the altitude about 1100 feet above sea level and the temperature is about 90° f. numerous varieties of rubber plants are arranged here for experimental purposes, and gutta percha also is slowly attaining maturity. bushes which yield acid, suitable for coagulating the milk of the rubber plant, grow alongside. cotton does not do well here owing to the scarcity of rain, but coffee and tea flourish. all the palms, many ferns and orchids and nearly every fruit and vegetable, european as well as tropical, grow in great profusion while the melons, vegetable marrows, beans, peas, potatoes, lettuces, cucumbers and tomatoes look healthy. croton, belladonna and other medicinal herbs are cultivated and there are many beautiful flowers, whose use is chiefly ornamental. the gardens are of great extent, well laid out and beautifully kept, so that it is difficult to believe that four years ago this site was wild forest. adjoining the gardens is a large farm in which cattle, resembling those of the lower congo, look well. it is however, unfortunate that the cows only give sufficient milk to rear their calves. horses, asses and pigs live healthily and the native sheep thrive, but are very thin. although wheat will not grow, maize is easily raised and the grass, if coarse looking, is good for grazing. the farm buildings are kept most scrupulously clean, for the slightest neglect would probably occasion an epidemic of trichinosis among the pigs. the villages in the neighbourhood of coquilhatville seem very populous and prosperous. any morning early whole families can be met--father, mother and children, with bundles of manioc fastened on their backs by broad grass fibres--going to the town. everywhere the natives seem contented and happy. when not working, they sit in the roads and dye their skins or have their hair dressed, while the children play around with bows and arrows or other pugnacious kind of toys. the wealthy wear heavy brass rings extending from the ankle to the knee and the discomfort must be very great, but as is proved by the tatouage, the natives will bear much pain in order to beautify themselves. before leaving coquilhatville, we send for the boy epondo, who was rendered famous as an example of an atrocity by mr. casement, the late british consul at boma. epondo is now employed as a gardener by the commissaire of the district and is always at hand when visitors desire to see him. four inches below the elbow joint of the left arm there are two deeps scars, three inches apart, which could certainly have been produced by the bite of an animal of about the size of a wild boar. the stump of the forearm is covered with irregular scars, such as would remain if the hand had become gangrenous and fallen away. it was useless asking him questions, as he had already told two distinct stories which have been related above. on august 10th, we leave coquilhatville and steam down the river to irebu, which we reach after a few hours hot journey. mr. jeniaux, the commandant, has spared no pains to make the camp not only beautiful but attractive in every way and it has well earned its reputation as one of the show places of the congo. lord mountmorres is lodged in a spare house used for guests and lieutenant hoyer kindly lends me his during our stay. the mess is very comfortably arranged, and the dinner based on antelope and wild pig is excellent. next day i go hunting with mr. hoyer in a canoe propelled by twenty paddlers. these at first keep up a kind of chant to the time of the paddles which is quite musical and pleasant. as we approach the game grounds however, they become quite silent. after travelling up stream for about a mile, we land in a kind of bog which is full of a species of duck, somewhat resembling a wood-cock. a sergeant of the force publique acts as guide and hunter, and it soon becomes apparent that the native is in the habit of stalking even birds and shooting them sitting. this is natural enough for formerly they were armed with bows and arrows, and now the army of course use only rifles. shot guns, therefore, are only known to the boys of the white men, some of whom are very good shots. the hunter seems quite annoyed because i only shoot at birds on the wing, but is delighted when one falls. so far indeed, the only enthusiasm a native has shown, has been while hunting after a successful shot. the paddlers at once re-enact the scene, put imaginary guns to their shoulders give a loud bang and then describe circles with their hands to give a dumb show of the bird falling, laughing and shouting all the time. they are really just like young children and are easily pleased by trifles. after walking some distance the sergeant becomes wildly excited and clutches me violently by the arm but makes no noise. looking up i see a large monkey but signify that i will not shoot those beasts. he then asks permission to fire his rifle and brings it down with a shot through the head. after this we paddle on to the hippo ground. after the very first shot at a head fifty yards away, the canoe suddenly gives a great lurch and as nearly as possible capsizes. another great beast had evidently chosen that moment to come up just under it and if we had not been a heavy load, would undoubtedly have thrown it high in the air. as it was, beyond a shaking, no one was damaged and we had excellent sport for a few minutes until the animals made for the bank and hid themselves in the long grass. behind irebu is a plain, where the grass is really green, the green that is only seen in the tropics. here and there are clumps of palms and patches of forest, the whole giving the appearance of a well kept park. there are antelope and wild pig here but they are very difficult to stalk owing to the open character of the ground. there are also a few red-legged partridges and many pigeons so that one always found something to shoot. the native camp here consists of a large square shut off by a wooden fence. inside are large huts in which the soldiers live, and oddly enough, they all prefer to have separate establishments, each woman preparing the food for her husband. these women also work in the plantation when they are not concerned with the business of maternity, which judging by the number of children about, must be very seldom. the native cemetery is a curious-looking place, for on each grave is placed the clothes of the dead one and any other belongings he has. no one knows the origin or object of this custom. they are not for the journey to the happy hunting ground apparently, for missionaries say they have never heard the natives speak of any kind of a future state. it may be that these articles are merely to show the wealth of the departed; they are however, all broken or torn to shreds, so that no robber should be tempted to take them. many of the tribes are said to eat their dead, except those of high position and those who die of infectious diseases, and others used to throw the corpses in the river. some tribes however, have a very elaborate funeral with much wailing and lamenting and the departed is interred beneath his own hut, which is never occupied again. at irebu, the narrow river from lake tumba joins the congo, and from its small size is known usually as the canal. the current sometimes flows up and sometimes down, according to the height of water in the congo, but it is obvious that the general direction must be down, as many small streams flow into the lake, and all their water is certainly not dispersed by evaporation. many crocodiles pass up and down the canal and it would be easy to shoot them from the windows or verandah of my house, but it seems to be rather a waste of cartridges which, like most other things, must be carried the whole tour, for none can be procured in the congo. i do not therefore, care to run the risk of running short when the hunting grounds of uele are reached. sunday is usually a very busy day in irebu. no work is done, but all the chiefs come in to call on the commandant, who is evidently regarded as a species of parent. indeed, the nickname of commandant jeniaux is the native word meaning father. all the sick are brought in and receive treatment; children are vaccinated, and any little native disputes are brought before him to settle. these nearly always relate to women. one man will complain that his wife has not behaved herself properly at home, that she has not prepared his food nicely, or much more rarely, that she has run away with another. sometimes a chief complains that another one has stolen some of his women or goats, and then the other side is heard and the judgment pronounced. these are of course, not formal trials, and the judgment is more in the shape of advice. it is however, always acted upon, for the time being at least. serious cases are left to the courts, but this institution of friendly palavers is an excellent one and establishes confidence and good will among the natives. it is here indeed, that the personal character of the white man is put to the test. a calm, just, firm rule will win both the love and respect of these over-grown children, but an excitable, harsh, uncertain temper and manner, will only awaken distrust and hatred. the more popular the head of the station, the easier it is for him to find workers in the villages, which in turn affect the general condition of the country around. although the system of work is absolutely uniform and every official is tied in a particular groove, yet the whole welfare, work, and indeed, appearance of the country and villages, is good or bad according to the moral character and personality of the chief white man in the neighbourhood. i would therefore, say, with however some reserve, that when the natives are discontented and rebel, it is not because they dislike the system of government, but are dissatisfied with the man who administers it. [illustration: native chiefs at coquilhatville.] on august 16th, inspecteur d'etat warnant, commander in-chief of the force publique, arrives at irebu. he is on a tour of inspection, and has every reason to be satisfied with the efficiency of the troops. perfect discipline and harmony is maintained throughout all ranks and all the officers are agreed that the troops are perfectly steady when fighting and never show the least sign of cowardice. many are very good shots and their drill certainly leaves nothing to be desired. on the same day mr. joseph clarke, of the american baptist mission at ikoko, calls at irebu and kindly invites me to his house for a few days. this is situated on the banks of lake tumba, or mantumba or lac n'tomba, whichever you prefer. lord mountmorres remains at irebu, but i leave in mr. clarke's boat, propelled by twenty four paddlers, and journey along the canal, which twists and turns in all directions. towards sunset we land at boboko where mr. clarke buys some ducks and eggs, the price of the latter being a table-spoonful of salt for each. he arranges also to sell some nails to the chief. we then cross the canal to itutu, a branch mission station conducted by a native who preaches, and is an excellent carpenter. here we sleep, mr. clarke making up a bed in the boat, while i occupy a mud hut which however, is scrupulously clean. next morning, after a bathe in the canal, in which the water is like warm, weak coffee, we continue our journey to ngero, a long straggling village on the north bank of the lake. the huts here are oblong and strongly constructed of hard cane and mud, the roofs being thatched with dried palm leaves closely interlaced. it is necessary to stoop to enter them, for the doors are not five feet high, but it is possible to stand upright within. there is usually a wood fire burning, but no outlet for the smoke, which slowly finds its way through the roof. the rafters therefore, are covered with a kind of tar which, undoubtedly, acts as an antiseptic, and also keeps away the insects. the mosquitoes indeed, will not face wood smoke, but tobacco smoke is useless as a shield against their attacks. both sexes here are practically nude. the men are fishermen and the women look after the banana-plantations, crush the palm nuts for oil and do the cooking and housework. ngero was the village of the chief lokolo longania, who raised a rebellion against the state some years ago, and after some trouble was captured and hanged. here we buy some fish and eggs and then go on to ikoko, the crew singing native songs and christian hymns as they paddle along. the mission house is very prettily situated, and is a wooden building, with that very rare luxury in the congo, glass windows. here we are met by mrs. clarke, who has spent many years with her husband in africa. the mission has a good farm and garden, and since the climate is not as bad as in many parts, its inmates enjoy fair health. a large wooden building is used as a chapel and school, and near it is a saw pit and a carpenter's shop where the boys make furniture and boxes for sale at irebu and other posts in the neighbourhood, for the furniture of the ikoko mission is quite famous. the girls all wear plain, blue frocks which they make themselves, as well as clothes for sale, and many are also quite expert at various kinds of fancy needlework. the business has however, decreased lately owing to the decrease in population. the mission bell has been ingeniously fixed in a tree, and it calls to school, to work and prayer, as regularly as the bugle in the state posts. the village of ikoko consists of groups of huts separated from each other by the tall grass, which here is eighteen or twenty feet long, but as the ends bend over, not above twelve or fifteen feet high. the people seem idle, contented and happy, the chief industry being fishing and net-making. mr. clarke said the population used to be about 2000 in number, but many have died of sleeping sickness and some have migrated. this is very evident, for a number of huts are deserted, and the weeds have grown over them, in some cases entirely blocking the entrances. out of curiosity, we have a rough census taken and find there are 138 men in the village on august 19th. some no doubt are fishing, and allowing for these and the women and children, there are probably not more than 1000 to 1200 people now living in the village. the work these do for the state, consists of supplying 600 rations of fish per week to the plantation of bikoro, a ration consisting of a whole, a half, or a quarter of a fish according to its size. for this they are paid 600 mitakos--or about 23/--. they also supply bamboos and baskets, but it is very plain that if the people worked hard, they would certainly not require as long as 40 hours a month to accomplish their tasks. the fish are caught in nets made of thin bamboo lashed together by a tough creeper, which are arranged in the lake. sometimes it happens that the fishermen are unfortunate and then they buy from their neighbours who take advantage of the scarcity value and charge them more than they will receive from the state. a village might thus be out of pocket by the transaction, but as each one has its turn, probably by the end of the year no one has lost or gained. in the mission school men, women, and children are learning to read and write the native language, and some have mastered also the rudiments of arithmetic and french. some of the classes are held in the school-room and others under trees near at hand. an assistant missionary, mr. whitman, helps mr. clarke, while mrs. whitman teaches in the school. on august 20th we start for bikoro under a threatening sky. it is indeed soon apparent that a tornado is crossing the lake towards us, for great banks of dense clouds advancing rapidly from the south west now obscure the sun. it would be impossible to travel through the storm, so we turn the boat and make for a creek which bounds ikoko on the east. only just in time, we reach a native hut, as a terrific storm bursts overhead. the rain descends in sheets accompanied by vivid green lightning and crashes of thunder. fortunately the roof is water-tight, but the mud floor of the hut has worn down below the level of the ground outside and soon the water pours through the door and is nine or ten inches deep inside. the fire splutters out and the logs float around amid the crowing of fowls and the cackling of ducks who are quite contented and happy. our hostess with a baby strapped on her back in the usual native fashion, commences to bale out the water with a basket while we sit on logs in the darkness and try to keep dry. after about an hour the storm passes and we go back to the mission, the lake now appearing like a small sea. mr. clarke lends me a copy of the _memorial concerning conditions in the independent state of the congo_ which was presented to the american senate early in 1904. there seem to be a great many curious errors in it. it starts with the astounding statement that the congo free state has a sea board of 400 miles along the atlantic, whereas a glance at the map will show that it is really about a tenth as long. it estimates the force publique at 30,000 men, rather more than twice its full strength, and its author is under the impression that the people may not collect the produce of the land or "barter it for merchandise." it is a little difficult to understand what the author means here. as a matter of fact, the people are trading with each other, all day long and with the white travellers whenever they have the opportunity. they sell food, lances, native knives and all kinds of curiosities to those who desire them and are at perfect liberty to barter away all their property if they wish to do so. they may not of course enter the territories of the state or private companies and take the ivory or rubber, any more than the people in europe may walk on to private land and gather the corn or fruit from it for their own use or profit. the native indeed is in the position of a farm labourer who gathers the fruits of the soil for his master and is paid a wage for so doing. on sunday i attend service in the chapel. a native from sierra leone reads a lesson from the gospel of st. matthew, which has been translated into bangala and gives a short address on the subject afterwards. he is evidently much in earnest and talks with that kind of spirit of conviction frequently to be noticed in street preachers. several hymns are sung and then the people pass out, dropping their mitakos into the plate as they do so. in the afternoon, we walk round the village. mr. clarke notices a boy with a malformation of one knee and speaks to him. he then explains to me that this is another atrocity, for the boy said he had been shot by the soldiers of the state when an infant. an examination of the boy however, showed he was suffering from a kind of bony tumour. there are several chiefs in ikoko and one of them also practises as a doctor. he has cleared a space about ten feet in diameter and enclosed it for a consulting room, while an inner chamber, still more closely surrounded, is the secret place where the infusions are made and the charms and fetishes consulted. although many of the drugs used, are efficacious or not, according to the faith of the patient, as in civilised countries, yet the white people constantly tell of apparently wonderful cures by native doctors, and it is certain that the people at present prefer to be treated by those of their own colour. there is also an old lady in ikoko, the widow of a chief, who is reported to be very clever as a healer. this old person has european features but has an unpleasant expression. the native women wear nothing but a thin belt with a small piece of cloth attached but they are covered with brass rings, and the principle wife of an important chief here was wearing a necklet of solid brass which must have weighed thirty or forty pounds. this was fixed on and had to be worn night and day. [illustration: the farm at eala.] in spite however, of clever doctors, the men do not live to be much over forty years of age. perhaps they have too many wives for there are far more old women than men. on the other hand, as there must be two or three women to each man, it is only natural to find more of the former at any given age. the infants are not weaned for three or four years and during that period the woman it is said refuses to lie with her husband. another wife therefore, cohabits with the man while the first rears her child. polygamy is thus a custom which the missionaries find very difficult to change. the state however, refuses to recognise more than one wife and many of the soldiers are legitimately married by the officials qualified to perform that office. much palm wine is consumed by the natives for its manufacture is very simple. a gourd is tied to an upper branch of a palm which is then tapped and the sap drops into the vessel. if this is left all night, fermentation takes place without artificial aid, and at midday a kind of highly scented alcoholic cider is produced which however, is acid and undrinkable by the evening. this natural wine must therefore, be drunk on the day of fermentation and does not improve on keeping. what a useful tree the palm is! its trunk, branches and leaves are fine building materials; its matting forms beds and furniture; its oil gives light, acts as butter or lard for cooking, makes soap when mixed with banana juice or an alkali, and indeed, can be used for all the purposes of oil; it forms wine, and the heart of the plant is most excellent eating as a salad. therefore given meat, the palm tree and the banana, and a town can be built and its inhabitants fed. both sexes smoke a great deal of tobacco and also indian hemp, which latter has however, been found so injurious that it is illegal to grow the plant but the native tobacco is not at all unpleasant when smoked in a pipe. on august 22nd we take a trip up a small river to the east of ikoko which winds through dense forest and is evidently full of fish, for at intervals, barricades are erected which stretch right across the river, with the exception of a small space to allow canoes to go up and down. in the middle or one side however, an opening is left which can be closed by lowering one of the bamboo nets heavily weighted, vertically down. platforms are erected ten or twelve feet high to raise or lower these nets and the whole structure is ingeniously and strongly put together. the fish are thus allowed to swim up and are then enclosed in a section of the river, when they are easily caught in baskets. all the riverside population engages in fishing. on the way i shot a toucan, which must have weighed ten or twelve pounds, with number five shot which happened to be in the gun at the time. the bird however, was hit in the head and breast. the natives at once plucked it and having scarcely warmed it at the fire greedily eat it. at a village called bokoto a boy was brought to me with his right hand missing, for i was very anxious to see an original of the photos which are so common in england. i was indeed beginning to despair of finding one at all for most of the white men had never seen a case, none of the natives understood what i wished and hitherto no missionary knew where one was to be found. here however, was a boy with his right hand missing and it had evidently been removed by a sharp instrument, but not i think by a surgeon, for the scars were not such as follow amputation at the wrist joint. mr. clarke acted as interpreter and the following conversation took place. --when was this done? --during the rubber war when the boy was an infant. --who did it? --the soldiers who came from bofiji. --why did they come? --because the natives had not collected rubber. --where did this take place? --in the country behind bikoro and the mother was killed at the same time as she was carrying away her infant. neither the date nor the age of the boy is known, but he appears to be 12 or 13 years of age and his name is imputela. although therefore, no proof can be adduced, for the child of course remembers nothing and only knows what he has been told, there is a possibility that a native soldier may have cut off his hand. on the other hand, it may have been injured or cut by a native chief. i mention this case at length, because it was the only one i ever found in a tour of several thousand miles in the interior of the congo state, although everyone knew i was very anxious to see such cases. on our way back we call at inkaka another fishing village. behind it a few of the batoir tribe had temporarily settled. they are very savage and uncivilised and lead a wandering life, hunting game. sometimes they act as professional hunters and are employed by villagers to find them food. one young fellow was armed with a bow and wooden arrows poisoned at the tip and carefully wrapped in a leaf. the poison is simply the decomposing matter of dead men or animals. as long as this is wet, it is most deadly but loses its strength when dried. for this reason only is the tip wrapped in a leaf. death has followed within a few hours of being struck with a poisoned arrow and this is only to be expected, for we know how dangerous it is for surgeons when they wound themselves during an examination of the dead body. on the way home we found a snake in the water and shot it just at the very moment it had seized a fish and was holding it in its mouth. just as we were picking this out another similar one appeared and this met the same fate. they were bright green in colour and had small heads, but one measured 93 and the other 90 inches in length. on august 23rd we visit bikoro a large state plantation of coffee, cocoa and rubber, situated on the bank of the lake about eight or nine miles from ikoko. it is conducted by mr. monaie, a swiss gentleman, who has had much experience in horticulture. here nature has been closely imitated but improved upon. first the undergrowth was cleared from the forest and then the native rubber vines were planted and have commenced to climb the trees. these are not tapped until they are ten years old, for although it is possible to obtain the rubber milk before, the vines are killed or seriously injured if they are cut when too young. some rubber shrubs from brazil have also been planted, but do not flourish as well as the native kind. altogether more than a 1000 hectares have been planted and the various plantations are connected by well kept paths. more than three hundred natives are employed and the work in the shade of the forest must be very pleasant. they are housed in a series of huts in a clearing, which are kept scrupulously clean. there are fifteen or twenty soldiers here who act as policemen--for only the big towns have a separate police force--and guard the rubber and ivory stores. gum copal is also found in the district in large quantities and in various qualities and colours. the brick houses for the two officials face the lake and gardens have been laid out which are very neat and tidy, the whole place, although much smaller, rivalling even irebu in beauty. next day i return to irebu in the _florida_ a small stern wheel steamer, and find a welcome mail from home and also a permit to shoot game from boma. this latter is an imposing document of nine articles and gives permission to shoot adult male animals but not female if accompanied by their young, or, if possible to distinguish them, even if alone. the animals named are, _hippopotames, baffles, antilopes, gazelles, ibex, chevrotains, les divers sangliers, petits singes, outardes, francolains, perdreaux, pintades_ and other game birds. permission is also given to kill _in a scientific manner_. one elephant in the close season. it will thus be seen that the state is determined to protect the wild animals of the forest from indiscriminate slaughter and stringent laws regulating hunting are decreed from time to time. [illustration: the ubangi river.] chapter v. the ubangi river.--irebu to banzyville. we leave irebu on august 29th in the _florida_ and steam up the river ubangi. the colour of the water at once changes for whereas the congo carries much sand and is brown, the ubangi carries much clay and is a dirty yellow. the banks are densely wooded and in the stream are many islands also covered with forest. lying on patches of sand or on the fallen trunks of trees are many crocodiles asleep. there is not much sport in shooting them but one which was leisurely swimming up stream about fifty yards from the ship, made a sporting shot and was killed with a bullet in the heart. as the cabin is small and hot, we arrange to sleep on the bridge of the steamer which is almost embedded in trees when we tie up to the bank for the night. a tornado bursts about midnight, but the dense foliage acts as a protection and very little water finds its way into our improvised bedroom. next day we stop at bobanghe, a native wood-post, and go ashore. the huts here are thatched with grass, for palms seem scarce. some of the men have black beards which they plait into one or two tails, producing a curious appearance and while they fish, the women do the work of the village and the marketing. several of them were sitting on logs, contentedly puffing tobacco smoke from wooden pipes while they offered fish, fruit and vegetables for sale to our crew and native passengers. one variety of fish was particularly noticeable; it was coloured like a trout, but had a long snout on the dorsal side. we bought one, and it proved very good eating. the forest here is full of rubber plants, nearly every vine and leaf, when broken, yielding the milky sap which dries, or can be coagulated, into rubber. one day the boy jean fell overboard, but leisurely undressed in the water and swam to the bank, whence he was rescued by the canoe of the steamer. he was perfectly calm but chikaia burst into tears and loudly blubbered. very little indeed is sufficient to arouse emotionalism in some-of the natives, who are always laughing or crying, fortunately the former more often than the latter. the banks of the ubangi descend as a rule, sheer into deep water and are often indeed miniature cliffs. no attempt is made to fashion steps and the villagers slide down the banks as best they can and thus form a rude path to the water. a half dozen men in an hour could make a convenient inclined plain or steps, but the native only does what work is absolutely necessary in order to live, and although loving ease, will not take the trouble to make himself more comfortable. so he climbs painfully up the bank every night from his canoe and slides down again every morning without attempting to improve the path. the vanity of the native however, causes him to take great pains to--as he thinks--improve his personal appearance. brass collars and bangles are very uncommon on the ubangi and beads take their place. the women wear short skirts made of vegetable fibres plaited, which must take days or weeks to construct. these are black or red in colour and are suspended from the waist, but as the fibre is somewhat stiff, they project all round like the dress of a ballet dancer. these are peculiar to the ubangi and are rarely worn by other tribes. the men wear only loin cloths and often carry a large straight knife suspended by a leather belt strapped round the chest. it is very hot from midday to sunset, but the nights are comparatively cool. one afternoon we saw a great number of serpent-birds perched high up on a bulbous tree, and, as they are good to eat, stopped to shoot some. they were not at all shy and did not depart after several shots had been fired, but wheeled round and round as if to discover what was the cause of the strange noise. ball, 3 and 5' shot were equally efficacious and more than a dozen fell in a few minutes. these birds have a beautiful black and white plumage with a long neck and bill and webbed feet and weigh five or six pounds each. the flavour is somewhat like ptarmigan and the natives eat them, as usual, without waiting until they were properly cooked. in the evening i took a stroll in the forest and soon found the recent spoor of an elephant. chikaia was just ahead, when he suddenly stopped and whispered _macat_ pointing in the air. there was a fine monkey and the boy's instinct for such a choice morsel, actually caused him to stop, although he knew very well it would have been absurd to fire and so frighten the elephant. at one time we must have been within a few yards of the beast when a snapping of a twig or some sound disturbed him and with a bellow he rushed away crashing through the forest. it is curious that while birds are so bold in africa, ground game is extremely shy and most difficult to stalk. on september 2nd we reach imese, the first place on the ubangi where there are white men. mr. donneaux was the chef du poste and everything was in good order. rubber vines were being planted in the forest and rubber shrubs in the clearings. coffee was also growing and pineapples and other fruits looked well. all the houses are, as usual, of brick which are of better quality than on the congo, as the clay is good and very abundant. the native village is about ten minutes' walk distant and is arranged in two or three regular streets and not in patches of huts dotted down here and there as in the lake tumba district. the state impost here is one kilogramme of rubber each month from each man for which he is paid 40 or 50 centimes. collecting this amount takes one or two days and the rest of the time the native works for himself or not as he chooses. here the people seem more industrious than in most parts, many women being engaged in making mats and pottery. the pots are fashioned by hand with the aid of a round stone and are so wonderfully symmetrical that they resemble those made on a lathe. the clay is obtained from the river bed by diving and after the vessel is made, it is first dried in the sun and then baked in a wood fire. while still hot, it is painted with gum copal which renders it water-tight. [illustration: young coffee trees at coquilhatville.] at dinner we have a dish called _beefsteak american_. formed apparently of very tender, cold meat with green salad and mayonnaise. on asking however, we hear it is the raw flesh of goat cut up small. it is certainly the best way of eating goat's flesh, for any method of cooking seems to extract what little juice it possesses and convert it into a substance resembling old leather. the name is curious, for it is neither beef nor steak, and is probably as rare in america as irish stew is in ireland or welsh rarebit in wales. there are some very fine canoes here, very often carved throughout their entire length, a favourite device being a crocodile. two or three very large _tom-toms_. are also in the village. these instruments are carved from a solid piece of a tree six or eight feet long, most of the interior being extracted through a narrow slit-like aperture two or three inches wide and running nearly the length of the tom-tom. the result is a hollow instrument, giving one or two different notes when struck in different parts which can be heard for many miles. in case of war, the whole country side can be quickly aroused, but the _tom-tom_. is also used during peace as a telegraph. at imese two soldiers and their future brides came on board for the purpose of travelling to libenge to be married, for only commissaires of districts and missionaries can legally join two into one. the send off was quite pretty, the happy couples being pelted with flowers as they stepped on board, while one friend--perhaps a kind of best man--threw his cap into the river. the state encourages regular marriages, especially among the soldiers. the wife then works in the gardens or plantations, while her husband drills, and returns at midday and in the evening to cook his food. next day we reach dongo, a village situated on a hill perhaps 200 feet high. after looking at flat forest for weeks, this appears a veritable mountain and it seems quite a stiff climb up the rough path constructed as usual only by the feet of the people who have used it. mr. vannini, an italian officer, is constructing a post here with the aid of some ten or fifteen soldiers. dongo is a very large village containing perhaps 3000 people and the huts are arranged in streets running parallel to each other with their ends towards the river. the physique of the people is very good indeed, some of the men being more than six feet in height. the women mostly wear copper collars, three inches high and with a second horizontal collar attached on the outside. the whole is hammered on and must be intensely uncomfortable. a special pillow, consisting of a piece of wood hollowed out for the head is necessary, as sleep would otherwise be impossible with such a contrivance round the neck. a great number of children run about and seem to be well nourished. some have large heads and protruding stomachs, without however, other signs of _rickets_. many of the men are painted with yellow stripes, an indication that they have killed their man in battle, and these donned their fighting clothes of many colours and with shields and spears posed to be photographed, dancing around and uttering wild war whoops. a human skull partly buried in the middle of a road is evidently a souvenir of the terrible orgy which followed some recent encounter. indeed all the people here are cannibals and those killed or captured in war, except women and children, are always eaten. when not fighting, the people fish, collect rubber, grow kwanga and generally work fairly well and are not troublesome. mr. vannini, however, evidently thinks it safer to erect a high stockade around his house and the huts of the soldiers. this is a wise precaution, as only a few months ago four french traders were killed and eaten on the opposite bank of the river. after passing several densely populated villages, one of which extends in a straight line for ten miles, we reach libenge, the capital of the ubangi district. the houses here have been arranged around a square with one side open to the river. in one of these we take up our quarters and then go for a stroll with captain bertrand, the commissaire of the district, and dr. rhodain, the medical officer for ubangi. the latter states that he has only seen two cases of sleeping sickness in several years' residence and that there is no syphilis, small-pox or tuberculosis in the neighbourhood. the people work well here,--the villagers collecting the usual kilogramme per month, while the workers in the plantations clear the forest and plant more rubber for future use. the hunting here is very good in the dry season. now however, it is necessary to wade in water three feet deep in the forest. spoor of elephant and antelope abound and there are several magnificent eagles and hawks overhead. the chief difficulty here for europeans is the water question. although much of this necessity is on all sides, it is not of good drinking quality and dysentery is therefore common, while bilious fever and hematuria are also known. one night at libenge as we were playing bridge, the sentry suddenly fired and the bullet whistled uncomfortably close by the door of our house. the guard turned out very quickly without any fuss and passed at the double. a single sharp order was given and then all was quiet again. next day we heard that a thief had penetrated to the rubber store when he was seen by the sentry, who fired the alarm, but the man was not captured. all the natives here seem anxious to trade. ladies sell us their brass bangles for a tea cup full of salt and their dresses for a similar amount. spears, knives and many other curios are also offered for sale some of which have evidently been hastily made since our arrival. we leave libenge on september 9th and continue our journey in the _florida_, this being her first trip up the river higher than this point for at low water, the rapids above cannot be navigated by steamers at all. now however, the depth is almost at its maximum, and as the boat only draws two feet, she can pass over the rocks with great ease. in the afternoon we stop at a village and ask for wood, for as there was no regular steamer service, there were no organised wood posts. the natives at first brought down a log or two and demanded payment at an exorbitant rate, which the captain refused to give, and it became necessary for our crew to go ashore and cut wood themselves. the chief seemed willing to deal fairly, but evidently had little authority over his lazy people. then on again through the tornado, which at this season appears daily with great regularity either in the afternoon or at night time. the scenery is now changing, for we are approaching the limits of the great equatorial forest. hills, which appear like mountains, after the dead level, can be seen in front covered with grass and a few trees. on september 10th, we reach songo a small state post in charge of a native from sierra leone. here we pitch our tents in a clearing and proceed to re-arrange the baggage, for we shall have now to travel in canoes, the river not being navigable for steamers for some distance. immediately above songo indeed is the first of the ubangi rapids, the water roaring and hissing as it fights its way down and over the rocks. just before bedtime, chikaia comes with a long face and evidently much disturbed and asks for a gun or rifle to protect himself, as the _indigènes_ are supposed to be very savage here. this of course i refuse, and tell him to go to sleep by the fire and not be foolish. however, i notice that both my rifle and gun are loaded and carefully placed by my bedside. the boys then organise a watch over the baggage, taking it in turn to act as sentry. on the opposite side of the river is bangi, the second most important place in the french congo, prettily situated on the side of a hill, and next day we cross in a small canoe. the journey is interesting and exciting. below the rapids are many small whirlpools, and the capita of the canoe takes advantage of these to help him on his course. sometimes the water at the upper and sometimes at the lower edge of the whirlpool is flowing in the direction he wishes to take and with wonderful dexterity, he turns the bow of the canoe towards a suitable current. we swing about like a cork and ship a good deal of water but arrive without mishap on the other side. we call on mr. jacques, the vice governor general of the french congo, who kindly offers us assistance and a few soldiers to act as sentries and interpreters when we camp on the french side of the river. most of these are senegalese and are smart looking fellows. the natives here affect a very elaborate head dress consisting of many coloured beads twisted and plaited into their hair, the amount of time and patience required by the barbers being enormous. it appears that the four french traders, who were massacred a few weeks ago, had two factories, one close to the river and one further inland. in the latter was a large stock of arms and ammunition. these were hastily abandoned and the natives then seized them and attacked the factory on the river. all four white men were killed and it is feared that two were first tied to trees and tortured. a punitive expedition has been sent against the tribe who are now armed with these modern rifles and the moral of the story is obviously that it is very dangerous to permit traders to import and sell arms at all. one night i was awakened and saw the boys dancing excitedly about the fire and in front of my tent. having asked the matter, chikaia, whose zoological knowledge is very limited, replied _il est la petite bête_. this sounded like mosquitoes so, having tucked in my net more closely, i turned round to sleep. a few minutes afterwards, lord mountmorres appeared shouting with pain and mounting a chair in front of my tent rapidly peeled off his clothes. he said his bed was full of great black ants which had fixed on his skin and were biting him all over. millions of these pests indeed were on the camping ground but had as yet not reached my tent. hastily pulling on high boots and covering myself from head to foot, i cautiously crept out of the tent and found the ground black with ants. it was impossible to kill them by stamping about for they were simply driven into the soft sand and wriggled out again the moment the foot was withdrawn. we were evidently in the line of march of a migrating host and were forced to beat a hasty retreat leaving the insects in full possession. there is no drinking water at songo, so we had to boil and filter that from the river. this proved very difficult, for even after allowing it to settle and then carefully decanting it, there was so much mud left, that the pores of the porcelain candles in the filters frequently became blocked. we had therefore to be content with muddy water well boiled. as we had a fair amount of baggage, we required sixty or seventy paddlers and it was not easy to find so many. at length however, after searching on both sides of the river, crews were collected for three large canoes and we arranged to continue our journey on september 14th. the canoes were lifted up the songo rapids empty, while the baggage was carried along the bank. it was then stowed in the boats and having taken our places we made a start. the method of propulsion is very interesting to watch. the canoes are sixty or seventy feet long and three or four wide. in the centre is an awning to shade the white man and in front by the bows, a space is left about ten feet long in which three pole men work. these use their poles as in punting, except that the ends are forked, so that they are enabled to push either against the bottom of the river or rocks, or branches of trees on the bank, for the canoe keeps close to the shore all the time in order to give the polemen an opportunity and also to avoid the swifter current running in the centre of the river. in the stern twenty or thirty paddlers sit on the sides of the boat and work together, while on the extreme end two or three stand up with long paddles to steer. the cook with his fire built on a heap of clay in the bottom of the canoe, sits among the paddlers and the sentries and baggage tuck themselves in somewhere, for it is wonderful how many people and how much baggage these canoes will carry. soon after starting we pass the catholic mission on the french bank and immediately begin to fight a rapid. the paddlers strain every muscle, the pole men push with all their strength against rocks and tree trunks and the soldiers help by pulling on branches of trees or anything else which is fixed. the water whirls past as we creep up inch by inch. at one moment gaining, at another losing, the excitement being intense, for if once we are conquered by the stream, the canoe will probably be broken to pieces on the rocks. at times some of the crew jump out and clinging with their feet to the rocks, while up to their middle in the torrent, push the boat up with all their strength. at length smooth water is reached and on we go quietly for an hour or two, when another rapid is reached and the struggle commences again. the work is intensely hard and dangerous, but the sangos are expert boatmen and seem anxious to finish their task as soon as possible. in rough water or smooth, the crews race along, singing, shouting and encouraging each other to make one more effort. after an exciting and tiring day we reach a village and having seen the crews rationed, pitch our tents. on again at 6.30. a.m. in a heavy river mist which however, is soon dispersed as the sun rises. the rapids, which at first had the excitement of novelty, began to pall for it was tiresome not being able to read or sleep without being disturbed by the possibility of a bath in a current running, at the rate of perhaps fifteen miles an hour, between rocks. towards sunset we reach the site of bokanda, a village now deserted, for some years ago the chief with his people migrated across the river to the french side. we decide therefore, to sleep in the new village and proceed to cross, but are still in mid stream when we see the majority of the people running away into the forest behind, the women gathering up their children and household utensils, while the men followed more leisurely. the chief however, and a few braves appear on the beach with guns and for a moment it looks as though they mean mischief. they evidently however think better of it, for we land unmolested and send interpreters to say we are hunters and only desire a place for our camp and food for our men. the chief at once advances and gives us chickens and eggs while the soldiers pitch the tents in the square of the village. on again at daybreak, the journey being still more tiring, for it is impossible to force the canoes heavily laden up some of the cataracts. we have therefore to land three times and while the baggage is carried along the bank, the empty canoes are hauled up with ropes. at length the elephant rapids are safely negotiated and an hour or two afterwards mokoangai is reached but in three long days' hard work, we have ascended only about thirty miles of the river. at mokoangai is a large plantation and farm and well built houses for the one or two white men who live there. next day i start before daybreak hunting. the country is open and hilly, covered generally with grass eight or ten feet high. still there are many places where the ground is almost bare and it is an ideal spot for stalking game. after walking a few miles in a mist, we see several antelopes and endeavour to stalk them. while still nearly a hundred yards away, they commence to walk slowly towards cover but it is possible to get a fair side shot and one falls heavily hit in the shoulder. soon after an elephant suddenly appears about two hundred yards ahead walking along the crest of a hill. sending the native hunter to pick up the antelope, chikaia and i follow the elephant's spoor for some hours, but do not come up with it or find other game. we were now high up on the range of hills behind mokoangai and the view was magnificent. the great river could be seen winding its way between the hills covered with the vivid greens only to be found in damp tropical countries. otherwise the picture somewhat recalled central wales with a wye magnified a hundred times. chikaia had walked a long way carrying a heavy rifle, and now showed signs of fatigue so he was encouraged by being allowed to shoot a monkey on the way home. next day being sunday, we rest quietly in the post and prepare to leave next morning in the _aia_ which is one of the first launches stanley took to africa and is therefore, somewhat ancient. since she is too small to carry much baggage, she tows a large open iron boat nearly the same size alongside. in this the camp is slowed and the boys and soldiers take their places sitting on the bales and cases, and we make a start on monday september 19th for banzyville. fortunately there are no rapids in this stretch of the river and it is at least possible to stand up comfortably in the launch, whereas in the canoes, it was necessary to sit still in a long hammock chair for practically twelve hours each day. the people and villages now change much in appearance for the huts are shaped like beehives and are made of frameworks of wood covered with grass. the entrance is only about three feet high and the dome of the roof perhaps four times that height. in some of them a kind of platform is erected which seems to be an attempt to make a two storey building of the hut. the women are here either quite nude or wear a small piece of cloth or grass below the waist; the men however all have a loin cloth. all the people seem to be of fine physique and the proportion of children is abnormally high. the first night we stop at a trading post of the dutch company on the french side of the river and are hospitably received by the agents there. next day we reach the catholic mission of sainte famille also on french territory. the fathers have laid out a large plantation and farm; horses, cattle, sheep, goats and poultry all doing well. indeed modern american ploughs and carts give the farm quite a home-like appearance. maize, oranges, bananas, pineapples and many vegetables are here in abundance. sleeping sickness is not known, which immunity is attributed by the priests to the fact that the natives have plenty of fresh meat and eat little kwanga. apparently the disease is due to a bacillus. it is however, at least possible that the new diet of the civilised native may be a predisposing factor. the savage is naturally carnivorous and before the advent of the white man, had little to eat but animal flesh. now his chief article of diet in the western parts of the congo is kwanga, which consists chiefly of starch, and he has only a little meat and fish. along the congo where the native is civilised, there is much sleeping sickness, but along the ubangi where he is more savage, there is practically none. the fathers give us some spirits distilled from the papye and pineapple which are very good and beer made from maize which is not. they then show us round the grounds and before we leave load us with eggs and fresh vegetables which are very acceptable. at sunset we tie up to the bank and make a camp. it is wonderful how quickly the grass is cut down, the tents erected, fires lighted and dinner cooked, for when the native knows he has to perform a certain definite task, he works hard, so that he can eat his dinner and get to sleep as soon as possible. chikaia apparently has a fine sense of satire or humour. a table was broken and when i asked how it was done, chikaia instead of answering "it has been done a long time" as an european servant would, went one better and said "it has always been like that." "i suppose it was made so," i replied. "yes, sir" was the answer and there was no more to be said. the banks of the river are here lined with villages and each time we stop crowds run to see the steamer, while the chief comes on board, shakes hands solemnly and presents eggs, chicken or a goat. in return we hand back a good value in cloth, beads or salt. mitakos are not seen here at all, for beads are used instead. the natives always seemed grateful and satisfied with their presents, which was rarely the case on the congo where the people generally grumble even when they receive many times the value of the article they sell. we camp at the village of dru, where we find it very difficult to pitch tents owing to the rocky nature of the soil. on september 22nd we reach the kuangu river where is situated the chief post of a french trading company. the buildings are as usual of bricks, the mortar being made of the shells of river oysters and sand. soon after our arrival, a poor native was brought in whose hand had been terribly mangled in a circular saw. we dressed it as carefully as possible and fixed it on a splint until he could reach a post with a hospital. in the night however, weird chanting was heard and next day we discovered that his friends had been exorcising the evil spirits--i.e. the perchloride of mercury in which the hand had been washed--had torn off all the bandages and sent the boy a way in a canoe to avoid the white medicine man. the hand will almost certainly fall off and the further history of the boy will perhaps be interesting. one of the traders, mr. constantine, a swiss, said he had been stationed in the interior and had heard no news since january. we are only able to bring him up to june, three months behind date. this gentleman has had an interesting career. he fought for england in the matabele war and then settled in the orange free state where he was commandeered by cronje and forced into the trenches at magersfontein, but to his own great satisfaction was soon taken prisoner by the british and was very well treated. he now lives absolutely alone, without a guard of any sort, some days' journey from the river and feels quite safe, for the natives here look upon a white man as a protection from the arabs. this company trades in rubber with the natives, paying in beads at the rate of 40 centimes a kilogramme. it is therefore, unlikely that many natives migrate to the french congo where they receive no more pay for their work than in the state, and are besides taxed. the country behind the station is flat veldt and only a few small elephants are occasionally found. the usual heavy tornado bursts in the afternoon nearly filling the launch and boat with water in a very short time. having bought some wine and other stores, from the company we next day continue up the river past many villages all densely populated. the architecture has again changed, the huts now being tent shaped and rising to a point in the centre which is sometimes ornamented with a pair of antelope horns. some of the villages have plantations and all the inhabitants seem desirous to trade, salt being the substance usually demanded in return for lances, knives or curios. indeed, even our own people wish to do a little business, and after buying articles from the villagers, try to sell them to us at no doubt a greatly enhanced price. the higher one travels up the river, the more numerous and densely populated are the villages until they extend almost without a break for many miles along the banks. each one supplies us with a _bras_ of wood which is paid for with beads. the scenery here in the very centre of africa is beautiful, range after range of hills, not however very high, extending as far as the eye can see. these are covered with grass, which near the villages is often burnt off, leaving black patches. on these the manioc will be planted for two years and then new areas will be cleared in the same manner. it is very hot in the day time and very humid, so that it is extremely difficult to preserve anything. stitches rot in leather and the soles of boots fall off, guns and rifles have to be oiled carefully every day and cigars are completely spoilt in a few hours unless kept in tin boxes. can one wonder therefore that the human system soon breaks down in this vapour bath and that sickness is very common in this part. there is not much game to be seen from the river but occasionally a covey of partridges rises from the grass and comes within gun shot of the launch. the day before we reached banzyville we found the steamer of the french company and paid a visit to the director, where we drank to the anglo-french agreement, news of which had just arrived. every frenchman in africa is delighted with the gift of territory as every englishman should be with the settlement of so many prickly questions. [illustration: sango natives of the ubangi.] [illustration: the upper ubangi] chapter vi. the upper ubangi.--banzyville to yakoma. banzyville has been built on a beautiful site at a double bend of the river. opposite is the french post of mobaie and between them roars a rapid. the country on each side is hilly, while the soil is rocky, great boulders of granite and quartz lying about in isolated grandeur. we reach the post on the morning of september 26th and are met by captain auita, an italian, who is the zone chief here. the buildings are arranged on two sides of a square, the other two being formed by the river as it turns to the left, and the open space is covered with gravel which makes a welcome change from sand and clay while the house placed at our disposal looks particularly inviting after a week of tents and the small launch. everything is wet through and has to be spread out on the gravel to dry under nature's great fire. unfortunately some of the skins, which perforce have been left in cases for a week, under water one minute and baked in the sun the next, have hopelessly rotted and have to be thrown away. next morning we interviewed numbers of native chiefs who were all very anxious to exchange lances and other curiosities for european clothes. all were content with _bulamatadi_, although some grumbled at the necessity to find porters and paddlers. this is evidently one of the most populous districts in the whole congo, for on all sides, both at the river edge and on the hill tops, are large villages consisting of tent-shaped huts and _shimbeks_, or square open sheds, under which the natives sit and sleep most of the day. besides rubber, great quantities of rice are grown here, the plantations extending parallel to the river for more than two miles. here men, women, and children are at work and those near the road come forward, give a military salute and shake hands, a custom peculiar to this part, for hitherto the women have not saluted and only the chiefs offered the hand. many of the people have thin lips and semitic noses and most are well made. as usual, if one meets a husband and wife, the former strolls ahead with a spear or stick, while the latter follows carrying a baby riding on one of her hips, tied on by her wrap of cloth, and with a heavy load of wood or food-stuff on her head. we cross the river in the evening and dine with captain meilleur at mobaie. the french villages are identical with those on the state side, but the natives are, if possible, still more idle. next morning much rubber is brought into banzyville. strings of natives, each with a little basket-full of this substance, march into the square and sit down in lines on the gravel. the baskets are then weighed on a yard arm and the weights entered in a book by captain auita until a record of the whole has been made when the chattering throng departs to a shed near by where five cooks have been hard at work preparing dinner for them. the natives here are paid in cloth at the rate of 50 or 60 centimes a kilogramme according to the quality of the rubber and although each man is supposed to supply only one kilogramme a month some of the villages here send in more than a ton in that time. mr. fernaka, the second in command, arrived on the 28th after marching for thirty days in the interior over unexplored ground. he said it was mostly marsh land containing a few villages from which the inhabitants, seeing the white man approach with his soldiers, fled into the bush. at first indeed the natives are always fearful of the whites, but in a short time are willing to trade and soon become very friendly. the native, in fact, quickly acquires absolute confidence in europeans and his fear at first is, obviously, only the fear of the unknown. it is rather amusing to see the children in villages where few white men have penetrated, run shrieking with terror to their mothers when a strange looking person, with a white face and clothes appears. at the sound of the launch whistle also many children run away. one of the soldiers, a sergeant of some years' standing who accompanied mr. fernaka on his arduous march, unfortunately contracted dysentery and arrived at banzyville only to die. we attend the funeral, the absolute simplicity of the ceremony being very impressive. all the troops here, perhaps seventy or eighty marched with reversed arms to the cemetery after the buglers sounding the last post and lined up opposite the grave. the order was given to present arms, the coffin was lowered, each person present threw a handful of earth into the grave and all was over. far into the night, however, one could hear the mournful dirge the soldiers were chanting for their dead comrade. hunting here is difficult although game abounds, the grass being high enough to conceal antelopes and everything else except elephants. after a walk through rough country and water for six hours without success, i was glad to get into my hammock and was jogged back home by perspiring natives, who took turns to carry their burden and changed about every ten minutes. altogether the hammock is not comfortable, and it is obviously useless hunting here until the grass is burnt. next day, being very tired and stiff, i pass the time looking through _civilisation in congoland_ again. having now visited many of the places mentioned in that book, the difficulties which beset a writer who publishes a work on a country he has never seen, become very apparent. in fact, it gives no more idea of the condition of the congo than a file of the police news would convey an impression of english civilisation. when one has visited some hundreds of villages and seen perhaps a million of natives, most of whom seem cheerful and contented, one marvels indeed how such absolutely false reports of the condition of the country can have originated. on the other hand, it is impossible to travel several thousands of miles in the congo--especially in the unfrequented parts--without constantly wondering what is the extraordinary power which enables a few hundred white men, not only to govern as many million blacks, but to open up and develop a country as large as the continent of europe, which a few years ago was absolutely unknown. we can dismiss at once the idea that the native is suppressed by military despotism, for the posts are isolated and the number of troops in them merely sufficient to guard property and stores, that is to say, to fulfil the duties of policemen in england. at any moment the thousands of natives who live in or near the posts, could overwhelm these small forces long before help could arrive from the next government station, in many cases a week's journey distant. the fact that they do not do so, is at least negative evidence that the white men do not ill treat the people. there is however, much positive evidence that the native has, not only a great respect, but also an affection for his new rulers, and it is not difficult to understand the reason, when we compare his fate before the advent of the europeans with his condition at present. in each village was a chief or chiefs, freemen and slaves who passed their lives hunting and fighting other tribes. the sole property of the chiefs and freemen were their huts, canoes, and slaves, and the rude instruments they used in war and hunting. the unfortunate slaves were bought and sold, captured in war and were often killed and eaten. one slave was worth so many goats, lances, or knives, and one large canoe would buy several women. legislation rested with the chiefs and trial by ordeal was common, but always so arranged that the result could be controlled by the judge. this is not the place however, to describe these interesting, if horrible practices. now at present the people are rich beyond the wildest dreams of their ancestors for the value of the property of the great chiefs has greatly increased, since they have dealt with europeans. again the chief of a small village containing 1000 men supplies 1000 kilogrammes of rubber each month to the state for 50 centimes a kilo. to collect this amount takes two or three days; each year therefore the village receives £240 for collecting a substance of no value at all to the natives whose daily routine in the meantime is scarcely affected at all. the natives used ivory chiefly to make war horns, but some of the chiefs had so much that they constructed fences of fine points round their mud huts little thinking that in the white man's country, those useless tusks would be worth a small mountain of salt. now they exchange them for clothes, cloth, salt, and other useful commodities. the lucky owner of a canoe, it is true, can no longer buy three or four slaves with it, but he can use it to transport produce or to catch fish, for which he is well paid. again compare the lot of the slave in the past with his present condition. he was liable to the most terrible fate at any moment; now he can enter the army, work in the plantations or remain safely in his village and do a few hours' work each month. there is however, another force acting which we should hardly expect would affect the mind of a savage. he is greatly influenced by a desire to ascend the social ladder at the summit of which, is of course, the white man, and anyone having direct dealings with him, at once knows himself to be superior to the naked cannibal of the forest. the servant, or _boy_, of the white man, holds a high rank and considers himself to be quite another species of man than his cousin, who is still uncivilised. so also the soldiers and workers in the plantations, who come into daily contact with the officials. all the most intelligent and ambitious natives are thus drawn away from their primitive condition of life and become attached to their masters, who give them cloth to wear and beads with which to beautify themselves. the most important chiefs are as anxious indeed to appear like europeans, as a prosperous native of sierra leone, is to wear patent boots and carry a silk umbrella. there is one near here named bayer, a young man of much intelligence and business capacity, who has built himself a brick house, dresses like a european, and is a proud man when he is asked to smoke a cigar on the verandah of the mess. the chiefs are, however, never asked to eat with the europeans, a distinction which is both necessary and wise. [illustration: young sango girls at banzyville.] it daily becomes more and more obvious that the white man is greatly respected and that his word is absolutely trusted. what he says is true and what he promises, he does. the native appears to respect these characteristics perhaps all the more because he is so lamentably deficient in them himself. it is indeed the respect caused by moral not physical force which enables a few europeans to govern this great country with success, and permits one or two white men to live securely with a few soldiers in an isolated post surrounded by thousands of natives most of whom are savage cannibals. there are, however, many difficulties yet to be surmounted, and among them is the arrangement of a satisfactory currency. this was brought home forcibly on october 1st when according to weekly custom, the people in the villages around brought in food for the post. many women appeared with large bunches of bananas for which as a rule, they are paid by beads. in this prosperous part the heads of the women are already fully adorned with beads and most of their household ornaments also, so they demanded cloth instead. the question of the currency is a very difficult one. there is the danger of flooding the banks of the congo with mitakos, and the banks of the ubangi with beads. in other words these articles which function as money are not used as rapidly as they are supplied, and a lady whose limbs are already weighted with brass rings and whose head is heavy with beads, wishes for some other payment. there is a warehouse at each of the state posts in which cloth, clothes, beads, salt, and many other commodities likely to be of use to the natives are kept, but it is manifestly impossible to give as wages to each individual the particular object he desires at the particular moment. the objection to beads and mitakos, does not apply to salt and cloth, the former being at once consumed, and the latter being worn out in course of time. nevertheless it is not well to have a currency which is continually being formed only to be destroyed. the money currency, already existing in the lower congo will, however, in course of time be extended, but there are still many difficulties in the way. francs and centimes will of course be of no use to the natives, unless stores are still kept at the state posts at which they can buy whatever they wish. this great question is, however, occupying the careful attention of the government, and will no doubt be settled as satisfactorily as many others have been which were equally difficult. sunday is always an interesting day in a state post, for the chiefs with many followers come in for a friendly chat and to ask advice. october 2nd was particularly exciting for a new chief had been elected in a village near banzyville, and great rejoicings consequently followed. singing, shouting, dancing and a general hubbub, went on from morning to night, and if the desire to make a noise is any criterion of happiness, these people must be the happiest in the world. there are many forms of dances; sometimes each one shuffles his legs without moving more than a foot or two and then swings his arms, head and body solemnly backwards and forwards; sometimes a number will form a ring, and one after the other will leap into it and rapidly rotate themselves; but whatever the form, all seemed to be keenly excited and to enjoy it thoroughly. the natives near the ubangi have a very distinctive tatouage. it consists of five elevated knobs of skin which form a straight line continuing the line of the nose up the forehead. these are formed by making for each knob two parallel incisions in the skin about half an inch apart and lifting the flap between. a piece of ivory is then inserted under the flap and left in until the wound has healed, the result being a knob of skin elevated above the level of the rest of the surface. all the tatouage in the congo consists in raising the skin in this manner, but in each district the design is different. simple tatooing by pricking in colours does not appear to be practised at all. fishing here is very simple and very effective. large baskets tapering to a point and open at the broad end are fixed by ropes, or rather by the strong vines which function as ropes here, just at the top of the rapids and the water rushes through with great force. the fish are carried into the baskets, but cannot pass through or return against the current, and are then simply speared and lifted out. they have firm, white flesh and are good eating. on october 3rd the chief of the banzas comes to the post to call. he is a fine, intelligent-looking man and rules his people, who are very numerous, admirably. in this part of the congo, the chieftainship descends from father to son, but in some districts the succession passes through the family of the wife of the chief. numerous petty chiefs drop in to the post at intervals during the day and are rather a nuisance, for they are always begging for clothes and offering lances and presents in exchange. they do not realise that one does not carry a superfluity of clothes when travelling, or that one or two lances are quite sufficient to keep as curios. probably they think we are traders for we are not _bulamatadi_, and no one i believe, has ever ascended the ubangi on a pleasure tour before. the newly-elected chief was very anxious to be given a suit of clothes as he had none and wished to make an impression on his new subjects. he described with many gestures, that he was elected with much beating of drums, which indeed was only too true and said he always intended to remain a great friend of the state. after that, of course he had to be given some clothes. the system of giving _tips_. indiscriminately is however, carried much too far in the state, and if it is not stopped, will soon prove to be a very heavy tax on the white man. every native demands a tip on every possible occasion whether he has done a service or not, and if he has done some work and is only paid his due, is as discontented and abusive as a cabman who has only received his legal fare. there are many native thieves all over the congo--one of them actually penetrated into the house of captain auita at midday in bright sunshine and stole a spear and a native knife. he was however, soon caught and marched off to prison. trials by ordeal used to be very common among the natives. a favourite method was to give a dose of strychnine to a fowl and if it died, the accused was guilty, but if it lived, he was innocent. the wretched fowl, feeling in any case very ill, walked about wondering at the excitement and followed by the complainant shouting "die, die, die, fowl" and the defendant shouting "live, live, live, fowl." the strength of the solution was always arranged by the judge so the verdict was known to him beforehand. a curious instrument to take the place of a jury, is a nut through which a piece of fibre has been passed in such a way, that when it is held vertically, the nut slides up and down. by a curious twist of the fibre however, it is possible to prevent the nut falling. at the trial, the nut is raised to the top of the string and if it stays there, the accused is innocent, but if it falls, he is guilty. here again, the judge can make the machine decide either way at his will. among the many objectionable insects of the congo is the _jigger_, a kind of sand fly which burrows under the skin, usually of a toe, and deposits eggs in a sack there. unless these are removed an abscess forms. the natives sit about calmly removing jiggers from each other's feet with needles, and show considerable skill in this small operation. it is necessary therefore never to move about with bare feet, for the boys carry them into every place. much ivory comes into the post at intervals, the points sometimes weighing 70 or 80 lbs. each. the state preserves the elephant very strictly, and the export duty on tusks above 6 kilos in weight, is 21 frs. per kilo. still it is not likely that the congo will continue to yield such large quantities of ivory, for the elephant only bears one offspring in three years and the growth of the baby is very slow. there is a baby elephant here one year old. he stands about 4 feet, 6 inches high, and has no sign of tusks at present. he is fed on rice, milk and bananas and is a playful little fellow. a tame ape here fears the elephant very much and at his approach at once clings to the native who tends him or climbs over his shoulder, so as to place the boy's body always between himself and the elephant. on monday october 10th we prepare to continue our journey up river. we shall now require six or seven canoes, as they are not so large as the ones lower down and our crews, servants, escort and camp followers total up to nearly two hundred. captain auita sends a few state capitas with us and captain meilleur lends us some french soldiers belonging to the 1st senegalese tirailleurs, a splendid set of fellows, very smart in their khaki uniforms. we can, therefore, land with impunity on either side of the river, _i.e._ in the french or the state congo, and be able to communicate with the chiefs, for it will be rather difficult perhaps to feed so many people. next day we start amid the most terrific din. each of the seven canoes carries one or two tom-toms and some have also native bells. all the capitas and most of the paddlers shout orders to each other which no one regards, even if they hear them, while the friends of the paddlers howl farewells from the beach. at length however, the baggage is arranged and the little fleet starts in single file, for each canoe hugs the bank. before half an hour had elapsed my canoe struck a rock and stuck on it. fortunately we were not travelling faster than two miles an hour, or a hole would have been made in the bottom. as it was, it was necessary for half the crew to go overboard, stand on the rock, and lift the canoe off. never was a ship so speedily lightened, and in a few moments we were once more afloat. the river now passes through a kind of gorge not more than half a mile wide and continues between hills clad with long grass but after an hour or two, it widens out again and the banks become low. the heat is great and the unceasing blows on the tom-tom within three feet of one's ears are very annoying, but if it is stopped, the crew no longer keep good time, and the boat, therefore, travels very slowly. the singing, on the other hand, is by no means unpleasant. one of the crew sings a solo, a kind of recitative, the words being an extempore criticism, as a rule, of the white passenger, and then the whole join in chorus in perfect harmony. the music is now wild and weird, now passionate and joyful, but always natural. there is nothing of the catch penny type of ditties, which become popular in england and america, in these savage african songs, nor are they in the least like chinese or indian music. the instruments are rudimentary; simple zithers, rattles, bells and a kind of guitar, but it is probable that all these, except the bells, have been introduced by the europeans or arabs. on we creep slowly until we reach the island of ya which belongs to the state. all the other islands, except bamu, being no man's land. here we land at a large village and while the boys are arranging the camp, we see that our party are all fed. the chiefs are requested to provide food, and soon nearly two hundred women appear, each with a wooden vessel containing a ration of kwanga, palm oil, salad, bananas, plantains, fish, meat, or a general mixture. these they deposit on the ground and stand at attention each behind the meal she has prepared. the sergeants and capitas distribute the rations among the soldiers and paddlers, and at an order of the chief, the whole crowd disappears into the huts. then we eat our dinner, consisting of the usual chicken and eggs, have a game of two-handed bridge and turn in. suddenly shrieks are heard coming from a hut and we order the sentry to discover the cause. he soon appears with one of our paddlers, who states that another one stole his ration, and when he endeavoured to get it back, beat him severely. we order him therefore more food, and decide to investigate the case in the morning. next day after giving cloth to the chiefs in payment for the food, we send for the youth who made so much noise in the night. a poleman now stated that the boy had stolen his loin cloth and that therefore he had beaten him. this story contradicted the other and further native evidence complicated the story still more, so after explaining to the poleman that he had no right to beat the boy, even if he were one of his crew, and that if such a thing occurred again, he would be severely punished, we decided to take no further action. one of the french soldiers now appeared and told a romantic story. he had found a long lost blood sister in the village, the mutual recognition being confirmed by the tribal marks. both had been sold as slaves when children; he had drifted into the french native army and she had married one of the subjects of the state. now she wished to leave her husband and go away with her brother, who was willing to pay compensation for her loss if necessary. as this seemed to raise some delicate questions, we refused to take any step, except to report the matter to the proper authorities. after these delays, we started up the river, lined on both sides by thickly populated villages. about midday an excited crowd stopped us at one of these and asked for our help. as everyone shouted at once and probably no one told the truth, it was difficult to discover what was the matter, but some women were missing from the french congo and an elephant from the state, and the natives on each bank wished the white men to punish those on the other. as private travellers, of course we could take no action, even if we had wished, and continued on our way already two or three hours late. at length at 6 p.m., zinga is reached, a large village with a fine plantation, and here we camp. just above the village the rapids are so strong that it is dangerous to take the canoes up charged, and it is necessary to carry all the baggage for about three miles across country until smooth water is reached again. the capitas wished to attempt the ascent with the canoes full, for the native dislikes carrying, more than anything else. we explain that if it is necessary for the white men, who can swim, to walk, how much more necessary is it to carry the baggage, which would at once sink if the canoes capsized. however, this did not convince them and europeans who have had accidents on the river say, that although the whole crew, who all swim like fishes, go to the assistance of the white man when a canoe capsizes, not one will take the trouble to rescue the baggage. probably the native, whose personal property is limited to a loin cloth, thinks all other possessions are useless vanities and not worth troubling about. the view here is very beautiful, the river taking a double bend between hills which are well wooded and traversed by mountain torrents of clear water hastening to join the main stream roaring in its rocky bed below. numerous pintades are usually found here, the finest game bird for eating in the whole of africa, and i go ahead of the bearers to search for them, but see nothing of interest. [illustration: the state post at djabir.] by 8 a.m. the canoes have all passed the rapids, and are charged again, so once more we make a start. soon another rapid is reached which it is impossible to negotiate with the paddles. some of the crew therefore, go overboard and standing on the rocks up to their waists in water, literally lift the boat up foot by foot until the top is reached. after this the river widens again and the current is not so strong. one of the canoes is now reserved as a kitchen and carries the goats, chickens and other food. it is interesting to watch luembo sitting smoking his pipe over the fire as he cooks the lunch. nothing disturbs his calm serenity and he goes on philosophically making soup even in the roughest water. when lunch is ready we stop by the bank, the kitchen comes alongside and the hot, strong soup is very acceptable, for it is impossible to eat much in the heat of the day. at night time we decide to stop at the mouth of the koto river, where is a post of the trading company of that name, and the two agents there kindly extend hospitality to us. some of the natives here show well marked semitic features and a few, oddly enough, have eyes shaped like the chinese. they are all ready to bring rations for the paddlers and accept payment without comment. indeed, the native never says "thank you," but as he speedily lets you know when he is dissatisfied, silence obviously means contentment. the company has a rubber plantation and a well kept farm with cows, pigs and sheep which live healthily here. the koto river is almost as large as the continuation of the ubangi and rises far away up north. passing it we continue ascending between banks, on which villages are practically continuous the whole way until we reach gumba, a large village on the french side with a hospitable chief and a mud guest house. in this we store the baggage and arrange to sleep on the verandah which has fortunately a water-tight, roof for the almost daily tornado happened to be of an unusually violent description. the lightning is practically continuous and of a vivid, blinding green colour; the thunder sounds as if whole streets have been struck and knocked down, while the rain descends like the stream of a shower bath. the chief's house in this village is oblong, but at the two ends of the roof, spire-like tops are affixed, similar to those on the rest of the huts in the village. they are not ornamental nor useful, but interesting as marking a native characteristic on a house copied from those in the government posts. next morning it was still raining hard, so we waited in the dry without anxiety, as we knew the journey to yakoma would only take five or six hours, but about 10 a.m. having emptied the canoes, which were full of water, we arranged the baggage and made a start. village succeeded village, in which were numerous people elaborately decorated with beads and paint, but not otherwise covered. all the chiefs were well disposed and presented eggs or chicken, and took the cloth or salt offered in return without grumbling. about midday we reached the commencement of the yakoma village, which extends for some miles along the bank. most of the crew were evidently well known here and several lived in the village. their well-meaning friends therefore, jumped on to the canoes as they passed or swam out to them and took the paddles and poles from their tired comrades. with a greatly augmented company, with the canoes dangerously deep in the water, with tom-toms beating, bells ringing, bugles sounding and people shouting, we arrived at yakoma about 5 p.m. on october 15th thus completing a voyage along the whole length of the ubangi river. chapter vii. yakoma to djabir. yakoma is built on the banks of the uele just before it joins with the bomu to form the ubangi. the voyage up that river from its entrance into the congo to its source here occupied seven weeks of which half the time, however, was spent in state posts. canoe travelling is terribly tiring, although one merely sits still in a hammock chair all day, and it has not been by any means comfortable camping in the forest during or after the daily tornado. still the trip has been very interesting for this is one of the least known parts of the world and the people are probably the least civilised. this experience brought home the fact with something like a shock that human nature is much the same everywhere and that if the savage leads the life practically of an animal, he is at the same time not very much unlike modern civilised man. he does not wear clothes, but he is very vain and adorns himself with beads and bangles, his hair dressing requiring hours of patient labour. he is often as pleased at being photographed as a young fashionable beauty and, if a warrior, is as proud of the paint which shows he has killed some one in battle, as a soldier is of his medals. he is frankly commercial in his dealings and as anxious to say what he thinks will please his guest as the most tactful of society's hostesses. he is as keen to win in a canoe race as any undergrad in his college boat and is a genuine and true sportsman. he is very jealous as a husband and devoted as a father, characteristics common both to animals and to the most intellectual of men. he is, as a chief, by no means hard on his subjects although his punishments are barbarous and his sense of justice not greatly developed. he eats human flesh but not the diseased livers of geese and he prefers his meat decomposing as some like their game. he takes no more thought for the morrow than many civilised people who live from hand to mouth without considering the future and finally he sees the world from his point of view and has little desire to discuss that of others. mr. van luttens the chef du poste kindly meets us and places a house at our disposal. we then read our mail, the first news from home since july, and glance through the newspapers. the country around yakoma is flat and as there is no sign of forest, the plantation consists of rubber bushes only. much rice is also grown here and at one time a large amount of coffee was raised from plants brought from liberia but these have since died. the native coffee, however, does well and is certainly as good as any in the world, so it seems to be wiser to cultivate this and to leave foreign varieties alone. this is one of the very few places in the congo where the cows give more milk than is required by their calves, and where butter can be made. the farm is well stocked with horses and cattle for breeding purposes which function they fulfil very well, the foals and calves looking strong and healthy. all the chiefs in the neighbourhood come and call upon us. they are all very rich, powerful and loyal in this district and delight in wearing european clothes or uniforms. one of them was dressed in an old naval uniform with an antique sword and another as a captain in the state service although he had no right to wear the uniform of the force publique at all. just opposite yakoma on the opposite bank of the uele is a village for retired soldiers where they have their own gardens and plantations and live a life of ease but are not pensioned. the term of service is for three or seven years with option of signing for another three years after the long period with increased pay and another three years if desired after that. it is not at all uncommon to find sergeants who have served ten or twelve years and they are always very responsible men. as usual the people offer us many native articles in return for cloth and we add to our already large collection. as there is no big game near at hand i decide to make a collection of small birds, of which there are very many here, with most beautiful plumage. unfortunately i have no smaller shot than 5-1/2 and it is difficult to avoid damaging the smaller varieties. however, by firing with the full choke barrel at about fifty yards two or three pellets almost always hit even the smallest birds. a very good method of preserving them is to inject formol into the bodies which at once stiffen out and become rigid in any position they are placed. birds can thus be set with the wings extended in a flying position or as if roosting, the effect being much prettier than any which can be obtained by stuffing. if is however, necessary to arrange them and inject very soon after they are dead for if rigor mortis once sets in, it is impossible to alter the position assumed by the head and wings. there were great numbers of beautiful birds in the plantation and it was easy to obtain over a dozen different specimens in less than an hour[3]. red-legged partridges are also found here in the rice, but as in europe this variety will not rise and one may walk all day hearing the familiar call on all sides and only obtain one or two shots. on october 19th i had my first attack of fever, which was not severe and soon yielded to phenacetin. it was however, rather a disappointment for i had taken five grains of quinine regularly every day since arriving in the congo. the fever ran the same course that it used to do in india ten years ago but as it only once appeared in england during that period, i hoped it had gone for ever. hundreds of mosquitoes hummed around with the ambitious idea presumably of carrying the germs to some other unfortunate. [illustration: the river near banzyville.] as we shall now leave the french frontier and travel altogether in state territory we send the senegalese escort down the river back to their station at mobaie. the sergeant who was in charge was a most responsible man and was evidently held in great respect by the chiefs of the french villages through which we passed. one day a chief was greatly disturbed because two men from his village had migrated into state territory. although this is against the law it is apparently not a very unusual occurrence. generally these emigrants have committed some crime and are fleeing from justice. one chief, however, at banzyville stated he had left the state territory because he objected to working rubber and had returned because he objected still more to paying the tax in the french congo. it is impossible indeed to say which side gains by this emigration but it is very evident that it is not altogether one-sided and not great enough to affect seriously the size of the population of either the french or free state congo. in yakoma the people are paid chiefly by beads and salt and it is interesting to watch the long string of workers filing to the office of the chef du poste on saturday, each one carrying a plate, a tin can or some other receptacle in which to receive his wages. on october 22nd we decide to pack up and move on. the skins of the larger birds the toucans, razor-bills and serpent birds are keeping very badly but those of the monkeys, leopards and antelopes are in better condition. it is however, doubtful if they will last, for to preserve them it is necessary to hang them out in the sun every day which is obviously impossible when travelling. as a small native war is in progress higher up the uele, mr. van luttens kindly arranges to accompany us for the first three days in order to ensure that relays of paddlers shall be forthcoming for many of those gentlemen have forsaken the wooden blade for the iron lance. we are therefore a large party on october 23rd when we leave yakoma in a drizzling rain, the remains of the usual nightly tornado. although the paddlers wear no clothes and do not hesitate to jump into the water at any moment it is curious that they dislike rain very much and never work so well as when a hot sun is shining. the least diminution of temperature indeed affects them very much and they sit drowsily over the fire hugging themselves, being aroused to action only with difficulty. we number now about two hundred including the thirty soldiers and armed capitas, but as the current is not very strong we make good headway through somewhat flat and uninteresting country until we arrive at prekissa, a large village on the north bank of the uele. here we were received by the chief of the abira tribe, a great potentate who sat in a long hammock chair surrounded by courtiers and ministers squatting on the ground and holding spears of state on each side of him. having welcomed us he escorted us through the village which is of great extent and well arranged. opposite his square hut or palace is the guard house in which are a few soldiers armed with cap-guns for he has some independent authority and the power of life and death in certain limited cases. behind the palace are many rows of round huts close together. not a soul is visible or a sound heard for these are the quarters of the wives of the chief and except the official lady who acts as legal queen none are presented to the white men. the present chief is a keen commercial man and understands the advantage of being on good terms with the slate for he has a large rubber plantation and also works metals. the blast furnace is most interesting. it is simply a pit about two feet wide and deep formed by banking up clay and earth for several feet around which has been dried by the great heat of the furnace into a hard stony substance. indeed at first sight the pit looks like a hole dug in solid rock. in it is placed iron stone and wood charcoal which is lighted and a blast made by several pairs of bellows formed of antelope skins. the molten metal is not run off but remains with the slag in the pit until it is cool when the latter is chipped away and the shapeless mass of iron is ready to be worked into spears and lances by the blacksmiths. probably this method is a very ancient one indeed, and it is curious that it should resemble so closely the modern bessemer process for making steel. having walked through the village we return to our camp on the river bank and the chief presents spears. he then proceeds to ask for anything he takes a fancy to in return. we had already given him cloth much more valuable than his lances when he suddenly demanded tobacco. i gave him the contents of my pouch and he then asked for that also. he next asked me to give him my jacket and finally wished to buy my cap for two ivory finger rings. to receive a present from a congo chief is thus a very expensive honour. he then sat down and smoked while we eat, for it is contrary to custom to ask a native to dine at the same table as a white man. we start again next morning at 6 a.m. the banks of the river are now assuming an equatorial appearance for we are in the third degree of latitude and palms grow in great profusion but the country is flat and uninteresting. about midday we land at gembele, a large village with an extensive plantation. the chief is a young, good-looking man with refined european features and a very gentlemanly manner. he owns a large island, many iron and copper mines and is very wealthy. when one was introduced to him he pointed with pride to the state medal he was wearing round his neck, a medal which is given to all chiefs of whose election or succession the government approves. an important feature of this village is a round enclosure built of trunks of trees and roofed with leaves which serves as a chamber of state wherein discussions take place and justice is administered. gembele only succeeded his father a year ago and among other responsibilities he has to take care of numerous wives, step mothers and aunts, the legacies of his father and uncles. they seem, however, to be well-disciplined for they were sunning themselves when we suddenly appeared round a corner but at a wave of the hand of the boy of the chief, they all rushed for cover and not one turned round to try and catch a glimpse of the white men. possibly they have peep-holes in the walls of their huts for it would be too much to expect them to have no feminine curiosity. gembele is evidently respected by his people but he has a somewhat serious look as though he felt the cares of his position heavily. there is a strong rapid opposite the village so we allow the canoes to go up empty and enter them again above it. it is now intensely hot and progress is slow but we reach the village of sembile before sundown and pitch our tents in a clearing. the huts here are still round and the people practically nude but the custom of wearing beads has disappeared and very few are painted. there is a bright moon which acts here as a clock by night as the sun does by day. as the latter passes practically straight overhead it is astonishingly easy to tell the time within half an hour after a very little practice. it is more difficult to use the moon as the point of the hour-hand and requires some care. this, however, is the only means the sentry has of determining 5 a.m. when we wish to be roused for he could not read a watch. we start again at daylight and ascend the river to voro where we land with all baggage for the rapids here are so strong that it is necessary to walk for several miles. we therefore start in a procession of more than one hundred people along a narrow foot-path while the crews take up the empty canoes. the guide leads and i follow next, hoping to shoot any game that may exist in the neighbourhood before it is disturbed by the bearers. it is, however, speedily apparent that with the exception of birds it will not be possible to see any game at all for the grass is very thick and about eight feet high. after a time my gun weighs heavy so i give it to a bearer and a moment after two fine pheasants rise a few yards away. all around is evidence of game. great tracts through the grass where the stately elephant has passed to drink at the river, spoor of buffalo and antelope at every water course and yet not a sign of life now for the sun is high up and a hundred bearers are yelling and singing close behind. after walking for about two hours we reach forest and enter its welcome shade. a small stream prattles cheerfully along under the trees and as the path several times passes through it we keep our feet comfortably cool. about 2 p.m. we reach a village beautifully situated on a slope in the midst of dense forest. this is protected on all sides by a strong stockade twelve feet high for leopards abound and when game is difficult to find do not hesitate to enter villages and carry off people. here we halt for lunch and then on again through the forest full of cuckoo pheasants. these are not much more difficult to shoot than hand reared birds at home although they fly higher to clear the tall trees. they do not, however, appear to travel very quickly but this may be a delusion as it is difficult to judge distance in africa. no other game birds come within range. late in the afternoon we reach bogosi, a large clean and well arranged village. the chief is a pleasant fellow perfectly willing to sell us food for our party; and monkeys, tortoises or anything else we may desire for ourselves. here we change all our paddlers the present ones going back to their villages. as the tribe is at war with one higher up the river, mr. van luttens thought it might be difficult to obtain paddlers here and so came himself. with his aid, however, the difficulty vanished for he arranged with the chief that the paddlers who took us to djabir should not be called upon to do any more work for the state for nine months. that is to say that the enforced forty hours a month would work out at six or seven days paddling in nine months and as each man was liberally paid in cloth no one could possibly say that he was used hardly. having bathed in the swiftly running river we dined in the enclosure which did duty as the council chamber and then thoroughly tired turned in early. it was not until 9 a.m. in the morning that we could make a start for all the baggage had to be fitted into the canoes and the paddlers arranged in their places. the first day with new crews is always a trouble but this is never repeated for the native has a good memory and every bale, bag, gun and even small articles like books are taken from the canoes each evening and put back in identically the same place in the morning. this is remarkable when one thinks that some hundreds of separate articles have to be placed in one of seven or eight different canoes in one particular place. the river is heavily in flood for this is the end of the wet season and the current is very strong indeed. soon we come to the first rapid and one of the men drops his pole overboard at the critical moment. the other two, however, hold the canoe up by pressing against the rocks while the water whirls past within an inch of the edge of the little craft. at a word from the capita one of the paddlers jumps into the rushing water, rescues the pole and lands safely with it on the bank, fifty or sixty yards below. all the sangos swim like salmon but cannot of course leap up rapids. they however, swim so powerfully that they steer clear of the rocks and reach the side even in the swiftest current. on we go slowly struggling up rapid after rapid and when it is impossible to paddle and pole the canoes against the stream the crew stand on the rocks and lift them up. sometimes the drop is three feet at one spot and it is perfectly marvellous how these men can thus stand waist deep in the water. naturally we ship a good deal of water which wets everything through and through but the crew take this as a matter of course and bale it out at intervals while the boys take care the firearms are not injured. the amount of actual work the crew do must be enormous yet they never seem fatigued and sing as lustily at the end as at the beginning of the day. at length we pass the island of mutemu and seek for a place for a camp. there is not much choice for the forest is very dense here and it is necessary in every place to clear the undergrowth before the tents can be pitched. then fires are lighted and all are soon asleep. we start again at daybreak and at once commence the fight with the rapids. soon after a chief appears in a canoe, and having explained that he is at war with a neighbouring tribe hopes it will not inconvenience the white man. on being asked why he is fighting he states that he has lost two women and thinks they have been stolen. i then told him war was a mistake and i hoped he would make peace as soon as possible, at which he looked a little surprised and answered that he expected to be successful and capture several women as well as men. the navigation of the uele at this part of its course is so difficult that there are very few villages on its banks for the native who lives near a stream hardly ever walks and he will not settle unless he can travel by canoe. for this reason there is often no pathway at all between villages only a mile or two apart on the river bank. the few people there are have probably never seen a white man for as far as one can ascertain no one has been up here for ten years. however, where there is a village the chief comes on board and presents a chicken. about midday the kitchen canoe paddles by with fire alight and pot boiling. soon after chikaia shouts: _le cuisinier est tombé dans l'eau_, and a little way ahead is seen a canoe apparently upside down close to the bank and twelve or fifteen black heads bobbing up and down in the water. mountmorres is just ahead in his canoe and easily within reach but to my surprise his paddlers suddenly turn away from the bank and make for mid-stream evidently straining every muscle. turning round i order my crew to pull rapidly to the rescue but to my disgust they also turn into mid-stream and take no notice of my command. having asked chikaia the meaning of this he replied: _la petite bête qui mange l'homme_. chikaia's knowledge of zoology and french being somewhat limited every animal is for him either a _petite_. or a _grande bête_. the information was therefore not very valuable for it was impossible to imagine what small beast was in the habit of eating people. thinking, however, of a crocodile i took my rifle but chikaia laughed and said: "_non, non, la petite._" by this time we were well out in mid-stream opposite the kitchen canoe which--to add to the mystery--was not upset at all. the cook, the crew, the goats and the fowls were all, however, in the water. no danger was apparent for the crew were swimming at their ease and hoisting the live stock back into the canoe. it is useless being astonished at anything in africa and there was obviously nothing to do but sit still while the crew raced along as fast as they could paddle. in a few minutes they pulled into the bank and there we waited for the kitchen which presently appeared with the cook reclining in the arms of one of the crew and moaning: "_je mart, je mort_." after a rapid examination, however, i could find nothing at all the matter. at length we discover the truth. his canoe had run into a large hornet's nest hanging from the branch of a tree and he had been stung in the head. to avoid further damage, he and the whole of the crew not only jumped into the water themselves but threw all the live stock overboard as well, for the natives believe that the sting of this insect kills and they fear it more than an encounter with a wild beast. the cook was therefore in a highly hysterical condition and no doubt in considerable pain also although no mark of a sting could be discovered, amidst his thick curly black hair. still i took him into my canoe, gave him whisky internally and bathed his head with permanganate of potassium and he was quite well next day. after this delay we struggle on until just before dark we reached the worst rapid on the river the kandoko falls, up which the canoes are lifted inch by inch. everything was already wet so the fact that a terrific tornado burst before we could pitch the tents added but little to our discomfort. on again at daybreak and after one or two ineffectual attempts to negotiate the last strong rapid on this piece of the river we conquer it and reach smooth water. in the course of the morning a canoe intercepts us in which is a native dressed as a state capita and armed with a gun. he says he has been sent by a white man to tell us not to sound our tom-toms as it will attract the hostile tribe and they will attack our camp. we ask for the letter for white men never send verbal messages by natives and when it was not forthcoming became suspicious that our visitor was spying our strength. we told him that we were peaceful travellers, that we should beat our tom-toms as much as we liked and camp where we wished and that if the tribe attacked us we should defend ourselves. probably our rifles made an impression for we were not molested at all during the day and at night camped in the village of the hostile tribe. our paddlers indeed fraternised with the enemy, against whom they would have been fighting if they had not been employed by us. [illustration: the sultan of djabir.] the usual tornado burst in the night and we did not make a start until 7 a.m. when we continued up the river and passed several villages before 2 p.m. when djabir came in sight. the view of the town from the distance is very pretty indeed. in the centre is an old fort with four towers now partly demolished and on each side the houses of the officials stretching along the river bank. here we land two hours afterwards and feel that at last we shall have a night's rest without fear that our habitation will be blown away or soaked with water. footnote: [3] now in the british museum (natural history). chapter viii. across uele.--djabir to ibembo. djabir is a disappointing place. although very imposing from a distance it is being rebuilt at present and at close quarters it becomes obvious that some of the old houses are in a very bad state of repair. some welcome newspapers meet us here and i am delighted to learn that the government has passed the licensing bill and that the japanese are still successful. the sultan of djabir sent his brother a young gentleman who has been educated and speaks french, to present a small ivory war-horn and to demand several times its value in cloth. afterwards he sold us some other articles but, although he received full value for them he repented of his bargain next day and demanded them back again. of course we let him take them. the sultan himself seems to be equally difficult to deal with and although the state has given him the rank of captain in the force publique and tried to humour him in every way he is not a good subject. his village has the usual characteristics with some signs of arab civilisation. lord mountmorres is now anxious to hasten to bumba for the rest of the mail and if necessary to send a special courier to coquilhatville with a cablegram while i arrange to follow more slowly and hunt the country in between. he therefore leaves djabir on october 31st taking only one boy and a little baggage. it is a very hot day and at night-time a heavy tornado bursts over the post. i wake up in a pool of water for the roof leaks badly and by bad luck just over my bed. having moved this to a dry spot it is possible to sleep but not for long for the mosquito net was fixed to the wall where i left it forgetting the little pests. it is now a question of bites or water and as the latter seems cooler i replace the bed and fixing the roof of the net on the slope so that the heaviest part of the shower will run off, pass the rest of the night in comparative comfort. it is indeed time the place was rebuilt for at present djabir has a depressing air of former greatness and present decay. as there are no elephants near and the antelopes are very small, i arrange to leave on november 1st but on starting to repack find many of the antelope skins are rotten and order them to be thrown away while the native lances and spears are covered with red rust, and have to be cleaned, smeared with palm oil and repacked. i start next morning to cross uele, but as it is impossible to obtain more than thirty five porters some of the baggage has to be left behind. the loads are carried here in rather a curious manner. the porters make a hand of coarse grass fibres and pass it over the crown of the head which is inclined forwards. the band is attached to the bale or box which itself rests on the back between the shoulders. then leaning forward the porter, carrying 50 lbs, walks at 3-1/2 miles an hour over rough roads for three or four hours with scarcely a stop. having crossed the river the caravan is formed and at once strikes along the path through the villages on the opposite bank to djabir. we are now on a frequented route and the villages and people show far more signs of the influence of the white man than those on the ubangi. the huts are square, thatched with leaves and have verandahs while most of the men and many women wear clothes. the tatouage also is here very different for the vertical line on the forehead is not seen and a horizontal line of small elevations just above the level of the eyes is very common; there are however, various other devices on the cheeks and the lobes of the ears are sometimes pierced for the insertion of a ring of ivory nearly as large as a serviette ring. the natives are very polite, every single one giving a salute so that at the end of a long village one's arm aches with returning it. chicken and eggs can be bought here for cloth at about the price one pays in an expensive shop in london. some of the natives said nothing and were satisfied while others grumbled but did not take back their goods. one man sold nine eggs for about 2/of which only three were fit to eat and demanded 4/for a chicken little larger than a pigeon. the natives here seem to have been spoilt by the whites who must have given them very high prices for food at first, and these have never been reduced. naturally demand and supply affect the price considerably. a native refused to sell us a duck at coquilhatville for 14/-, for ducks are rare. on the other hand in remote villages rarely visited by white men, the people will sometimes give two chickens for an empty wine bottle and would practically sell themselves for salt so fond are they of that substance. this they eat alone and relish immensely for the native salt is very unpleasant. it is made from water lilies and certain forms of grass which are burnt slowly under a fire, the resulting ash containing a large quantity of sodium chloride. it is however, mixed with sulphur, charcoal and other impurities and to remove these the ash is placed in water when the sodium chloride and other soluble salts enter into solution. this is then evaporated to dryness in the sun and forms native salt. once clear of the line of villages which extend for two or three miles, the path enters dense forest and the walk becomes pleasant. palms are abundant and the _parasol_. tree very common. overhead are pigeons, a few ducks and, as usual, thousands of parrots. i shot a few either for the larder or for their skins all of which fell in the dense undergrowth. without a retriever these were no doubt difficult to find but it was curious that the birds with beautiful feathers and indifferent flesh were always picked up while the ducks and pigeons usually could not be found. all the porters returned along this path the next day and perhaps were then more successful and enjoyed the game which would not be harmed by hanging for a day in a tree. the road is a good one being sometimes five or six feet wide and most of the marshes and streams are crossed by rude wooden bridges formed by trunks of trees laid parallel to each other. [illustration: warriors at djabir.] most of the way is up a gentle incline for we are now passing over the ridge which separates the watersheds of the ubangi and the congo. at intervals along the road are small clearings in some of which are capitas armed with cap-guns to protect the rubber caravans from thieves. about midday we reach kaki-kaki, a clearing in the forest in which is a mud house for the use of white men passing through and here i call a halt for we have marched about twelve or thirteen miles. on again next morning at daybreak the path continuing through the forest, and as it is quite cold at this hour and the exercise is pleasant we march briskly only stopping to shoot occasionally. after leaving kaki-kaki the streams flow south instead of north which shows that after fighting our way up rivers for four months we have now reached the highest point of our journey and are at length going down hill. it is indeed a great relief to think that instead of struggling up rapids, when next we take to canoes we shall be whirled rapidly down stream. there is, however, nothing like a mountain or even a considerable hill in this part of uele. after an hour or two the forest ends and we cross a plain covered with grass only four to six feet high on which clumps of trees and bushes are dotted about. on every side are traces of elephant, antelope and wild cattle but the sun is now high on his brilliant course and only man is foolish enough to work in the day time in central africa. it is indeed very hot marching for there is no shade and it is necessary to change the gun for the umbrella. in another hour we reach the string of villages constituting the territory of the sultan of enguetra who like the sultan of djabir is not a particularly good chief. his people, however, receive the porters kindly and give them bananas. then on again under a very fierce sun until the north bank of the likati river is reached. here we enter a canoe and are rapidly paddled down the stream which is only about twenty yards wide, until we reach a clearing in the forest in which the post of enguetra is being built by lieutenant gaspard. in a few weeks he has constructed a fine brick house of two storeys with a large verandah looking down a natural avenue to the river. at this time of the year--the early days of november--the post is practically an island for the river flows on one side and on the other three water is standing in the forest to the depth of three or four feet. this is no doubt good for the rubber vines but bad for hunting. however, i determine to settle here for a week or two and hunt the forest and plains about. next morning herefore i start at 5 a.m. in the dark and follow the guide who evidently feels the cold and steps out at a good pace. after passing through the plantation we strike into dense forest and the walking becomes very difficult. roots of trees below, branches and vines above have to be dodged all the time and it is a relief to march along the bed of a stream even if it has two or three feet of water in it. it is impossible to see for more than a yard or two on each side through the dense undergrowth and the sun and sky are quite invisible although patches of lights show that the former is now well above the level of the tallest tree. traces of elephant and antelope abound, the former being of small size without points worth having. after two hours we reach the plain and find the water nearly six feet deep. there is no place about to pitch a tent and it is extremely difficult marching in the forest in the night, but the only chance of an elephant is to be here an hour or two before daybreak. indeed it is almost impossible to hunt until the water subsides and that means waiting for over a month. however there are plenty of small beasts and birds so the day was not altogether wasted. the congo is undoubtedly the land of exaggerations. everything here is bigger or smaller than any where else. if the elephants are the largest in the world the insects are the smallest and enguetra is especially favoured by their attendance. millions of little beasts fall on one all day long. soup might here be called hexapoda bouillon and a glass of wine in a few minutes becomes a tincture of insects. butterflies are especially numerous and are of groat beauty. they are so lazy or sleepy that one can nearly always pick them up with one's fingers. ducks are not agile creatures on land but here they waddle slowly up to the butterflies and as often as not catch them in their beaks. the native is a curious mixture of simplicity and cunning he is very fond of strong alcohol but does not care much for wine. the mess boy here apparently stole some whisky and instead of filling the bottle up with water added red wine to the requisite amount. of course the colour led to instant detection and of course he knew nothing about it, but he lurched about violently as he waited at dinner and it was obvious the new european drink was acting rather forcibly. it is very troublesome to have to lock up every bottle when travelling, yet it is absolutely necessary. there is, however, i hear a patent lock which can be fixed over the cork and is easily fastened to the bottle. this is worth remembering. one day chikaia slated that the sultan of enguetra intended to attack the post that night and if he had done so it might have fared badly with us for we were only two white men with perhaps fifteen or twenty soldiers. however, a heavy tornado broke and perhaps the warriors refused to face the storm for nothing happened. the boys were very alarmed and did not hesitate to say so. as the relationship between the sultan and the state was not very satisfactory the report might have been true, otherwise it might well have been idle gossip. war had then not been declared but the state soon after sent a force to occupy the district. chikaia, who is a christian, formed a violent attachment to a woman who worked in the plantation here and asked to be allowed to marry her, although at the time she appeared to be the wife of a soldier with whom she was living. chikaia, however, said she was not legally married, so we investigated the case. the supposed husband swore they were married, the woman swore they were not. the man, however, in this case evidently lied for he said the ceremony took place at a certain post and was conducted by a certain official. now only commissaires of districts and missionaries can legalise marriages and the official named was neither. after representing to chikaia that the woman did not seem a very desirable wife, i gave my permission to his marriage, provided that the catholic missionaries, to which church he belonged, were willing to perform the ceremony for the woman was not a christian. the woman was very pleased and thanked me in the native fashion by at once asking for a necklace of beads for a wedding present. the demand for _tips_. becomes sometimes quite humorous. a native girl fell down and cut herself and one of the officials dressed the wound until it healed. the parents then came and asked for a tip and when the astonished individual required to know the reason said that the girl had been every day to have her wound attended to and she ought to be paid for it. one day as i was sitting after lunch half asleep, a green and white serpent glided through the open door into my room. it happened that my guns were leaning against the opposite wall and i did not fancy jumping over the beast, so simply shouted. it then withdrew on to the verandah and i followed as quickly as possible with a gun. in the meantime chikaia came running up and gave it several blows on the back with a heavy piece of wood. the sentry then appeared and before i could stop him cut off its head. the skin was thus spoilt which was a great pity as it measured more than ten feet in length. as it was not easy to procure paddlers at enguetra i decided to send on one of the boys mavunga with some of the heavy baggage on november 17th and to follow him the next day. he was very nervous at the idea of travelling alone and wished to borrow a revolver, but this of course i refused. it is curious that these coast boys fear the natives of the interior so much and still more curious that the presence of a single white man at once restores confidence. it is indeed becoming more apparent every day that the natives have a very genuine respect and admiration for the europeans and credit them with powers which neither they nor any other people possess. i leave enguetra on the 18th in a most comfortable canoe with an awning so high that it is possible to stand upright, a great luxury in canoe travelling. the likati flows swiftly through dense forests and we glide down the rapids very quickly and comfortably. no villages exist along the banks and nothing is visible except the forest until we reach kati-kati a clearing in which a mud hut has been erected for the convenience of travellers. i went for a stroll in the forest but after half an hour was stopped by an unpleasant palpitation of the heart. although the distressing symptom passed away quickly it was obvious it might occur again and then i realised for the first time that i was very anaemic and that hard exertion would be impossible for some time. this was the more annoying for the country around was particularly rich in game. we leave at sunrise which is, however, concealed by a thick water mist and speed along until we reach dzamba or ekwanga-tana close to the point where the likati and rubi rivers join to form the itimbiri. dzamba is a transit port where cargoes are transhipped from canoes into a small steamer the _milz_ which plies between it and buta the capital of uele. as the _milz_ departed the next day i decided to travel in her and thus altered my original plan of descending direct to the congo. the rubi is about three times as wide as the likati and also flows through dense forest which is only broken here and there by wood posts. although the water is high and the current strong the _milz_ which is a twin-screw steamer, travels well and early on the third day we arrive at buta. the post is being moved and some brick houses have already been built, one of which is placed at my disposal. after settling in it i call upon baron de rennette, the commissaire of uele which is a very important district for through it runs the path to the nile and it has frontiers both to french and english territories. the lado enclave, however, is governed separately by a special official. one now realises fully the extreme difficulty and expense of transport across africa. take for example a bale of cloth shipped at brussels and addressed to bomokandi. it is very possible that this will be transhipped at banana into a lighter which will be towed to matadi; secondly it will travel by train to leopoldville; thirdly by steamer to bumba beyond which point the larger vessels do not run; fourthly by small steamer to ibembo; fifthly by canoe to dzamba during which journey it has to be carried by hand past some rapids; sixthly by the _milz_ to buta and seventhly by hand to bomokandi. every basket of rubber and point of ivory exported and every box of food or bale of cloth imported is indeed constantly being transhipped and then conveyed by various methods a few hundred miles on its journey. the example given is by no means an extreme one, and many others could be traced in almost any direction. the reason is simple. although the whole of central africa is traversed by rivers which eventually flow into the congo, both the main river and its tributaries are in places impossible to navigate owing to the rapids. great efforts are, however, being made to overcome these obstructions. wherever possible railways are being constructed and roads made to avoid them the latest great work initiated being the automobile road through uele. it is indeed impossible now to carry by hand the great amount of merchandise passing up and down the country, even if the natives were willing to undertake the task. this is, however, the very work they dislike most and during my visit an immense quantity of stores was lying at buta and could not be forwarded owing to lack of porters. the automobile road will change all this, for trains of waggons carrying the merchandise will then be quickly and easily towed by road engines. passengers will also be conveyed in a similar manner and it is reasonable to prophesy that in five or ten years time it will be possible to cross africa from the nile to banana without travelling a single mile in canoes or on foot. at present the difficulty of transport chiefly affects the comfort of the officials for their stores of food may be delayed for some weeks and although it is possible to live on kwanga, goats and chickens, it is not a suitable diet for europeans. less difficulty is experienced with the exportation, for the rubber and ivory are always travelling down the hill towards the mouth of the river. baron de rennette fully realises how extremely important it is to have good food in this exhausting climate and took his native cook to europe to receive some lessons in the culinary art. he has been rewarded for his trouble and now lives almost as well as he could at home. good food, indeed, is almost as necessary in africa as pure water. after a hard day's work in this climate it is impossible either to relish or to digest goat's flesh or tough chicken and the result is weakness followed by fever, anaemia or dysentry. when travelling it is still more difficult to obtain properly cooked food, and it was thus especially pleasant to find oneself dining off a clean white cloth with clean silver, hot plates and food cooked and served in a manner which would have been a credit to a london club. there is a good path to bima and bomokandi and i was thinking of taking this ten day's walk when an attack of fever caused me to change my plans again. while still at buta mgr. derikx arrived. he was on a tour of his diocese and expected to be travelling for a year. i was very pleased to see him and was bound to confess that all he had told me of the congo on the voyage out was strictly accurate. having recovered from the fever and on the recommendation of baron de bennette, commenced a course of arseniate of soda, i left buta on november 28th in the _milz_. the small steamer rapidly descended the river for the water was now falling rapidly. many crocodiles had ascended this small river to lay their eggs and were lying on sandbanks but we travelled so quickly that it was impossible to shoot them. near buta is one of the villages constructed for and by old soldiers and, like the rest of these institutions, this one is very well arranged and kept forming a striking contrast to the ordinary native village. it is indeed extraordinary how the savage can be changed into a civilised being by a few years of military discipline. i reach dzamba again on the 29th and continue the journey in canoe on the next day. the current is running swiftly down the itimbiri and after an hour we arrive at a rapid and march through the forest while the canoe descends without passengers. the river winds here very much so that although the current is very strong it is more than an hour before the canoe arrives at the village, which we reached walking, in about twenty-minutes. the journey up is very slow and tedious for the baggage has to be carried by hand along this short cut through the forest. it is therefore proposed to build a light railway to relieve the native of this task. i reach ibembo on the 30th and am met by lieutenant francois, the chef du poste. it is a large station with a big mess for many travellers are continually passing through. on this date three hundred and fifty soldiers with their officers were marching through with the object of occupying enguetra and its district until the sultan becomes a little more reasonable. it is very difficult for the troops to avoid ambuscades in the forest. they march in a hollow square formation with the women, who carry much of the baggage, in the centre. each soldier carries a knife and literally cuts his way through the undergrowth. if the head, flanks or rear of the square is attacked the men close up and meet the enemy with a steady fire for they always march with the rifle loaded. progress is naturally very slow and the enemy difficult to catch, while the chance of being hit by a poisoned arrow or a lance hurled from behind a tree is always present. the soldier however, is very plucky and well earns his twenty-one cents each day, and the one franc twenty-five cents a month which is reserved for him. [illustration: the itimbiri river.] next day i visit the catholic mission of ibembo and am received by father benin who is in charge in the absence of mgr. derikx. the mission is situated on a plateau about 200 feet high on the opposite bank to the post, but a little lower down the stream and the whole place is admirably arranged, the view across the river being especially beautiful. three hundred natives, mostly children, are engaged in the plantations and gardens all being dressed in a pretty uniform and appearing healthy and happy. there is indeed, very little sickness here, for the buildings and grounds are as scrupulously clean as those of a state post. in a well-fitted carpenter's shop the entire furniture for the chapel and houses has been made from the wood of old canoes which is hard and well-seasoned. the boys also work in ivory, turning serviette rings with great accuracy and skill. four or five brethren and five sisters form the staff of the mission and one of the latter superintends the cooking with most happy results. next day i walk through the native villages near ibembo where most of the men fish and the women make pots of clay. there are a great number of children about and very little sickness. sunday as usual was market day and the people from the neighbourhood brought in kwanga, fish, eggs, chicken and three antelopes. food is sold for mitakos three of which will purchase enough kwanga to feed a man and woman for a day. in the afternoon a chief arrives with the not unusual story that a troup of elephants have entered and destroyed his plantation of manioc. we arrange therefore to start at 4 a.m. next morning on the chance that they will repeat their visit, but a heavy tornado in the night renders hunting impossible. after spending a pleasant week at ibembo, i prepare to descend the river to bumba and then to ascend the congo to stanley falls. [illustration: basoko from the river.]. chapter ix. ibembo to stanley falls. the _delivrance_ a steamer built on the same lines as the _florida_ arrives at ibembo on december 5th with a large cargo of cloth, clothes, beads, salt and other articles for barter, and also cases of food for the europeans. this is almost her last voyage up the itimbiri this season, for soon the waters will have fallen so low that the river will be navigable only by canoes. no time is wasted in the congo state. as soon as the cargo was discharged, the empty holds were filled with baskets of rubber and ivory and in less than twenty four hours after her arrival, the steamer was ready to depart. having arranged to travel by this boat, my baggage was soon on board, and we left ibembo at midday on the 6th of december. at first the river passes between the cliff fronting the plateau, on which the mission stands and low lying forest on the opposite bank. the cliff is red, and is evidently full of iron. in a short time however, both banks become flat and are covered with forest broken at intervals by villages which are well arranged, clean and tidy. some of them are wood posts, and one is occupied by old soldiers, who have built themselves very good houses. these veterans have no pension, but are given materials to form plantations, and also supply the steamers with wood at the usual rate. they rarely, if ever, return to their native villages, which they left seven or ten years before as naked savages, for they are now smart civilised men and imitate the appearance and manners of the europeans as closely as possible. about 6 p.m. we reach the post of mandungu, situated on the right bank of the itimbiri. it is very well built and scrupulously tidy. behind is a high wooden stockade, and in front, along the river bank is a small wall broken by a kind of arbour, in which is a brass gun with the interesting inscription g.r. iii 1799. on again at daybreak down the swiftly running stream. the itimbiri indeed, like its principal feeders, the likati and rubi, is rapidly falling, for the dry season has now commenced in earnest, and although thunder-storms are frequent, they are not accompanied by rain. we stop at moenge, a small post on the left bank of the river, for the mail, and then on again until the congo is reached an hour before sunset. the great river is still very full of water, which shows no signs at present of falling. this is, only to be expected, for all the tributaries are now emptying themselves into the main stream, which is thus kept high for some weeks after they have commenced to fall. we turn down the congo and after passing some villages and a post of the s.a.b. trading company, reach bumba at sunset. this is an important shipping port, for the large vessels stop here owing to the difficulty of navigating the congo higher up. all the cargo for stanley falls and the upper congo, as well as that for uele, has therefore to be transhipped here. the place is designed in a series of squares, one side of each being formed by the river while the spaces thus left are filled with well kept gardens, the whole being very effective. mr. simon, the commandant of the station kindly lends me a house and also arranges to allow the _delivrance_ to take me up to stanley falls as soon as her cargo has been discharged. on each side of the post are villages extending along the river bank. the men here wear a loin cloth, but the women only bangles, and the tatouage is varied and extensive. next day the _delivrance_ was charged with sheets of corrugated iron for building purposes and it was very interesting to watch the natives carrying these to the ship. like some civilised people, the natives are so lazy that they often give themselves a great deal of work in the effort to avoid it. the plates were of various sizes and shapes and consequently of various weights. sauntering slowly up to the stack on the beach, one of the porters would examine it carefully and search for as small a load as possible. then he would either lift the upper ten or twelve plates or try to pull the one he had chosen out from the stack. having accomplished his object thus with great exertion, he would put the plate on his head and carry it leisurely the few yards to the boat. of course the larger ones had to be moved some time, and in reality at the end of the day the lazy fellows had thus done more work than was necessary. compared with hindu or chinese coolies, the central africans indeed both in the plantations and at the dock side, accomplish rather less than half the amount of work in the same time. the paddlers, on the other hand, cannot be called lazy, and when propelling canoes against strong currents or up rapids, exert themselves to the utmost. we leave bumba on december 9th in the _delivrance_ and turn up stream. after passing the mouth of the itimbiri the banks are unoccupied for many miles, dense unbroken forest lining each shore. here and there is a wood post and we pass also two considerable areas which had evidently been cleared some time ago and occupied by villages. the people, however, were very troublesome in these parts and have since migrated into the interior leaving the ancient sites to elephants and other beasts. it is very much more comfortable on the _delivrance_ than on the larger steamers, for, being the only passenger, i have plenty of room in the cabin below and as usual in these small craft, we have all our meals on the bridge. [illustration: loading a barge.] on the 11th we arrive at barumbu, a small post with a large brick house for the commissaire when he visits the place. here most of the natives were dancing and looked very ridiculous. they did not move over the ground and seemed to be doing a kind of physical drill. first one leg was kicked forwards and backwards while the other did a heavy stiff looking hop. then perhaps the arms were thrown up and down and the whole body advanced from the hips, and finally the head was jerked to and fro. these movements were repeated time after time, evidently in a regular set order, for once started, several people performed exactly the same in perfect time whether they could see each other or were back to back. the whole affair looked stiff and ungracious, but was keenly enjoyed by the natives. [illustration: general view of basoko.] an hour later we arrived at basoko, the capital of the aruwimi district. it is different from other posts, for it has a wall running along the river front with a square tower in the centre, giving the appearance of fortification. there are indeed a few guns here, but not many troops. after paying a short visit to the commissaire general of aruwimi, captain pimpurnieaux, we continue our journey. next morning was pay day, all the ordinary seamen receiving 21 mitakos a week, but the capitas and wheelmen were given more. these latter are usually a very responsible set of men, for after a few journeys they remember every island and land-mark on the river and often steer all day without a word of command from the captain. about midday we met the _ville de paris_ which differs from the other steamers in having her wheels at the side instead of at the stern. this arrangement has not however, proved a success, for this boat is neither so fast nor so easily steered as the others. i am now troubled with a new complaint, synovitis of the knee joint with a good deal of effusion, which makes it very difficult to walk. it is curious why this malady should have appeared, for i had not knocked or otherwise injured the joint and had indeed been sitting quietly on steamers all day for the previous week. on the afternoon of the 12th we reach isangi, a post at the junction of the lomami and the congo. this river drains the territory occupied by the company of the same name and we turn up it to visit hambi, the chief town. there are a few large villages on the banks where the natives exhibit a curious method of hair dressing. it is allowed to grow long, which is very unusual in the congo, and is then turned up and matted together on the top of the head with grease and the red powder of the cam-wood. the effect is, that each appears to be wearing a red and black cloth cap. we reach hambi, which is a large station well built and very tidy, the next day. the company leases a very extensive territory along the river banks and does a large trade in rubber and ivory, the brazilian variety of the former growing here very well. the natives are quite satisfied, work well and give very little trouble, although it is necessary to punish them sometimes, and as usual, the prisoners on the chain are given work to do outside the prison. we stay here one day and then descend the lomani, and turn up the congo. the banks of the river now have a new appearance, for they are higher and no longer densely wooded and at short intervals are villages thickly populated and containing a high percentage of children. most of the men fish or build canoes, and all the people seem to be constantly trading with each other, selling food or curiosities for mitakos or cloth. we stop for the night at yonanghe, a post which has been built by a true native of the congo, who at one time was the boy of inspecteur d'etat, malfeyt. he has travelled to europe, speaks french and english and makes an excellent chef du poste, which rank he enjoys officially, with all its rights and privileges. everyone agrees he is thoroughly responsible and a very good friend, but if a captain of a steamer offends him, he will not sell him a chicken or even an egg for any sum. on the 15th we reach yakussu, where is a mission station of the english baptists. as i cannot go ashore, the missionary, mr. stapleton, comes on board and we have an interesting chat. he has known the bangala district for many years and has seen the riverside population diminish very much during the last fifteen years. this he ascribes partly to the sleeping sickness and partly to emigration to the state posts. at first it was very difficult for the people to raise enough food for themselves and for the soldiers in the posts, and to avoid the hard work, many accepted service under the state. here however, near stanley falls, there is plenty of food and the people have no difficulty in providing for their own wants and in supplying the state posts as well. he thinks that after the cruelty of the arabs, the rule of the white man appears as heaven to the native. all are therefore contented and happy, and as there is very little sleeping sickness, the population is increasing. the mission boys are taught to be carpenters, masons and brick makers, for food is so plentiful that there is no need to establish plantations. the chief grievance of mr. stapleton is, that the government will not permit the missionaries to settle where they wish and will not grant them land. several other missionaries have also complained of this, but some districts are certainly not civilised at present, and it would be dangerous for any white man to live in them without a military guard. it thus happens that while there are a great number of mission stations along the congo in the part where the population has diminished greatly, there is not a single mission on the state side of the ubangi river where the people are very numerous. we arrived at stanleyville in the afternoon. the town is situated on the north bank of the river and consists of streets of large well built houses with much space in between which is laid out in gardens. on the opposite bank are the works of the railway to ponthierville, a number of corrugated iron buildings and a large native village. in front, a hundred yards up the river, the lowest of the stanley falls can be seen, the white foam glistening in the sunlight as the water rushes over the rocks. the commissaire of the district--the province orientale--lieutenant de neullemeister, kindly lends me a house and acts as my host. fish is very plentiful here, but a sudden and terrible disease has suddenly carried off most of the goats and chickens and we are therefore, rather short of fresh meat for a few days. many of the natives have the arab type of features and their village is quite arabian in appearance. they are all very civilised and work well, so that much rubber is collected, although the population about lake tanganika is not very dense. the women here are clothed and do not work in the plantations at all. next day lieutenant de neullemeister and i, cross the river and are met by mr. adams, the director of the railway company. we enter a truck and proceed along the new line which plunges into dense forest immediately, turning and twisting in many directions in order to avoid the numerous soft places and ravines and although there are a few steep gradients, most of the way the line runs on fairly level ground. the soil is a kind of ferruginous clay in some places and sandy in others and all the bridges are constructed of wood. mr. adams says the natives are good workers and that they have had no trouble with them and very little sickness. the gauge of the line is considerably wider than that of the matadi-leopoldville railway and at present about thirty kilometres have been finished the whole passing through thick forest with clearings here and there for the huts of the workmen. the difficulties of construction are very great, but these are being surmounted and the cost of transport of material is enormous, for every steel rail six of which weigh a ton has to be carried from europe to matadi by ship, then by the railway to leopoldville, and then up the river for nearly a thousand miles. the company has its own private steamer, the _kintamo_, a stern wheeler of 500 tons which is the largest vessel on the congo, but like the rest was carried out in sections and put together and launched at leopoldville. the construction of this railway will thus be costly, and it is doubtful if the amount of produce carried will be sufficient for some years to pay a dividend. the advantages of it will however, be very great, for at present the falls render the river useless for navigation, and everything has to be carried round by hand. everywhere indeed, there is evidence that the state not only spends enormous sums in opening up the country, but welcomes the formation of private companies who will help them in their gigantic undertaking. it is difficult to realise that probably no man, white or black, has ever set foot in the forest a few hundred yards away, and yet we are travelling smoothly along a steel railroad through a tractless desert of trees propelled by a modern steam locomotive. the line does not pass near a single native village, for this part is not thickly populated and the only creatures whose paths are interrupted, are the elephants, buffaloes and wild pigs. on our return we visit the house of mr. adams, a solid structure of brick and european cement, and the mess of the thirty or forty whites employed on the line who live here very well for mutton as well as goat can be purchased from the natives. the price of everything which has to be carried from europe is very high at stanleyville for the cost of transport is very great. in the afternoon, we make a tour of the town, and as it is impossible to walk, i am conveyed in a kind of bathchair resting on one wheel. one boy goes in front and one behind and when the road is very bad or an obstacle is met, they lift the machine bodily over it. it is however, a bumpy ride, for the roads are very rough and the chair has no springs. we pass the mess, capable of dining sixty men and visit the prison. this is a brick building arranged as a quadrangle with an exercising yard in the centre. the cells are lofty and airy and only one prisoner occupies each, but many sleep in one dormitory. everywhere great cleanliness is observed, so that one is not altogether surprised to learn that the mortality due to sleeping sickness is very small among the prisoners. some of them are making mats and baskets in the yard, but most are working on the chain outside. in a separate building, the women, who also wear light chains, are cooking dinner for the prison. indeed, on the whole the lot of a prisoner in the congo is better than he would be likely to experience in a native village, with the exception that he is compelled to work. most of the people are sentenced for theft or violence, but one woman was imprisoned for throwing a solution of pepper into the face of her husband and nearly blinding him. there is a separate room set apart for white prisoners, but it has not yet been used and is at present much more satisfactorily occupied by the instruments of the band of the force publique. near the mess we pass the house of tippo-tip, a small mud structure with a verandah and a roof of grass. it is not used at all now, but is allowed to remain as an historical monument. stanley was compelled to negotiate with tippo in order to avoid a conflict at the time when the state was not sufficiently armed to undertake such a task but since then, arab rule has been entirely driven from central africa. almost opposite the falls, a fort is being constructed with a ditch all round. when finished, it will be capable of holding the whole garrison and supplies for eighteen months. it is of course, only constructed as a defence against native attacks and is not built strong enough to resist big gun fire. the quarters of the force publique here are very comfortable. each man has a room to himself about seven feet square constructed of brick and the sergeants have a small house, each containing two rooms and a verandah. i looked into one or two and they were well arranged. bed and mosquito curtain, table and chair with a few pictures and ornaments, showed what an advance the native had made in civilisation since he slept in a hut on the mud floor. finally we visited the motive power which enables all this to be done, the rubber stores. here people were busy sorting and packing the precious material into baskets ready to be carried to the barge which was waiting to sail. chapter x. stanley falls to london. the prison gang arrives at 8 a.m. on the morning of december 18th and at once my baggage is carried down to the river and placed on board the barge. it is a novel sight. a long line of prisoners chained together, slowly marching down the road with bales, boxes, chairs, tables and portmanteaus on their heads. no method could be simpler or more secure for transporting baggage. the barge--as the name implies--has no means of propulsion and depends for her locomotive power upon a powerful steam tug which is attached alongside. the whole space in the ship is thus devoted to cargo and only passengers who are sick are carried, the accommodation being limited, but there is a fine deck on which to sit or walk about. the barge is of about 400 tons burden and is therefore as large as the mail passenger boats, and the great advantage of travelling in it is, that since there is absolutely no vibration or motion to be felt, it is very comfortable for writing. as the navigation of the river is difficult near stanleyville, a pilot takes all the boats down the first day's journey and returns in the next vessel ascending. on the way we called at the catholic mission for one of the priests who wished to travel to la romee and i was astonished to find he was quite ignorant of the agitation against the congo, which was taking place in europe, and wondered, as many of us do, what was the cause of it, for he knew nothing of atrocities or cruelties to natives. afterwards we stopped at yakussu for wood and then at la romee where there is an extensive farm. here we take on board some fresh vegetables and cow's milk which however, is not fit to drink an hour afterwards. the climate in the congo is very bad for all kinds of food. antelope, killed in the early morning, is often rotten by the evening, and thus the difficulty of obtaining fresh food is greatly increased. the rapidity with which flesh decomposes is, perhaps, the reason why the natives prefer it in that condition, for as it is so difficult to obtain meat fresh, they may have acquired the taste for it rotten, just as some civilised people train their palates to prefer game high. it is however, very disgusting to see them eating. one day a carcase of a wild pig in a highly decomposed condition was picked up by one of the paddlers on the ubangi. this was cut up and shared among the canoes and part of it fell to my crew. next day a most unpleasant smell accompanied us all the forenoon and no one could detect the cause, in fact, none of the natives noticed it. at lunch time however, the polemen produced a basket full of rotten flesh which they had stored in the front part of the canoe and thus given me the full benefit of it. as they commenced eating it raw, it was rather too much and i promptly ordered them to the other end of the boat where i could neither see nor smell them. [illustration: the force publique at stanleyville.] after travelling rapidly all day down stream, we tie up at sunset at yonanghe and ship some rubber. we start again at daybreak, but as the wood in this part is both plentiful and good, the captain stops frequently at the posts and takes a large amount on board. this is a wise precaution, for lower down the wood is not so good and there is less of it, while there are more steamers to be supplied. at most of the villages the natives come to the beach with goods for sale, but the price of curios is too great here to tempt me. on the 20th we reach basoko after running through a terrific tornado with so much rain that for a time it was impossible to see the banks. it is supposed to be the dry season here, so this storm is presumably an exception. every morning there is a fog on the river more or less dense, which lasts for an hour or two after sunrise. during this period, it is often necessary to steam dead slow, for it is impossible to see a boat's length ahead. a pathetic incident happened one day. we were transporting eight prisoners to boma and when we stopped these carried wood on to the steamer. one of them was the son of the chief of a large village at which we stopped, who thus had the mortification of seeing his heir working "on the chain." he begged the captain to liberate him, who of course had not the power to do so even if he had wished, for the man had been sentenced for a serious theft and was now on his way to a convict settlement. the chief therefore, told his son he was to give no trouble to the authorities and tried to comfort him by saying he would see the railway and boma and the great ships which went to europe. these prisoners gave no trouble at all. they were fed on the same food as the crew and did a certain amount of work, the only sign that they were criminals, being the chain which bound them together. on the 21st we reached bumba and shipped a good deal of coffee. here it was necessary to give the _chicotte_ to one of the crew for continually shirking work. he was given twenty five lashes, but it did not seem to affect him physically or morally, for immediately afterwards he smiled, rubbed himself and then slowly walked ashore to carry bags of coffee and while his fellows were hastening to finish their task, he was deliberately loitering about. next time he will be dismissed and then he will find it difficult to find employment. on the following day we stopped at dobo, one of the posts of the mongala company, which has been taken over by the state. the company found it was very difficult to make the people work and some serious charges of cruelty were proved against the officials. the bangala tribe are however, very savage and only a short time ago a trader was killed and his body cut up ready for eating when some troops arrived and rescued it. the government therefore, sent a punitive expedition into the country. there are very few villages on the river, and no signs that there have ever been any, for the forest grows to the water's edge in an uninterrupted line. at sunset we arrived at lisala, which is a large military training camp, well constructed and managed. in it about a thousand savages are being converted into clean, smart-looking soldiers. next day we passed the _kintamo_., which was forcing its way up against the stream with a cargo of rails directed to stanleyville. on the 24th we stopped at mobeka, which is situated at the point where the mongala river runs into the congo and was the chief post of the mongala company. it is surrounded by a brick wall, except towards the river, and access to the post from the native village is through stout wooden gates. at one place is a kind of watch tower built on the wall and the whole gives the appearance that the occupants knew they were living in the midst of cannibals, who would not hesitate to attack them if they were not well prepared to resist. it is to be hoped that the present expedition will be successful in converting a few from their barbarous condition, but great difficulties have to be overcome, for the fighting must be in the forest, as the natives never meet troops in the open if they can help it. in the evening we reached nouvelle anvers, a large and populous town. the houses are arranged along the river bank, surrounded by gardens, and the quarters of the troops leave nothing to be desired. christinas day has nothing resembling christmas about it. a tropical sun burns overhead, warm sandy water glares below. in the morning we pass mosembe, a mission station, and in the afternoon, lulongo. there used to be a large village and coffee plantation here, but it was not a success and has been abandoned. the mission however, still remains as also a wood post where we stop for the night and try to believe that duck is turkey and mutton, roastbeef. we have now traversed the whole of the river which runs past the bangala district. it is undoubtedly very sparsely populated, but on the other hand, there are no remains of villages or clearings in the forest which would indicate it has ever been otherwise. next day we reach coquilhatville early and after taking some rubber and gum copal on board leave in the afternoon. from this point the river is familiar and at each place are old friends. at irebu, commandant jeniaux comes on board and we have a chat about the condition of the agitation in europe. since we last met i have travelled some thousands of miles and have formed an opinion both of the system of government and of those who administer it. there is no doubt whatever in my mind, that the native is not habitually ill-treated and that he is very well paid for his work. it is impossible to do more than guess at the object of the outcry, but it is certain that no agitation based on such a little foundation has ever been attended by such a near approach to success. next day we stop at lukoteia and take on board logs of wood and timber already worked into beams and posts for building. a little lower down is the old coffee plantation and close to it, tobacco is being grown. the river here is very wide and full of islands. to one of these we tie up and are at once attacked by millions of mosquitoes, who will not allow us to eat our dinner in peace. fortunately i find an old pair of kid gloves and with my head covered with a silk handkerchief and my legs in high hunting boots, prepare for the onslaught. the mosquito here bites through duck trousers and socks with great ease, but his trunk cannot reach through the thickness of a sleeve of a coat and a flannel shirt, so with suitable clothes, one can gain a little peace, except for the constant humming round one's ears. a cigar or pipe is no protection at all, but the insects will not face the smoke of a wood fire. since people cannot either, however, that is not much use. as it was, the few bites swelled up badly and completely upset the theory held by many, that after a few months in the congo, the mosquito bite has no effect. it is some gratification--but not much--to think they only gained an extract of goat and chicken, instead of a solution of good juicy fresh meat. on the 29th we passed yumbi and bolobo. at the latter place great numbers of natives came to the beach to trade with our crew and black passengers who bought dried fish and kwanga. in the evening we reach sandy beach, opposite which, is _lonely_. island so called because it is the last island on the river before it narrows to pass through what is known as the canal. here the banks are flanked with hills which are a welcome sight after the dead level of the forest higher up. next day we arrive at kwamouth and after taking some cargo from the kasai on board move on to a large wood post. it is not a very interesting or lively occupation watching people cut wood in the forest and stack it on the beach, and these posts are sometimes used as places of punishment for refractory europeans, whom it is thought desirable to isolate for a time. the strict paternal system is carried out throughout the state and methods of punishment are adopted which are rarely if ever found elsewhere. for minor offences the europeans are fined by stopping their pay for a certain number of days and sometimes a man is revocated, which means he is sent home without being paid for the six months or year previously. in this way men who drink hard when they have the opportunity, who are habitually insubordinate, or who are undesirable, are weeded out rapidly. penal offences are of course tried in the courts and punished with imprisonment. it is indeed curious after travelling in america and our colonies, to find, sturdy, rough, independent characters behaving with extraordinary meekness and docility. drunken brawls and promiscuous revolver shooting are unknown in the congo, for the simple reason, that it is impossible up country to procure drink. there are no drink shanties or gambling dens and indeed no amusements of any kind. men work from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., have their dinner and go to bed. very little news penetrates from the outside world and conversation is therefore, limited to the immediate affairs of the individuals concerned. small matters thus appear to be far more important than they really are and the story of any little adventure soon becomes magnified out of all recognition. this, perhaps, accounts also for some of the absurd stories of atrocities. on the last day of the year we reach leopoldville and are comfortably installed in the inspector's house. a kind of fete is held in the evening and a procession passes with lanterns on poles, but there is very little singing or noise of any kind and the whole affair is rather ghostly. on january 2nd we leave leopoldville by train and remembering the amount of the fare coming up, i was careful to reduce my baggage to the minimum. of course the food cases were all empty, the wine drunk, the salt paid away to natives and the petroleum burnt; still for myself, three boys and excess baggage, the fare for the two hundred miles was over £25. just before we left leopoldville, who should enter the carriage but mr. joseph clarke, of ikoko, and another mr. clark, who is also a missionary. i was very pleased to see them and hear the news from their side of the question. they were travelling to maladi to attend a meeting of missionaries, but to-day only proceeded as far as kinshassa. mr. clarke told me he had sent to the commission of enquiry some new photographs of the boy without a hand whom he had shown to me at ikoko and was convinced that the world would be startled when the report appeared. all the meetings of the commission are held in public and therefore the evidence submitted at them is already known. the interpretation of this apparently depends upon the already formed opinion of the individual, for while the state officials say that very little, if anything, has been proved against the government, the missionaries are quite satisfied that the a.b.i.r. company will be severely condemned. of course no report can possibly satisfy any of the controversialists for their feelings are too strong to permit them to be content with cold facts judicially stated. after an uneventful and uncomfortable journey through the beautiful part described before, we arrive at sono congo about 5 p.m. and take a room in the magazins-generaux, a wooden building raised above the level of the ground and fairly clean. it is beautifully fresh and cool up here, and for the first time for half a year, it is possible to take a bath in clear white water. on again at 6.30 a.m. at which hour it was quite cold, but as the sun rose and we descended, it became very hot indeed, for we were then well south of the equator and it was summer in the lower congo. the scenery through the palabala mountains improved, if possible, on a second acquaintance and the railway as a feat of engineering, appeared still more marvellous. after a dusty, hot journey, we arrived at matadi at 5 p.m. and found mr. de rache, the commissaire of the district, on the platform. he had kindly taken a room at one of the hotels, but as it necessitated climbing up the hill and i could only walk with difficulty, i decided to sleep on board the _anversville_ which was discharging cargo at the pier head. here indeed were all the luxuries of europe. a barber, a big bath, white spotless table-cloths, clean shining plate, red juicy beef and last, but by no means least, cold drinks. it is worth roughing it to experience the keen delight at returning to comforts which are never appreciated at their full worth when enjoyed every day. next morning we leave matadi for boma in the _heron_. the current is running down through the narrow channel at about ten knots an hour and the water roars and bubbles as though passing over rocks in a rapid. we therefore roll a good deal and travel very fast indeed until we reach boma just before midday. stories in the congo grow with extraordinary rapidity and my attack of synovitis had been converted into a serious illness before it reached the capital. a room had therefore, been prepared at the _croix rouge_ in which i was soon comfortably installed. the hospital consists of eight sets of rooms arranged in four buildings, separated from each other, but with the verandahs connected by balconies. in the centre is a building in which the eight sisters live the whole thus forming a "t" with a building at each end of the lines and one where they intersect. the whole is situated on a hill from which a magnificent view can be obtained of the river and country around. here i remained for nearly a week and was attended with much skill and care by the medical men and sisters. it was necessary to make some calls in the town and a carriage at boma was placed at my disposal similar to the one at stanleyville, but travelling in it was more comfortable for the roads are better in the capital. it was very hot and the mosquitoes were terribly hostile, but otherwise my visit was very pleasant and agreeable. on january 6th the german cruiser the _vineta_ and the gunboat the _habicht_ entered the congo and the governor general gave a dinner to the officers to which i received the honour of an invitation. i am tempted to give the menu to show that although living in the upper congo is not good, as a rule, in boma it is possible to give a banquet worthy of anyone. menu - _potage aux tomates_ - _coquilles de crevettes_ - _barbue. sauce câpres_ _pommes nature_ - _filet de boeuf_ _flageolets. pommes rissolées_ - _asperges de malines_ _sauce au beurre_ - _pigeonneaux rôtis. petits pois_ -_poulets farcis. compote de mangues_ - _canetons rôtis. salade russe_ - _gâteaux_ _ananas au kirsch_ _fruits.--desserts_ the wines were oporlo, hodiheimer, niersteiner, pichon longueville 1893, château grand larose 1893, corton and louis roederer champagne. the dinner was served admirably by native boys while the band of the force publique performed in the garden. the strong, grasping instinct of the native was well shown after i had paid off the "boys," written them good characters and made them handsome presents. at the last moment they all came and demanded a further tip which i rather indignantly refused to give. however, they showed by their manner then that they were well satisfied and knew very well that it would be very difficult to obtain such high wages again. i had many long talks with mr. vandamme, who was as usual, very hard at work, and mr. underwood who kindly helped me to settle many matters. indeed, everyone with whom i came into contact, whether state officials, missionaries or traders, were always extremely kind and courteous and converted what might have been a very unpleasant and dangerous journey into a most interesting tour and i sincerely hope that all will remain, as i hope they are now, good friends, whether they agree with me or not about the merits of the system of government in the congo. after bidding farewell to the residents at boma, i left in the _wall_ on january 10th and after a rapid journey to banana, joined the _anversville_ which immediately put to sea and by sunset the mouth of the congo was out of sight. the voyage home was uneventful, except for a few days of strong head winds. among the passengers were mr. gohr, the director of justice, who well deserved a holiday after his extremely responsible and arduous duties, captain stevens, the commissaire of the equator district, as cheerful and jolly as ever, mr. longlain, the director of the a.b.i.r. company who has come in for a quite unmerited share of abuse, and many other state officials, many of whom were in an indifferent state of health. two or three catholic and some baptist missionaries were also travelling home and it was interesting and satisfactory to find that everyone, whether state official, missionary or trader, was convinced that the commission of enquiry would issue a report which would correspond with his own opinion. there was plenty of time to arrange the impressions of the tour in order and to formulate some general ideas on the system of government in the congo and the manner in which it is administered. the whole system has been created and is controlled absolutely by one mind. it is a very simple and extremely practical machine, but it is very vast. the officials who work it therefore, have each their own special task allotted to them and very few appear to understand the principles on which the whole moves. the problem which has been faced and successfully overcome, is how an unknown land populated by savages can be developed and civilised by its own resources without heavily taxing the native and without poisoning him with alcohol. it is done in this manner. each native is compelled to do a certain amount of work for the state. this results in the collection of great quantities of rubber and ivory for which the native is paid. the rubber and ivory are then sold at a profit in europe and the sum so realised is used to pay the heavy expenses of transport, to keep up the government and to open out new lines of communication throughout the country. the native is thus made to work instead of paying a tax in money and it is possible to raise enough revenue without selling him alcohol. as has been shown in these pages, the native is very grasping and very idle and has little idea at present of the value either of produce or work. he thus charges an extortionate amount for his goats and chickens, and demands heavy fees for services rendered. the state however, fixes the price of labour and food at its fair value and demands a certain amount of one or other from each village. this sometimes leads to discontent and rebellion just as do the taxes levied by other governments, and it is necessary to occupy territory with troops. no soldier however, is allowed to have in his possession a rifle unless he is accompanied by a white officer, and if he tries to ill-treat the natives, is severely punished. the officials themselves, are subjected to the most severe discipline, and as they exist, so to speak, on the rungs of a ladder, each one can be punished by the one next above him, who is, in turn, responsible, until at length the summit is reached. every post is worked on identical principles and the responsibility for its success or failure, rests with the official in charge. he is not permitted to try experiments or to alter the system in the least degree, and can only use his moral power to influence the natives. the question has been asked whether this system is not contrary to the letter or spirit of the treaty of 1885. clause v. of that treaty runs as follows. "no power which exercises or may exercise sovereign rights in the above mentioned regions shall be allowed to grant therein either monopoly or privilege of any kind in commercial matters; foreigners without distinction shall enjoy protection of their persons and goods as well as the right of acquiring and transferring moveable and immoveable property and the same treatment and rights as subjects of the nation in the exercise of their professions." in the first place it must be remembered that the berlin act applies to all the powers possessing territory in the congo basin and not to the free state particularly, and secondly, that it was agreed upon by the powers to prohibit monopolies and privileges in commercial matters and to suppress slavery, but not to interfere with the government of the states or colonies which were then or might be established and which might or might not sign the treaty. all the powers indeed which signed the act of berlin of 1885 did so voluntarily and among them the congo free state which had already been recognised by the whole of europe as an independent state. the signatory powers to that act did not create, define the boundaries, or in any way particularly specify the congo free state which is bound by it, therefore, to the same extent only as is england, france, germany, or other signatory powers. all these powers at various times have declared that vacant land is crown property. a german imperial order of november 26th 1895 says that the proprietorship of all vacant land in german east africa belongs to the empire. an order issued by the commissioner of the french congo of september 26th 1891 runs "uncultivated soil and vacant land which nobody legally claims shall be considered as belonging to the state and shall form part of the colonial domain[4]." in the british empire, the right of the government to declare vacant lands in the colonies crown property has been frequently exercised[5]. in annexing all the vacant lands, the congo free state therefore, has only followed the usual custom practised by all countries, so that it is obvious these lands are absolutely the property of the state, which, therefore, has a perfect right either to sell or lease them to companies, missionaries or traders, or to collect the produce from them itself. indeed it was never intended that the whole congo basin should be pegged out into claims by a host of adventurers without any system, law or order, for such a proceeding would have speedily led to complete anarchy. since then the vacant lands belong to the state, it is obvious that traders can only acquire landed property either from the state, from other traders or persons possessing land. again it is obvious that a trader only has the right of purchasing the produce of the land from the owner and although he may buy for example, rubber, which a native chief has grown on his own plantation, no chief may go into the forest which is state territory, collect the rubber from it and sell it, for such would be simple robbery. now the state imposes regulations upon the concessionary companies and traders, which it also observes carefully itself on its own land in order that the rubber plants shall not be killed and furthermore it stipulates that all who take rubber juice, shall plant young rubber trees and vines to replace those which die in process of time. the supply of rubber is thus assured in the future. in spite however of the most stringent rules the officials of the private companies undoubtedly ill-treat the natives sometimes. what then would have been the result if the country had been parcelled out among a number of private traders, who had simply pegged out claims? their object would have been to make a large fortune and return home as soon as possible. after a few years, therefore, all the existing rubber trees and vines would have been bled to death, no new ones would have been planted, and the native would certainly have been over-worked and ill-treated. the country would then have been deserted and left to return to savagery. the state itself on the other hand is working for the future. everything which can grow is planted, the natives are daily becoming more civilised, posts are being built, roads and waterways opened up and the whole place rendered beautiful and attractive. in the meantime, properly in the country is guarded, trade is perfectly free, and everyone, native and foreigner, is free to pursue his business in his own manner, subject only to such laws as are imposed in all civilised countries for the good of the community at large. the congo free state has indeed, without breaking any treaty, solved the problem which has baffled the combined wisdom of all the ancient great colonial powers. it exists on its own resources without poisoning the natives with alcohol; it extracts much wealth from the soil without fear of ever exhausting it; it opens up great tracts of land without running heavily into debt, and--noblest of all--it daily converts naked cannibal savages into self-respecting responsible people. footnotes: [4] see _new africa_ by senator e. descamps, p. 73 _et seq_. [5] in canada, australia and the north west. the pools of silence by h. de vere stacpoole author of "the blue lagoon," "the crimson azaleas," "garryowen," etc. new york duffield & company 1910 copyright, 1910, by duffield & company published, july, 1910 the trow press, new york table of contents part i chapter page i. a lecture of thenard's 3 ii. dr. duthil 11 iii. captain berselius 19 iv. schaunard 30 v. marseilles 42 part two vi. matadi 51 vii. yandjali 56 viii. the voice of the congo forest 64 ix. big game 72 x. m'bassa 80 xi. andreas meeus 84 xii. night at the fort 94 part three xiii. the pools of silence 101 xiv. behind the mask 110 xv. the punishment 115 xvi. due south 123 xvii. sun-washed spaces 127 xviii. far into elephant land 130 xix. the great herd 140 xx. the broken camp 152 xxi. the feast of the vultures 159 xxii. the lost guide 164 xxiii. beyond the skyline 173 xxiv. the sentence of the desert 181 xxv. toward the sunset 187 xxvi. the fading mist 192 xxvii. i am the forest 200 xxviii. god sends a guide 204 xxix. the vision of the pools 212 part four xxx. the avenger 219 xxxi. the voice of the forest by night 230 xxxii. moonlight on the pools 236 xxxiii. the river of gold 245 xxxiv. the substitute 252 xxxv. paris 258 xxxvi. dreams 266 xxxvii. berselius beholds his other self 273 xxxviii. the revolt of a slave 280 xxxix. maxine 283 xl. pugin 296 xli. the return of captain berselius 304 xlii. amidst the lilies 315 part one chapter i a lecture of thenard's the sun was setting over paris, a blood-red and violent-looking sun, like the face of a bully staring in at the window of a vast chill room. the bank of cloud above the west, corrugated by the wind, seemed not unlike the lowermost slats of a venetian blind; one might have fancied that a great finger had tilted them up whilst the red, callous, cruel face took a last peep at the frost-bitten city, the frost-bound country--montmartre and its windows, winking and bloodshot; bercy and its barges; notre dame, where icicles, large as carrots, hung from the lips of the gargoyles, and the seine clipping the _cité_ and flowing to the clean but distant sea. it was the fourth of january and the last day of félix thénard's post-graduate course of lectures at the beaujon hospital. post-graduate lectures are intended not for students, using the word in its limited sense, but for fully fledged men who wish for extra training in some special subject, and thénard, the famous neurologist of the beaujon, had a class which practically represented the whole continent of europe and half the world. men from vienna and madrid, germany and japan, london and new york, crowded the benches of his lecture room. even the republic of liberia was represented by a large gentleman, who seemed carved from solid night and polished with palm oil. dr. paul quincy adams, one of the representatives of america at the lectures of thénard, was just reaching the entrance of the beaujon as the last rays of sunset were touching the heights of montmartre and the first lamps of paris were springing alight. he had walked all the way from his rooms in the rue dijon, for omnibuses were slow and uncomfortable, cabs were dear, and money was, just at present, the most unpleasant thing that money can convert itself into--an object. adams was six feet two, a vermonter, an american gentleman whose chest measurements were big, almost, as his instincts were fine. he had fought his way up, literally from the soil, putting in terms as seaside _café_ waiter to help to pay his college fees; putting aside everything but honour in his grand struggle to freedom and individual existence, and finishing his college career with a travelling scholarship which brought him to paris. individualism, the thing that lends something of greatness to each american, but which does not tend to the greatness of the nation, was the mainspring of this big man whom nature had undoubtedly designed with her eye on the vast plains, virgin forests, and unfordable rivers, and across whose shoulder one half divined the invisible axe of the pioneer. he was just twenty-three years of age, yet he looked thirty: plain enough as far as features go, his face was a face to remember in time of trouble. it was of the american type that approximates to the red indian, and you guessed the power that lay behind it by the set of the cheek-bones, the breadth of the chin and the restfulness of the eyes. like the red indian, paul quincy adams was slow of speech. a silent man with his tongue. he entered the hospital and passed down a long corridor to the cloakroom, where he left his overcoat and from there, by another corridor, he found his way to the swing-door of the lecture theatre. it wanted five minutes to the hour. he peeped over the muffing of the glass; the place was nearly full, so he went in and took his seat, choosing one at the right hand end of the first row of the stalls--students' vernacular for the lowest row of the theatre benches. the theatre was lit with gas. it had whitewashed walls bare as the walls of a barn; a permanent blackboard faced the audience, and the air was suffocatingly hot after the crisp, cold air of the streets. it would be like this till about the middle of the lecture, when alphonse the porter would pull the rope of the skylight and ventilate the place with an arctic blast. this room, which had once been an anatomical theatre, and always a lecture room, had known the erect form of lisfranc; the stooping shoulders of majendie had cast their shadow on its walls; flourens had lectured here on that subject of which he had so profound a knowledge--the brain; the echoes of this room had heard the foundations of medicine shift and change, the rank heresies of yesterday voiced as the facts of to-day--and _vice versa_. adams, having opened his notebook and sharpened his pencil, sat listening to the gas sizzling above his head; then he turned for a moment and glanced at the men behind him: the doctor from vienna in a broadly braided frock-coat with satin facings, betraying himself to all men by the end of the clinical thermometer protruding from his waistcoat pocket; the two japanese gentlemen--brown, incurious, and inscrutable--men from another world, come to look on; the republican from liberia, and the rest. then he turned his head, for the door on the floor of the theatre had opened, giving entrance to thénard. thénard was a smallish man in a rather shabby frock-coat; his beard was scant, pointed, and gray-tinged; he had a depressed expression, the general air of a second-rate tradesman on the verge of bankruptcy; and as he entered and crossed to the _estrade_ where the lecture table stood and the glass of water, he shouted some words vehemently and harshly to alphonse, the theatre attendant, who, it seemed, had forgotten to place the box of coloured chalks on the table--the sacred chalks which the lecturer used for colouring his diagrams on the blackboard. one instantly took a dislike to this shabby-looking _bourgeois_, with the harsh, irritable voice, but after awhile, as the lecture went on, one forgot him. it was not the profundity of the man's knowledge, great though it was, that impressed one; or the subtlety of his reasoning or the lucidity of his expression, but his earnestness, his obvious disregard for everything earthly but truth. this was borne in on one by every expression of his face, every gesture of his body, every word and every tone and inflection of his voice. this was the twelfth and last lecture of the course. it was on the "brain conceived as a machine pure and simple." it was a cold and pitiless lecture, striking at the root of poetry and romance, speaking of religions, not religion, and utterly ignoring the idea which stands poised like a white-winged victory over all other ideas--the soul. it was pitiless because it did these things, and it was terrible because it was spoken by thénard, for he was just standing there, a little, oldish man, terribly convincing in his simplicity, absolutely without prejudice, as ready to acknowledge the soul and its attributes as to refuse them, standing there twiddling his horsehair watch-chain, and speaking from the profundity of his knowledge with, at his elbow, a huge army of facts, instances, and cases, not one of which did not support his logical deductions. i wish i could print his lecture in full. i can only give some few sentences taken at haphazard from the peroration. "the fundamental basis of all morality can be expressed by the words left--or right. 'shall i take the path to the right, when my child is being threatened with death by a pterodactyl, or shall i take the path to the left when a mastodon is threatening to put a foot on my dinner?' "the prehistoric man asking himself that question in the dawn of time laid the foundation of the world's morality. do we know how he answered it? yes--undoubtedly he saved his dinner. "the prehistoric woman crouching in the ferns, wakened from sleep by the cries of her child on the left and the shouting of her man on the right, found herself face to face with the question, 'shall i court self-destruction in attempting to save _it_, or shall i seek safety with _him_?' do we know how she answered that question? undoubtedly she took the path to the left. "the woman's right was the man's left, and she took it not from any motive of goodness but just because her child appealed to her as powerfully as his dinner appealed to the man. and which was the nobler instinct? in prehistoric times, gentlemen, they were both equally noble, for the instinct of the man was as essential to the fact that you and i are here gathered together in enlightened paris, as the instinct of the woman. "right or left? that is still the essence of morals--all the rest is embroidery. whilst i am talking to you now, service is being held at the madeleine, the bourse is closed (looking at his watch), but other gaming houses are opening. the _café de paris_ is filling, the little sisters of the poor are visiting the sick. "we feel keenly that some people are doing good and some people are doing evil. we wonder at the origin of it all, and the answer comes from the prehistoric forest. "'i am determination. i can choose the right or i can choose the left. whilst dwelling in the man's heart my choice lies _that_ way, in the woman's heart _that_ way. "'i am not religion, but between the man and the woman i have created an essential antagonism of motive which will be the basis of all future religions and systems of ethics. i have already dimly demarcated a line between ferocity and greed, and a thing which has yet no name, but which will in future ages be called love. "'_i_ am a constant quantity, but the dim plan i have traced in the plastic brain will be used by the ever-building years; spires and domes shall fret the skies, priests unroll their scrolls of papyri, infinite developments of the simple basic right and left laid down by me shall combine to build a pantheon of a million shrines to a million gods--who are yet only three: the tramp of the mastodon, the cry of the child in the pterodactyl's grip, and myself, who in future years shall be the only surviving god of the three--determination.' * * * * * "the pineal gland had no known function, so descartes declared it to be the seat of the soul. 'there is nothing in here. let us put something in,' and he put in the idea of the soul. that was the old method. "morphology teaches us now that the pineal gland is the last vestige of an eye which once belonged to a reptile long extinct. that is the new method; the results are not so pretty, but they are more exact." * * * * * "you have finished your post-graduate work, and i suppose you are about to leave paris like the others. have you any plans?" the lecture was over, the audience was pouring out of the theatre, and adams was talking to thénard, whom he knew personally. "well, no," said adams. "none very fixed just at present. of course i shall practise in my own country, but i can't quite see the opening yet." chapter ii dr. duthil thénard, with his case-book and a bundle of papers under his arm, stood for a moment in thought. then he suddenly raised his chin. "how would you like to go on a big-game shooting expedition to the congo?" "ask a child would it like pie," said the american, speaking in english. then, in french, "immensely, monsieur. only it is impossible." "why?" "money." "ah, that's just it," said thénard. "a patient of mine, captain berselius, is starting on a big-game shooting expedition to the congo. he requires a medical man to accompany him, and the salary is two thousand francs a month and all things found----" adams's eyes lit up. "two thousand a month!" "yes; he is a very rich man. his wife is a patient of mine. when i was visiting her yesterday the captain put the thing before me--in fact, gave me _carte blanche_ to choose for him. he requires the services of a medical man--an englishman if possible----" "but i'm an american," said adams. "it is the same thing," replied thénard, with a little laugh. "you are all big and strong and fond of guns and danger." he had taken adams by the arm and was leading him down the passage toward the entrance hall of the hospital. "the primitive man is strong in you all, and that is why you are so vital and important, you anglo-saxons, anglo-celts, and anglo-teutons. come in here." he opened the door of one of the house-surgeon's rooms. a youngish looking man, with a straw-coloured beard, was seated before the fire, with a cigarette between his lips. he rose to greet thénard, was introduced to adams, and, drawing an old couch a bit from the wall, he bade his guests be seated. the armchair he retained himself. one of the legs was loose, and he was the only man in the beaujon who had the art of sitting on it without smashing it. this he explained whilst offering cigarettes. thénard, like many another french professor, unofficially was quite one with the students. he would snatch a moment from his work to smoke a cigarette with them; he would sometimes look in at their little parties. i have seen him at a birthday party where the cakes and ale, to say nothing of the cigarettes and the unpawned banjo, were the direct products of a pawned microscope. i have seen him, i say, at a party like this, drinking a health to the microscope as the giver of all the good things on the table--he, the great thénard, with an income of fifteen to twenty thousand pounds a year, and a reputation solid as the four massive text-books that stood to his name. "duthil," said thénard, "i have secured, i believe, a man for our friend berselius." he indicated adams with a half laugh, and dr. duthil, turning in his chair, regarded anew the colossus from the states. the great, large-hewn, cast-iron visaged adams, beside whom thénard looked like a shrivelled monkey and duthil like a big baby with a beard. "good," said duthil. "a better man than bauchardy," said thénard. "much," replied duthil. "who, then, was bauchardy?" asked adams, amused rather by the way in which the two others were discussing him. "bauchardy?" said duthil. "why, he was the last man berselius killed." "silence," said thénard, then turning to adams, "berselius is a perfectly straight man. on these hunting expeditions of his he invariably takes a doctor with him; he is not a man who fears death in the least, but he has had bitter experience of being without medical assistance, so he takes a doctor. he pays well and is entirely to be trusted to do the right thing, as far as money goes. on that side the contract is all right. but there is another side--the character of berselius. a man, to be the companion of captain berselius, needs to be big and strong in body and mind, or he would be crushed by the hand of captain berselius. yes, he is a terrible man in a way--_un homme affreux_--a man of the tiger type--and he is going to the country of the big baboons, where there is the freedom of action that the soul of such a man desires----" "in fact," said adams, "he is a villain, this captain berselius?" "oh, no," said thénard, "not in the least. be quiet, duthil, you do not know the man as i do. i have studied him; he is a primitive----" "an apache," said duthil. "come, dear master, confess that from the moment you heard that this berselius was intent on another expedition, you determined to throw a foreigner into the breach. 'no more french doctors, if possible,' said you. is not that so?" thénard laughed the laugh of cynical confession, buttoning his overcoat at the same time and preparing to go. "well, there may be something in what you say, duthil. however, there the offer is--a sound one financially. yes. i must say i dread that two thousand francs a month will prove a fatal attraction, and, if mr. adams does not go, some weaker man will. well, i must be off." "one moment," said adams. "will you give me this man's address? i don't say i will take the post, but i might at least go and see him." "certainly," replied thénard, and taking one of his own cards from his pocket, he scribbled on the back of it- captain armand berselius 14 avenue malakoff then he went off to a consultation at the hotel bristol on a balkan prince, whose malady, hitherto expressed by evil living, had suddenly taken an acute and terrible turn and adams found himself alone with dr. duthil. "that is thénard all over," said duthil. "he is the high priest of modernism. he and all the rest of the neurologists have divided up devilment into provinces, and labelled each province with names all ending in _enia_ or _itis_. berselius is a primitive, it seems; this balkan prince is--i don't know what they call him--sure to be something latin, which does not interfere in the least with the fact that he ought to be boiled alive in an antiseptic solution. have another cigarette." "do you know anything special against captain berselius?" asked adams, taking the cigarette. "i have never even seen the man," replied duthil, "but from what i have heard, he is a regular buccaneer of the old type, who values human life not one hair. bauchardy, that last doctor he took with him, was a friend of mine. perhaps that is why i feel vicious about the man, for he killed bauchardy as sure as i didn't." "killed him?" "yes; with hardship and overwork." "overwork?" "_mon dieu_, yes. dragged him through swamps after his infernal monkeys and tigers, and bauchardy died in the hospital at marseilles of spinal meningitis, brought on by the hardships of the expedition--died as mad as berselius himself." "as mad as berselius?" "yes; this infernal berselius seemed to have infected him with his own hunting fever, and bauchardy--_mon dieu_, you should have seen him during his illness, shooting imaginary elephants, and calling for berselius." "what i want to get at is this," said adams. "was bauchardy driven into these swamps you speak of, and made to hunt against his will--treated cruelly, in fact--or did berselius take his own share of the hardships?" "his own share! why, from what i can understand, he did all the hunting. a man of iron with the ferocity of a tiger--a very devil, who made others follow him as poor bauchardy did, to his death----" "well," said adams, "this man interests me somehow, and i intend to have a look at him." "the pay is good," said duthil, "but i have warned you fully, if thénard hasn't. good evening." the rue dijon, where adams lived, was a good way from the beaujon. he made his way there on foot, studying the proposition as he went. the sporting nature of the proposal coming from the sedate thénard rather tickled him. "he wants to pit me against this berselius," said adams to himself, "same as if we were dogs. that's the long and short of it. yes, i can understand his meaning in part; he's afraid if berselius engages some week-kneed individual, he'll give the weak-kneed individual more than he can take. he wants to stick a six-foot yankee in the breach, instead of a five-foot froggie, all absinthe and cigarette ends. well, he was frank, at all events. hum, i don't like the proposition--and yet there's something--there's something--there's something about it i _do_ like. then there's the two thousand francs a month, and not a penny out of pocket, and there's the congo, and the guggly-wuggly alligators, and the great big hairy apes, and the feel of a gun in one's hand again. oh, my!" "all the same, it's funny," he went on, as he drew near the boulevard st. michel. "when thénard spoke of berselius there was something more than absence of friendship in his tone. can old man thénard have a down on this berselius and does he in his heart of hearts imagine that by allotting p. quincy adams to the post of physician extraordinary to the expedition, he will get even with the captain? my friend, remember that hymn the english salvationists were yelling last sunday outside the american presbyterian church in the rue de berry--'christian, walk carefully, danger is near.' not a bad motto for paris, and i will take it." he walked into the _café d'italie_, which, as everyone knows, is next to mouton's, the pork shop, on the left-hand side of the boul' miche, as you go from the seine; called for a boc, and then plunged into a game of dominoes with an art student in a magenta necktie, whom he had never met before, and whom, after the game, he would, a million to one, never meet again. that night, when he had blown out his candle, he reviewed thénard's proposition in the dark. the more he looked at it the more attraction it had for him, and--"whatever comes of it," said he to himself, "i will go and see this captain berselius to-morrow. the animal seems worth the trouble of inspection." chapter iii captain berselius next morning was chill and a white seine mist wrapped paris in its folds. it clung to the trees of the avenue champs elysées, and it half veiled the avenue malakoff as adams's _fiacre_ turned into that thoroughfare and drew up at no. 14, a house with a carriage drive, a porter's lodge, and wrought-iron gates. the american paid off his cab, rang at the porter's lodge, was instantly admitted, and found himself in an enormous courtyard domed in with glass. he noted the orange and aloe trees growing in tubs of porcelain, as the porter led him to the big double glass doors giving entrance to the house. "he's got the money," thought adams, as the glass swing-door was opened by a flunkey as magnificent as a lord mayor's footman, who took the visitor's card and the card of m. thénard and presented them to a functionary with a large pale face, who was seated at a table close to the door. this personage, who was as soberly dressed as an archbishop, and had altogether a pontifical air, raised himself to his feet and approached the visitor. "has monsieur an appointment----" "no," said adams. "i have come to see your master on business. you can take him my card--yes, that one--dr. adams, introduced by dr. thénard." the functionary seemed perplexed; the early hour, the size of the visitor, his decided manner, all taken together, were out of routine. only for a moment he hesitated, then leading the way across the warm and flower-scented hall, he opened a door and said, "will monsieur take a seat?" adams entered a big room, half library, half museum; the door closed behind him, and he found himself alone. the four walls of the room showed a few books, but were mostly covered with arms and trophies of the chase. japanese swords in solid ivory scabbards, swords of the old samurai so keen that a touch of the edge would divide a suspended hair. malay krisses, double-handed chinese execution swords; old pepper-pot revolvers, such as may still be found on the african coast; knob-kerries, assegais, steel-spiked balls swinging from whips of raw hide; weapons wild and savage and primitive as those with which attila drove before him the hordes of the huns, and modern weapons of to-day and yesterday; the big elephant gun which has been supplanted by the express rifle; the deadly magazine rifle, the latest products of schaunard of the rue de la paix and westley richards of london. adams forgot time as he stood examining these things; then he turned his attention to the trophies, mounted by borchard of berlin, that prince of taxidermists. here stood a great ape, six feet and over--_monstrum horrendum_--head flung back, mouth open, shouting aloud to the imagination of the gazer in the language that was spoken ere the earliest man lifted his face to the chill mystery of the stars. in the right fist was clutched the branch of a m'bina tree, ready lifted to dash your brains out--the whole thing a miracle of the taxidermist's art. here crawled an alligator on a slab of granitic rock; an alligator--that is to say, the despair of the taxidermist--for you can make nothing out of an alligator; alive and not in motion he looks stuffed, stuffed, he looks just the same. hartbeest, reedbuck, the maned and huge-eared roan antelope, gazelle, and bush-buck, all were here, skull or mask, dominated by the vast head of the wildebeest, with ponderous sickle-curved horns. adams had half completed the tour of the walls when the door of the library opened and captain berselius came in. tall, black-bearded and ferocious looking--that was the description of man adams was prepared to meet. but captain berselius was a little man in a frock-coat, rather worn, and slippers. he had evidently been in _négligé_ and, to meet the visitor, slipped into the frock-coat, or possibly he was careless, taken up with abstractions, dreams, business affairs, plans. he was rather stout, with an oval, egg-shaped face; his beard, sparse and pointed and tinged with gray, had originally been light of hue; he had pale blue eyes, and he had a perpetual smile. it is to be understood by this that captain berselius's smile was, so to speak, hung on a hair-trigger; there was always a trace of it on his face round the lips, and in conversation it became accentuated. at first sight, during your first moments of meeting with captain berselius, you would have said, "what a happy-faced and jolly little man!" adams, completely taken aback by the apparition before him, bowed. "i have the pleasure of speaking to dr. adams, introduced by dr. thénard?" said captain berselius, motioning the visitor to a chair. "pray take a seat, take a seat--yes----" he took a seat opposite the american, crossed his legs in a comfortable manner, caressed his chin, and whilst chatting on general subjects stared full at the newcomer, as though adams had been a statue, examining him, without the least insolence, but in that thorough manner with which a purchaser examines the horse he is about to buy or the physician of an insurance company a proposer. it was now that adams felt he had to deal with no common man in captain berselius. never before had he conversed with a person so calmly authoritative, so perfectly at ease, and so commanding. this little commonplace-looking, negligently dressed man, talking easily in his armchair, made the spacious adams feel small and of little account in the world. captain berselius filled all the space. he was _the_ person in that room; adams, though he had personality enough, was nowhere. and now he noticed that the perpetual smile of the captain had no relation to mirth or kindliness, it was not worn as a mask, for captain berselius had no need for masks; it was a mysterious and unaccountable thing that was there. "you know m. thénard intimately?" said captain berselius, turning suddenly from some remarks he was making on the united states. "oh, no," said adams. "i have attended his clinics; beyond that----" "just so," said the other. "are you a good shot?" "fair, with the rifle." "you have had to do with big game?" "i have shot bear." "these are some of my trophies," said the captain, rising to his feet. he took his stand before the great ape and contemplated it for a moment. "i shot him near m'bassa on the west coast two years ago. the natives at the village where we were camping said there was a big monkey in a tree near by. they seemed very much frightened, but they led me to the tree. he knew what a gun was; he knew what a man was, too. he knew that his hour of death had arrived, and he came roaring out of the tree to meet me. but when he was on the ground, with the muzzle of my mannlicher two yards from his head, all his rage vanished. he saw death, and to shut out the sight he put his big hands before his face----" "and you?" "i shot him through the heart. this room does not represent all my work. the billiard room and the hall contain many of my trophies; they are interesting to me, for each has a history. that tiger skin there in front of the fireplace once covered a thing very much alive. he was a full-sized brute, and i met him in a rice field near benares. i had not even time to raise my gun when he charged. then i was on my back and he was on top of me. he had overshot the mark a bit--i was not even scratched. i lay looking up at his whiskers; they seemed thick as quills, and i counted them. i was dead to all intents and purposes, so i felt no fear. that was the lesson this gentleman taught me; it is as natural to be dead as to be alive. i have never been afraid of death since. well, something must have distracted his attention and frightened him, for he lifted himself, passed over me like a cloud, and was gone. well, so much for the tiger. and now for business. are you prepared to act as medical attendant to my new expedition?" "well," said adams, "i would like a little time to consider----" "certainly," said captain berselius, taking out his watch. "i will give you five minutes, as a matter of form. thénard, in a note to me this morning, informs me he has given you all details as to salary." "yes, he gave me the details. as you give me so short a time to make my decision about you, i suppose you have already made your decision about me?" "absolutely," said berselius. "two minutes have passed. why waste the other three? for you have already made up your mind to come." adams sat down in a chair for a moment, and in that moment he did a great deal of thinking. he had never met a man before at all like berselius. he had never before come across a man with such a tremendous personality. berselius fascinated yet repelled him. that there was evil in this man he felt, but he felt also that there was good. much evil and much good. and beyond this he divined an animal ferocity latent--the ferocity of a tiger--a cold and pitiless and utterly divorced from reason ferociousness, the passion of a primitive man, who had never known law except the law of the axe wielded by the strongest. and yet there was something in the man that he liked. he knew by berselius's manner that if he did not take the offer now, he would lose it. he reckoned with lightning swiftness that the expedition would bring him in solid cash enough to start in a small way in the states. he was as poor as job, as hungry for adventure as a schoolboy, and he only had a moment to decide in. "how many men are making up your party?" suddenly asked adams. "you and i alone," replied berselius, putting his watch in his pocket to indicate that the time was almost expired. "i will come," said adams, and it seemed to him that he said the words against his will. captain berselius went to a writing table, took a sheet of paper and wrote carefully and with consideration for the space of some five minutes. then he handed the paper to adams. "these are the things you want," said he. "i am an old campaigner in the wilds, so you will excuse me for specifying them. go for your outfit where you will, but for your guns to schaunard, for he is the best. order all accounts to be sent in to my secretary, m. pinchon. he will settle them. your salary you can take how you will. if it is useful to you, i can give you a cheque now on the crédit lyonnais, if you will state the amount." "thank you, thank you," said adams. "i have quite sufficient money for my needs, and, if it is the same to you, i would rather pay for my outfit myself." "as you please," said captain berselius, quite indifferently. "but schaunard's account and the account for drugs and instruments you will please send to m. pinchon; they are part of the expedition. and now," looking at his watch, "will you do me the pleasure of staying to _déjeuner_?" adams bowed. "i will notify you to-night at your address the exact date we start," said captain berselius as he led the way from the room. "it will be within a fortnight. my yacht is lying at marseilles, and will take us to matadi, which will be our base. she will be faster than the mail-boats and very much more comfortable." they crossed the hall, captain berselius opened a door, motioned his companion to enter, and adams found himself in a room, half morning room, half boudoir. a bright log fire was burning, and on either side of the fireplace two women--a girl of about eighteen and a woman of thirty-five or so--were seated. the elder woman, madame berselius, a parisienne, pale, stout, yet well-proportioned, with almond-shaped eyes; full lips exquisitely cut in the form of the true cupid's bow; and with a face vigorous enough, but veiled by an expression at once mulish, blindish, and indolent--was a type. the type of the poodle woman, the parasite. with the insolent expression of a japanese lady of rank, an insult herself to the human race, you will see her everywhere in the highest social ranks of society. at the zoölogical gardens of madrid on a sunday, when the grandees of spain take their pleasure amidst the animals at longchamps, in rotten row, washington square, unter den linden, wherever money is, growing like an evil fungus, she flourishes. opposite madame berselius sat her daughter, maxine. adams, after his first glance at the two women, saw only maxine. maxine had golden-brown hair, worn after the fashion of cléo de mérode's, gray eyes, and a wide mouth, with pomegranate-red lips. goethe's dictum that the highest beauty is unobtainable without something of disproportion was exemplified in the case of maxine berselius. "her mouth is too wide," said the women, who, knowing nothing of the philosophy of art, hit upon the defect that was maxine's main charm. berselius introduced adams to his wife and daughter, and scarcely had he done so than a servant, in the blue-and-gold livery of the house, flung open the door and announced that _déjeuner_ was served. adams scarcely noticed the room into which they passed; a room whose scheme of colour was that watery green which we associate with the scenery of early spring, the call of the cuckoo, and the river echoes where the weir foams and the willow droops. the tapestry hanging upon the walls did not distract from this scheme. taken from some château of provence, and old almost as the story of nicolete, it showed ladies listening to shepherds who played on flutes, capering lambs, daffodils blowing to the winds of early spring under a sky gray and broken by rifts of blue. adams scarcely noticed the room, or the tapestry, or the food placed before him; he was entirely absorbed by two things, maxine and captain berselius. berselius's presence at the table evidently cast silence and a cloak of restraint upon the women. you could see that the servants who served him dreaded him to the very tips of their fingers, and, though he was chatting easily and in an almost paternal manner, his wife and daughter had almost the air of children, nervous, and on their very best behaviour. this was noticeable, especially, in madame berselius. the beautiful, indolent, arrogant face became a very humble face indeed when she turned it on the man who was evidently, literally, her lord and master. maxine, though oppressed by the presence, wore a different air; she seemed abstracted and utterly unconscious of what a beautiful picture she made against the old-world tapestry of spring. her eyes sometimes met the american's. they scarcely spoke to each other once during the meal, yet their eyes met almost as frequently as though they had been conversing. as a matter of fact, adams was a new type of man to her, and on that account interesting; very different was this son of anak, with the restful, forceful face, to the curled and scented dandies of the chaussée d'antin, the "captains with the little moustaches," the frequenters of the _foyer de ballet_, the cigarette-dried mummies of the grand club. it was like the view of a mountain to a person who had only known hills. maxine, in her turn, was a new type of woman to adams. this perfect flower from the parisian hot-house was the rarest and most beautiful thing he had met in the way of womanhood. she seemed to him a rose only just unfolded, unconscious of its own freshness and beauty as of the dew upon its petals, and saying to the world, by the voice of its own loveliness, "behold me!" "well," said captain berselius, as he took leave of his guest in the smoking room, "i will let you know to-night the day and hour of our departure. all my business in paris will be settled this afternoon. you had better come and see me the day before we start, so that we can make our last arrangements. _au revoir._" chapter iv schaunard the young man turned down the avenue malakoff, after he had left berselius's house, in the direction of the avenue des champs elysées. in twenty-four hours a complete change had taken place in his life. his line of travel had taken a new and most unexpected course; it was as though a train on the north german had, suddenly, by some mysterious arrangement of points and tracks, found itself on the paris-lyons and mediterranean railway. yesterday afternoon the prospect before him, though vague enough, was american. a practice in some big central american town. it would be a hard fight, for money was scanty, and in medicine, especially in the states, advertisement counts for very much. all that was changed now, and the hard, definite prospect that had elbowed itself out of vagueness stood before him: africa, its palms and poisonous forests, the congo--berselius. something else besides these things also stood before him very definitely and almost casting them into shade. maxine. up to this, a woman had never stood before him as a possible part of his future, if we except mary eliza summers, the eleven-year-old daughter of old abe summers, who kept the store in dodgeville, vermont, years ago--that is to say, when paul quincy adams was twelve, an orchard-robbing hooligan, whose chief worry in life was that, though he could thrash his eldest brother left-handed, he was condemned by the law of entail to wear his old pants. when a man falls in love with a woman--really in love--though the attainment of his desire be all but impossible, he has reached the goal of life; no tide can take him higher toward the absolute. he has reached life's zenith, and never will he rise higher, even though he live to wield a sceptre or rule armies. adams reached the place de la concorde on foot, walking and taking his way mechanically, and utterly unconscious of the passers-by. he was studying in minute detail maxine berselius, the pose of her head outlined against the tapestry, the curves of her lips that could speak so well without speaking, the little shell-like ears, the brown-gold coils of her hair, her hands, her dress. he was standing undetermined as to his route, and whether he would cross over to the rue st. honoré or turn toward the seine, when someone gripped his arm from behind, and, turning, he found himself face to face with dr. stenhouse, an english physician who had set up in paris, practising in the boulevard haussmann and flourishing exceedingly. "well, this is luck," said stenhouse. "i lost your address, or i would have written, asking you to come and see us. i remembered it was over on the other side of the water somewhere, but where exactly i could not remember. what are you doing with yourself?" "nothing, just at present." "well, see here. i'm going to the rue du mont thabor to see a patient; walk along with me--it's quite close, just behind the rue st. honoré." they crossed the place de la concorde. "you have finished your post-graduate work, i expect," said stenhouse. "are you going to practise in the states?" "ultimately, i may," replied adams. "i have always intended doing so; but i have to feel my way very cautiously, for the money market is not in a particularly flourishing state with me." "good heavens!" said stenhouse, "when is it with a medical man, especially when he is just starting? i've been through that. see here, why don't you start in paris?" "paris?" "yes, this is the place to make money. you say you are thinking of starting in some american city; well, let me tell you, there are very few american cities so full of rich americans as paris." "well," said adams, "the idea is not a bad one, but just for the present i am fixed. i am going on a big-game shooting expedition to the congo." "as doctor?" "yes, and the salary is not bad--two thousand francs a month and everything found, to say nothing of the fun." "and the malaria?" "oh, one has to run risks." "whom are you going with?" "a man called berselius." "not captain berselius?" asked stenhouse, stopping dead. "yes, captain berselius, of no. 14 avenue malakoff. i have just returned from having _déjeuner_ with him." stenhouse whistled. they were in the rue du mont thabor by this, in front of a small _café_. "well," said adams, "what's wrong?" "everything," replied the other. "this is the house where my patient lives. wait for me, for a moment, like a good fellow. i shan't detain you long, and then we can finish our talk, for i have something to tell you." he darted into the _café_ and adams waited, watching the passers-by and somewhat perturbed in mind. stenhouse's manner impressed him uncomfortably, for, if captain berselius had been the devil, the englishman could not have put more disfavour into his tone. and he (adams) had made a compact with captain berselius. the rue du mont thabor is a somewhat gloomy little street, and it fitted adams's mood as he waited, watching the passers-by and the small affairs of the little shops. at the end of five minutes stenhouse returned. "well?" said adams. "i have had no luncheon yet," replied stenhouse. "i have been so rushed. come with me to a little place i know in the rue st. honoré, where i can get a cup of tea and a bun. we will talk then." "now," said stenhouse, when he was seated at a little marble-topped table with the cup of tea and the bun before him. "you say you have engaged yourself to go to the congo with captain berselius." "yes. what do you know about him?" "that's just the difficulty. i can only say this, and it's between ourselves, the man's name is a byword for a brute and a devil." "that's cheerful," said adams. "mind you," said stenhouse, "he is in the very best society. i have met him at a reception at the elysée. he goes everywhere. he belongs to the best clubs; he's a _persona grata_ at more courts than one, and an intimate friend of king leopold of belgium. his immense wealth, or part of it, comes from the rubber industry--motor tires and so forth. and he's mad after big game. that's his pleasure--killing. he's a killer. that is the best description of the man. the lust of blood is in him, and the astounding thing, to my mind, is that he is not a murderer. he has killed two men in duels, and they say that it is a sight to see him fighting. mind you, when i say 'murderer,' i do not mean to imply that he is a man who would murder for money. give the devil his due. i mean that he is quite beyond reason when aroused, and if you were to hit captain berselius in the face he would kill you as certain as i'll get indigestion from that bun i have just swallowed. the last doctor he took with him to africa died at marseilles from the hardships he went through--not at the hands of berselius, for that would have aroused inquiry, but simply from the hardships of the expedition; but he gave frightful accounts to the hospital authorities of the way this berselius had treated the natives. he drove that expedition right away from libreville, in the french congo, to god knows where. he had it under martial law the whole time, clubbing and thrashing the niggers at the least offence, and shooting with his own hand two of them who tried to desert." "you must remember," said adams, taking up the cudgels for berselius and almost surprised himself at so doing, "that an expedition like that, if it is not held together by a firm hand, goes to pieces, and the result is disaster for everyone. and you know what niggers are." "there you are," laughed stenhouse. "the man has obsessed you already, and you'll come back, if you go, like bauchardy, the man who died in the hospital at marseilles, cursing berselius, yet so magnetized by the power of the chap that you would be ready to follow him again if he said 'come,' and you had the legs to stand on. that is how bauchardy was." "the man, undoubtedly, has a great individuality," said adams. "passing him in the street one might take him for a very ordinary person. meeting him for the first time, he looks all good nature; that smile----" "always," said stenhouse. "beware of a man with a perpetual smile on his face." "yes, i know that, but this smile of berselius's is not worn as a cloak. it seems quite natural to the man, yet somehow bad, as if it came from a profound and natural cynicism directed against all things--including all things good." "you have put it," said stenhouse, "in four words." "but, in spite of everything," said adams, "i believe the man to have great good qualities: some instinct tells me so." "my dear sir," said stenhouse, "did you ever meet a bad man worth twopence at his trade who had not good qualities? the bad man who is half good--so to speak--is a much more dangerous villain than the barrier bully without heart or soul. when hell makes a super-excellent devil, the devil puts goodness in just as a baker puts soda in his bread to make it rise. look at verlaine." "well," said adams, "i have promised berselius, and i will have to go. besides, there are other considerations." he was thinking of maxine, and a smile lit up his face. "you seem happy enough about it," said stenhouse, rising to go. "well, 'he who will to cupar maun to cupar.' when do you start?" "i don't know yet, but i shall hear to-night." they passed out into the rue st. honoré, where they parted. "good luck," said stenhouse, getting into a _fiacre_. "good-bye," replied adams, waving his hand. being in that quarter of the town, and having nothing especial to do, he determined to go to schaunard's in the rue de la paix, and see about his guns. schaunard personally superintends his own shop, which is the first gun-shop on the continent of europe. emperors visit him in person and he receives them as an equal, though far superior to them in the science of sport. an old man now, with a long white beard, he remembers the fowling-pieces and rifles which he supplied to the emperor maximilian before that unfortunate gentleman started on his fatal expedition in search of a throne. he is a mathematician as well as a maker of guns; his telescopic sights and wind gauges are second to none in the world, and his shop front in the rue de la paix exposes no wares--it has just a wire blind, on which are blazoned the arms of russia, england, and spain. but, inside, the place is a joy to a rightly constituted man. behind glass cases the long processions of guns and rifles, smooth, sleek, nut-brown and deadly, are a sight for the eyes of a sportsman. the duelling pistol is still a factor in continental life, and the cases containing them at schaunard's are worth lingering over, for the modern duelling pistol is a thing of beauty, very different from the murderous hair-trigger machines of count considine--though just as deadly. to schaunard, pottering amongst his wares, appeared adams. the swing-door closed, shutting out the sound of the rue de la paix, and the old gun-merchant came forward through the silence of his shop to meet his visitor. adams explained his business. he had come to buy some rifles for a big-game expedition. captain berselius had recommended him. "ah! captain berselius?" said schaunard, and an interested look came into his face. "true, he is a customer of mine. as a matter of fact, his guns for his new expedition are already boxed and directed for marseilles. ah, yes--you require a complete outfit, i suppose?" "yes," said adams. "i am going with him." "going with captain berselius as a friend?" "no, as a doctor." "true, he generally takes a doctor with him," said schaunard, running his fingers through his beard. "have you had much experience amidst big game, and can you make out your own list of requirements, or shall i help you with my advice?" "i should be very glad of your advice. no, i have not had much experience in big-game shooting. i have shot bears, that's all----" "armand!" cried schaunard, and a pale-faced young man came forward from the back part of the shop. "open me this case." armand opened a case, and the deft hand of the old man took down a double-barrelled cordite rifle, light-looking and of exquisite workmanship. "these are the guns we shoot elephants with nowadays," said schaunard, handling the weapon lovingly. "a child could carry it, and there is nothing living it will not kill." he laughed softly to himself, and then directed armand to bring forward an elephant gun of the old pattern. in an instant the young man returned, staggering under the weight of the immense rifle, shod with a heel of india-rubber an inch thick. adams laughed, took the thing up with one hand, and raised it to his shoulder as though it had been a featherweight. "ah!" said he, "here's a gun worth shooting with." schaunard looked on with admiration at the giant handling the gigantic gun. "oh, for you," said he, "it's all very well. _ma foi_, but you suit one another, you both are of another day." "god bless you," said adams, "you can pick me up by the bushel in the states. i'm _small_. say, how much is this thing?" "_that!_" cried schaunard. "why, what on earth could you want with such an obsolete weapon as that?" "tell me--does this thing hit harder, gun for gun--not weight for weight, mind you--but gun for gun--than that double-barrel you are holding in your hands?" "oh, yes," said schaunard, "it hits harder, just as a cannon would hit harder, but----" "i'll have her," said adams. "i've taken a fancy to her. see here, captain berselius is paying for my guns; they are his, part of the expedition--i want this as my own, and i'll pay you for her out of my own pocket. how much is she?" schaunard, whose fifty years of trading had explained to him the fact that when an american takes a whim into his head it is best for all parties to let him have his own way, ran his fingers through his beard. "the thing has no price," said he. "it is a curiosity. but if you must have it--well, i will let you have it for two hundred francs." "done," said adams. "have you any cartridges?" "oh, yes," replied schaunard. "heaps. that is to say, i have the old cartridges, and i can have a couple of hundred of them emptied and re-filled and percussioned. ah, well, monsieur, you must have your own way. armand, take the gun; have it attended to and packed. and now that monsieur has his play-toy," finished the old man, with one of his silent little laughs, "let us come to business." they did, and nearly an hour was spent whilst the american chose a double hammerless-ejector cordite rifle and a .256 sporting mannlicher, for schaunard was a man who, when he took an interest in a customer, could be very interesting. when business was concluded schaunard gave his customer various tips as to the treatment of guns. "and now," said he, opening the door as adams was taking his departure, "i will give you one more piece of advice about this expedition. it is a piece of private advice, and i will trust you not to tell the captain that i gave it to you." "yes. what is the advice?" "don't go." adams laughed as he turned on his heel, and schaunard laughed as he closed the door. a passer-by might have imagined that the two men had just exchanged a good joke. before adams had taken three steps, the door of the shop re-opened, and schaunard's voice called again. "monsieur." "yes?" said adams, turning. "you need not pay me for the gun till you come back." "right," said adams, laughing. "i will call in and pay you for it when i come back. _au revoir._" "_adieu._" chapter v marseilles on the day of departure berselius was entertained at _déjeuner_ by the cerele militaire. he brought adams with him as a guest. nearly all the sporting members of the great club were present to speed the man who after schillings was reckoned on the continent the most adventurous big-game hunter in the world. despite what stenhouse, duthil, and schaunard had said, adams by this time inclined to a half-liking for berselius; the man seemed so far from and unconscious of the little things of the world, so destitute of pettiness, that the half liking which always accompanies respect could not but find a place in adams's mind. guest at a table surrounded by sixty of the wealthiest and most powerful officers of a military nation, berselius did not forget his companion, but introduced him with painstaking care to the chief men present, included him in his speech of thanks, and made him feel that though he was taking berselius's pay, he was his friend and on a perfect social equality with him. adams felt this keenly. on qualifying first he had obtained an appointment as travelling physician to an american, a prominent member of the new york smart set, a man of twenty-two, a motorist, a yachtsman, clean shaved as an actor and smug as a butler, one of those men who make the great american nation so small in the eyes of the world--the world that cannot see beyond the servants' hall antics of new york society to the great plains where the adamses hew the wood and draw the water, build the cities and bridge the rivers, and lay the iron roads, making rail-heads of the roar of the atlantic and the thunder of the pacific. this gentleman treated adams as a paid attendant and in such a manner that adams one morning lifted him from his bed by the slack of his silk pajamas and all but drowned him in his own bath. he could not but remember the incident as he sat watching berselius so calm, so courtly, so absolutely destitute of mannerism, so incontestably the superior, in some magnetic way, of all the other men who were present. maxine and m. pinchon, the secretary, were to accompany them to marseilles. a cold, white paris fog covered the city that night as they drove to the station, and the fog detonators and horns followed them as they glided out slowly from beneath the great glass roof. slowly at first, then more swiftly over rumbling bridges and clicking point, more swiftly still, breaking from the fog-banked seine valley, through snarling tunnel and chattering cutting, faster now and freer, by long lines of poplar trees, mist-strewn, and moonlit ponds and fields, spectral white roads, little winking towns; and now, as if drawn by the magnetic south, swaying to the rock-a-bye of speed, aiming for the lights of dijon far away south, to the tune of the wheels, "seventy-miles-an-hour--seventy-miles-an-hour." civilization, whatever else she has done, has written one poem, the "rapide." true to herself, she makes it pay a dividend, and prostitutes it to the service of stockbrokers, society folk, and gamblers bound for monaco--but what a poem it is that we snore through between a day in paris and a day in marseilles. a poem, swiftly moving, musical with speed, a song built up of songs, telling of paris, its chill and winter fog, of the winter fields, the poplar trees and mist; vineyards of the côte d'or; provence with the dawn upon it, tarascon blowing its morning bugle to the sun; the rhone, and the vineyards, and the olives, and the white, white roads; ending at last in that triumphant blast of music, light and colour, marseilles. _la joconde_, berselius's yacht, was berthed at the messagerie wharf, and after _déjeuner_ at the hotel noailles, they took their way there on foot. adams had never seen the south before as marseilles shows it. the vivid light and the black shadows, the variegated crowd of the canabier prolongue had for him an "arabian nights" fascination, but the wharves held a deeper fascination still. marseilles draws its most subtle charm from far away in the past. beaked triremes have rubbed their girding cables against the wharves of the old phocée; the sunshine of a thousand years has left some trace of its gold, a mirage in the air chilled by the mistral and perfumed by the ocean. at marseilles took place the meeting between mary magdalen and laeta acilia, so delightfully fabled by anatole france. the count of monte cristo landed here after he had discovered his treasure, and here caderouse after the infamy at "la reservée" watched old dantès starving to death. multitudes of ships, fabled and real, have passed from the harbour to countries curious and strange, but never one of them to a stranger country than that to which _la joconde_ was to bear berselius and his companion. gay as naples with colour, piercing the blue sky with a thousand spars, fluttering the flags of all nations to the wind, shot through with the sharp rattle of winch-chains, and perfumed with garlic, vanilla, fumes of coal tar, and the tang of the sea, the wharves of marseilles lay before the travellers, a great counter eternally vibrating to the thunder of trade; bales of carpets from the levant, tons of cheeses from holland, wood from norway, copra, rice, tobacco, corn, silks from china and japan, cotton from lancashire; all pouring in to the tune of the winch-pauls, the cry of the stevedores, and the bugles of port saint jean, shrill beneath the blue sky and triumphant as the crowing of the gallic cock. between the breaks in the shipping one could see the sea-gulls fishing and the harbour flashing, here spangled with coal tar, here whipped to deepest sapphire by the mistral; the junk shops, grog shops, parrot shops, rope-walks, ships' stores and factories lining the quays, each lending a perfume, a voice, or a scrap of colour to the air vibrating with light, vibrating with sound, shot through with voices; hammer blows from the copper sheathers in the dry docks, the rolling of drums from port st. nicholas, the roaring of grain elevators, rattling of winch-chains, trumpeting of ship sirens, mewing of gulls, the bells of notre dame and the bells of st. victor, all fused, orchestrated, into one triumphant symphony beneath the clear blue sky and the trade flags of the world. _la joconde_ was berthed beside a messagerie boat which they had to cross to reach her. she was a palatial cruising yacht of twelve hundred tons' burden, built somewhat on the lines of drexel's _la margharita_, but with less width of funnel. it was two o'clock in the afternoon when they went on board; all the luggage had arrived, steam was up, the port arrangements had been made, and berselius determined to start at once. maxine kissed him, then she turned to adams. "_bon voyage._" "good-bye," said adams. he held her hand for a fraction of a second after his grasp had relaxed. then she was standing on the deck of the messagerie boat, waving good-bye across the lane of blue water widening between _la joconde_ and her berth mate. at the harbour mouth, looking back across the blue wind-swept water, he fancied he could still see her, a microscopic speck in the great picture of terraced marseilles, with its windows, houses, flags, and domes glittering and burning in the sun. then the swell of the gulf of lyons took _la joconde_ as a nurse takes an infant and rocks it on her knee, and france and civilization were slowly wrapped from sight under the veils of distance. part two chapter vi matadi it was evening. _la joconde_, berselius's yacht, lay moored at the wharf of matadi; warpling against the starboard plates, whimpering, wimpling, here smooth as glass, here eddied and frosted, a sea of golden light, a gliding mirror, went the congo. a faint, faint haze dulled the palms away on the other side; from the wharf, where ships were loading up with rubber, ivory, palm-oil, and bales of gum copal, the roar and rattle of steam-winches went across the water, far away across the glittering water, where the red flamingoes were flying, to that other shore where the palm trees showed their fringe of hot and hazy green. the impression of heat which green, the coolest of all colours, can produce, damp heat, heart-weakening heat, that is the master impression produced by the congo on the mind of man. all the other impressions are--to paraphrase thénard--embroideries on this. yet how many other impressions there are! the congo is africa in a frank mood. africa, laying her hand on her heart and speaking, or rather, whispering the truth. this great river flooding from stanley pool and far away beyond, draws with it, like a moving dream, the pictures of the roaring rapids and the silent pools, the swamps filled with darkness of vegetation and murderous life; the unutterable loneliness of vast forests. the water brook of the hartbeest and antelope, it brings with it their quiet reflections, just as it brings the awful horn and the pig-like face of the rhinoceros. what things have not slaked their thirst in this quiet water flooding past matadi--and wallowed in it? its faint perfume hints at that. on the deck of the yacht, under the double awning, berselius was seated, and, close to him, adams. they had arrived only yesterday, and to-morrow they were proceeding by rail to leopoldville, which was to be the real base of the expedition, leaving _la joconde_ behind at matadi. the yacht would return to france. "what a lot of stuff they are loading on those ships," said adams, turning in his chair as the roar and rattle of the winch chains, that had ceased for a moment, flared up again like a flame of sound. "what are the exports here?" "gum copal--nuts--rubber--tusks--everything you can get out of there," answered berselius, lazily waving a hand to indicate the congo basin. adams, leaning back in his deck chair, followed with his eyes the sweep of berselius's hand, "over there"; little did he dream of what those words held in their magic. then berselius went below. the moon rose; lights speckled the misty wharf and a broad road of silver lay stretched across the moving water to the other bank that, under the moonlight, lay like a line of cotton-wool. it was the mist tangled by and tangling the trees. adams paced the deck, smoking and occasionally pausing to flip off his cigar-ash on the bulwark rail. he was thinking of maxine berselius. she had come to marseilles to see them off, and---not a word had been exchanged between them that a third person did not hear or might not have heard, yet they had told each other the whole of that delightful story in which the hero is i and the heroine you. adams on his side and maxine on hers did not in the least contemplate possibilities. a social river, wide as the congo, and flowing from as mysterious a source, lay between them. maxine was rich--so rich that the contrast of her wealth with his own poverty shut the door for adams on the idea of marriage. he could not hope to take his true place in the world for years, and he would not stoop to take a woman's money or assistance. he was too big to go through a back door. no, he would enter the social temple by walking between the pillars of the portico, or smashing an entrance way through the wall with his fist. he was a type of the true american man, the individual who trusts in himself; an unpleasant person very often, but the most essentially male creation in nature. though he could not contemplate maxine as a wife, he did as a woman. in a state of savagery he would have carried her off in his arms; surrounded as he was by the trammels of civilization, he contented himself with imagining her in that position. it is quite possible that no other woman would ever inspire the same passion in him. he knew this, yet he did not grumble; for he was practical, and his practical nature had a part in his wildest dreams. go to new york and look at the twenty-storied, sky-scrapers built by the adamses. they look like houses out of a story by dean swift. the wildest dreams of architecture. yet they don't fall down; they serve their purpose, for the dreamers who built them were at bottom practical men. as he paced the deck, smoking and contemplating the moonlit river, maxine gave place in his mind to her father. berselius up to this had shown himself in no unfavourable light. up to this he had been almost companionable. almost! they had dined together, paced the deck together, discussed all sorts of subjects, yet not by the fraction of an inch had he advanced in his knowledge of the man. a wall of ice divided berselius from his fellow-men. between him and them a great gulf was fixed, a gulf narrow enough to speak across, but of an impenetrable depth. berselius was always so assured, so impassively calm, so authoritative, his conversation so penetrative, so lit by intuition and acquired knowledge, that adams sometimes in his company felt that elation which comes to us when we find ourselves in the presence of a supreme mind. at other times this overpowering personality weighed upon him so much that he would leave the saloon and pace the deck so as to become himself again. * * * * * next morning they left by rail for leopoldville, where they found waiting for them the _leopold_, a shallow-draught steamer of some two hundred tons. chapter vii yandjali the _leopold_ was officered entirely by belgians, and it would have been almost impossible to find a pleasanter set of men. tilkins, the captain, especially, won adams's regard. he was a huge man, with a wife and family in antwerp, and he was eternally damning the congo and wishing himself back in antwerp. they transhipped to a smaller boat, the _couronne_, and one morning shortly after breakfast three strokes on the steamer bell announced their approach to yandjali. imagine a rough landing-stage, a handful of houses, mostly mud-built, the funereal heat-green of palm and banana, a flood of tropical sunshine lighting the little wharf, crammed with bales of merchandise. such was yandjali, and beyond yandjali lay the forest, and in front of yandjali flowed the river, and years ago _boom-boom_ down the river's shining surface, from away up there where the great palms gave place to reeds and water-grass, you might have heard the sound of the hippopotami bellowing to the sun, a deep organ note, unlike the sound emitted by any other creature on earth. you do not hear it now. the great brutes have long ago been driven away by man. on the wharf to greet the steamer stood the district commissioner, commander verhaeren; behind him six or seven half-naked, savage-looking blacks, each topped with a red fez and armed with an albini rifle, stood gazing straight before them with wrinkled eyes at the approaching boat. verhaeren and berselius were seemingly old friends; they shook hands and berselius introduced adams; then the three left the wharf and walked up to the district commissioner's house, a frame building surrounded by palm trees and some distance from the mud huts of the soldiers and porters. the yandjali of this story, not to be confounded with yandjali notorious in congo history for its massacre, is not in a rubber district, though on the fringe of one; it is a game district and produces cassava. the congo state has parcelled out its territory. there are the rubber districts, the gum copal districts, the food districts, and the districts where ivory is obtained. in each of these districts the natives are made to work and bring in rubber, gum copal, food, or ivory, as a tax. the district commissioner, or _chef de poste_, in each district draws up a schedule of what is required. such and such a village must produce and hand over so many kilos of rubber, or copal, so much cassava, so many tusks, etc. verhaeren was a stout, pale-faced man, with a jet-black beard, a good-tempered looking man, with that strange, lazy, semi-oriental look which the belgian face takes when the owner of it is fixed to a post, with nothing to do but oversee trade, and when the post is on the confines of civilization. away up country, lost in the dim, green, heat-laden wilderness, you will find a different type of man; more alert and nervy, a man who never smiles, a preoccupied looking man who, ten years or five years ago, lost his berth in an office for misconduct, or his commission in the army. a _déclassé_. he is the man who really drives the congo machine, the last wheel in the engine, but the most important; the man whose deeds are not to be written. verhaeren's living room in the frame house was furnished with steamer deck chairs, a table and some shelves. pinned to the wall and curling up at the corners was a page torn from _la gaudriole_, the picture of a girl in tights; on one of the shelves lay a stack of old newspapers, on another a stack of official papers, reports from subordinates, invoices, and those eternal "official letters," with which the congo government deluges its employees, and whose everlasting purport is "get more ivory, get more rubber, get more copal." verhaeren brought out some excellent cigars and a bottle of vanderhum, and the three men smoked and talked. he had acted as berselius's agent for the expedition, and had collected all the gun-bearers and porters necessary, and a guide. it was berselius's intention to strike a hundred miles west up river almost parallel to the congo, and then south into the heart of the elephant country. they talked of the expedition, but verhaeren showed little knowledge of the work and no enthusiasm. the belgians of the congo have no feeling for sport. they never hunt the game at their doors, except for food. when they had discussed matters, verhaeren led the way out for berselius to inspect his arrangements. the porters were called up. there were _forty_ of them, and adams thought that he had never before seen such a collection of depressed looking individuals; they were muscular enough, but there was something in their faces, their movements and their attitude, that told a tale of spirits broken to servitude by terror. the four gun-bearers and the headman were very different. the headman was a zappo zap, a ferocious looking nigger, fez-tipped, who could speak twenty words of french, and who was nicknamed félix. the gun-bearers were recruited from the "soldiers" of the state by special leave from headquarters. adams looked with astonishment at the immense amount of luggage they were bringing. "chop boxes," such as are used on the east coast, contained stores; two big tents, a couple of "roorkee" chairs, folding-beds and tables, cork mattresses, cooking utensils, made up the pile, to say nothing of the guns which had just been taken from their cases. "what did you bring this thing for?" asked berselius, pointing to adams's elephant gun, which the zappo zap headman was just stripping from its covering. "to shoot with," said adams, laughing. berselius looked at the big man handling the big gun, and gave a short laugh. "well, bring it," said he; "but i don't envy your gun-bearers." but félix, the headman, did not seem of the same opinion. the enormous rifle evidently appealed to his ferocious heart. it was a god-gun this, and no mistake, and its lustre evidently spread to adams, the owner of it. félix was a very big man, almost as big as adams: a member of the great cannibal fighting tribe of zappo zaps, he had followed verhaeren, who had once held a post in the bena pianga country, to yandjali; he had a sort of attachment for verhaeren, which showed that he possessed some sort of heart. all the zappo zaps have been enrolled by the congo government as "soldiers"; they have a bad name and cause a lot of heart-searching to the brussels administration, for when they are used in punitive expeditions to burn villages of recalcitrant rubber-getters, they, to use a local expression, "_will_ eat when they have killed." when they are used _en masse_, the old cannibal instinct breaks out; when the killing is over they go for the killed, furious as dogs over bones. god help the man who would come between them and their food! of these men félix was a fine specimen. a nature man, ever ready to slay, and cruel as death. a man from the beginning of the world. if félix had possessed a wife, he and she might have stood for the man and woman mentioned by thénard in his lecture. the basic man and woman in whose dim brains determination had begun to work, sketching the vague line on either side of which lies the right and left of moral action. a true savage, never to be really civilized. for it is the fate of the savage that he will never become one of us. do what you will and pray how you will, you will never make up for the million years that have passed him by, the million years during which the dim sketch which is the basis of all ethics has lain in his brain undeveloped, or developed only into a few fantastic and abortive god shapes and devil shapes. he will never become one of us. extraordinary paradox--he never can become a leopold or a félix fuchs! berselius disbanded the porters with a wave of the hand, and he and his companions began a round of the station. verhaeren, with a cigar in his mouth, led the way. he opened the door of a go-down, and adams in the dim light, saw bale upon bale of stuff; gum copal it proved to be, for yandjali tapped a huge district where this stuff is found, and which lies forty miles to the south. there was also cassava in large quantities, and the place had a heady smell, as if fermentation were going on amidst the bales. verhaeren shut the door and led on till, rounding a corner, a puff of hot air brought a stench which caused adams to choke and spit. verhaeren laughed. it was the hostage house that sent its poisonous breath to meet them. a native corporal and two soldiers stood at the palisade which circled the hostage house. the women and children had just been driven back from the fields where they had been digging and weeding, and they had been served with their wretched dinners. they were eating these scraps of food like animals, some in the sun amidst the tufts of grass and mounds of ordure in the little yard, some in the shadow of the house. there were old, old women like shrivelled monkeys; girls of twelve and fifteen, some almost comely; middle-aged women, women about to become mothers, and a woman who had become a mother during the past night lying there in the shelter of the hostage house. there were little pot-bellied nigger children, tiny black dots, who had to do their bit of work in the fields with the others; and when the strangers appeared and looked over the rail, these folk set up a crying and chattering, and ran about distractedly, not knowing what new thing was in store for them. they were the female folk and children of a village, ten miles away south; they were here as "hostages," because the village had not produced its full tale of cassava. they had been here over a month. the soldiers laughed, and struck with the butts of their rifles on the palisading, as if to increase the confusion. adams noticed that the young girls and women were of all the terrified crowd seemingly the most terrified. he did not know the reason; he could not even guess it. a good man himself, and believing in a god in heaven, he could not guess the truth. he knew nothing of the reason of these women's terror, and he looked with disgust at the scene before him, not entirely comprehending. those creatures, so filthy, so animal-like, created in his mind such abhorrence that he forgot to make allowances for the fact that they were penned like swine, and that perchance in their own native state, free in their own villages, they might be cleaner and less revolting. he could not hear the dismal cry of the "congo niggers," who of all people on the earth are the most miserable, the most abused, the most sorrow-stricken, the most dumb. he did not know that he was looking at one of the filthy acts in the great drama that a hundred years hence will be read with horror by a more enlightened world. they turned from the degrading sight and went back to verhaeren's house for dinner. chapter viii the voice of the congo forest just after daybreak next morning the expedition started. berselius, adams, the gun-bearers and félix headed the line; a long way after came the porters and their loads, shepherded by half a dozen soldiers of the state specially hired for the business. before they had gone a mile on their route the sun was blazing strongly, sharp bird-calls came from the trees, and from the porters tramping under their loads a hum like the hum of an awakened beehive. these people will talk and chatter when the sun rises; club them, or threaten them, or load them with burdens as much as you please, the old instinct of the birds and beasts remains. at first the way led through cassava and manioc fields and past clumps of palms; then, all at once, and like plunging under a green veil or into the heart of a green wave, they entered the forest. the night chill was just leaving the forest, the great green gloom, festooned with fantastic rope-like tendrils, was drinking the sunlight with a million tongues; you could hear the rustle and snap of branches straightening themselves and sighing toward heaven after the long, damp, chilly night. the tropical forest at daybreak flings its arms up to the sun as if to embrace him, and all the teeming life it holds gives tongue. flights of coloured and extraordinary birds rise like smoke wreaths from the steaming leaves, and the drone of a million, million insects from the sonorous depths comes like the sound of life in ferment. the river lay a few miles to their left, and faintly from it, muffled by the trees, they could hear the shrill whistling of the river steamboat. it was like the "good-bye" of civilization. the road they were pursuing through the forest was just a dim track beaten down by the feet of the copal and cassava gatherers bearing their loads to yandjali. here and there the forest thinned out and a riot of umbrella thorns, vicious, sword-like grass and tall, dull purple flowers, like hollyhocks made a scrub that choked the way and tangled the foot; then the trees would thicken up, and with the green gloom of a mighty wave the forest would fall upon the travellers and swallow them up. adams, tramping beside berselius, tried vainly to analyze the extraordinary and new sensations to which this place gave birth in him. the forest had taken him. it seemed to him, on entering it, that he had died to all the things he had ever known. at yandjali he had felt himself in a foreign country, but still in touch with europe and the past; a mile deep in the forest and yandjali itself, savage as it was, seemed part of the civilization and the life he had left behind him. the forests of the old world may be vast, but their trees are familiar. one may lose one's direction, but one can never lose _oneself_ amidst the friendly pines, the beeches, the oaks, whose forms have been known to us from childhood. but here, where the beard-moss hangs from unknown trees, as we tramp through the sweltering sap-scented gloom, we feel ourselves not in a forest but under a cover. there is nothing of the perfume of the pine, nothing of the breeze in the branches, nothing of the beauty of the forest twilight here. we are in a great green room, festooned with vines and tendrils and hung about with leaves. nothing is beautiful here, but everything is curious. it is a curiosity shop, where one pays with the sweat of one's brow, with the languor of one's body, and the remembrance of one's past, for the sight of an orchid shaped like a bird, or a flower shaped like a jug, or a bird whose flight is a flash of sapphire dust. a great green room, where echo sounds of things unknown. you can see nothing but the foliage, and the tree boles just around, yet the place is full of life and war and danger. that crash followed by the shrieking of birds--you cannot tell whether it is half a mile away or quite close, or to the right, or to the left, or whether it is caused by a branch torn from a tree by some huge hand, or a tree a hundred years old felled at last by time. time is the woodman of the congo forests. nobody else could do the work, and he works in his own lazy fashion, leaving things to right themselves and find their own salvation. just as there is eternal war to the death between the beasts of this jungle, so there is war to the death between the trees, the vines, and the weeds. a frightful battle between the vegetable things is going on; we scarcely recognize it, because the processes are so slow, but if five years of the jungle could be photographed week by week, and the whole series be run rapidly off on some huge cinematograph machine, you would see a heaving and rending struggle for existence, vegetation fed by the roaring tropical rains rising like a giant and flinging itself on the vegetation of yesterday; vines lengthening like snakes, tree felling tree, and weed choking weed. even in the quietude of a moment, standing and looking before one at the moss-bearded trees and the python-like loops of the lianas, one can see the struggle crystallized, just as in the still marble of the laocoon one sees the struggle of life with death. in this place which covers an unthinkable area of the earth, a vast population has dwelt since the beginning of time. think of it. shut off from the world which has progressed toward civilization, alone with the beasts and the trees, they have lived here without a guide and without a god. the instinct which teaches the birds to build nests taught them to build huts; the herd-instinct drove them into tribes. then, ages ago, before christ was crucified, before moses was born, began the terrible and pathetic attempt of a predamned people to raise their heads and walk erect. the first lifting of purblind eyes destined never to see even the face of art. yet there was a germ of civilization amongst them. they had villages and vague laws and art of a sort; the ferocious tribes drew to one side, hunting beasts and warring with each other, and the others, the milder and kindlier tribes, led their own comparatively quiet life; and mohammed was born somewhere in the unknown north, and they knew nothing of the fact till the arab slavers raided them, and robbed them of men and women and children, just as boys rob an orchard. but the birth of christ and the foundation of christendom was the event which in far distant years was destined to be this unhappy people's last undoing. they had known the beasts of the forests, the storms, the rains, the arab raiders, but fate had reserved a new thing for them to know. the christians. alas! that one should have to say it, but here the fact is, that white men, christian men, have taken these people, have drawn under the banner of christianity and under christian pay all the warlike tribes, armed them, and set them as task-masters over the humble and meek. and never in the history of the world has such a state of servitude been known as at present exists in the country of this forlorn people. they had been marching some three hours when, from ahead came a sound as of some huge animal approaching. berselius half turned to his gun-bearer for his rifle, but félix reassured him. "cassava bearers," said félix. it was, in fact, a crowd of natives; some thirty or forty, bearing loads of kwanga (cassava cakes) to yandjali. they were coming along the forest path in single file, their burdens on their heads, and when the leaders saw the white men they stopped dead. a great chattering broke out. one could hear it going back all along the unseen line, a rattlesnake of sound. then félix called out to them; the gun-bearers and the white men stood aside, and the cassava bearers, taking heart, advanced. they were heavily laden, for most of them had from ten to twenty kwanga on their heads, and besides this burden--they were mostly women--several of them had babies slung on their backs. these people belonged to a village which lay within verhaeren's district. the tax laid on this village was three hundred cakes of cassava to be delivered at yandjali every eight days. the people of this village were a lazy lot, and if you have ever collected taxes in england, you can fancy the trouble of making such people--savages living in a tropical forest, who have no count of time and scarcely an idea of numbers--pay up. especially when one takes into consideration the fact that to produce three hundred cakes of cassava every eight days, the whole village must work literally like a beehive, the men gathering and the women grinding the stuff from dawn till dark. only by the heaviest penalties could such a desirable state of things be brought about, and the heavier and sharper the punishments inflicted at any one time, the easier was it for verhaeren to work these people. adams watched the cassava bearers as they passed at a trot. they went by like automatic figures, without raising their eyes from the ground. there were some old women amongst them who looked more like shrivelled monkeys than human beings; extraordinary anatomical specimens, whose muscles, working as they ran, were as visible as though no skin covered them. there were young women, young children, and women far advanced in pregnancy; and they all went by like automatic figures, clockwork marionettes. it was a pitiable spectacle enough, these laden creatures, mute looking as dumb beasts; but there was nothing especially to shock the eye of the european, for it is the long-prepared treason against this people, devised and carried out by nature, that their black mask covers a multitude of other people's sins and their own untold sufferings. had they been white, the despairing look, the sunken eyes, the hundred signs that tell of suffering and slavery would have been visible, would have appealed to the heart; but the black mass could not express these things fully. they were niggers, uglier looking and more depressed looking than other niggers--that was all. and so adams passed on, without knowing what he had seen and the only impression the sight made on his mind was one of disgust. one fact his professional eye noticed as the crowd passed by. four of the women had lost their left hands. the hands had been amputated just above the wrist in three cases, and one woman had suffered amputation at the middle of the forearm. he spoke of this to berselius, who did not seem to hear his remark. at noon they halted for a three hours' rest, and then pushed on, camping for the night, after a twenty-five miles' journey, in a break of the forest. chapter ix big game just as going along the coast by pondoland one sees english park scenery running down to the very sea edge, so the congo has its surprises in strips of country that might, as far as appearance goes, have been cut out of europe and planted here. this glade which félix had chosen for a camping place was strewn with rough grass and studded here and there with what at first sight seemed apple trees: they were in reality thorns. the camp was pitched and the fires lit on the edge of the forest, and then berselius proceeded to take tale of his people and found one missing. one of the cook boys had dropped behind and vanished. he had been lame shortly after the start. the soldiers had not seen him drop behind, but the porters had. "how many miles away was it?" asked berselius of the collected porters. "nkoto, nkoto (very many, very many)," the answer came in a chorus, for a group of savages, if they have the same idea in common, will all shout together in response to an answer, like one man. "why had they not told?" "we did not know," came the irrelevant answer in chorus. berselius knew quite well that they had not told simply from heedlessness and want of initiative. he would have flogged the whole lot soundly, but he wanted them fresh for the morrow's work. cutting down their rations would but weaken them, and as for threatening to dock their pay, such a threat has no effect on a savage. "look!" said berselius. he had just dismissed the porters with a reprimand when his keen eye caught sight of something far up the glade. it wanted an hour of sunset. adams, following the direction in which berselius was gazing, saw, a great distance off, to judge by the diminishing size of the thorn trees, a form that made his heart to leap in him. massive and motionless, a great creature stood humped in the level light; the twin horns back-curving and silhouetted against the sky told him at once what it was. "bull rhinoceros," said berselius. "been lying up in the thick stuff all day; come out to feed." he made a sign to félix who, knowing exactly what was wanted, dived into the tent and came back with a .400 cordite rifle and adams's elephant gun. "come," said berselius, "the brute is evidently thinking. they stay like that for an hour sometimes. if we have any luck, we may get a shot sideways before he moves. there's not a breath of wind." they started, félix following with the guns. "i would not bother about him," said berselius, "only the meat will be useful, and it will be an experience for you. you will take first shot, and, if he charges, aim just behind the shoulder--that's the spot for a rhino if you can reach it; for other animals aim at the neck, no matter what animal it is, or whether it is a lion or a buck; the neck shot is the knock-out blow. i have seen a lion shot through the heart travel fifty yards and kill a man; had he been struck in the neck he would have fallen in his tracks." "cow," said félix from behind. out of the thick stuff on the edge of the forest another form had broken. she was scarcely smaller than the bull, but the horns were shorter; she was paler in colour, too, and showed up not nearly so well. then she vanished into the thick stuff, but the bull remained standing, immovable as though he were made of cast iron, and the two awful horns, now more distinct, cut the background like scimitars. the rhinoceros, like the aboriginal native of the congo, has come straight down from pre-adamite days almost without change. he is half blind now; he can scarcely see twenty yards, he is still moving in the night of the ancient world, and the smell of a man excites the wildest apprehension in his vestige of a mind. he scents you, flings his heavy head from side to side, and then to all appearances he charges you. nothing could appear more wicked, ferocious, and full of deadly intent than this charge; yet, in reality, the unfortunate brute is not seeking you at all, but running away from you; for the rhino when running away always runs in the direction from which the wind is blowing. you are in that direction, else your scent could not reach him; as your scent grows stronger and stronger, the more alarmed does he become and the quicker he runs. now he sights you, or you fire. if you miss, god help you, for he charges the flash with all his fright suddenly changed to fury. they had got within four hundred yards from the brute when a faint puff of wind stirred the grass, and instantly the rhino shifted his position. "he's got our scent," said berselius, taking the cordite rifle from félix, who handed his gun also to adams. "he's got it strong. we will wait for him here." the rhino, after a few uneasy movements, began to "run about." one could see that the brute was ill at ease; he went in a half-circle, and then, the wind increasing, and bringing the scent strong, he headed straight for berselius and his companions, and charged. the sound of him coming was like the sound of a great drum beaten by a lunatic. "don't fire till i give the word," cried berselius, "and aim just behind the shoulder." adams, who was to the left of the charging beast, raised the rifle and looked down the sights. he knew that if he missed, the brute would charge the flash and be on him perhaps before he could give it the second barrel. it was exactly like standing before an advancing express engine. an engine, moreover, that had the power of leaving the metals to chase you should you not derail it. would berselius never speak! berselius all the time was glancing from the rhino to adams. "fire!" the ear-blasting report of the elephant gun echoed from the forest, and the rhino, just as if he had been tripped by an invisible wire fence, fell, tearing up the ground and squealing like a pig. "good," said berselius. adams wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. he had never gone through a moment of more deadly nerve tension. he was moving toward his quarry, now stretched stiff and stark, when he was arrested by félix. "cow," said félix again. the cow had broken cover at the report of the gun and had got their wind. just as two automatic figures of the same make will, when wound up, and touched off, perform the same actions, the cow did exactly what the bull had done--ran about in a fierce and distressed manner and then charged right in the eye of the wind. "mine," said berselius, and he went forward twenty paces to meet her. berselius, chilling and aloof to the point of mysteriousness, had, since the very starting of the expedition, shown little of his true character to his companion. what he had shown up to this had not lowered adams's respect for him. self-restraint seemed the mainspring of that commanding force which this strange man exercised. his reprimand to the porters for the loss of the boy, expressed in a few quiet words, had sent them shivering to their places, cowed and dumb. animal instinct seemed to tell them of a terrible animal which the self-restraint of that quiet-looking little man, with the pointed beard, alone prevented from breaking upon them. berselius had allowed the bull to approach to a little over a hundred yards before letting adams fire. he had gauged the american's nerve to a nicety and his power of self-restraint, and he knew that beyond the hundred-yard limit he dared not trust them; for no man born of woman who has not had a good experience of big game can stand up to a charging rhinoceros and take certain aim when the hundred-yard limit has been passed. the thunderous drumming of the oncoming brute echoed from the forest. had its head been a feather-pillow the impact of the three tons of solid flesh moving behind it would have been certain death; but the head was an instrument of destruction, devised when the megatherium walked the world, and the long raking horn would have ripped up an elephant as easily as a sharp penknife rips up a rabbit. before this thing, and to the right of it, rifle in hand, stood berselius. he did not even lift the gun to his shoulder till the hundred-yard limit was passed, and then he hung on his aim so horribly that adams felt the sweat-drops running on his face like ants, and even félix swallowed like a man who is trying to choke down something nauseous. it was a magnificent exhibition of daring and self-restraint and cool assurance. at twenty-five yards or a little under, the cordite rang out. the brute seemed to trip, just as the other had done, over some invisible taut-stretched wire, and skidding with its own impetus, squealing, striking out and tearing up the grass, it came right up to berselius's feet before stiffening in death. like the great automaton it was, it had scented the human beings just as the bull had scented them, "fussed" just as he had fussed, charged as he had charged, and died as he had died. and now from the camp rose a great outcry, "nyama, nyama! (meat, meat!)." from the soldiers, from the gun-bearers, from the porters it came. there were no longer soldiers, or gun-bearers, or porters; every distinction was forgotten; they were all savages, voicing the eternal cry of the jungle, "nyama, nyama! (meat, meat!)." in the last rays of the sunset the two gigantic forms lay stretched forever in death. they lay as they had composed themselves after that long stiff stretch which every animal takes before settling itself for eternal sleep; and adams stood looking at the great grinning masks tipped with the murderous horns, whilst berselius, with his gun butt resting on his boot, stood watching with a brooding eye as the porters and gun-bearers swarmed like ants around the slain animals and proceeded, under his direction, to cut them up. then the meat was brought into camp. the tails and the best parts of the carcasses, including the kidneys, were reserved for the white men, and the rations from the rest of the meat were served out; but a dozen porters who had been last in the line, and who were accountable for letting the boy drop behind, got nothing. it was pitiable to see their faces. but they deserved their punishment, notwithstanding the fact that in the middle of the meat distribution the missing boy limped into camp. he had a thorn half an inch long in his foot, which adams extracted. then the camp went to bed. adams in his tent under the mosquito net slept soundly and heard and knew nothing of the incidents of the night. berselius was also sleeping soundly when, at about one o'clock in the morning, félix aroused him. one of the porters had been caught stealing some of the meat left over from the distribution of the night before. the extraordinary thing was that he had fed well, not being one of the proscribed. he had stolen from pure greed. he was an undersized man, a weakling, and likely to break down and give trouble anyway. his crime was great. berselius sent félix to his tent for a mauser pistol. then the body was flung into the forest where the roaring, rasping cry of a leopard was splitting the dark. chapter x m'bassa seven days' march took them one hundred and twenty miles east of yandjali and into the heart of the great rubber district of m'bonga. twenty miles a day ought to have been covered on an average, but they had delayed here and there to shoot, and the extra porters, whose duty it was to carry the trophies, were already in requisition. it had been forest most of the way, but forest broken by open spaces; they had crossed two great swards of park-like country where the antelope herds moved like clouds, marvellous natural preserves that might have been english but for the tropic haze and heat and the great n'sambya trees with their yellow bell-like blossoms, the m'binas with their bursts of scarlet bloom, the tall feather-palms, and the wild papaws of the adjoining woods. but in the last two days of the march the forest had thickened and taken a more sombre note; nothing they had come upon heretofore had been quite so wild as this, so luxuriant and tropical. it was the haunt of the rubber vine, that mysterious plant which requires a glass-house atmosphere and a soil especially rich. the great rubber forest of m'bonga, thousands of square miles in extent, is really composed of two forests joined by an isthmus of woods. dimly, it is shaped like an hourglass; south of the constriction where the two forests join lies the elephant country for which berselius was making, and félix had led them so craftily and well, that they struck into the rubber district only fifty miles from the constriction. in the forest, thirty miles from the elephant ground, lies the belgian fort m'bassa. they were making for this place now, which was to be the base from which they would start on the great hunt. the fort of m'bassa is not used to-day as a fort, only as a collecting-place for rubber. in the early days it was a very necessary entrenchment for the belgians, as a tribe almost as warlike as the zappo zaps terrorized the districts; but the people of this tribe have long been brought under the blue flag with the white star. they are now "soldiers," and their savagery, like a keen tool, has been turned to good account by the government. in the great forest of m'bonga the rubber vines are not equally distributed. large areas occur in which they are not found; only in the most desolate places do they grow. you cannot tame and prune and bring the rubber vine into subjection; it will have nothing to do with the vineyard and the field; it chooses to grow alone. everything else comes to its harvest with a joyous face, but the rubber vine, like a dark green snake, fearful of death, has to be hunted for. even in the areas of the forest which it frequents, it is only to be found in patches, so the harvesters cannot go in a body, as men do to the harvesting of the corn, or the cotton, or the grape; they have to break up into small parties and these again subdivide, leaving a single individual here and there where the vines are thickest. he, entirely alone, at the mercy of the evil spirits that are in his imagination and the beasts that are in the forest, makes a rude shelter out of boughs and leaves, and sets to work making incisions in the vine and draining them drop by drop of their viscous sap. sometimes he sings over this monotonous work, and in the long rains between the intervals of the shower-bath roarings you can hear the ululations of these folk through the drip of the leaves, and at night the spark-like glimmer of their fires dots the reeking gloom. these are the conditions of the rubber collector's task, and it is not a task that ever can be finished; year in, year out, it never ceases. these woods through which félix led them were to the woods near yandjali what the music of beethoven is to the music of mozart. immense and gloomy symphonies. the trees were huge, and groaned beneath the weight of lianas cable-thick. at times they had to burst their way through the veils of leaves and vines, the porters losing themselves and calling one to the other, and the head of the expedition halting till the stragglers were collected; at times the ground they trod on was like grease from the cast-down fruit of the plantains that grew here enormous, and sodden, and dismal, showering their fruit in such quantities that the bush-pigs, devour as they might, could never dispose of it all. on some of the trees, like huge withered leaves, hung bats, and from some of the trees the beard-moss hung yards long, and of a spectral gray; the very weeds trodden underfoot were sappy, and the smell of their squirting juice mixed itself with the smell of decay. it was not even ground, either; the whole forest would dip down into an unseen valley; you felt yourself going down hill, down, down, and then you knew you were at the bottom of a sub-arboreal valley by the deeper stagnation of the air. open spaces, when they came, showed little sky, and they were less open spaces than rooms in the surrounding prison. félix was not leading them through the uttermost depths of this place; he was following the vague indications of a road by which the rubber from m'bassa was carted to the river. they were travelling along a highway, in fact, and the dimmest indication of a track where other men have been before is a thing which robs the wilderness of much of its terror. the loneliness of the forest beyond track or way, in those vast depths where the rubber collectors have to go alone, i leave you to imagine. at last, at noon, on the third day of their journey to this place they struck rising ground where the trees fell away till no trees were left, and the blue sky of heaven lay above their heads, and before them on the highest point of the rise, fort m'bassa burning in the sun. chapter xi andreas meeus the parthenon in all its glory could not have looked more beautiful to the returning greek than this half-ruined fort in the eyes of adams. a thing built by the hands of white men and shone on by the sun--what could be more acceptable to the eye after the long, long tramp through the heart-breaking forest! the fort of m'bassa was quite small; the surrounding walls had gone to decay, but the "guest house" and the office, and the great go-down where the rubber was stored, were in good repair and well thatched. outside the walls were a number of wretched hovels inhabited by the "soldiers" and their wives, and one of these soldiers, a tall black, with the eternal red fez on his head and a rifle slung on his back, was the first to sight the coming expedition, and to notify its approach with a yell that brought a dozen like him from the sun-baked hovels and, a moment later from the office, a white man in a pith helmet, who stood for a moment looking across the half-ruined wall at the newcomers, and then advanced to meet them. he was a middle-sized man, with a melancholy face that showed very white under the shadow of the helmet; he was dressed in dingy white drill, and he had a cigarette between his lips. he looked like a man who had never in his life smiled, yet his face was not an unpleasant face altogether, though there was much in it to give the observer pause. his voice was not an unpleasant voice, altogether, yet there was that in it, as he greeted berselius, which struck adams sharply and strangely; for the voice of andreas meeus, _chef de poste_ at m'bassa, was the voice of a man who for two years had been condemned to talk the language of the natives. it had curious inflections, hesitancies, and a dulness that expressed the condition of a brain condemned for two years to think the thoughts of the natives in their own language. just as the voice of a violin expresses the condition of the violin, so does the voice of a man express the condition of his mind. and that is the fact that will strike you most if you travel in the wilds of the congo state and talk to the men of your own colour who are condemned to live amongst the people. one might have compared meeus's voice to the voice of a violin--a violin that had been attacked by some strange fungoid growth that had filled its interior and dulled the sounding board. he had been apprised a month before of the coming of berselius's expedition, and one might imagine the servility which this man would show to the all-powerful berselius, whose hunting expeditions were red-carpeted, who was hail-fellow-well-met with leopold, who, by lifting his finger, could cause andreas meeus to be dismissed from his post, and by crooking his finger cause him to be raised to a commissionership. yet he showed no servility at all. he had left servility behind him, just as he had left pride, just as he had left ambition, patriotism, country, and that divine something which blossoms into love of wife and child. when he had shaken hands with berselius and adams, he led the way into the fort, or rather into the enclosure surrounded by the ruinous mud walls, an enclosure of about a hundred yards square. on the right of the quadrangle stood the go-down, where the rubber and a small quantity of ivory was stored. in the centre stood the misnamed guest house, a large mud and wattle building, with a veranda gone to decay. the blinding sun shone on it all, showing up with its fierce light the true and appalling desolation of the place. there was not one thing in the enclosure upon which the eye could rest with thankfulness. turning from the enclosure and looking across the fort wall to the distance, one saw a world as far from civilization as the world that romulus looked at when he gazed across the wall outlining the first dim sketch of rome. to the north, forest; to the south, forest; to the east, forest; and to the west, eternal and illimitable forest. blazing sun, everlasting haze that in the rainy season would become mist and silence. in the storms and under the rains the great rubber forest of m'bonga would roar like a reef-tormented sea, but on a day like this, when, gazing from the high ground of the fort, the eye travelled across the swelling domes and heat-stricken valleys of foliage, the pale green of the feather-palms, the sombre green of the n'sambyas, to the haze that veiled all things beyond, on a day like this, silence gazed at one sphinx-like, and from the distance of a million years. silence that had brooded upon africa before africa had a name, before pharaoh was born, before thebes was built. meeus led the way into the guest house, which contained only two rooms--rooms spacious enough, but bare of everything except the ordinary necessities of life. in the living room there was a table of white deal-like wood and three or four chairs evidently made by natives from a european design. a leopard skin, badly dried and shrivelling at the edges, hung on one wall, presumably as an ornament; on another wall some congo bows and arrows--bows with enormously thick strings and arrows poisoned so skilfully that a scratch from one would kill you, though they had been hanging there for many years. they were trophies of the early days when fort m'bassa was really a fort, and from those woods down there clouds of soot-black devils, with filed teeth, raided the place, only to be swept away by rifle fire. there was no picture torn from an illustrated paper adorning the place, as in verhaeren's abode, but on a rudely constructed shelf there lay just the same stack of "official letters," some of these two years old, some of last month, all dealing with trade. meeus brought out cigarettes and gin, but berselius, safe now at his base of operations, to make a little festival of the occasion sent to the stores, which his porters had deposited in the go-down, for a magnum of champagne. it was cliquot, and as meeus felt the glow of the wine in his veins, a flush came into his hollow cheeks and a brightness into his dull eyes; forgotten things stirred again in his memory, with the shadows of people he had known--the glitter of lamplit streets in brussels, the glare of the _café de couronne_--all the past, such as it was, lay in the wine. meeus was one of the "unfortunate men." he had held a small clerkship under the belgian government, from which he had been dismissed through a fault of his own. this was five years ago. up to his dismissal he had led the peddling and sordid life that a small government clerk on the continent leads if he has nothing to save him from himself and from his fellows: the dry rot of official life had left him useless for anything but official life. a sensualist in a small way, he enlarged his sphere on the day of his dismissal, when he found himself cut off from work and adrift in the world, with five hundred francs in his pocket. in one glorious debauch, which lasted a week, he spent the five hundred francs, and then he settled down to live on a maiden aunt. he called it looking for work. she lasted for a year and nine months, and then she died, and her annuity died with her. he felt her loss deeply, for not only had her money helped to support him, but she was his only real friend, and he had a heart in those days that seemed so far distant from him now. then it was that poverty took him by the hand and explained patiently and with diagrams the hardness of the world, the atrocious position of the _déclassé_, who has never studied the art of roguery so as to make a living by it, and the utter uselessness as friends of those good fellows who sat in the _cafés_ and walked the boulevards and ogled the women. he tramped the streets of brussels, at first in seedy clothes and at last in filth and horrible rags. a relative came to his assistance with two hundred francs; he bought himself clothes and made himself respectable, but, in a fortnight, found himself relapsing again, sinking like a swimmer whose momentary support has gone to pieces. just as the waves were again about to close over his benighted head, an acquaintance got him a post under government. not under the belgian but the congo government. andreas meeus was exactly the type of man this government required, and still requires, and still uses and must continue to use as long as the infernal machine which it has invented for the extraction of gold from niggers continues to work. a man, that is to say, who has eaten orange-peel picked up in the market-place; a man who has worn out his friends--and his clothes. a man without hope. one would think for the work in hand they would choose the greatest blackguards possible: convicts convicted of the worst crimes of violence. not at all. these men would be for one thing too intractable; for another thing, too unstable, and for another thing (strange to say), possessed of too much heart. the congo government knows its work far too well for that. it does not take the murderer or the violent criminal from the penitentiary to do its work; it takes from the streets the man without hope. the educated man who has fallen, the man who can still think. meeus went to africa just as a man goes to prison. he hated the idea of going, but he had to go, or stay and starve. he was stationed three months at boma and then he was moved to a post on the upper congo, a small and easily worked post, where he found out the full conditions of his new servitude. this post had to do with what they call in the jargon of the congo administration, forest exploitation. gum copal and wax was the stuff he had to extract from the people round about. here he found himself morally in the clutches of that famous and infamous proclamation issued from brussels on the twentieth of june, 1892, by secretary of state van estvelde. the bonus proclamation. according to the terms of this proclamation, meeus found that besides his pay he could get a bonus on every kilo of wax and copal he could extract from the natives, and that the cheaper he could get the stuff the more his bonus would be. thus, for every kilo of wax or copal screwed out of the natives at a cost of five centimes or less, he received into his pocket a bonus of fifteen centimes, that is to say the bonus to meeus was three times what the natives got; if by any laxity or sense of justice, the cost of the wax or copal rose to six centimes a kilo, meeus only got ten centimes bonus, and so on. the cheaper he got the stuff the more he was paid for it. and those were the terms on which he had to trade with the natives. then there were the taxes. the natives had to bring in huge quantities of wax and copal for nothing, just as a tax owing to the state, a tax to the government that was plundering and exploiting them. meeus, who had a spice of the tradesman in him, fell into this state of things as easily as a billiard ball falls into a pocket when skilfully directed. the unfortunate man was absolutely a billiard ball in the hands of a professional player; the stroke of the cue had been given in belgium, he rolled to his appointed post, fell into it, and was damned. his fingers became crooked and a dull hunger for money filled his soul. his success in working the niggers was so great that he was moved to a more difficult post at higher pay, and then right on to m'bassa. he was not naturally a cruel man. in his childhood he had been fond of animals, but matabiche, the god-devil of the congo, changed all that. he saw nothing extortionate in his dealings, nothing wrong in them. when things were going well, then all was well; but when the natives resisted his charges and taxes, defrauding him of his bonus and lowering him in the eyes of his superiors, then meeus became terrible. and he was absolute master. away here in the lonely fort, in the midst of the great m'bonga rubber forest that was now speechless as a sphinx, now roaring at him like a sea in torment; here in the endless sunlight of the dry seasons and the endless misery of the rains, meeus driven in upon himself, had time to think. there is no prison so terrible as a limitless prison. far better for a man to inhabit a cell in dartmoor than a post in the desert of the forest. the walls are companionable things, but there is no companionship in distance. meeus knew what it was to look over the walls of the fort and watch another sun setting on another day, and another darkness heralding another night. he knew what it was to watch infinite freedom and to know it for his captor and jailer. he knew what it was to wake from his noonday siesta and see the same great awful splash of sunlight striking the same old space of arid yard, where the empty tomato tin lay by the rotten plantain cast over by some nigger child. he knew what it was to lie and hear the flies buzzing and wonder what tune of the devil it was they were trying to imitate. he knew what it was to think of death with the impotent craving of a sick child for some impossible toy. look into your own life and see all the tiny things that save you from _ennui_ and devilment, and give you heart to continue the journey from hour to hour in this world where we live. your morning paper, the new book from the library you have just got to read, the pipe you hope to smoke when you return from work, the very details of your work; a hundred and one petty things that make up the day of an ordinary man, breaking the monotony and breaking the prospect before him into short views. meeus had none of these. without literature or love, without a woman to help him through, without a child to care for or a dog to care for him, there at fort m'bassa in the glaring sunshine he faced his fate and became what he was. chapter xii night at the fort the night was hot and close and the paraffin lamp in the guest house mixed its smell with the tobacco smoke and with a faint, faint musky odour that came from the night outside. every now and then a puff of hot wind blew through the open doorway, hot and damp as though a great panther were breathing into the room. the nights in the forest were chill, but up here at fort m'bassa they were stewing in a heat wave. adams, with his coat off, pipe in mouth, was leaning back in a basket chair with his feet on a sugar box. berselius, in another easy chair, was smoking a cigar, and meeus, sitting with his elbows on the table, was talking of trade and its troubles. there is an evil spirit in rubber that gives a lot of trouble to those who deal with it. the getting of it is bad enough, but the tricks of the thing itself are worse. it is subject to all sorts of influences, climatic and other, and tends to deteriorate on its journey to the river and the coast of europe. it was marvellous to see the passion with which this man spoke of this inanimate thing. "and then, ivory," said meeus. "when i came here first, hundred-pound tusks were common; when you reach that district, m. le capitaine, you will see for yourself, no doubt, that the elephants have decreased. what comes in now, even, is not of the same quality. scrivelloes (small tusks), defective tusks, for which one gets almost nothing as a bonus. and with the decrease of the elephant comes the increased subterfuge of the natives. 'what are we to do?' they say. 'we cannot make elephants.' this is the worst six months for ivory i have had, and then, on top of this--for troubles always come together--i have this bother i told you of with these people down there by the silent pools." a village ten miles to the east had, during the last few weeks, suspended rubber payments, gone arrear in taxes, the villagers running off into the forest and hiding from their hateful work. "what caused the trouble?" asked berselius. "god knows," replied meeus. "it may blow over--it may have blown over by this, for i have had no word for two days; anyhow, to-morrow i will walk over and see. if it hasn't blown over, i will give the people very clearly to understand that there will be trouble. i will stay there for a few days and see what persuasion can do. would you like to come with me?" "i don't mind," said berselius. "a few days' rest will do the porters no harm. what do you say, dr. adams?" "i'm with you," said adams. "anything better than to stay back here alone. how do you find it here, m. meeus, when you are by yourself?" "oh, one lives," replied the _chef de poste_, looking at the cigarette between his fingers with a dreamy expression, and speaking as though he were addressing it. "one lives." that, thought adams, must be the worst part about it. but he did not speak the words. he was a silent man, slow of speech but ready with sympathy, and as he lounged comfortably in his chair, smoking his pipe, his pity for meeus was profound. the man had been for two years in this benighted solitude; two years without seeing a white face, except on the rare occasion of a district commissioner's visit. he ought to have been mad by this, thought adams; and he was a judge, for he had studied madness and its causes. but meeus was not mad in the least particular. he was coldly sane. lust had saved his reason, the lust inspired by matabiche. berselius's cook brought in some coffee, and when they had talked long enough about the congo trade in its various branches, they went out and smoked their pipes, leaning or sitting on the low wall of the fort. the first quarter of the moon, low in the sky and looking like a boat-shaped japanese lantern, lay above the forest. the forest, spectral-pale and misty, lay beneath the moon; the heat was sweltering, and adams could not keep the palms of his hands dry, rub them with his pocket handkerchief or on his knees as much as he would. this is the heat that makes a man feel limp as a wet rag; the heat that liquefies morals and manners and temper and nerve force, so that they run with the sweat from the pores. drink will not "bite" in this heat, and a stiff glass of brandy affects the head almost as little as a glass of water. "it is over there," said meeus, pointing to the southeast, "that we are going to-morrow to interview those beasts." adams started at the intensity of loathing expressed by meeus in that sentence. he had spoken almost angrily at rubber and tusks, but his languid, complaining voice had held nothing like this before. those beasts! he hated them, and he would not have been human had he not hated them. they were his jailers in very truth, their work was his deliverance. the revolt of this village would make him short of rubber; probably it would bring a reprimand from his superiors. a great bat flitted by so close that the smell of it poisoned the air, and from the forest, far away to the west, came the ripping saw-like cry of a leopard on the prowl. many fierce things were hunting in the forest that night, but nothing fiercer than meeus, as he stood in the moonlight, cigarette in mouth, staring across the misty forest in the direction of the silent pools. part three chapter xiii the pools of silence next morning berselius ordered félix to have the tents taken from the go-down and enough stores for two days. tents and stores would be carried by the "soldiers" of the fort, who were to accompany them on the expedition. adams noticed with surprise the childlike interest meeus took in the belongings of berselius; the green rot-proof tents, the latest invention of europe, seemed to appeal to him especially; the roorkee chairs, the folding baths, the mosquito nets of the latest pattern, the cooking utensils of pure aluminum, filled his simple mind with astonishment. his mind during his sojourn at fort m'bassa had, in fact, grown childlike in this particular; nothing but little things appealed to him. whilst the expedition was getting ready adams strolled about outside the fort walls. the black "soldiers," who were to accompany them, were seated in the sun near their hovels, some of them cleaning their rifles, others smoking; but for their rifles and fez caps they might, with a view of carthage in the distance, have been taken for the black legionaries of hamilcar, ferocious mercenaries without country or god, fierce as the music of the leopard-skin drums that led them to battle. turning, he walked round the west wall till he came to the wall on the north, which was higher than the others. here, against the north wall, was a sheltered cover like an immense sty, indescribably filthy and evil-smelling; about thirty rings were fastened to the wall, and from each ring depended a big rusty chain ending in a collar. it was the hostage house of fort m'bassa. it was empty now, but nearly always full, and it stood there like a horrible voiceless witness. a great disgust filled the mind of adams; disgust of the niggers who had evidently lately inhabited this place, and disgust of the belgians who had herded them there. he felt there was something very wrong in the state of congo. the hostage house of yandjali had started the impression; meeus in some subtle way had deepened it; and now this. but he fully recognized what difficult people to deal with niggers are. he felt that all this was slavery under a thin disguise, this so-called taxation and "trade," but it was not his affair. all work is slavery more or less pleasant. the doctor is the slave of his patients, the shopkeeper of his clients. these niggers were, no doubt, slaves of the belgians, but they were not bought and sold; they had to work, it is true, but all men have to work. besides, berselius had told him that the belgians had stopped the liquor traffic and stopped the arab raiders. there was good and bad on the side of the belgians, and the niggers were niggers. so reasoned adams, and with reason enough, though from insufficient data. at eight o'clock in the blazing sunshine, that even then was oppressive, the expedition started. the white men leading, félix coming immediately behind, and eleven of the soldiers, bearing the tents and stores for two days, following after. they plunged into the forest, taking a dim track, which was the rubber track from the village of the silent pools and from half a dozen other villages to the west. the ground here was different from the ground they had traversed in coming to the fort. this was boggy; here and there the foot sank with a sough into the pulp of morass and rotten leaves; the lianas were thinner and more snaky, the greenery, if possible, greener, and the air close and moist as the air of a steam-bath. the forest of m'bonga has great tracts of this boggy, pestiferous land, dreadful sloughs of despond caverned with foliage, and by some curse the rubber vines entrench themselves with these. the naked rubber collectors, shivering over their fires, are attacked by the rheumatism and dysentery and fever that lie in these swamps; diseases almost merciful, for the aches and pains they cause draw the mind away from the wild beasts and devils and phantoms that haunt the imagination of the rubber slaves. it took them three hours to do the ten miles, and then at last the forest cleared away and fairyland appeared. here in the very depths of the hopeless jungle, as if laid out and forgotten by some ancient god, lie the silent pools of matabayo and the park-like lands that hold them. like a beautiful song in some tragic and gloomy opera, a regret of the god who created the hopeless forest, sheltered by the great n'sambya trees, they lie; pools of shadowy and tranquil water, broken by reflections of branches and mirroring speargrass ten feet high and fanlike fern fronds. all was motionless and silent as a stereoscopic picture; the rocketing palms bursting into sprays of emerald green, the n'sambyas with their trumpet-like yellow blossoms, the fern fronds reduplicating themselves in the water's glass, all and each lent their motionless beauty to the completion of the perfect picture. in the old days, long ago, before the land was exploited and the forest turned into a hunting ground for rubber, the lovely head of the oryx would push aside the long green blades of the speargrass; then, bending her lips to the lips of the oryx gazing up at her from the water, she would drink, shattering the reflection into a thousand ripples. the water-buck came here in herds from the elephant country away south, beyond the hour-glass-like constriction which divided the great forest, and the tiny dik-dik, smallest of all antelopes, came also to take its sip. but all that is past. the rifle and the trap, at the instigation of the devouring government that eats rubber and antelope, ivory and palm-oil, cassava and copal, has thinned out the herds and driven them away. the "soldier" must be fed. even the humble bush pig of the forest knows that fact. it was four years since berselius had hunted in this country, and even in that short time he found enormous change. but he could not grumble. he was a shareholder in the company, and in twenty industries depending on it. close up to the forest, where the m'bina trees showed their balls of scarlet blossom, lay the village they had come to reason with. there were twenty-five or more low huts of wattle and mud, roofed with leaves and grass. no one was visible but an old woman, naked, all but for a slight covering about the loins. she was on all fours, grinding something between two stones, and as she sighted the party she looked backward over her shoulder at them like a frightened cat. she cried out in a chattering voice, and from the huts six others, naked as herself, came, stared at the whites, and then, as if driven by the same impulse, and just like rabbits, darted into the forest. but meeus had counted on this, and had detached seven of his men to crawl round and post themselves at the back of the huts amidst the trees. a great hullaballoo broke out, and almost immediately the soldiers appeared, driving the seven villagers before them with their rifle-butts. they were not hurting them, just pushing them along, for this was, up to the present, not a punitive expedition but a fatherly visitation to point out the evils of laziness and insubordination, and to get, if possible, these poor wretches to communicate with the disaffected ones and make them return to their work. adams nearly laughed outright at the faces of the villagers; black countenances drawn into all the contortions of fright, but the contortions of their bodies were more laughable still, as they came forward like naughty children, driven by the soldiers, putting their hands out behind to evade the prods of the gun-butts. berselius had ordered the tents to be raised on the sunlit grass, for the edge of the forest, though shady, was infested by clouds of tiny black midges--midges whose bite was as bad, almost, as the bite of a mosquito. meeus spoke to the people in their own tongue, telling them not to be afraid, and when the tents were erected he and berselius and adams, sitting in the shelter of the biggest tent, faced the seven villagers, all drawn up in a row and backed by the eleven soldiers in their red fez caps. the villagers, backed by the soldiers and fronted by meeus, formed a picture which was the whole congo administration in a nutshell. in a sentence, underscored by the line of blood-red fezzes. these seven undersized, downtrodden, hideously frightened creatures, with eyeballs rolling and the marks of old chain scars on their necks, were the representatives of all the humble and meek tribes of the congo, the people who for thousands of years had lived a lowly life, humble as the coneys of scripture; people who had cultivated the art of agriculture and had carried civilization as far as their weak hands would carry it in that benighted land. literally the salt of that dark earth. very poor salt, it is true, but the best they could make of themselves. these eleven red-tipped devils, gun-butting the others to make them stand erect and keep in line, were the representatives of the warlike tribes who for thousands of years had preyed on each other and made the land a hell. cannibals most of them, ferocious all of them, heartless to a man. meeus was the white man who, urged by the black lust of money, had armed and drilled and brought under good pay all the warlike tribes of the congo state and set them as task-masters over the humble tribes. by extension, berselius and adams were the nations of europe looking on, one fully knowing, the other not quite comprehending the tragedy enacted before their eyes. i am not fond of parallels, but as these people have ranged themselves thus before my eyes, i cannot help pointing out the full meaning of the picture. a picture which is photographically true. there was a little pot-bellied boy amongst the villagers, the old woman of the grindstone was holding him by the hand; he, of all the crowd, did not look in the least frightened. his eyeballs rolled, but they rolled in wonder. the tent seemed to take his fancy immensely; then the big adams struck his taste, and he examined him from tip to toe. adams, greatly taken with the blackamoor, puffed out his cheeks, closed one eye, and instantly, as if at the blow of a hatchet, the black face split, disclosing two white rows of teeth, and then hid itself, rubbing a snub nose against the old woman's thigh. but a rolling white eyeball reappeared in a moment, only to vanish again as adams, this time, sucked in his cheeks and worked his nose, making, under his sun hat, a picture to delight and terrify the heart of any child. all this was quite unobserved by the rest, and all this time meeus gravely and slowly was talking to the villagers in a quiet voice. they were to send one of their number into the forest to find the defaulters and urge them to return. then all would be well. that was the gist of his discourse; and the wavering line of niggers rolled their eyes and answered, "we hear, we hear," all together and like one person speaking, and they were nearly tumbling down with fright, for they knew that all would not be well, and that what the awful white man with the pale, grave face said to them was lies, lies, lies--all lies. besides the old woman and the child there were two young girls, an old man, a boy of fifteen or so, with only one foot, and a pregnant woman very near her time. adams had almost forgotten the nigger child when a white eyeball gazing at him from between the old woman's legs recalled its existence. he thought he had never seen a jollier animal of the human tribe than that. the creature was so absolutely human and full of fun that it was difficult to believe it the progeny of these downtrodden, frightened looking folk. and the strange thing was, it had all the tricks of an english or american child. the hiding and peeping business, the ready laugh followed by bashfulness and self-effacement, the old unalterable impudence, which is not least amidst the _prima mobilia_ of the childish mind. in another moment, he felt, the thing would forget its respect and return his grimaces, so he ignored it and fixed his attention on meeus and the trembling wretches he was addressing. when the lecture was over they were dismissed, and the boy with the amputated foot was sent off to the forest to find the delinquents and bring them back. till sunrise on the following day was the term given him. if the others did not begin to return by that time there would be trouble. chapter xiv behind the mask the silent pools and the woods around were the haunts of innumerable birds. rose-coloured flamingoes and gorgeous ducks, birds arrayed in all the jewellery of the tropics, birds not much bigger than dragon-flies, and birds that looked like flying beetles. when they had dined, adams, leaving the others to smoke and take their siesta, went off by the water's edge on a tour of the pools. they were three in number; sheets of water blue and tranquil and well-named, for surely in all the world nowhere else could such perfect peace be found. perhaps it was the shelter of the forest protecting these windless sheets of water; perhaps it was the nature of the foliage, so triumphantly alive yet so motionless; perhaps beyond these some more recondite reason influenced the mind and stirred the imagination. who knows? the spirit of the scene was there. the spirit of deep and unalterable peace. the peace of shadowy lagoons, the peace of the cedar groves where the sheltering trees shaded the loveliness of merope, the peace of the heart which passes all understanding and which men have named the peace of god. it was the first time since leaving yandjali that adams had found himself alone and out of sight of his companions. he breathed deeply, as if breathing in the air of freedom, and as he strode along, tramping through the long grass, his mind, whilst losing no detail of the scene around him, was travelling far away, even to paris, and beyond. suddenly, twenty yards ahead, bounding and beautiful in its freedom and grace, a small antelope passed with the swiftness of an arrow; after it, almost touching it, came another form, yellow and fierce and flashing through the grass and vanishing, like the antelope, amidst the high grasses on the edge of the pool. the antelope had rushed to the water for protection, and the leopard had followed, carried forward by its impetus and ferocity, for adams could hear its splash following the splash of the quarry; then a roar split the silence, echoed from the trees, and sent innumerable birds fluttering and crying from the edge of the forest and the edge of the pool. adams burst through the long speargrass to see what was happening, and, standing on the boggy margin, holding the grasses aside, gazed. the antelope had vanished as if it had never been, and a few yards from the shore, in the midst of a lather of water that seemed beaten up with a great swizzle-stick, the leopard's head, mouth open, roaring, horrified his eyes for a moment and then was jerked under the surface. the water closed, eddied, and became still, and silence resumed her sway over the silent pools. something beneath the water had devoured the antelope; something beneath the water had dragged the leopard to its doom, and swish! a huge flail tore the speargrass to ribbons and sent adams flying backward with the wind of its passage. another foot and the crocodile's tail would have swept him to the fate of the antelope and leopard. the place was alive with ferocity and horror, and it seemed to adams that the silent pools had suddenly slipped the mask of silence and beauty and shown to him the face of hideous death. he wiped the sweat from his brow. he was unarmed, and it seemed that a man, to walk in safety through this garden of eden, ought to be armed to the teeth. he turned back to the camp, walking slowly and seeing nothing of the beauties around him, nothing but the picture of the leopard's face, the paws frantically beating the water, and a more horrible picture still, the water resuming its calmness and its peace. when he reached the camp, he found berselius and meeus absent. after their siesta they had gone for a stroll by the water's edge in the opposite direction to that which he had taken. the soldiers were on duty, keeping a watchful eye on the villagers; all were seated, the villagers in front of their huts and the soldiers in the shade, with their rifles handy; all, that is to say, except the nigger child, who was trotting about here and there, and who seemed quite destitute of fear or concern. when this creature saw the gigantic adams who looked even more gigantic in his white drill clothes, it laughed and ran away, with hands outspread and head half slewed round. then it hid behind a tree. there is nothing more charming than the flight of a child when it wishes to be pursued. it is the instinct of women and children to run away, so as to lead you on, and it is the instinct of a rightly constituted man to follow. adams came toward the tree, and the villagers seated before their huts and the soldiers seated in the shade all turned their heads like automata to watch. "hi there, you ink-bottle!" cried adams. "hullo there, you black dogaroo! out you come, uncle remus!" then he whistled. he stood still, knowing that to approach closer would drive the dogaroo to flight or to tree climbing. there was nothing visible but two small black hands clutching the tree bole; then the gollywog face, absolutely split in two with a grin, appeared and vanished. adams sat down. the old, old village woman who was, in fact, the child's grandmother, had been looking on nervously, but when the big man sat down she knew he was only playing with the child, and she called out something in the native, evidently meant to reassure it. but she might have saved her breath, for the black bundle behind the tree suddenly left cover and stood with hands folded, looking at the seated man. he drew his watch from his pocket and held it up. it approached. he whistled, and it approached nearer. two yards away it stopped dead. "tick-tick," said adams, holding up the watch. "papeete n'quong," replied the other, or words to that effect. it spoke in a hoarse, crowing voice not at all unpleasant. if you listen to english children playing in the street you will often hear this croaking sort of voice, like the voice of a young rook. papeete struck adams as a good name for the animal and, calling him by it, he held out the watch as a bait. the lured one approached closer, held out a black claw, and next moment was seized by the foot. it rolled on the ground like a dog, laughing and kicking, and adams tickled it; and the grim soldiers laughed, showing their sharp white teeth, and the old grandmother beat her hands together, palm to palm, as if pleased, and the other villagers looked on without the ghost of an expression on their black faces. then he jumped it on its feet and sent it back to its people with a slap on its behind, and returned to his tent to smoke till berselius and meeus returned. but he had worked his own undoing, for, till they broke camp, papeete haunted him like a buzz-fly, peeping at him, sometimes from under the tent, trotting after him like a dog, watching him from a distance, till he began to think of "haunts" and "sendings" and spooks. when berselius and his companion returned, the three men sat and smoked till supper time. at dark the villagers were driven into their huts and at the door of each hut lay a sentry. a big fire was lit, and by its light two more sentries kept watch over the others and their prisoners. then the moon rose, spreading silver over the silence of the pools and the limitless foliage of the forest. chapter xv the punishment the sun rose, bringing with it a breeze. above the stir and bustle of the birds you could hear the gentle wind in the tree-tops like the sound of a sea on a low-tide beach. the camp was still in gloom, but the whole arc of sky above the pools was thrilled and filled with living light. sapphire blue, dazzling and pale, but deep with infinite distance, it had an intrinsic brilliancy as though filled with sunbeams brayed to dust. the palm tops had caught the morning splendour and then, rapidly, as though the armies of light were moving to imperious trumpet-calls, charging with golden spears, legion on legion, a hurricane of brightness, day broke upon the pools. we call it day, but what is it, this splendour that comes from nowhere, and vanishes to nowhere, that strikes our lives rhythmically like the golden wing of a vast and flying bird, bearing us along with it in the wind of its flight? the rotation of the earth? but in the desert, on the sea, in the spaces of the forest you will see in the dawn a vision divorced from time, a recurring glance of a beauty that is eternal, a ray as if from the bright world toward which the great bird time is flying, caught and reflected to our eyes by every lift of the wing. the dawn had not brought the truants back from the forest. this point meeus carefully verified. even the boy who had been sent to communicate with them had not returned. "no news?" said berselius, as he stepped from his tent-door and glanced around him. "none," replied meeus. adams now appeared, and the servants who had been preparing breakfast laid it on the grass. the smell of coffee filled the air; nothing could be more pleasant than this out-of-doors breakfast in the bright and lovely morning, the air fresh with the breeze and the voices of birds. the villagers were all seated in a group, huddled together at the extreme left of the row of huts. they were no longer free, but tied together ankle to ankle by strips of _n'goji_. only papeete was at liberty, but he kept at a distance. he was seated near the old woman, and he was exploring the interior of an empty tomato tin flung away by the cook. "i will give them two hours more," said meeus, as he sipped his coffee. "and then?" said adams. meeus was about to reply when he caught a glance from berselius. "then," he said, "i will knock those mud houses of theirs to pieces. they require a lesson." "poor devils!" said adams. meeus during the meal did not display a trace of irritation. from his appearance one might have judged that the niggers had returned to their work, and that everything was going well. at times he appeared absent-minded, and at times he wore a gloomy but triumphant look, as though some business which had unpleasant memories attached to it had at last been settled to his satisfaction. after breakfast he drew berselius aside, and the two men walked away in the direction of the pools, leaving adams to smoke his pipe in the shade of the tent. they came back in about half an hour, and berselius, after speaking a few words to félix, turned to adams. "i must ask you to return to fort m'bassa and get everything in readiness for our departure. félix will accompany you. i will follow in a couple of hours with m. meeus. i am afraid we will have to pull these people's houses down. it's a painful duty, but it has to be performed. you will save yourself the sight of it." "thanks," said adams. not for a good deal of money would he have remained to see those wretched hovels knocked to pieces. he could perceive plainly enough that the thing had to be done. conciliation had been tried, and it was of no avail. he was quite on the side of meeus; indeed, he had admired the self-restraint of this very much tried _chef de poste_. not a hard word, not a blow, scarcely a threat had been used. the people had been spoken to in a fatherly manner, a messenger had been sent to the truants, and the messenger had joined them. at all events he had not returned. then, certainly, pull their houses down. but he did not wish to see the sight. he had nothing to do with the affair, so filling and lighting another pipe, and leaving all his belongings to be brought on by berselius, he turned with félix and, saying good-bye to his companions, started. they had nearly reached the edge of the forest when shouts from behind caused adams to turn his head. the soldiers were shouting to papeete to come back. the thing had trotted after adams like a black dog. it was within a few yards of him. "go back," shouted adams. "tick-tick," replied papeete. it was the only english the creature knew. it stood frying in the sun, grinning and glistening, till adams, with an assumption of ferocity, made for it, then back it went, and adams, laughing, plunged under the veil of leaves. berselius, seated at his tent door, looked at his watch. meeus, seated beside berselius, was smoking cigarettes. "give him an hour," said berselius. "he will be far away enough by that. besides, the wind is blowing from there." "true," said meeus. "an hour." and he continued to smoke. but his hand was shaking, and he was biting the cigarette, and his lips were dry so that he had to be continually licking them. berselius was quite calm, but his face was pale, and he seemed contemplating something at a distance. when half an hour had passed, meeus rose suddenly to his feet and began to walk about, up and down, in front of the tent, up and down, up and down, as a man walks when he is in distress of mind. the black soldiers also seemed uneasy, and the villagers huddled closer together like sheep. papeete alone seemed undisturbed. he was playing now with the old tomato tin, out of which he had scraped and licked every vestige of the contents. suddenly meeus began crying out to the soldiers in a hard, sharp voice like the yelping of a dog. the time was up, and the soldiers knew. they ranged up, chattering and laughing, and all at once, as if produced from nowhere, two rhinoceros hide whips appeared in the hands of two of the tallest of the blacks. rhinoceros hide is more than an inch thick; it is clear and almost translucent when properly prepared. in the form of a whip it is less an instrument of punishment than a weapon. these whips were not the smoothly prepared whips used for light punishment; they had angles that cut like sword edges. one wonders what those sentimental people would say--those sentimental people who cry out if a burly ruffian is ordered twenty strokes with the cat--could they see a hundred _chicotte_ administered with a whip that is flexible as india-rubber, hard as steel. two soldiers at the yelping orders of meeus cut the old woman apart from her fellows and flung her on the ground. the two soldiers armed with whips came to her, and she did not speak a word, nor cry out, but lay grinning at the sun. papeete, seeing his old grandmother treated like this, dropped his tomato tin and screamed, till a soldier put a foot on his chest and held him down. "two hundred _chicotte_," cried meeus, and like the echo of his words came the first dull, coughing blow. the villagers shrieked and cried altogether at each blow, but the victim, after the shriek which followed the first blow, was dumb. free as a top which is being whipped by a boy, she gyrated, making frantic efforts to escape, and like boys whipping a top, the two soldiers with their whips pursued her, blow following blow. a semicircle of blood on the ground marked her gyrations. once she almost gained her feet, but a blow in the face sent her down again. she put her hands to her poor face, and the rhinoceros whips caught her on the hands, breaking them. she flung herself on her back and they beat her on the stomach, cutting through the walls of the abdomen till the intestines protruded. she flung herself on her face and they cut into her back with the whips till her ribs were bare and the fat bulged through the long slashes in the skin. verily it was a beating to the bitter end, and meeus, pale, dripping with sweat, his eyes dilated to a rim, ran about laughing, shouting-_"two hundred chicotte. two hundred chicotte."_ * * * * * he cried the words like a parrot, not knowing what he said. and berselius? berselius, also dripping with sweat, his eyes also dilated to a rim, tottering like a drunken man, gazed, drinking, drinking the sight in. down, away down in the heart of man there is a trapdoor. beyond the instincts of murder and assassination, beyond the instincts that make a count cajus or a marquis de sade, it lies, and it leads directly into the last and nethermost depths of hell, where sits in eternal damnation eccelin de romano. cruelty for cruelty's sake: the mad pleasure of watching suffering in its most odious form: that is the passion which hides demon-like beneath this door, and that was the passion that held berselius now in its grip. he had drunk of all things, this man, but never of such a potent draught as this demon held now to his lips--and not for the first time. the draught would have been nothing but for the bitterness of it, the horror of it, the mad delight of knowing the fiendishness of it, and drinking, drinking, drinking, till reason, self-respect, and soul, were overthrown. the thing that had been a black woman and, now, seemed like nothing earthly except a bundle of red rags, gave up the miserable soul it contained and, stiffening in the clutches of tetanus, became a hoop. * * * * * what happened then to the remaining villagers could be heard echoing for miles through the forest in the shrieks and wails of the tortured ones. one cannot write of unnamable things, unprintable deeds. the screams lasted till noon. at one o'clock the punitive expedition had departed, leaving the silent pools to their silence. the houses of the village had been destroyed and trampled out. the sward lay covered with shapeless remains, and scarcely had the last of the expedition departed, staggering and half drunk with the delirium of their deeds, than from the blue above, like a stone, dropped a vulture. a vulture drops like a stone, with wings closed till it reaches within a few yards of the ground; then it spreads its wings and, with wide-opened talons, lights on its prey. then, a marabout with fore-slanting legs and domed-out wings, came sailing silently down to the feast, and another vulture, and yet another. chapter xvi due south when berselius and meeus returned to fort m'bassa adams, who met them, came to the conclusion that berselius had been drinking. the man's face looked stiff and bloated, just as a man's face looks after a terrible debauch. meeus looked cold and hard and old, but his eyes were bright and he was seemingly quite himself. "to-morrow i shall start," said berselius. "not to-day. i am tired and wish to sleep." he went off to the room where his bed was, and cast himself on it and fell instantly into a deep and dreamless sleep. the innocent may wonder how such a man would dare to sleep--dare to enter that dark country so close to the frontier of death. but what should the innocent know of a berselius, who was yet a living man and walked the earth but a few years ago, and whose prototype is alive to-day. alive and powerful and lustful, great in mind, body, and estate. * * * * * before sunrise next morning the expedition was marshalled in the courtyard for the start. a great fire burned in the space just before the house, and by its light the stores and tents were taken from the go-down. the red light of the fire lit up the black glistening skins of the porters as they loaded themselves with the chop boxes and tents and guns; lit up the red fez caps of the onlooking "soldiers," their glittering white teeth, their white eyeballs, and the barrels of their rifles. beyond and below the fort the forest stretched in the living starlight like an infinite white sea. the tree-tops were roofed with a faint mist, no breath of wind disturbed it, and in contrast to the deathly stillness of all that dead-white world the sky, filled with leaping stars, seemed alive and vocal. it was chill up here just before dawn. hence the fire. food had been served out to the porters, and they ate it whilst getting things ready and loading up. berselius and his companions were breakfasting in the guest house and the light of the paraffin lamp lay on the veranda yellow as topaz in contrast with the red light of the fire in the yard. everything was ready for the start. they were waiting now for the sun. then, away to the east, as though a vague azure wind had blown up under the canopy of darkness, the sky, right down to the roof of the forest, became translucent and filled with distance. a reef of cloud like a vermilion pencil-line materialized itself, became a rose-red feather tipped with dazzling gold, and dissolved as if washed away by the rising sea of light. a great bustle spread through the courtyard. the remaining stores were loaded up, and under the direction of félix, the porters formed in a long line, their loads on their heads. as the expedition left the compound it was already day. the edge of the sun had leaped over the edge of the forest, the world was filled with light, and the sky was a sparkling blue. what a scene that was! the limitless sea of snow-white mist rippled over by the sea of light, the mist billowed and spiralled by the dawn wind, great palm tops bursting through the haze, glittering effulgent with dew, birds breaking to the sky in coloured flocks, snow, and light, and the green of tremendous vegetation, and over all, new-built and beautiful, the blue, tranquil dome of sky. it was song materialized in colour and form, the song of the primeval forests breaking from the mists of chaos, tremendous, triumphant, joyous, finding day at last, and greeting him with the glory of the palms, with the rustle of the n'sambyas tossing their golden bugles to the light, the drip and sigh of the euphorbia trees, the broad-leaved plantains and the thousand others whose forms hold the gloom of the forest in the mesh of their leaves. "i have awakened, o god! i have awakened. behold me, o lord! i am thine!" thus to the splendour of the sun and led by the trumpet of the wind sang the forest. a hundred million trees lent their voices to the song. a hundred million trees--acacia and palm, m'bina and cottonwood, thorn and mimosa; in gloom, in shine, in valley and on rise, mist-strewn and sun-stricken, all bending under the deep sweet billows of the wind. at the edge of the forest berselius and adams took leave of meeus. neither berselius nor meeus showed any sign of the past day. they had "slept it off." as for adams, he knew nothing, except that the villagers had been punished and their houses destroyed. the way lay due south. they were now treading that isthmus of woods which connects the two great forests which, united thus, make the forest of m'bonga. the trees in this vast connecting wood are different from the trees in the main forests. you find here enormous acacias, monkey-bread trees, raphia palms and baobabs; less gloom, and fewer creeping and hanging plants. berselius, as a rule, brought with him a taxidermist, but this expedition was purely for sport. the tusks of whatever elephants were slain would be brought back, but no skins; unless, indeed, they were fortunate enough to find some rare or unknown species. chapter xvii sun-washed spaces a two days' march brought them clear of the woods and into a broken country, vast, sunstrewn and silent; a beautiful desolation where the tall grass waved in the wind, and ridge and hollow, plain and mimosa tree, led the eye beyond, and beyond, to everlasting space. standing here alone, and listening, the only sound from all that great sunlit country was the sound of the wind in the grasses near by. truly this place was at the very back of the world, the hinterland of the primeval forests. strike eastward far enough and you would sight the snow-capped crest of kilimanjaro, king of african mountains, sitting snow-crowned above the vast territory to which he has given his name, and which stretches from lake eyasi to the pare mountains. the hunters of kilimanjaro, which once was the home of elephants, have thinned the herds and driven them to wander. elephants that a hundred years ago, even fifty years ago, were almost fearless of man, have altered their habits from the bitter lessons they have received, and now are only to be found in the most inaccessible places. should they cling to more inhabited districts, they come out of the sheltered places only by night. a man may spend years in an elephant district without once seeing an elephant. driven by the necessity of food and the fear of man, the great herds wander in their wonderful and mysterious journeys for hundreds and hundreds of miles. never lying down, sleeping as they stand, always on guard, dim of sight yet keen of smell, they pass where there are trees, feeding as they go, stripping branches of leaves. alarmed, or seeking a new feeding place, a herd moves in the rainy season, when the ground is soft, with the silence and swiftness of a cloud shadow; in the dry season when the ground is hard, the sound of them stampeding is like the drums of an army. "elephants," said berselius, pointing to some bundles of dried stuff lying near a vangueria bush. "that stuff is a bundle of bowstring hemp. they chew it and drop it. oh, that has been dropped a long time ago; see, there you have elephants again." a tree standing alone showed half its bark ripped off, tusked off by some old bull elephant, and above the tusk marks, some fifteen feet up, could be seen the rubbing mark where great shoulders had scratched themselves. as they marched, making due south, berselius in that cold manner which never left him, and which made comradeship with the man impossible and reduced companionship to the thinnest bond, talked to adams about the game they were after, telling in a few graphic sentences and not without feeling the wonderful story of the moving herds, to whom distance is nothing, to whom mountains are nothing, to whom the thickest jungle is nothing. the poem of the children of the mammoth who have walked the earth with the mastodon, who have stripped the trees wherein dwelt arboreal man, who have wandered under the stars and suns of a million years, seen rivers change their courses and hills arise where plains had been, and yet remain, far strewn and thinned out, it is true, but living still. at noon they halted and the tents were pitched for a four hours' rest. adams, whilst dinner was preparing, walked away by himself till the camp was hidden by a ridge, then he stood and looked around him. alone, like this, the spirit of the scene appeared before him: the sun, and wind, and sky; the vast, vast spaces of waving grass, broken by the beds of dried-up streams, strewn here and there with mimosas and thorns, here dim with the growth of vangueria bushes, here sharp and gray-green with cactus; this giant land, infinite, sunlit, and silent, spoke to him in a new language. it seemed to adams that he had never known freedom before. a shadow swept by him on the grass. he looked up and watched the great bird that had cast the shadow sailing away on the wind, dwindling to a point, and vanishing in the dazzling blue. chapter xviii far into elephant land they sighted a small herd of giraffe two days later, but so far off as to be beyond pursuit; but before evening, just as they were about to camp by some pools, they came across rhino. berselius's quick eye spotted the beasts, a bull and a cow. they were in the open, under shelter of some thick grass; the bull was half sitting up, and his head and horn in the evening light might have been taken for the stump of a broken tree. the cow was not visible at first, but almost immediately after they sighted the bull, she heaved herself up and stood a silhouette against the sky. the wind was blowing from the beasts, so it was quite possible to get close up to them. the meat would be useful, so berselius and his companion started, with félix carrying the guns. as they drew close adams noticed that the back of the great cow seemed alive and in motion. half a dozen rhinoceros birds, in fact, were upon it, and almost immediately, sighting the hunters, they rose chattering and fluttering in the air. these birds are the guardians of the half-blind rhinoceros. they live on the parasites that infest his skin. it is a partnership. the birds warn the rhinoceros of danger, and he, vicariously, feeds the birds. scarcely had the birds given warning than the bull heaved himself up. berselius's rifle rang out, but the light was uncertain, and the brute wounded, but not mortally, charged forward took a half circle, swung his head from side to side in search of his assailant, and sighted the cow. instantly, horn down and squealing, he charged her. she met him horn to horn, and the smash could be heard at the camp where the porters and the soldiers stood gazing open-mouthed at the battle between the two great brutes charging each other in the low evening light, fighting with the ferocity of tigers and the agility of cats. adams, close up as he was, had a better view, and unless he had seen with his own eyes, he could not have believed that two animals so heavy and unwieldy could display such nimbleness and such quickness of ferocity. it was the wickedest sight, and it was brought to an end at last by the rifle of berselius. curiously enough, neither brute had injured the other very much. the horns which, had they been of ivory, must have been shivered, were intact, for the horn of a rhinoceros is flexible; it is built up of a conglomeration of hairs, and though, perhaps, the most unbreakable thing in the universe, it bends up to a certain point just as a rapier does. next morning, two hours after daybreak, félix, who was scouting just ahead of the column, came running back with news he had struck elephant spoor. every tooth in his head told the tale. not only spoor, but the spoor of a vast herd cutting right across the line of march. berselius came forward to examine, and adams came with him. the dry ground and wire grass was not the best medium for taking the track of the beasts, but to the experienced eyes of berselius and the zappo zap everything was clear. a herd of elephant had passed not long ago, and they were undisturbed and unsuspicious. when elephants are suspicious they march in lines, single file, one stepping in the tracks of another. this herd was spread wide and going easy of mind, but at what pace it would be impossible to say. the long boat-shaped back feet of the bulls leave a print unmistakable in the rainy season when the ground is soft, but still discernible to the trained eye in the dry season. félix declared that there were at least twenty bulls in the herd, and some of huge size. "how long is it since they passed here?" asked berselius. félix held up the fingers of one hand. from certain indications he came to the conclusion they had passed late in the night, three hours or so before daybreak. they numbered forty or fifty, leaving aside the calves that might be with them. he delivered these opinions, speaking in the native, and berselius instantly gave the order, "left wheel!" to the crowd of porters; and at the word the long column turned at right angles to the line of march and struck due west, treading the track of the herd. nothing is more exciting than this following in the track of a mammoth army whose tactics you cannot foresee. this herd might be simply moving a few miles in search of a new feeding ground, or it might be making one of those great sweeping marches covering hundreds of miles that the mysterious elephant people make at the dictates of their mysterious instinct. it might be moving at a gentle pace, or swifter than a man could run. a mile on the new route they came on a broken tree, a great tree broken down as if by a storm; the fractures were quite recent. the elephant folk had done this. they came across another tree whose sides, facing north and south, had been clearly barked, and the pieces of the bark, farther on, that had been chewed and flung away. with one stroke of a tusk passing a tree, and without stopping, an elephant will tear off a strip of bark; and it was curious to see how the bark of this tree to east and west was intact. the moving herd had not stopped. just in passing, an elephant on either side of the tree had taken his slice of bark, chewed it and flung it away. there were also small trees trodden down mercilessly under foot. thus the great track of the herd lay before the hunters, but not a sign in all the sunlit, silent country before them of the herd itself. it was berselius's aim to crowd up his men as quickly as a forced march could do it, camp and then pursue the herd with a few swift followers, the barest possible amount of stores and one tent. the calabashes and the water bottles had been filled at the last halt, but it was desirable to find water for the evening's camping place. it was now that berselius showed his capacity as a driver and his own enormous store of energy. he took the tail of the column, and woe to the porters who lagged behind! félix was with him, and adams, who was heading the column, could hear the shouts of the zappo zap. the men with their loads went at a quick walk, sometimes breaking into a trot, urged forward by the gun-butt of félix. the heat was sweltering, but there was no rest. on, on, on, ever on through a country that changed not at all; the same breaks and ridges, the same limitless plains of waving grass, the same scant trees, the same heat-shaken horizon toward which the elephant road led straight, unwavering, endless. the brain reeled with the heat and the dazzle, but the column halted not nor stayed. the energy of berselius drove it forward as the energy of steam drives an engine. his voice, his very presence, put life into flagging legs and sight into dazzled eyes. he spared neither himself nor others; the game was ahead, the spoor was hot, and the panther in his soul drove him forward. toward noon they halted for two hours where some bushes spread their shade. the porters lay down on their bellies, with arms outspread, having taken a draught of water and a bite of food; they lay in absolute and profound slumber. adams, nearly as exhausted, lay on his back. even félix showed signs of the journey, but berselius sat right back into the bushes, with his knees drawn up and, with eyes fixed on the eastern distance, brooded. he was always like this on a great hunt, when the game was near. silent and brooding, and morose to the point of savagery. one might almost have fancied that in far distant days this man had been a tiger, and that the tiger still lived slumbering in his soul, triumphant over death, driving him forth at intervals from civilization to wander in the wild places of the earth and slay. two hours past noon they resumed their journey: on, on, on, treading the elephant track which still went due east straight as an arrow to the blue horizon. the frightful tiredness they had felt before the noonday halt had passed, giving place to a dull, dreamy feeling, such as comes after taking opium. the column marched mechanically and without thought, knowing only two things, the feel of the hard ground and grass beneath their feet, and the smiting of the sun on their backs. thus the galley slaves of old laboured at their oars and the builders of the pyramids beneath their loads, all moving like one man. but here was no tune of flutes to set the pace, or monotonous song to help the lifting; only the voice of berselius like a whip-lash, and the gun-butt of félix drumming on the ribs of laggards. a light, hot wind was blowing in their faces. adams, still at the head of the column, had suffered severely during the morning march, and the re-start after the noon rest was painful to him as a beating; but the reserve forces of a powerful constitution that had never been tampered with were now coming into play, and, after a time, he felt little discomfort. his body, like a wound-up mechanism, did all the work; his mind became divorced from it; he experienced a curious exaltation, like that which comes from drink, only finer far and more ethereal. the column seemed marching far swifter than it was marching in reality, the vast sunlit land seemed vaster even than it was; the wind-blown grass, the far distant trees, the circling skyline, all spoke of freedom unknown to man: the freedom of the herd they were pursuing; the freedom of the bird flying overhead; the freedom of the wind blowing in the grass; the freedom of the limitless, endless, sunlit country. meridians of silence, and light, and plains, and trees, and mountains, and forests. parallels of virgin land. he was feeling what the bird knows and feels when it beats up the mountains or glides down the vales of air; what the elephant herd knows and feels when it moves over mountains and across plains; what the antelopes know when distance calls them. a shout from félix, and the zappo zap came running up the line; his head was flung up and he was sniffing the air. then, walking beside adams, he stared ahead right away over the country before them to the far skyline. "elephant smell," he replied, when adams asked him what was the matter; then, turning, he shouted some words in the native back to berselius, and tramped on beside adams, his nose raised to the wind, of which each puff brought the scent stronger. adams could smell nothing, but the savage could tell that right ahead there were elephants; close up, too, yet not a sign of them could be seen. this puzzled him, and what puzzles a savage frightens him. his nose told him that here were elephants in sight of his eyes; his eyes told him that there were none. all at once the column came to a dead halt. porters flung down their loads and cried out in fright. even berselius stood stock-still in astonishment. from the air, blown on the wind from no visible source, came the shrill trumpeting of an elephant. there, in broad daylight, close up to them, the sound came with the shock of the supernatural. nothing stirred in all the land but the grass bending to the wind. there was not even a bird in the air; yet close to them an elephant was trumpeting shrilly and fiercely as elephants trumpet when they charge. again came the sound, and once again, but this time it broke lamentably to a complaint that died away to silence. instantly the zappo zap came to himself. he knew that sound. an elephant was dying somewhere near by, caught in a trap possibly. he rushed down the line, gun-butting the porters back to their places, shouting to berselius, helping loads up on the heads of the men who had dropped them, so that in a minute the column was in motion again and going swiftly to make up for lost time. five minutes brought them to a slight rise in the ground, beyond which, deep-cut, rock-strewn and skeleton-dry, lay the bed of a river. in the rains this would be scarcely fordable, but now not even a trickle of water could be seen. on the floor of this river-bed, like a huge dark rock, lay the body of an elephant. an african elephant is the biggest creature on earth, far bigger than his indian cousin, and far more formidable looking. adams could scarcely believe that the thing before him was the body of an animal, as he contrasted its size with félix, who had raced down the slope and was examining the carcass. "dead!" cried félix, and the porters, taking heart, descended, but not without groaning and lamentations, for it is well-known to the natives that whoever comes across an elephant lying down must die, speedily and by violent means; and this elephant was lying down in very truth, his tusks humbly lowered to the ground, his great ears motionless, just as death had left him. it was a bull and surely, from his size, the father of the herd. berselius considered the beast to be of great age. one tusk was decayed badly and the other was chipped and broken, and on the skin of the side were several of those circular sores one almost always finds on the body of a rhinoceros, "dundos," as the natives call them; old scars and wounds told their tale of old battles and the wanderings of many years. it might have been eighty or a hundred years since the creature had first seen the light and started on its wonderful journey over mountains and plains through jungle and forest, lying down maybe only twenty times in all those years, wandering hither and thither, and knowing not that every step of its journey was a step closer to here. just this little piece of ground on which it lay had been plotted out for it a hundred years ago, and it had come to it by a million mazy paths, but not less surely than had it followed the leading of a faultlessly directed arrow. the herd had left it here to die. berselius, examining the body closely, could find no wound. he concluded that it had come to its end just as old men come to their end at last--the mechanism had failed, hindered, perhaps, by some internal disease, and it had lain down to wait for death. the tusks were not worth taking, and the party pursued its way up the eastern bank of the river, where the herd had also evidently pursued its way, and then on, on, across the country due east, in the track they had followed since morning. as they left the river-bed a tiny dot in the sky above, which they had not noticed, enlarged, and like a stone from the blue fell a vulture. it lit on the carcass; then came a kite slanting down to the feast, and then from the blue, like stones dropped from the careless hand of a giant, vulture after vulture. chapter xix the great herd félix kept his place beside adams at the head of the column. the black seemed morose, and at the same time, excited. two things had disturbed him: the bad luck of meeting a lying-down elephant and the fact that a giraffe was with the herd. he had spotted giraffe spoor in the river-bed where the ground was sandy and showed up the impression well. now, the giraffe has the keen eyesight of a bird, and when he throws in his lot with the elephant folk who, though half-blind, have the keen scent of hounds, the combination is bad for the hunter. an hour before sundown they struck some pools beside which grew a tree, the biggest they had yet come across, and here berselius gave the order, halt and camp. to half of the porters it was an order to fall down flat, their loads beside them, their arms outspread absolutely broken with the weariness of the march, broken, and speechless, and motionless, and plunged into such a depth of slumber that had you kicked them they would not have moved. berselius, himself, was nearly exhausted. he sat with his back against the tree and gave his orders in a languid voice, and it was very curious to see the tents going up, wielded by men who seemed working in their sleep, slowly and with fumbling fingers, tripping over each other, pausing, hesitating, yet working all the same, and all in the still level light of evening that lent unreality to the scene. luck was against berselius. it was quite within the bounds of probability that the herd might have halted here by the water for the night; but they had not. they had drunk here, for the pool was all trodden up and still muddy, and then gone on. they were evidently making one of their great marches, and it was probable now that they would never be caught up with. under these circumstances, berselius determined to halt for the night. some small trees and bushes were cut to make a camp fire, and when they had finished supper berselius, still with his back to the tree, sat talking to adams by the light of the crackling branches. he did not seem in the least put out with his failure. "the rains will be on us in a week or two," said he. "then you will see elephants all over this place. they lie up in the inaccessible places in the dry season, but when the wet weather comes the herds spread over the plains. not such herds as the one we have been following--it is rarely one comes across one like that. however, to-morrow we may have better luck with them. félix tells me that forty miles beyond there, where they have gone, there are a lot of trees. they may stop and feed, and if they do, we will have them. to-morrow i shall start light. leave the main camp here. you and i and félix, and four of the best of those men, and the smallest tent, enough stores for three or four days. yes, to-morrow----" the man dozed off, sleep-stricken, the pipe between his teeth. "to-morrow!" portentous word! they retired to their tents. two sentries were posted to keep the fire going and to keep watch. the porters lay about, looking just like men who had fallen in battle, and after awhile the sentries, having piled the fire with wood, sat down, and the moon rose, flooding the whole wide land with light. she had scarcely lifted her own diameter above the horizon when the sentries, flat on their backs, with arms extended, were sleeping as soundly as the others. brilliant almost as daylight, still and peaceful as death, the light of the great moon flooded the land, paling the stars and casting the shadows of the tents across the sleepers, and the wind, which was now blowing from the west, shook the twigs of the tree, like skeleton fingers, over the flicker of the red burning camp-fire. now, the great herd of elephants had been making, as berselius imagined possible, for the forest that lay forty miles to the east. they had reached it before sundown, and had begun to feed, stripping branches of their leaves, the enormous trunks reaching up like snakes and whirling the leaves catherine-wheellike down enormous throats; the purring and grumbling of their cavernous bellies, the rubbing of rough shoulders against the bark, the stamping of feet crushing the undergrowth, resounded in echoes amongst the trees. the big bull giraffe that had cast its lot in with the herd was busy, too, tearing and snapping down twigs and leaves, feeding like the others, who were all feeding like one, even to the eighteen-month-old calves busy at the teats of their enormous dams. the sunlight, level and low, struck the wonderful picture. half the herd were in the wood, and you could see the tree branches bending and shaking to the reaching trunks. half the herd were grazing on the wood's edge, the giraffe amidst them, its clouded body burning in the sunset against the green of the trees. the wind was blowing steadily along the edge of the wood and against a band of hunters of the congo state, blacks armed with rifles, who were worming their way along from tree bole to tree bole, till within shooting distance of the bull elephant nearest to them. the creatures feeding knew nothing of their danger till three shots, that sounded like one, rang out, and the bull, struck in the neck, the shoulder, and between the ear and eye, fell, literally all of a heap, as though some giant's scimitar had swept its legs away from under it. at this moment the sun's lower edge had just touched the horizon. the whole visible herd on the edge of the wood, at the sound of the shots and the crash of the falling bull, wheeled, trumpeted wildly, and with trunks swung up, ears spread wide, swept away toward the sunset, following the track by which they had come; whilst, bursting from the woods, leaf-strewn, with green branches tangled in their tusks, furious and mad with fright, came the remainder, following in the same track, sweeping after the others, and filling the air with the thunder of their stampede. shot after shot rang out, but not an elephant was touched, and in two great clouds, which coalesced, the broken herd with the sound of a storm passed away along the road they had come by, the night closing on them as the sun vanished from the sky. berselius had not reckoned on this. no man can reckon on what the wilderness will do. the oldest hunter is the man who knows most surely the dramatic surprises of the hunt, but the oldest hunter would never have taken this into his calculations. here, back along the road they had travelled all day, was coming, not a peacefully moving herd, but a storm of elephants. elephants who had been disturbed in feeding, shot at, and shot after, filled with the dull fury that dwells in an elephant's brain for days, and with the instinct for safety that would carry them perhaps a hundred miles before dawn. and right in the track of this terrible army of destruction lay the sleeping camp, the camp fire smouldering and fluttering its flames on the wind. and the wind had shifted! with the dark, as though the scene had been skilfully prepared by some infernal dramatist, just as the cover of night shut down tight and sealed, and suddenly, like a box-lid that had been upheld by the last rays of the setting sun, just as the great stars burst out above as if at the touch of an electric button, the wind shifted right round and blew due east. this change of wind would dull the sound of the oncoming host to the people at the camp; at the same time it would bring the scent of the human beings to the elephants. the effect of this might be to make them swerve away from the line they were taking, but it would be impossible to tell for certain. the only sure thing was, that if they continued in their course till within eyeshot of the camp fire, they would charge it and destroy everything round about it in their fury. a camp fire to an angry elephant is the equivalent of a red rag to a bull. thus the dramatic element of uncertainty was introduced into the tragedy unfolding on the plains, and the great stars seemed to leap like expectant hearts of fire till the moon broke over the horizon, casting the flying shadows of the great beasts before them. the first furious stampede had settled into a rapid trot, to a sound like the sound of a hundred muffled drums beating a rataplan. instinct told the herd that immediate danger was past, also that for safety they would have to cover an immense space of country; so they settled to the pace most suitable for the journey. and what a pace it was, and what a sight! drifting across the country before the great white moon, fantastic beasts and more fantastic shadows, in three divisions line ahead, with the lanes of moonlight ruled between each line; calves by the cows, bulls in the van, they went, keeping to the scent of the track they had come by as unswervingly as a train keeps to the metals. the giraffe was still with them. he and his shadow, gliding with compass-like strides a hundred yards away from the southward column; and just as the scent of the camp came to his mammoth friends, the sight of the camp fire, like a red spark, struck his keen eyes. with a rasping note of warning he swerved to the south. now was the critical moment. everything lay with the decision of the bulls leading the van, who, with trunks flung up and crooked forward, were holding the scent as a man holds a line. they had only a moment of time, but he who knows the elephant folk knows well the rapidity with which their minds can reason, and from their action it would seem that the arbiters of berselius's fate reasoned thus: "the enemy were behind; they are now in front. so be it. let us charge." and they charged, with a blast of trumpeting that shook the sky; with trunks flung up and forward-driving tusks, ears spread like great sails, and a sound like the thunder of artillery, they charged the scent, the body of the herd following the leaders, as the body of a battering-ram follows the head. * * * * * adams, when he had flung himself down in his tent, fell asleep instantly. this sleep, which was profound and dreamless, lasted but half an hour, and was succeeded by a slumber in which, as in a darkened room where a magic-lantern is being operated, vivid and fantastic pictures arose before him. he was on the march with the column through a country infinite as is space; the road they were taking, like the road to the tombs of the chinese kings, was lined on either side with animals done in stone. at first these were tigers, and then, as though some veil of illusion had been withdrawn, he discovered them to be creatures far larger and more cruel, remorseless, and fearful than tigers; they were elephants--great stone elephants that had been standing there under the sun from everlasting, and they dwindled in perspective from giants to pigmies and from pigmies to grains of sand, for they were the guardians of a road whose end was infinity. then these vanished, but the elephant country under the burning sun remained. there was nothing to be seen but the sun-washed spaces of wind-blown grass, and broken ground, and scattered trees, till across the sky in long procession, one following the other, passed shadow elephants. shadows each thrice the height of the highest mountain, and these things called forth in the mind of the sleeper such a horror and depth of dread that he started awake with the sweat running down his face. sleep was shattered, and in the excitement and nerve-tension of over-tiredness he lay tossing on his back. the long march of the day before, in which men had matched themselves against moving mountains, the obsession of the things they had been pursuing, had combined to shatter sleep. he came out in the open for a breath of air. the camp was plunged in slumber. the two sentries ordered by berselius to keep watch and to feed the fire lay like the others, with arms outspread; the fire was burning low, as though drowned out by the flood of moonlight, and adams was on the point of going to the pile of fuel for some sticks to feed it, when he saw a sight which was one of the strangest, perhaps, that he would ever see. the sentry lying on the right of the fire sat up, rose to his feet, went to the wood pile, took an armful of fuel and flung it on the embers. the fire roared up and crackled, and the sleep-walker, who had performed this act with wide-staring eyes that saw nothing, returned to his place and lay down. it was as if the order of berselius still rang in his ears and the vision of berselius still dominated his mind. adams, thinking of this strange thing, stood with the wind fanning his face, looking over the country to the west, the country they had traversed that day in tribulation under the burning sun. there was nothing to tell now of the weary march, the pursuit of phantoms, the long, long miles of labour; all was peaceful and coldly beautiful, moonlit and silent. he was about to return to his tent when a faint sound struck his ear. a faint, booming sound, just like that which troubles us when the eardrum vibrates on its own account from exhaustion or the effect of drugs. he stopped his ears and the sound ceased. then he knew that the sound was a real sound borne on the air. he thought it was coming to him on the wind, which was now blowing steadily in his face, and he strained his eyes to see the cause; but he saw nothing. there was no cloud in the sky or storm on the horizon, yet the sound was increasing. boom, boom, becoming deeper and more sonorous, now like the long roll of muffled drums, now like the sea bursting in the sea-caves of a distant coast, or the drums of the cyclone when they beat the charge for the rushing winds. but the heart-searching feature of this strange booming in the night was a rhythm, a pulsation that spoke of life. this was no dull shifting of matter, as in an earthquake, or of air as in a storm; this sound was alive. adams sprang to the tent where berselius was sleeping, and dragged him out by the arm, crying, "listen!" he would have cried, "see!" but the words withered on his lips at the sight which was now before him as he faced east. an acre of rollicking and tossing blackness storming straight for the camp across the plain under the thunder that was filling the night. a thing inconceivable and paralyzing, till the iron grip of berselius seized his arm, driving him against the tree, and the voice of berselius cried, "elephants." in a moment adams was in the lower branches of the great tree, and scarcely had he gained his position than the sky split with the trumpeting of the charge and, as a man dying sees his whole life with one glance, he saw the whole camp of awakened sleepers fly like wind-blown leaves from before the oncoming storm, leaving only two figures remaining, the figures of berselius and félix. the zappo zap had gone apart from the camp to sleep. he had drugged himself by smoking hemp, and he was lying half a hundred yards away, face down on the ground, dead to everything in earth and heaven. berselius had spied him. what adams saw then was, perhaps, the most heroic act ever recorded of man. the soul-shattering terror of the advancing storm, the thunder and the trumpeting that never ceased, had no effect on the iron heart of berselius. he made the instantaneous calculation that it was just possible to kick the man awake (for sound has no effect on the hemp-drugged one) and get him to the tree and a chance of safety. and he made the attempt. and he would have succeeded but that he fell. the root of a dead tree, whose trunk had long vanished, caught his foot when he had made half the distance, and brought him down flat on his face. it was as though god had said, "not so." adams, in an agony, sweat pouring from him, watched berselius rise to his feet. he rose slowly as if with deliberation, and then he stood fronting the oncoming storm. whether he was dazed, or whether he knew that he had miscalculated his chances, who knows? but there he stood, as if disdaining to fly, face fronting the enemy. and it seemed to the watcher that the figure of that man was the figure of a god, till the storm closed on him, and seized and swung aloft by a trunk, he was flung away like a stone from a catapult somewhere into the night. just as a man clings to a mast in a hurricane, deaf, blind, all his life and energy in his arms, adams clung to the tree bole above the branch upon which he was. the storm below, the smashing of great bodies against the tree, the trumpeting whose prolonged scream never ceased--all were nothing. his mind was cast out--he had flung it away just as the elephant had flung berselius away. to him the universe was the tree to which he was clinging, just that part which his arms encircled. the herd had attacked in three columns, keeping the very same formation as they had kept from the start. the northern column, consisting of cows with their calves, drove on as if to safety, the others, cows and bulls--the cows even more ferocious than the bulls--attacked the camps, the tents, and the fire. they stamped and trod the fire out, smashing tent poles and chop boxes, stores and cooking utensils, tusking one another in the tight-packed _mêlée_, and the scream of the trumpeting never ceased. then they drove on. the porters, all except two, had, unhappily for themselves, fled in a body to the west, and now mixed with the trumpeting and thunder could be heard the screams of men trodden under foot or tusked to pieces. these sounds ceased, and the trumpeting died away, and nothing could be distinguished but the dull boom, boom of the herd sweeping away west, growing fainter and fainter, and dying away in the night. chapter xx the broken camp the whole thing had scarcely lasted twenty minutes. during the storming and trumpeting, adams, clinging to the tree, had felt neither terror nor interest. his mind was cast out, all but a vestige of it; this remnant of mind recognized that it was lying in the open palm of death, and it was not afraid. not only that, but it felt lazily triumphant. it is only the reasoning mind that fears death, the mind that can still say to itself, "what will come after?" the intuitive mind, which does not reason, has no fear. had not the herd been so closely packed and so furious, adams would have been smelt out, plucked from the tree and stamped to pieces without any manner of doubt. but the elephants, jammed together, tusking each other, and rooting the camp to pieces, had passed on, not knowing that they had left a living man behind them. as the sound of the storm died away, he came to his senses as a man comes to his senses after the inhalation of ether, and the first thing that was borne in upon him was the fact that he was clinging to a tree, and that he could not let go. his arms encircled the rough bark like bands of iron; they had divorced themselves from his will power, they held him there despite himself, not from muscular rigidity or spasm, but just because they refused to let go. they were doing the business of clinging to safety on their own account, and he had to _think himself free_. there was no use in ordering them to release him, he had to reason with them. then, little by little, they (fingers first) returned to discipline, and he slipped down and came to earth, literally, for his knees gave under him and he fell. he was a very brave man and a very strong man, but now, just released from death, now that all danger was over, he was very much afraid. he had seen and heard life: life whipped to fury, screaming and in maelstrom action, life in its loudest and most appalling phase, and he felt as a man might feel to whom the gods had shown a near view of that tempest of fire we call the sun. he sat up and looked around him on the pitiable ruins of the camp on which a tornado could not have wrought more destruction. something lay glittering in the moonlight close to him. he picked it up. it was his shaving-glass, the most fragile thing in all their belongings, yet unbroken. tent-poles had been smashed to matchwood, cooking utensils trodden flat, guns broken to pieces; yet this thing, useless and fragile, had been carefully preserved, watched over by some god of its own. he was dropping it from his fingers when a cry from behind him made him turn his head. a dark figure was approaching in the moonlight. it was the zappo zap. the man whom berselius, with splendid heroism, had tried to save. like the looking-glass, and protected, perhaps, by some god of his own, the columns of destruction had passed him by. the column of cows with their calves had passed him on the other side. old hunters say that elephants will not trouble with a dead man, and félix, though awakened by the shaking of the earth, had lain like a dead man as the storm swept by. he was very much alive, now, and seemingly unconcerned as he came toward adams, stood beside him, and looked around. "all gone dam," said félix. and volumes would not have expressed the situation more graphically. then the savage, having contemplated the scene for a moment, rushed forward to a heap of stuff--broken boxes and what not--dragged something from it and gave a shout. it was the big elephant rifle, with its cartridge-bag attached. the stock was split, but the thing was practically intact. félix waved it over his head and laughed and whooped. "gun!" yelled félix. adams beckoned to him, and he came like a black devil in the moonlight--a black devil with filed teeth and flashing eyeballs--and adams pointed to the tree and motioned him to leave the gun there and follow him. félix obeyed, and adams started in the direction in which he had seen berselius flung. it was not far to walk, and they had not far to search. a hundred yards took them to a break in the ground, and there in the moonlight, with arms extended, lay the body of the once powerful berselius, the man who had driven them like sheep, the man whose will was law. the man of wealth and genius, great as lucifer in evil, yet in courage and heroism tremendous. god-man or devil-man, or a combination of both, but great, incontestably great and compelling. adams knelt down beside the body, and the zappo zap stood by with incurious eyes looking on. berselius was not dead. he was breathing; breathing deeply and stertorously, as men breathe in apoplexy or after sunstroke or ruinous injury to the brain. adams tore open the collar of the hunting shirt; then he examined the limbs. berselius, flung like a stone from a catapult, had, unfortunately for himself, not broken a limb. that might have saved him. his head was the injured part, and adams, running his fingers through the hair, matted with blood, came on the mischief. the right parietal bone was dented very slightly for a space nearly as broad as a penny. the skin was broken, but the bone itself, though depressed slightly, was not destroyed. the inner table of the skull no doubt was splintered, hence the brain mischief. there was only one thing to be done--trephine. and that as swiftly as possible. everything needful was in the instrument-case, but had it escaped destruction? he raised berselius by the shoulders. félix took the feet, and between them they carried the body to the tree, where they laid it down. before starting to hunt for the instruments, adams bled berselius with his penknife. the effect was almost instantaneous. the breathing became less stertorous and laboured. then he started to search hither and thither for the precious mahogany case which held the amputating knives, the tourniquets and the trephine. the zappo zap was no use, as he did not know anything about the stores, and had never even seen the instrument case, so adams had to conduct the search alone, in a hurry, and over half an acre of ground. the case had almost to a certainty been smashed to pieces; still, there was a chance that the trephine had escaped injury. he remembered the shaving-glass, and how it had been miraculously preserved, and started to work. he came across a flat oblong disc of tin; it had been a box of sardines, it was now flattened out as though by a rolling mill. he came across a bottle of brandy sticking jauntily up from a hole in the ground, as if saying, "have a drink." it was intact. he knocked the head off and, accepting the dumb invitation, put it back where he had found it, and went on. he came across long strips of the green rot-proof stuff the tents had been made of. they looked as though they had been torn up like this for rib-roller bandages, for they were just of that width. he came across half a mosquito-net; the other half was sailing away north, streaming from the tusk of a bull in which it was tangled, and giving him, no doubt, a sufficiently bizarre appearance under the quiet light of the moon and stars. there were several chop boxes of stores intact; and a cigar box without a crack in it, and also without a cigar. it looked as though it had been carefully opened, emptied, and laid down. there was no end to the surprises of this search: things brayed to pieces as if with a pestle and mortar, things easily smashable untouched. he had been searching for two hours when he found the trephine. it lay near the brass lock of the amputating case, attached to which there were some pieces of mahogany from the case itself. a trephine is just like a corkscrew, only in place of the screw you have a cup of steel. this steel cup has a serrated edge: it is, in fact, a small circular saw. applying the saw edge to the bone, and working the handle with half turns of the wrist, you can remove a disc from the outer table of the skull just as a cook stamps cakes out of a sheet of dough with a "cutter." adams looked at the thing in his hands; the cup of chilled steel, thin as paper and brittle as glass, had been smashed to pieces, presumably; at all events, it was not there. he flung the handle and the shaft away and came back to the tree beneath which the body of berselius was lying. berselius, still senseless, was breathing deeply and slowly, and adams, having cut away the hair of the scalp round the wound with his penknife, went to the pool for water to bathe the wound; but the pool was trodden up into slush, and hours must elapse before the mud would settle. he remembered the bottle of brandy, fetched it, washed the wound with brandy, and with his handkerchief torn into three pieces bound it up. there was nothing more to be done; and he sat down with his back to the tree to wait for dawn. the bitterness of the thing was in his heart, the bitterness of being there with hands willing and able to help, yet helpless. a surgeon is as useless without his instruments as the cold, lifeless instruments are without a hand to guide them. it is not his fault that his hands are tied, but if he is a man of any feeling, that does not lessen the anguish of the situation. adams, listening to the breathing of the man he could not save, sat watching the moonlit desert where the grass waved in the wind. félix, lying on his belly, had resumed his slumbers, and beside the sleeping savage lay the thing he worshipped more than his god, the big elephant rifle, across the stock of which his naked arm was flung. chapter xxi the feast of the vultures adams, who had fallen asleep, was awakened by a whoop from félix. it was full, blazing day, and the zappo zap, standing erect just as he had sprung from sleep, was staring with wrinkled eyes straight out across the land. two black figures were approaching. they were the two porters who had fled westward, and who, with félix, were all that remained of berselius's savage train of followers. the rest were over there---over there to the west, where vultures and marabouts and kites were holding a clamorous meeting; over there, where the ground was black with birds. the two wretches approaching the camping place rolled their eyes in terror, glancing over there. they had run for miles and hidden themselves in a donga. they had heard the tragedy from afar, the storming and trumpeting, and the shrieks of men being destroyed, torn to pieces, trampled to pulp; they had heard the thunder of the vanishing herd, and they had listened to the awful silence that followed, lying on their faces, clinging to the breast of their old, cold, cruel mother earth. with day, like homing pigeons, they had returned to the camp. "hi yi!" yelled félix, and a response came like the cry of a seagull. they were shivering as dogs shiver when ill or frightened; their teeth were chattering, and they had a curious gray, dusky look; the very oil of their skins seemed to have dried up, and old chain scars on their necks and ankles showed white and leprous-looking in the bright morning sunshine. but adams had no time to attend to them. having glanced in their direction, he turned to berselius, bent over him, and started back in surprise. berselius's eyes were open; he was breathing regularly and slowly, and he looked like a man who, just awakened from sleep, was yet too lazy to move. adams touched him upon the shoulder, and berselius, raising his right hand, drew it over his face as if to chase away sleep. then his head dropped, and he lay looking up at the sky. then he yawned twice, deeply, and turning his head on his left shoulder looked about him lazily, his eyes resting here and there: on the two porters who were sitting, with knees drawn up, eating some food which félix had given them; on the broken camp furniture and the heaps of raffle left by the catastrophe of the night before; on the skyline where the grass waved against the morning blue. adams heaved a sigh of relief. the man had only been stunned. none of the vital centres of the brain had been injured. some injury there must be, but the main springs of life were intact. there was no paralysis, for now the sick man was raising his left hand, and, moving about as a person moves in bed to get a more comfortable position, he raised both knees and then, turning over on his right side, straightened them out again. now, by the movements of a sick person you can tell pretty nearly the condition of his brain. all the movements of this sick man were normal; they indicated great tiredness, nothing more. the shock and the loss of blood might account for that. adams the night before had made a pillow from his own coat for the stricken one's head; he was bending now to rearrange it, but he desisted. berselius was asleep. adams remained on his knees for a moment contemplating his patient with deep satisfaction. then he rose to his feet. some shelter must be improvised to protect the sleeping man from the sun, but in the raffle around there did not seem enough tent cloth to make even an umbrella. calling félix and the two porters to follow him, he started off, searching amidst the _débris_ here and there, setting the porters to work to collect the remains of the stores and to bring them back to the tree, hunting in vain for what he wanted, till félix, just as they reached the northern limit of destruction, pointed to where the birds were still busy, clamorous and gorging. "what is it?" asked adams. "tent," replied félix. to the left of where the birds were, and close to them, lay a mound of something showing dark amidst the grass. it was a tent, or a large part of one of the tents; tangled, perhaps, in a tusk, it had been brought here and cast, just as a storm might have brought and cast it. even at this distance the air was tainted with the odour of the birds and their prey, but the thing had to be fetched, and adams was not the man to exhibit qualms before a savage. "come," said he, and they started. the birds saw them coming, and some flew away; others, trying to fly away, rose in the air heavily and fluttering a hundred yards sank and scattered about in the grass, looking like great vermin; a few remained waddling here and there, either too impudent for flight or too greatly gorged. truly it had been a great killing, and the ground was ripped as if by ploughs. over a hundred square yards lay blistering beneath the sun, red and blue and black; and the torment of it pierced the silence like a shout, though not a movement was there, save the movement of the bald-headed vulture as he waddled, or the flapping of a rag of skin to the breeze. they seized on the tent, the zappo zap laughing and with teeth glinting in the sun. it was the smallest tent, ripped here and there, but otherwise sound; the mosquito net inside was intact and rolled up like a ball, but the pole was broken in two. as they carried it between them, they had to pass near a man. he was very dead, that man; a great foot had trodden on his face, and it was flattened out, looking like a great black flat-fish in which a child, for fun, had punched holes for eyes and mouth and nose; it was curling up at the edges under the sun's rays, becoming converted into a cup. "b'selius," said félix, with a laugh, indicating this thing as they passed it. adams had his hands full, or he would have struck the brute to the ground. he contented himself with driving the tent pole into the small of his back to urge him forward. from that moment he conceived a hatred for félix such as few men have felt, for it was not a hatred against a man, or even a brute, but a black automatic figure with filed teeth, a thing with the brain and heart of an alligator, yet fashioned after god's own image. a hatred for félix, and a pity for berselius. chapter xxii the lost guide they improvised a shelter against the tree with the tent cloth over the sleeping man, and then adams set félix to work splicing and mending the tent pole. the two porters, who had stuffed themselves with food, were looking better and a shade more human; the glossy look was coming back to their skins and the fright was leaving their faces. he set them to work, piling the recovered stores in the bit of shade cast by the tree and the improvised tent, and as they did so he took toll of the stuff. he judged that there was enough provisions to take them back along the road they had come by. the hunt was ended. even should berselius recover fully in a couple of days, adams determined to insist on a return. but he did not expect any resistance. it was a long, long, wearisome day. the great far-stretching land, voiceless except just over there where birds were still busy and would be busy till all was gone; the cloudless sky, and the shifting shadow of the tree; these were the best company he had. the blacks were not companions. the two porters seemed less human than dogs, and félix poisoned his sight. his dislike for this man had been steadily growing. the thought that berselius had risked his life for this creature, and the remembrance of how he had pointed to the dead man with a grin and said "b'selius," had brought matters to a head in the mind of adams, and turned his dislike into a furious antipathy. he sat now in what little shadow there was, watching the figure of the zappo zap. félix, the tent-pole finished, had slunk off westward, hunting about, or pretending to hunt for salvage. little by little the black figure dwindled till it reached where the birds were discoursing and clamouring, and adams felt his blood grow cold as he watched the birds rise like a puff of black smoke and scatter, some this way, some that; some flying right away, some settling down near by. the black figure, a tiny sketch against the sky, wandered hither and thither, and then vanished. félix had sat him down. adams rose up and took the elephant rifle, took from the bag a great solid drawn brass cartridge, loaded the rifle, and sat down again in the shade. berselius was sleeping peacefully. he could hear the even respirations through the tent cloth. the porters were sleeping in the sun as only niggers can sleep when they are tired; but adams was feeling as if he could never sleep again, as he sat waiting and watching and listening to the faint whisper, whisper of the grass as the wind bent it gently in its passage. a long time passed, and then the black sketch appeared again outlined on the sky. it grew in size, and as it grew adams fingered the triggers of the gun, and his lips became as dry as sand, so that he had to lick them and keep on licking them, till his tongue became dry as his lips and his palate dry as his tongue. then he rose up, rifle in hand, for the zappo zap had come to speaking distance. adams advanced to meet him. there was a dry, dull glaze about the creature's lips and chin that told a horrible story, and at the sight of it the white man halted dead, pointed away to where the birds were again congregating, cried "gr-r-r," as a man cries to a dog that has misbehaved, and flung the rifle to his shoulder. félix broke away and ran. ran, striking eastward, and bounding as a buck antelope bounds with a leopard at its heels, whilst the ear-shattering report of the great rifle rang across the land and a puff of white dust broke from the ground near the black bounding figure. adams, cursing himself for having missed, grounded the gun-butt and stood watching the dot in the distance till it vanished from sight. he had forgotten the fact that félix was the guide and that without him the return would be a hazardous one; but had he remembered this, it would have made no difference. better to die in the desert twenty times over than to return escorted by _that_. it was now getting toward sundown. the great elephant country in which the camp lay lost had, during the daytime, three phases. three spirits presided over this place; the spirit of morning, of noon, and of evening. in towns and cities, even in the open country of civilized lands, these three are clad in language and bound in chains of convention, reduced to slaves whose task is to call men to rise, to eat, or sleep. but here, in this vast place, one saw them naked--naked and free as when they caught the world's first day, like a new-minted coin struck from darkness, and spun it behind them into night. under the presidency of these three spirits the land was ever changing; the country of the morning was not the country of the noon, nor was the country of the noon the country of the evening. the morning was loud. i can express it in no other terms. dawn came like a blast of trumpets, driving the flocks of the red flamingoes before it, tremendous, and shattering the night of stars at the first fanfare. a moment later, and, changing the image, imagination could hear the sea of light bursting against the far edge of the horizon, even as you watched the spindrift of it surging up to heaven and the waves of it breaking over ridge and tree and plain of waving grass. noon was the hour of silence. under the pyramid of light the land lay speechless, without a shadow except the shadow of the flying bird, or a sound except the sigh of the grass, touched and bent by the wind, if it blew. evening brought with it a new country. there was no dusk here, no beauties of twilight, but the level light of sunset brought a beauty of its own. distance stood over the land, casting trees farther away, and spreading the prairies of grass with her magic. the country, now, had a new population. the shadows. nowhere else, perhaps, do shadows grow and live as here, where the atmosphere and the level light of evening combine to form the quaintest shadows on earth. the giraffe has for his counterpart a set of shadow legs ten yards long, and the elephant in his shadow state goes on stilts. a man is followed by a pair of black compasses, and a squat tent flings to the east the shadow of a sword. adams was sitting looking at the two porters whom he had set to hunt for firewood; he was watching their grotesque figures, and more than grotesque shadows, when a movement of the sick man under the tent-cloth caused him to turn. berselius had awakened. more than that, he was sitting up, and before adams could put up a hand, the tent-cloth was flung back, and the head and shoulders of the sick man appeared. his face was pale, his hair in disorder; but his consciousness had fully returned. he recognized adams with a glance, and then, without speaking, struggled to free himself of the tent-cloth and get on his feet. adams helped him. berselius, leaning on the arm of his companion, looked around him, and then stood looking at the setting sun. the glorious day was very near its end. the sun huge and half-shorn of his beams, was sinking slowly, inevitably; scarce two diameters divided his lower edge from the horizon that was thirsting for him as the grave thirsts for man. thus fades, shorn of its dazzle and splendour, the intellect so triumphant at noon, the personality, the compelling will; the man himself when night has touched him. "are you better?" asked adams. berselius made no reply. like a child, held by some glittering bauble, he seemed fascinated by the sun. the western sky was marked by a thin reef of cloud; dull gold, it momentarily brightened to burnished gold, and then to fire. the sun touched the horizon. ere one could say "look!" he was half gone. the blazing arc of his upper limb hung for a moment palpitating, then it dwindled to a point, vanished, and a wave of twilight, like the shadow of a wing, passed over the land. as berselius, leaning on the arm of his companion, turned, it was already night. the camp fire which the porters had lit was crackling, and berselius, helped by his friend, sat down with his back to the tree and his face toward the fire. "are you better?" asked adams, as he took a seat beside him and proceeded to light a pipe. "my head," said berselius. as he spoke he put his hand to his head as a person puts his hand to his forehead when he is dazed. "have you any pain?" "no, no pain, but there is a mist." "you can see all right?" "yes, yes, i can see. it is not my sight, but there is a mist--in my head." adams guessed what he meant. the man's mind had been literally shaken up. he knew, too, that thought and mental excitement were the worst things for him. "don't think about it," said he. "it will pass. you have had a knock on the head. just lean back against the tree, for i want to dress the wound." he undid the bandage, fetched some water from the pool, which was now clear, and set to work. the wound was healthy and seemed much less severe than it had seemed the night before. the dent in the bone seemed quite inconsiderable. the inner table of the skull might, after all, be not injured. one thing was certain: whatever mischief the cortex of the brain had suffered, the prime centres had escaped. speech and movement were perfect and thought was rational. "there," said adams, when he had finished his dressings and taken his seat, "you are all right now. but don't talk or do any thinking. the mist, as you call it, in your head will pass away." "i can see," said berselius; then he stopped, hesitated, and went on--"i can see last night--i can see us all here by the camp fire, but beyond that i cannot see, for a great white mist hides everything. and still"--he burst out--"i seem to know everything hidden by that mist, but i can't see, i can't see. what is this thing that has happened to me?" "you know your name?" "yes, my name is berselius, just as your name is adams. my mind is clear, my memory is clear, but i have lost the sight of memory. beyond the camp fire of last night, everything is a thick mist--i am afraid!" he took adams's big hand, and the big man gulped suddenly at the words and the action. the great berselius afraid! the man who had faced the elephants, the man who cared not a halfpenny for death, the man who was so far above the stature of other men, sitting there beside him and holding his hand like a little child, and saying, "i am afraid!" and the voice of berselius was not the voice of the berselius of yesterday. it had lost the decision and commanding tone that made it so different from the voices of common men. "it will pass," said adams. "it is only a shake-up of the brain. why, i have seen a man after a blow on the head with his memory clean wiped out. he had to learn his alphabet again." berselius did not reply. his head was nodding forward in sleep. he had slept all day, but sleep had taken him again suddenly, just as it takes a child, and adams placed him under the improvised tent with the coat for a pillow under his head, and then sat by the fire. memory of all things in this wonderful world is surely the most wonderful. it is there now, and the next moment it is not. you leave your house in london, and you are next found in brighton, sane to all intents and purposes, but your memory is gone. a dense fog hides everything you have ever done, dreamed or spoken. you may have committed crimes in your past life, or you may have been a saint. it is all the same, for the moment, until the mist breaks up and your past reappears. berselius's case was a phase of this condition. he knew his name--everything lay before his mind up to a certain point. beyond that, he knew all sorts of things were lying, but he could not see them. to use his own eloquent expression, he had lost the sight of memory. if you recall your past, it comes in pictures. you have to ransack a great photographic gallery. before you can think, you must see. beyond a certain point berselius had lost the sight of memory, in other words, he had lost his past. chapter xxiii beyond the skyline adams, wearied to death with the events of the past day and night, slept by the camp fire the deep dreamless sleep of utter exhaustion. he had piled the fire with wood, using broken boxes, slow-burning vangueria brushwood, and the remains of a ruined mimosa tree that lay a hundred yards from the camp, and he lay by it now as soundly asleep as the two porters and berselius. the fire stood guard; crackling and flickering beneath the stars, it showed a burning spark that made the camping place determinable many miles away. now the zappo zap, when he had fled from adams, put ten miles of country behind him, going almost with the swiftness of an antelope, taking low bush and broken ground in his stride, and halting only when instinct brought him to a stand, saying, "you are safe." he knew the country well, and the thirty miles that separated him from the eastern forest, where he could obtain food and shelter, were nothing to him. he could have run nearly the whole distance and reached there in a few hours' time. but time was also nothing to him. he had fed well, and could last two days without food. it was not his intention to desert the camp yet; for at the camp, under that tree away to the west, lay a thing that he lusted after as men lust for drink or love: the desire of his dark soul--the elephant gun. before adams drove him away from the camp he had made up his mind to steal it. sneak off with it in the night and vanish with it into his own country away to the northeast, leaving b'selius and his broken camp to fend for themselves. this determination was still unshaken; the thing held him like a charm, and he sat down, squatting in the grass with his knees drawn up to his chin and his eyes fixed westward, waiting for evening. an hour before sunset he made for the camp, reaching within a mile of it as the light left the sky. he watched the camp fire burning, and made for it. toward midnight, crawling on his belly, soundless as a snake, he crept right up beside adams, seized the gun and the cartridge bag, and with them in his hands stood erect. he had no fear now. he knew he could outrun anyone there. he held the gun by the barrels. adams's white face, as he lay with mouth open, snoring and deep in slumber, presented an irresistible mark for the heavy gun-butt, and all would have been over with that sleeper in this world, had not the attention of the savage been drawn to an object that suddenly appeared from beneath the folds of the improvised tent. it was the hand of berselius. berselius, moving uneasily in his sleep, had flung out his arm; the clenched fist, like the emblem of power, struck the eye of the zappo zap, and quelled him as the sight of the whip quells a dog. b'selius was alive and able to clench his fist. that fact was enough for félix, and next moment he was gone, and the moonlight cast his black shadow as he ran, making northeast, a darkness let loose on life and on the land. adams awoke at sun-up to find the gun and the cartridge bag gone. the porters knew nothing. he had picked up enough of their language to interrogate them, but they could only shake their heads, and he was debating in his own mind whether he ought to kick them on principle, when berselius made his appearance from the tent. his strength had come back to him. the dazed look of the day before had left his face, but the expression of the face was altered. the half smile which had been such a peculiar feature of his countenance was no longer there. the level eye that raised to no man and lowered before no man, the aspect of command and the ease of perfect control and power--where were they? adams, as he looked at his companion, felt a pang such as we feel when we see a human being suddenly and terribly mutilated. who has not known a friend who, from an accident in the hunting field, the shock of a railway collision, or some great grief, has suddenly changed; of whom people say, "ah, yes, since the accident he has never been the same man"? a friend who yesterday was hale and hearty, full of will power and brain, and who to-day is a different person with drooping under-lip, lack-lustre eye, and bearing in every movement the indecision which marks the inferior mind. berselius's under-lip did not droop, nor did his manner lack the ordinary decision of a healthy man; the change in him was slight, but it was startlingly evident. so high had nature placed him above other men, that a crack in the pedestal was noticeable; as to the injury to the statue itself, the ladder of time would be required before that could be fully discovered. so far from being downcast this morning, berselius was mildly cheerful. he washed and had his wound dressed, and then sat down to a miserable breakfast of cold tinned meat and cassava cakes, with water fetched from the pool in a cracked calabash. he said nothing about the mist in his head, and adams carefully avoided touching on the question. "sleep has put him all right," said adams to himself. "all the same, he's not the man he was. he's a dozen times more human and like other men. wonder how long it will last. just as long as he's feeling sick, i expect." he rose to fetch his pipe when berselius, who had finished eating and had also risen to his feet, beckoned him to come close. "that is the road we came by?" said berselius, pointing over the country toward the west. "yes," said adams, "that is the road." "do you see the skyline?" said berselius. "yes, i see the skyline." "well, my memory carries me to the skyline, but not beyond." "oh, lord!" said adams to himself, "here he is beginning it all over again!" "i can remember," said berselius, "everything that happened as far as my eye carries me. for instance, by that tree a mile away a porter fell down. he was very exhausted. and when we had passed that ridge near the skyline we saw two birds fighting; two bald-headed vultures----" "that is so," said adams. "but beyond the skyline," said berselius, suddenly becoming excited and clutching his companion's arm, "i see nothing. i know nothing. all is mist--all is mist." "yes, yes," said the surgeon. "it's only memory blindness. it will come back." "ah, but will it? if i can get to the skyline and see the country beyond, and if i remember that, and if i go on and on, the way we came, and if i remember as i go, then, then, i will be saved. but if i get to that skyline and if i find that the mist stops me from seeing beyond, then i pray you kill me, for the agony of this thing is not to be borne." suddenly he ceased, and then, as if to some unseen person, he cried out-"i have left my memory on that road." adams, frightened at the man's agitation, tried to soothe him, but berselius, in the grip of this awful desire to pierce back beyond that mist and find himself, would not be soothed. nothing would satisfy him but to strike camp and return along the road they had come by. some instinct told him that the sight of the things he had seen would wake up memory, and that bit by bit, as he went, the mist would retreat before him, and perhaps vanish at last. some instinct told him this, but reason, who is ever a doubter, tortured him with doubts. the only course was to go back and see. adams, who doubted if his patient was physically fit for a march, at last gave in; the man's agony of mind was more dangerous to him than the exhaustion of physical exercise could prove. he gave orders to the porters to strike camp, and then turned to himself, and helped them. they only carried what was barely needful, and was even less than needful, to take them to fort m'bassa, ten days, journey in berselius's condition. four water bottles that had been left intact they filled with water; they took the tent, and the pole that félix had spliced. cassava cakes and tinned meat and a few pounds of chocolate made up the provisions. there were no guns to carry, no trophies of the chase. of all the army of porters only two were left. berselius was broken down, félix had fled, they had no guide, and the crowning horror of the thing was that they had struck off in pursuit of the herd at right angles to the straight path they had taken from the forest, and adams did not know in the least the point where they had struck off. the porters were absolutely no use as guides, and unless god sent a guide from heaven or chance interposed to lead them in the right way, they were lost; for they had no guns or ammunition with which to get food. truly the omen of the elephant lying down had not spoken in vain. when all was loaded up, and adams was loaded even like the porters, they turned their backs on the tree and the pools, and leaving them there to burn in the sun forever struck straight west in the direction from which they had come. berselius had come in pursuit of a terrible thing and a merciless thing; he was returning in search of a more terrible and a more merciless thing--memory. it was four hours after sun-up when they left the camp; and two hours' march brought them to that ridge which berselius had indicated from the camp as being near the skyline. when they reached the ridge, and not before, berselius halted and stared over the country in front of him, his face filled with triumph and hope. he seized adams's hand and pointed away to the west. the ridge gave a big view of the country. "i can remember all that," said he, "keenly, right up to the skyline." "and at the skyline?" "stands the mist," replied berselius. "but it will lift before me as i go on. now i know it is only the sight of the things i have seen that is needful to recall the memory of them and of myself in connection with them." adams said nothing. it struck him with an eerie feeling that this man beside him was actually walking back into his past. as veil after veil of distance was raised, so would the past come back, bit by bit. but he was yet to learn what a terrible journey that would be. one thing struck him as strange. berselius had never tried to pierce the mist by questions. the man seemed entirely obsessed by the curtain of mist, and by the necessity of piercing it by physical movement, of putting tree to tree and mile to mile. berselius had not asked questions because, no doubt, he was under the dominion of a profound instinct, telling him that the past he had lost could only be recalled by the actual picture of the things he had seen. chapter xxiv the sentence of the desert berselius had not asked a single question as to the catastrophe. his own misfortune had banished for him, doubtless, all interest in everything else. adams had said to him nothing of félix, his horrible deeds or his theft of the rifle. félix, though he had vanished from adams's life completely and forever, had not vanished from the face of the earth. he was very much alive and doing, and his deeds and his fate are worth a word, for they formed a tragedy well fitting the stage of this merciless land. the zappo zap, having secured the gun and its ammunition, revelling in the joy of possession and power, went skipping on his road, which lay to the northeast. six miles from the camp he flung himself down by a bush, and, with the gun covered by his arm, slept, and hunted in his sleep, like a hound, till dawn. then he rose and pursued his way, still travelling northeast, his bird-like eyes skimming the land and horizon. he sang as he pursued his way, and his song fitted his filed teeth to a charm. if a poisoned arrow could sing or a stabbing spear, it would sing what félix sang as he went, his long morning shadow stalking behind him; he as soulless and as heartless as it. what motive of attachment had driven him to follow verhaeren to yandjali from the bena pianga country heaven knows, for the man was quite beyond the human pale. the elephants were far, far above him in power of love and kindness; one had to descend straight to the alligators to match him, and even then one found oneself at fault. he was not. those three words alone describe this figure of india-rubber that could still walk and talk and live and lust, and to whom slaying and torture were amongst the æsthetics of life. an hour before noon, beyond and above a clump of trees, he sighted a moving object. it was the head of a giraffe. it was the very same bull giraffe that had fled with the elephant herd and then wheeled away south from it. it was wandering devious now, feeding by itself, and the instant félix saw the tell-tale head, he dropped flat to the ground as if he had been shot. the giraffe had not seen him, for the head, having vanished for a moment, reappeared; it was feeding, plucking down small branches of leaves, and félix, lying on his side, opened the breech of the rifle, drew the empty cartridge case, inserted a cartridge in each barrel, and closed the breech. now, unknown to adams, when he had fired the gun the day before, there was a plug of clay in the left-hand barrel about two inches from the muzzle; just an inconsiderable wad of clay about as thick as a gun wad; the elephant folk had done this when they had mishandled the gun, and, though the thing could have been removed with a twig, puck himself could not have conceived a more mischievous obstruction. he certainly never would have conceived so devilish a one. adams had, fortunately for himself, fired the right-hand barrel; the concussion had not broken up the plug, for it was still moist, being clay from the trodden-up edge of the pool. it was moist still, for the night dew had found it. the zappo zap knew nothing of the plug. he knew nothing, either, of the tricks of these big, old-fashioned elephant guns, for he kept both barrels full cock, and it is almost three to two that if you fire one of these rifles with both barrels full cock, both barrels will go off simultaneously, or nearly so, from the concussion. with the gun trailing after him--another foolish trick--the savage crawled on his belly through the long grass to within firing distance of the tree clump. then he lay and waited. he had not long to wait. the giraffe, hungry and feeding, was straying along the edge of the clump of trees, picking down the youngest and freshest leaves, just as a _gourmet_ picks the best bits out of a salad. in a few minutes his body was in view, the endless neck flung up, the absurd head and little, stumpy, useless horns prying amidst the leaves, and every now and then slewing round and sweeping the country in search of danger. félix lay motionless as a log; then, during a moment when the giraffe's head was hidden in the leaves, he flung himself into position and took aim. a tremendous report rang out, the giraffe fell, squealing, and roaring and kicking, and félix, flung on his back, lay stretched out, a cloud of gauzy blue smoke in the air above him. the breech of the rifle had blown out. he had fired the right-hand barrel, but the concussion had sprung the left-hand cock as well. it seemed to the savage that a great black hand struck him in the face and flung him backward. he lay for a moment, half-stunned; then he sat up, and, behold! the sun had gone out and he was in perfect blackness. he was blind, for his eyes were gone, and where his nose had been was now a cavity. he looked as though he had put on a red velvet domino, and he sat there in the sun with the last vestige of the blue smoke dissolving above him in the air, not knowing in the least what had happened to him. he knew nothing of blindness; he knew little of pain. an englishman in his wounded state would have been screaming in agony; to félix the pain was sharp, but it was nothing to the fact that the sun had "gone down." he put his hand to the pain and felt his ruined face, but that did not tell him anything. this sudden black dark was not the darkness which came from shutting one's eyes; it was something else, and he scrambled on his feet to find out. he could feel the darkness now, and he advanced a few steps to see if he could walk through it; then he sprang into the air to see if it was lighter above, and dived on his hands and knees to see if he could slip under it, and shouted and whooped to see if he could drive it away. but it was a great darkness, not to be out-jumped, jumped he as high as the sun, or slipped under, were he as thin as a knife, or whooped away, though he whooped to everlasting. he walked rapidly, and then he began to run. he ran rapidly, and he seemed to possess some instinct in his feet which told him of broken ground. the burst gun lay where he had left it in the grass, and the dead giraffe lay where it had fallen by the trees; the wind blew, and the grass waved, the sun spread his pyramid of light from horizon to horizon, and in the sparkle above a black dot hung trembling above the stricken beast at the edge of the wood. the black figure of the man continued its headlong course. it was running in a circle of many miles, impelled through the nothingness of night by the dark soul raging in it. hours passed, and _then_ it fell, and lay face to the sky and arms outspread. you might have thought it dead. but it was a thing almost indestructible. it lay motionless, but it was alive with hunger. during all its gyrations it had been followed and watched closely. it had not lain for a minute when a vulture dropped like a stone from the sky and lit on it with wings outspread. next moment the vulture was seized, screeching, torn limb from limb, and in the act of being devoured! * * * * * but the sentence of the desert on the blind is death, trap vultures as cunningly as you will, and devour them as ferociously. the eye is everything in the battle of the strong against the weak. and so it came about that two days later a pair of leopards from the woods to the northeast fought with the figure, which fought with teeth and hands and feet, whilst the yellow-eyed kites looked on at a battle that would have turned with horror the heart of flamininus. chapter xxv toward the sunset when berselius, standing on the ridge, had looked long enough at the country before him, taking in its every detail with delight, they started again on their march, berselius leading. they had no guide. the only plan in adams's head was to march straight west toward the sunset for a distance roughly equivalent to the forced march they had made in pursuit of the herd, and then to strike at right angles due north and try to strike the wood isthmus of the two great forests making up the forest of m'bonga. but the sunset is a wide mark and only appears at sunset. they had no compass; the elephant folk had made away with all the instruments of the expedition. they must inevitably stray from the true direction, striking into that infernal circle which imprisons all things blind and all things compassless. even should they, by a miracle, strike the isthmus of woods, the forest would take them, confuse them, hand them from tree to tree and glade to glade, and lose them at last and for ever in one of the million pockets which a forest holds open for the lost. the stout heart of the big man had not quailed before this prospect. he had a fighting chance; that was enough for him. but now at the re-start, as berselius stepped forward and took the lead, a hope sprang up in his breast. a tremendous and joyful idea occurred to him. was it possible that berselius would guide them back? the memory that the man possessed was so keen, his anxiety to pierce the veil before him was so overpowering, was it possible that like a hound hunting by sight instead of smell, he would lead them straight? only by following the exact track they had come by, could berselius pierce back into that past he craved to see. only by putting tree to tree and ridge to ridge, memory to memory, could he collect what he had lost. could he do this? the life of the whole party depended upon the answer to that question. the track they ought to follow was the track by which the herd had led them. adams could not tell whether they were following that track--even félix could scarcely have told--for the dew and the wind had made the faint traces of the elephants quite indiscernible now to civilized eyes; and berselius never once looked at the ground under his feet, he was led entirely by the configuration of the land. that to the eyes of adams was hopeless. for the great elephant country is all alike, and one ridge is the counterpart of another ridge, and one grassy plain of another grassy plain, and the scattered trees tell you nothing when you are lost, except that you are lost. the heat of the day was now strong on the land; the porters sweated under their loads, and adams, loaded like them, knew for once in his life what it was to be a slave and a beast of burden. berselius, who carried nothing, did not seem to feel the heat; weak though he must have been from his injury and the blood-letting. he marched on, ever on, apparently satisfied and well pleased as horizon lifted, giving place to new horizon, and plain of waving grass succeeded ridge of broken ground. but adams, as hour followed hour, felt the hope dying out in his breast, and the remorseless certainty stole upon him that they were out of their track. this land seemed somehow different from any he had seen before; he could have sworn that this country around them was not the country through which they had pursued the herd. his hope had been built on a false foundation. how could a man whose memory was almost entirely obscured lead them right? this was not the case of the blind leading the blind, but the case of the blind leading men with sight. berselius was deceiving himself. hope was leading him, not memory. and still berselius led on, assured and triumphant, calling out, "see! do you remember that tree? we passed it at just this distance when we were coming." or, now, "look at that patch of blue grass. we halted for a minute here." adams, after a while, made no reply. the assurance and delight of berselius as these fancied memories came to him shocked the heart. there was a horrible and sardonic humour in the whole business, a bathos that insulted the soul. the dead leading the living, the blind leading the man with sight, lunacy leading sanity to death. yet there was nothing to be done but follow. as well take berselius's road as any other. sunset would tell them whether they were facing the sunset; but he wished that berselius would cease. the situation was bad enough to bear without those triumphant calls. it was past noon now; the light wind that had been blowing in their faces had died away; there was the faintest stirring of the air, and on this, suddenly, to adams's nostrils came stealing a smell of corruption, such as he had never experienced before. it grew stronger as they went. there was a slight rise in the ground before them just here, and as they took it the stench became almost insupportable, and adams was turning aside to spit when a cry from berselius, who was a few yards in advance, brought him forward to his side. the rise in the ground had hidden from them a dried-up river-bed, and there before them in the sandy trough, huge amidst the boulders, lay the body of an elephant. a crowd of birds busy about the carcass rose clamouring in the air and flew away. "do you remember?" cried berselius. "good god!" said adams. "do i remember!" it was the body of the great beast they had passed when in pursuit of the herd. yes, there was no doubt now that berselius was guiding them aright. he had followed the track they had come by without deviating a hundred yards. the great animal was lying just as they had left it, but the work of the birds was evident; horribly so, and it was not a sight to linger over. they descended into the river bed, passed up the other bank, and went on, berselius leading and adams walking by his side. "do you know," said adams, "i was beginning to think you were out of the track." berselius smiled. adams, who was glancing at his face, thought that he had never seen an expression like that on the man's face before. the smile of the lips that had marked and marred his countenance through life, the smile that was half a sneer, was not there; this came about the eyes. "he was in exactly the same position, too," said adams. "but the birds will have him down before long. well, he has served one purpose in his life; he has shown us we are on the right road, and he has given you back another bit of memory." "poor brute," said berselius. these words, coming from the once iron-hearted berselius, struck adams strangely; there was a trace of pity in their tone. chapter xxvi the fading mist they camped two hours before sundown. one of the few mercies of this country is the number of dead trees and the bushes from which one can always scrape the materials for a fire. adams, with his hunting knife and a small hatchet which was all steel and so had been uninjured in the catastrophe, cut wood enough for the fire. they had nothing to cook with, but fortunately the food they had with them did not require cooking. the tent was practicable, for the pole, so well had it been spliced, was as good as new. they set it up, and having eaten their supper, crept under it, leaving the porters to keep watch or not as they chose. berselius, who had marched so well all day, had broken down at the finish. he seemed half dead with weariness, and scarcely spoke a word, eating mechanically and falling to sleep immediately on lying down. but he was happy. happy as the man who suddenly finds that he can outwalk the paralysis threatening him, or the man who finds the fog of blindness lifting before him, showing him again bit by bit the world he had deemed forever lost. whilst this man sleeps in the tent beside his companion and the waning moon breaks up over the horizon and mixes her light with the red flicker of the fire, a word about that past of which he was in search may not be out of place. berselius was of mixed nationality. his father of swedish descent, his mother of french. armand berselius the elder was what is termed a lucky man. in other words, he had that keenness of intellect which enables the possessor to seize opportunities and to foresee events. this art of looking into the future is the key to aladdin's palace and to the temple of power. to know what will appreciate in value and what will depreciate, that is the art of success in life, and that was the art which made armand berselius a millionaire. berselius the younger grew up in an atmosphere of money. his mother died when he was quite young. he had neither brothers nor sisters; his father, a chilly-hearted sensualist, had a dislike to the boy; for some obscure reason, without any foundation in fact, he fancied that he was some other man's son. the basis of an evil mind is distrust. beware of the man who is always fearful of being swindled. who cannot trust, cannot be trusted. berselius treated his son like a brute, and the boy, with great power for love in his heart, conceived a hatred for the man who misused him that was hellish in intensity. but not a sign of it did he show. that power of will and restraint so remarkable in the grown-up man was not less remarkable in the boy. he bound his hate with iron bands and prisoned it, and he did this from pride. when his father thrashed him for the slightest offence, he showed not a sign of pain or passion; when the old man committed that last outrage one can commit against the mind of a child, and sneered at him before grown-up people, young berselius neither flushed nor moved an eyelid. he handed the insult to the beast feeding at his heart, and it devoured it and grew. the spring was poisoned at its source. that education of the heart which only love can give was utterly cut off from the boy and supplanted by the education of hate. and the mind tainted thus from the beginning was an extraordinary mind, a spacious intellect, great for evil or great for good, never little, and fed by an unfailing flood of energy. the elder berselius, as if bent on the utter damnation of his son, kept him well supplied with money. he did this from pride. the young man took his graduate degree in vice, with higher marks from the devil than any other young man of his time. he passed through the college of st. cyr and into the cavalry, leaving it at the death of his father and when he had obtained his captaincy. he now found himself free, without a profession and with forty million francs to squander, or save, or do what he liked with. he at once took his place as a man of affairs with one hand in politics and the other in finance. there are a dozen men like berselius on the continent of europe. politicians and financiers under the guise of boulevardiers. men of leisure apparently, but, in reality, men of intellect, who work their political and financial works quite unobtrusively and yet have a considerable hand in the making of events. berselius was one of these, varying the monotony of social life with periodic returns to the wilderness. with the foundation of the congo state by king leopold, berselius saw huge chances of profit. he knew the country, for he had hunted there. he knew the ivory, the copal, and the palm oil resources of the place, and in the rubber vines he guessed an untapped source of boundless wealth. he saw the great difficulty in the way of making this territory a paying concern; that is to say, he saw the labour question. europeans would not do the work; the blacks would not, unless paid, and even then inefficiently. to keep up a large force of european police to make the blacks work on european terms, was out of the question. the expense would run away with half the profits; the troops would die, and, worst of all, other nations would say, "what are you doing with that huge army of men?" the word "slavery" had to be eliminated from the proceedings, else the conscience of europe would be touched. he foresaw this, and he was lost in admiration at the native police idea. the stroke of genius that collected all the félixes of the congo basin into an army of darkness, and collected all the weak and defenceless into a herd of slaves, was a stroke after his own heart. of the greatest murder syndicate the world has ever seen, berselius became a member. he was not invited to the bloody banquet--he invited himself. he had struck the congo in a hunting expedition; he had seen and observed; later on, during a second expedition, he had seen the germination of leopold's idea. he dropped his gun and came back to europe. he was quite big enough to have smashed the whole infernal machinery then and there. america had not yet, hoodwinked, signed the licence to kill, which she handed to leopold on the 22d of april, 1884. germany had not been roped in. england and france were still aloof, and berselius, arriving at the psychological moment, did not mince matters. the result was two million pounds to his credit during the next ten years. so much for berselius and his past. an hour after dawn next day they started. the morning was windless, warm, and silent, and the sun shining broad on the land cast their shadows before them as they went, the porters with their loads piled on their heads, adams carrying the tent-pole and tent, berselius leading. he had recovered from his weakness of the night before. he had almost recovered his strength, and he felt that newness of being which the convalescent feels--that feeling of new birth into the old world which pays one, almost, for the pains of the past sickness. never since his boyhood had berselius felt that keen pleasure in the sun and the blue sky and the grass under his feet; but it called up no memories of boyhood, for the mist was still there, hiding boyhood and manhood and _everything_ up to the skyline. but the mist did not frighten him now. he had found a means of dispelling it; the photographic plates were all there unbroken, waiting only to be collected and put together, and he felt instinctively that after a time, when he had collected a certain number, the brain would gain strength, and all at once the mist would vanish for ever, and he would be himself again. three hours after the start they passed a broken-down tree. adams recognized it at once as the tree they had passed on the hunt, shortly after turning from their path to follow the herd of elephants. berselius was still leading them straight, and soon they would come to the crucial point--the spot where they had turned at right angles to follow the elephants. would berselius remember and turn, or would he get confused and go on in a straight line? the question was answered in another twenty minutes by berselius himself. he stopped dead and waved his arm with a sweeping motion to include all the country to the north. "we came from there," he said, indicating the north. "we struck the elephant spoor just here, and turned due west." "how on earth do you know?" asked adams. "i can't see any indication, and for the life of me i couldn't tell where we turned or whether we came from there," indicating the north, "or there," pointing to the south. "how do you know?" "how do i know?" replied berselius. "why, this place and everything we reach and pass is as vivid to me as if i had passed it only two minutes ago. _it hits me with such vividness that it blinds me._ it is that which i believe makes the mist. the things i can see are so extraordinarily vivid that they hide everything else. my brain seems new born--every memory that comes back to it comes back glorious in strength. if there were gods, they would see as i see." a wind had arisen and it blew from the northwest. berselius inhaled it triumphantly. adams stood watching him. this piece-by-piece return of memory, this rebuilding of the past foot by foot, mile by mile, and horizon by horizon, was certainly the strangest phenomenon of the brain that he had ever come across. this thing occurs in civilized life, but then it is far less striking, for the past comes to a man from a hundred close points--a thousand familiar things in his house or surroundings call to him when he is brought back to them; but here in the great, lone elephant land, the only familiar thing was the track they had followed and the country around it. if berselius had been taken off that track and placed a few miles away, he would have been as lost as adams. they wheeled to the north, following in their leader's footsteps. that afternoon, late, they camped by the same pool near which berselius had shot the rhinos. adams, to make sure, walked away to where the great bull had fought the cow before being laid low by the rifle of the hunter. the bones were there, picked clean and bleached, exemplifying the eternal hunger of the desert, which is one of the most horrible facts in life. these two great brutes had been left nearly whole a few days ago; tons of flesh had vanished like snow in sunshine, mist in morning. but adams, as he gazed at the colossal bones, was not thinking of that; the marvel of their return filled his mind as he looked from the skeletons to where, against the evening blue, a thin wreath of smoke rose up from the camp fire which the porters had lighted. far away south, so far away as to be scarcely discernible, a bird was sailing along, sliding on the wind without a motion of the wings. it passed from sight and left the sky stainless, and the land lay around silent with the tremendous silence of evening, and lifeless as the bones bleaching at his feet. chapter xxvii i am the forest the day after the next, two hours before noon, they passed an object which adams remembered well. it was the big tree which berselius had pointed out to him as having been tusked by an elephant; and an hour after they had started from the mid-day rest, the horizon to the north changed and grew dark. it was the forest. the sky immediately above the dark line, from contrast, was extraordinarily bright and pale, and, as they marched, the line lifted and the trees grew. "look!" said berselius. "i see," replied adams. a question was troubling his mind. would berselius be able to guide them amidst the trees? here in the open he had a hundred tiny indications on either side of him, but amidst the trees how could he find his way? was it possible that memory could lead him through that labyrinth once it grew dense? it will be remembered that it was a two days' march from fort m'bassa through the isthmus of woods to the elephant country. at the edge of the forest the trees were very thinly set, but for the rest, and a day's march from the fort, it was jungle. would berselius be able to penetrate that jungle? time would tell. berselius knew nothing about it; he only knew what lay before his sight. toward evening the trees came out to meet them, baobab and monkey-bread, set widely apart; and they camped by a pool and lit their fire, and slept as men sleep in the pure air of the woods and the desert. next morning they pursued their journey, berselius still confident. at noon, however, he began to exhibit slight signs of agitation and anxiety. the trees were thickening around them; he still knew the way, but the view before him was getting shorter and shorter as the trees thickened; that is to say, the mist was coming closer and closer. he knew nothing of the dense jungle before them; he only knew that the clear road in front of him was shortening up rapidly and horribly, and that if it continued to do so it would inevitably vanish. the joy that had filled his heart became transformed to the grief which the man condemned to blindness feels when he sees the bright world fading from his sight, slowly but surely as the expiring flame of a lamp. he walked more rapidly, and the more rapidly he went the shorter did the road before him grow. all at once the forest--which had been playing, up to this, with berselius as a cat plays with a mouse--all at once the forest, like a great green sphinx, put down its great green paw and spoke from its cavernous heart-"i am the forest." they had passed almost at a step into the labyrinths. plantain leaves hit them insolently in the face, lianas hung across their path like green ropes placed to bar them out, weeds tangled the foot. berselius, like an animal that finds itself trapped, plunged madly forward. adams following closely behind heard him catching back his breath with a sob. they plunged on for a few yards, and then berselius stood still. the forest was very silent, and seemed listening. the evening light and the shade of the leaves cast gloom around them. adams could hear his own heart thumping and the breathing of the porters behind him. if berselius had lost his way, then they were lost indeed. after a moment berselius spoke, as a man speaks whose every hope in life is shattered. "the path is gone." adams's only reply was a deep intake of the breath. "there is nothing before me. i am lost." "shall we try back?" said adams, speaking in that hard tone which comes when a man is commanding his voice. "back? of what use? i cannot go back; i must go forward. but here there is nothing." the unhappy man's voice was terrible to hear. he had marched so triumphantly all day, drawing nearer at each step to himself, to that self which memory had hidden from him and which memory was disclosing bit by bit. and now the march was interrupted as if by a wall set across his path. but adams was of a type of man to whom despondency may be known, but never despair. they had marched all day; they were lost, it is true, but they were not far, now, from fort m'bassa. the immediate necessity was rest and food. there was a little clearing amidst the trees just here, and with his own hands he raised the tent. they had no fire, but the moon when she rose, though in her last quarter, lit up the forest around them with a green glow-worm glimmer. one could see the lianas and the trees, the broad leaves shining with dew, some bright, some sketched in dimly, and all bathed in gauze green light; and they could hear the drip and patter of dew on leaf and branch. this is a mournful sound--the most mournful of all the sounds that fill the great forests of the congo. it is so casual, so tearful. one might fancy it the sound of the forest weeping to itself in the silence of the night. chapter xxviii god sends a guide to be lost in the desert or in a land like the elephant country is bad, but to be lost in the dense parts of the tropical forest is far worse. you are in a horrible labyrinth, a maze, not of intricate paths but of blinding curtains. i am speaking now of that arrogant jungle, moist and hot, where life is in full ferment, and where the rubber vine grows and thrives; where you go knee-deep in slush and catch at a tree-bole to prevent yourself going farther, cling, sweating at every pore and shivering like a dog, feeling for firmer ground and finding it, only to be led on to another quagmire. the bush pig avoids this place, the leopard shuns it; it is bad in the dry season when the sun gives some light by day, and the moon a gauzy green glimmer by night, but in the rains it is terrific. night, then, is black as the inside of a trunk, and day is so feeble that your hand, held before your face at arm's length, is just a shadow. the westward part of the forest of m'bonga projects a spur of the pestiferous rubber-bearing land into the isthmus of healthy woods. it was just at the tip of this spur that berselius and his party were entangled and lost. the two porters were yandjali men, they knew nothing of these woods, and were utterly useless as guides; they sat now amidst the leaves near the tent eating their food; dark shadows in the glow-worm light, the glistening black skin of a knee or shoulder showing up touched by the glimmer in which leaf and liana, tree trunk and branch, seemed like marine foliage bathed in the watery light of a sea-cave. adams had lit a pipe, and he sat beside berselius at the opening of the tent, smoking. the glare of the match had shown him the face of berselius for a moment. berselius, since his first outcry on finding the path gone, had said little, and there was a patient and lost look on his face, sad but most curious to see. most curious, for it said fully what a hundred little things had been hinting since their start from the scene of the catastrophe--that the old berselius had vanished and a new berselius had taken his place. adams had at first put down the change in his companion to weakness, but the weakness had passed, the man's great vitality had reasserted itself, and the change was still there. this was not the man who had engaged him in paris; this person might have been a mild twin-brother of the redoubtable captain of the avenue malakoff, of matadi and yandjali. when memory came fully back, would it bring with it the old berselius, or would the new berselius, mild, inoffensive, and kindly, suddenly find himself burdened with the tremendous past of the man he once had been? nothing is more true than that the human mind from accident, from grief, or from that mysterious excitement, during which in half an hour a blaspheming costermonger "gets religion" and becomes a saint of god--nothing is more certain than that the human mind can like this, at a flash, turn topsy-turvy; the good coming to the top, the bad going to the bottom. mechanical pressure on the cortex of the brain can bring this state of things about, even as it can convert a saint of god into a devil incarnate. was berselius under the influence of forced amendment of this sort? adams was not even considering the matter, he was lost in gloomy thoughts. he was smoking slowly, holding his index and middle fingers over the pipe-bowl to prevent the tobacco burning too quickly, for he had only a couple of pipefuls left. he was thinking that to-morrow evening the pouch would be empty, when, from somewhere in the forest near by, there came a sound which brought him to his feet and the two porters up on hands and knees like listening dogs. it was the sound of a human voice raised in a sort of chant, ghostly and mournful as the sound of the falling dew. as it came, rising and falling, monotonous and rhythmical, the very plain song of desolation, adams felt his hair lift and his flesh crawl, till one of the porters, springing erect from his crouching position, sent his voice through the trees-"ahi ahee!" the song ceased; and then, a moment later, faint and wavering, and like the voice of a seagull, came the reply-"ahi aheee!" "man," said the porter, turning white eyeballs and glinting teeth over his shoulder at adams. he called again, and again came the reply. "quick," said adams, seizing the arm of berselius, who had risen, "there's a native here somewhere about; he may guide us out of this infernal place; follow me, and for god's sake keep close." holding berselius by the arm, and motioning the other native to follow, he seized the porter by the shoulder and pushed him forward. the man knew what was required and obeyed, advancing, calling, and listening by turns, till, at last, catching the true direction of the sound he went rapidly, berselius and adams following close behind. sometimes they were half up to the knees in boggy patches, fighting their way through leaves that struck them like great wet hands; sometimes the call in the distance seemed farther away, and they held their pace, they held their breath, they clung to each other, listening, till, now, by some trick of the trees, though they had not moved and though there was no wind, the cry came nearer. "ahi, ahee!" then, at last, a dim red glow shone through the foliage before them and bursting their way through the leaves they broke into an open space where, alone, by a small fire of dry branches and brushwood, sat a native, stark naked, except for a scrap of dingy loincloth, and looking like a black gnome, a faun of this horrible place, and the very concretion of its desolation and death. he was sitting when they caught their first glimpse of him, with his chin supported on his hand, but the instant he saw the faces of the white men he rose as if to escape, then the porter called out something that reassured him, and he sat down again and shivered. he was one of the rubber collectors. he had reached this spot the day before, and had built himself a shelter of leaves and branches. he would be here for ten days or a fortnight, and his food, chiefly cassava, lay in a little pile in the shelter, covered over with leaves. the porter continued speaking to the collector, who, now regaining the use of his limbs, stood up before the white men, hands folded in front of him, and his eyes rolling from berselius to adams. "m'bassa," said adams, touching the porter, pointing to the collector, and then away into the forest in the direction he fancied fort m'bassa to be. the porter understood. he said a few words to the collector, who nodded his head furiously and struck himself on the breast with his open hand. then the porter turned again to adams. "m'bassa," said he, nodding his head, pointing to the collector, and then away into the forest. that was all, but it meant that they were saved. adams gave a great whoop that echoed away through the trees, startling bats and birds in the branches and losing itself without an echo in the depths of the gloom. then he struck himself a blow on the chest with his fist. "my god!" said he, "the tent!" they had only travelled an eighth of a mile or so from the camping place, but they had wandered this way and that before the porter had found the true direction of the call, and the tent, provisions, and everything else were lost as utterly and irrevocably as though they had been dropped in mid-ocean. to step aside from a thing--even for a hundred yards--in this terrible place was to lose it; even the rubber collectors, from whom the forest holds few secrets have, in these thick places, to blaze a trail by breaking branches, tying lianas and marking tree trunks. "true," said berselius in a weary voice, "we have lost even that." "no matter," said adams, "we have got a guide. cheer up, this man will take us to fort m'bassa and there you will find the road again." "are you sure?" said berselius, a touch of hope in his voice. "sure? certain. you've forgotten fort m'bassa. well, when you see it, you will remember it, and it will lead you right away home. cheer up, cheer up; we've got a fire and a bit of shelter for you to sleep under, and we'll start bright and early in the morning, and this black imp of satan will lead you straight back to your road and your memory--hey! uncle joe!" he patted the collector on the naked shoulder and a faint grin appeared on that individual's forlorn countenance; never had he come across a white man like this before. then, bustling about, adams piled up the fire with more sticks, got berselius under the shelter of the collector's wretched hut, sat himself down close to the fire, produced his pipe, and proceeded, in one glorious debauch, to finish the last of his tobacco. this rubber collector, the last and the humblest creature on earth, had given them fire and shelter; they were also to be beholden to him for food. his wretched cassava cakes and his calabash of water gave them their breakfast next morning, and then they started, the collector leading, walking before them through the dense growth of the trees as assuredly as a man following a well-known road. it was a terrible thing for him to leave his post, but the white men were from m'bassa and wished to return to m'bassa, and m'bassa was the head centre of his work and the terrible mecca of his fears. white men from there and going to there must be obeyed. this was the last phase of the great hunt. berselius had been slowly stripped by the wilderness of everything now but the clothes he stood up in, his companion and two porters. guns, equipment, tents, stores, the zappo zap, and the army of men under that ferocious lieutenant, had all "gone dam." he was mud to the knees, his clothing was torn, he was mud to the elbows from having tripped last night and fallen in a quagmire, his face was white and drawn and grimy as the face of a london cabrunner, his hair was grayer and dull, but his eyes were bright and he was happy. at m'bassa he would be put upon the road again--the only road to the thing he craved for as burning dives craved for water--himself. but it was ordained that he should find that questionably desirous person before reaching m'bassa. they had been on the march for an hour when adams, fussing like a person who is making his first journey by rail, stopped the guide to make sure he was leading them right. "m'bassa?" said adams. "m'bassa," replied the other, nodding his head. then with outspread hand he pointed before them and made a semicircular sweep to indicate that he was leading them for some reason by a circuitous route. he was making, in fact, for open ground that would bring them in the direction of the fort by a longer but much easier road than a direct line through the jungle. he was making also for water, for his scant supply had been exhausted by his guests, and he knew the road he was taking would lead him to broad pools of water. adams nodded his head to imply that he understood, and the man led on. chapter xxix the vision of the pools somewhere about noon they halted for a rest and some food. it was less boggy here, and the sunlight showed stronger through the dense roof of foliage. the cassava cakes were tainted with must, and they had no water, but the increasing light made them forget everything but the freedom that was opening before them. adams pointed to the empty calabash which their guide carried, and the collector nodded and pointed before them, as if to imply that soon they would come to water and that all would be well. now, as they resumed their way, the trees altered and drew farther apart, the ground was solid under foot, and through the foliage of the euphorbia and raphia palm came stray glimmers of sunshine, bits of blue sky, birds, voices, and the whisper of a breeze. "this is better," said berselius. adams flung up his head and expanded his nostrils. "better, my god!" said he; "this is heaven!" it was heaven, indeed, after that hell of gloom; that bog roofed in with leaves, the very smell of which clings to one for ever like the memory of a fever dream. all at once patches of sunlight appeared in front as well as above. they quickened their pace, the trees drew apart, and, suddenly, with theatrical effect, a park-like sward of land lay before them leading to a sheet of blue water reflecting tall feather-palms and waving speargrass, all domed over with blue, and burning in the bright, bright sunshine. "the silent pools!" cried adams. "the very place where i saw the leopard chasing the antelope! great scott!--hi! hi! hi! you there!--where are you going?" the collector had raced down to the water's edge; he knew the dangers of the place, for he divided the grass, filled his calabash with water, and dashed back before anything could seize him. then, without drinking, he came running with the calabash to the white men. adams handed the calabash first to his companion. berselius drank and then wiped his forehead; he seemed disturbed in his mind and had a dazed look. he had never come so far along the edge of the pools as this, but there was something in the configuration of the place that stirred his sleeping memory. "what is it?" asked adams. "i don't know," replied berselius. "i have dreamt--i have seen--i remember something--somewhere--" adams laughed. "i know," said he; "you come along, and in a few minutes you will see something that will help your memory. why, man, we camped near here, you and i and meeus; when you see the spot you'll find yourself on your road again. come, let's make a start." the collector was standing with the half-full calabash in his hands. he had not dared to drink. adams nodded to him, motioning him to do so, but he handed it first to the porter. then, when the porter had drunk, the collector finished the remains of the water and the last few drops he flung on the ground, an offering, perhaps, to some god or devil of his own. then he led on, skirting the water's edge. the loveliness of the place had not lessened since adams had seen it last; even the breeze that was blowing to-day did not disturb the spirit of sweet and profound peace which held in a charm this lost garden of the wilderness; the palms bent as if in sleep, the water dimpled to the breeze and seemed to smile, a flamingo, with rose-coloured wings, passed and flew before them and vanished beyond the rocking tops of the trees that still sheltered the camping place where once berselius had raised his tent. again, with theatrical effect, as the pools had burst upon them on leaving the forest, the camping place unveiled itself. "now," said adams in triumph, "do you remember that?" berselius did not reply. he was walking along with his eyes fixed straight before him. he did not stop, or hesitate, or make any exclamation to indicate whether he remembered or not. "do you remember?" cried adams. but berselius did not speak. he was making noises as if strangling, and suddenly his hands flew up to the neck of his hunting shirt, and tore at it till he tore it open. "steady, man, steady," cried adams catching the other's arm. "hi, you'll be in a fit if you don't mind--steady, i _say_." but berselius heard nothing, knew nothing but the scene before him, and adams, who was running now after the afflicted man, who had broken away and was making straight for the trees beneath which the village had once been, heard and knew nothing of what lay before and around berselius. berselius had stepped out of the forest an innocent man, and behold! memory had suddenly fronted him with a hell in which he was the chief demon. he had no time to accommodate himself to the situation, no time for sophistry. he was not equipped with the forty years of steadily growing callousness that had vanished; the fiend who had inspired him with the lust for torture had deserted him, and the sight and the knowledge of himself came as suddenly as a blow in the face. under that m'bina tree two soldiers, one with the haft of a blood-stained knife between his teeth, had mutilated horribly a living girl. little papeete had been decapitated just where his skull lay now; the shrieks and wails of the tortured tore the sky above berselius; but adams heard nothing and saw nothing but berselius raving amidst the remains. bones lay here and bones lay there, clean picked by the vultures and white bleached by the sun; skulls, jawbones, femurs, broken or whole. the remains of the miserable huts faced the strewn and miserable bones, and the trees blew their golden trumpets over all. as adams looked from the man who with shrill cries was running about as a frantic woman runs about, to the bones on the ground, he guessed the tragedy of berselius. but he was to hear it in words spoken with the torrid eloquence of madness. part four chapter xxx the avenger it was a hot night up at the fort, a night eloquent of the coming rains. the door of the guest house stood open and the light of the paraffin lamp lay upon the veranda and the ground of the yard, forming a parallelogram of topaz across which were flitting continually great moth shadows big as birds. andreas meeus was seated at the white-wood table of the sitting room before a big blue sheet of paper. he held a pen in his hand, but he was not writing just at present; he was reading what he had written. he was, in fact, making up his three-monthly report for headquarters, and he found it difficult, because the last three months had brought in little rubber and less ivory. a lot of things had conspired to make trade bad. sickness had swept two villages entirely away; one village, as we know, had revolted; then, vines had died from some mysterious disease in two of the very best patches of the forest. all these explanations meeus was now putting on paper for the edification of the congo government. he was devoting a special paragraph to the revolt of the village by the silent pools, and the punishment he had dealt out to the natives. not a word was said of torture and slaughtering. "drastic measures" was the term he used, a term perfectly well understood by the people to whom he was writing. on the wall behind him the leopard-skin still hung, looking now shrivelled at the edges in this extreme heat. on the wall in front of him the congo bows and poisoned arrows looked more venomous and deadly than by the light of day. a scorpion twice the size of a penny was making a circuit of the walls just below the ceiling; you could hear a faint scratch from it as it travelled along, a scratch that seemed an echo of meeus's pen as it travelled across the paper. he held between his lips the everlasting cigarette. sitting thus, meditating, pen in hand, he heard sounds: the sound of the night wind, the sound of one of the soldiers singing as he cleaned his rifle--the men always sang over this business, as if to propitiate the gun god--the scratch of the scorpion and the "creak, creak" of a joist warping and twisting to the heat. but the sound of the wind was the most arresting. it would come over the forest and up the slope and round the guest house with a long-drawn, sweeping "ha-a-a-r," and sob once or twice, and then die away down the slope and over the forest and away and beyond to the east, where kilimanjaro was waiting for it, crowned with snow on his throne beneath the stars. but the wind was almost dead now--the heat of the night had stifled it. the faintest breathing of air took the place of the strong puffs that had sent the flame of the lamp half up the glass chimney. as meeus listened, on this faint breath from the forest he heard a sound-"boom--boom"--very faint, and as if someone were striking a drum in a leisurely manner. "boom--boom." a great man-ape haunted this part of the forest of m'bonga like an evil spirit. he had wandered here, perhaps from the west coast forests. driven away from his species--who knows?--for some crime. the natives of the fort had caught glimpses of him now and then; he was huge and old and gray, and now in the darkness of the forest was striking himself on the chest, standing there in the gloom of the leaves, trampling the plantains under foot, taller than the tallest man, smiting himself in the pride of his strength. "boom--boom." it is a hair-lifting sound when you know the cause, but it left meeus unmoved. his mind was too full of the business of writing his report to draw images or listen to imagination; all the same, this sinister drum-beat acted upon his subconscious self and, scarcely knowing why he did so, he got up from the table and came outside to the fort wall and looked over away into the dark. there was not a star in the sky. a dense pall of cloud stretched from horizon to horizon, and the wind, as meeus stepped from the veranda into the darkness, died away utterly. he stood looking into the dark. he could make out the forest, a blackness humped and crouching in the surrounding blackness. there was not a ray of light from the sky, and now and again came the drum-"boom--boom." then it ceased, and a bat passed so close that the wind of it stirred his hair. he spat the taint of it from his mouth, and returning to the house, seated himself at the table and continued his work. but the night was to be fateful in sounds and surprises. he had not been sitting five minutes when a voice from the blackness outside made him drop his pen and listen. it was a european voice, shouting and raving and laughing, and meeus, as he listened, clutched at the table, for the voice was known to him. it was the voice of berselius! berselius, who was hundreds of miles away in the elephant country! meeus heard his own name. it came in to him out of the darkness, followed by a peal of laughter. rapid steps sounded coming across the courtyard, and the sweat ran from meeus's face and his stomach crawled as, with a bound across the veranda, a huge man framed himself in the doorway and stood motionless as a statue. for the first moment meeus did not recognize adams. he was filthy and tattered, he wore no coat, and his hunting shirt was open at the neck, and the arms of it rolled up above the elbows. adams, for the space of ten seconds, stood staring at meeus from under his pith helmet. the face under the helmet seemed cast from bronze. then he came in and shut the door behind him, walked to the table, took meeus by the coat at the back of the neck, and lifted him up as a man lifts a dog by the scruff. for a moment it seemed as if he were going to kill the wretched man without word or explanation, but he mastered himself with a supreme effort, put him down, took the vacant seat at the table and cried: "stand before me there." meeus stood. he held on to the table with his left hand and with his right he made pawing movements in the air. the big man seated at the table did not notice. he sat for a few seconds with both hands clasped together, one making a cup for the other, just as a man might sit about to make a speech and carefully considering his opening words. then he spoke. "_did you kill those people by the silent pools?_" meeus made no reply, but drew a step back and put out his hand, as if fending the question off, as if asking for a moment in which to explain. he had so many things to say, so many reasons to give, but he could say nothing, for his tongue was paralyzed and his lips were dry. "_did you kill those people by the silent pools?_" the awful man at the table was beginning to work himself up. he had risen at the second question, and at the third time of asking he seized meeus by the shoulders. "_did you kill those people----?_" "punishment," stuttered meeus. a cry like the cry of a woman and a crash that shook the plaster from the ceiling, followed the fatal word. adams had swung the man aloft and dashed him against the wall with such force, that the wattling gave and the plaster fell in flakes. meeus lay still as death, staring at his executioner with a face expressionless and white as the plaster flakes around him. "get up," said adams. meeus heard and moved his arms. "get up." again the arms moved and the body raised itself, but the legs did not move. "i cannot," said meeus. adams came to him and bending down pinched his right thigh hard. "do you feel me touching you?" "no." adams did the same to the other thigh. "do you feel that?" "no." "lie there," said adams. he opened the door and went out into the night. a moment later he returned; after him came the two porters bearing berselius between them. berselius was quiet now; the brain fever that had stricken him had passed into a muttering stage, and he let himself be carried, passive as a bag of meal, whilst adams went before with the lamp leading the way into the bedroom. here, on one of the beds, the porters laid their burden down. then they came back, and under the directions of adams lifted meeus and carried him into the bedroom and placed him on the second bed. adams, with the lamp in his hand, stood for a moment looking at meeus. his rage had spent itself; he had avenged the people at the silent pools. with his naked hands he had inflicted on the criminal before him an injury worse than the injury of fire or sword. meeus, frightened now by the pity in the face of the other, horribly frightened by the unknown thing that had happened to him, making him dead from the waist down, moved his lips, but made no sound. "your back is broken," replied adams to the question in the other's eyes. then he turned to berselius. * * * * * at midnight the rains broke with a crash of thunder that seemed to shake the universe. adams, worn out, was seated at the table in the living room smoking some tobacco he had found in a tin on the shelf, and listening to the rambling of berselius, when the thunder-clap came, making the lamp shiver on the table. meeus, who had been silent since his death sentence had been read to him, cried out at the thunder, but berselius did not heed--he was hunting elephants under a burning sun in a country even vaster than the elephant country. adams rose up and came to the door; not a drop of rain had fallen yet. he crossed the yard and stood at the fort wall looking into blackness. it was solid as ebony, and he could hear the soldiers, whose huts were outside the wall, calling to one another. a great splash of light lit up the whole roof of the forest clear as day, and the darkness shut down again with a bang that hit the ear like a blow, and the echoes of it roared and rumbled and muttered, and died, and silence wrapped herself again in her robe and sat to wait. now, there was a faint stirring of the air, increasing to a breeze, and far away a sound like the spinning of a top came on the breeze. it was the rain, miles away, coming over the forest in a solid sheet, the sound of it increasing on the great drum of the forest's roof to a roar. another flash lit the world, and adams saw the rain. he saw what it is given to very few men to see. from horizon to horizon, as if built by plumb, line and square, stretched a glittering wall, reaching from the forest to the sky. the base of this wall was lost in snow-white billows of spray and mist. never was there so tremendous a sight as this infinite wall and the niagara clouds of spray, roaring, living, and lit by the great flash one second, drowned out by the darkness and the thunder the next. adams, terrified, ran back to the house, shut the door, and waited. the house was solidly built and had withstood many rains, but there were times when it seemed to him that the whole place must be washed away bodily. nothing could be heard but the rain, and the sound of such rain is far more terrifying than the sound of thunder or the rumble of the earthquake. there were times when he said to himself, "this cannot last," yet it lasted. with the lamp in his hand he went into the sleeping room to see how berselius and meeus were doing. berselius was still, to judge from the movements of his lips, delirious, and just the same. meeus was lying with his hands on his breast. he might have been asleep, only for his eyes, wide open and bright, and following every movement of the man with the lamp. meeus, catching the other's eye, motioned to him to come near. then he tried to speak, but the roar outside made it impossible to hear him. adams pointed to the roof, as if to say, "wait till it is over," then he came back to the sitting room, tore the leopard skin down from the wall, rolled it up for a pillow, and lay down with his head on it. he had been through so much of late that he had grown callous and case-hardened; he did not care much whether the place was washed away or not--he wanted to sleep, and he slept. meeus, left alone, lay watching the glimmer of the lamp shining through the cracks of the door, and listening to the thunder of the rain. this was the greatest rain he had experienced. he wondered if it would flood the go-down and get at the rubber stored there; he wondered if the soldiers had deserted their huts and taken refuge in the office. these thoughts were of not the slightest interest to him; they just came and strayed across his mind, which was still half-paralyzed by the great calamity that had befallen him. for the last half-hour an iron hand seemed round his body just on a level with the diaphragm; this seemed growing tighter, and the tighter it grew the more difficult it was to breathe. the fracture had been very high up, but he knew nothing of this; he knew that his back was broken, and that men with broken backs die, but he did not fully realize that he was going to die till--all at once--his breathing stopped dead of its own accord, and then of its own accord went on rapidly and shallowly. then he recognized that his breathing was entirely under the control of something over which _he_ had no control. this is the most terrible thing a man can know, for it is a thing that no man ever knows till he is in the hands of death. * * * * * it was daylight when adams awoke, and the rain had ceased. he went to the door and opened it. it was after sunrise, but the sun was not to be seen. the whole world was a vapour, but through which the forest was dimly visible. the soldiers were in the courtyard; they had just come out of the office where they had taken refuge during the night. their huts had been washed away, but they did not seem to mind a bit; they showed their teeth in a grin, and shouted something when they saw the white man, and pointed to the rainswept yard and the sky. adams nodded, and then went back into the house and into the bedroom, where he found meeus hanging head downward out of his bed. rubber would trouble andreas meeus no more; his soul had gone to join the great army of souls in the beyond. it is strange enough to look upon the body of a man you have killed. but adams had no more pity or compunction in his mind than if meeus had been a stoat. he turned to berselius, who was sleeping. the delirium had passed, and he was breathing evenly and well. there was hope for him yet--hope for his body if not for his mind. chapter xxxi the voice of the forest by night the first thing to be done was to bury meeus. and now came the question, how would the soldiers take the death of the _chef de poste_? they knew nothing of it yet. would they revolt, or would they seek to revenge him, guessing him to have been killed. adams did not know and he did not care. he half hoped there would be trouble. the congo had burst upon his view, stripped of shams, in all its ferocity, just as the great scene of the killing had burst upon berselius. all sorts of things--from the hostage house of yandjali to the hostage house of m'bassa, from mass to papeete's skull--connected themselves up and made a skeleton, from which he constructed that great and ferocious monster, the congo state. the soldiers, with their filed teeth, were part of the monster, and, such was the depth of fury in his heart, he would have welcomed a fight, so that he might express with his arms what his tongue ached to say. the original man loomed large in adams. god had given him a character benign and just, a heart tempered to mercy and kindliness; all these qualities had been outraged and were now under arms. they had given a mandate to the original man to act. the death of meeus was the first result. he went to the shelf where meeus had kept his official letters and took meeus's mauser pistol from it. it was in a holster attached to a belt. he strapped the belt round his waist, drew the pistol from the holster and examined it. it was loaded, and in an old cigar-box he found a dozen clips of cartridges. he put three of these in his pocket and with the pistol at his side came out into the courtyard. huge billows of white cloud filled the sky, broken here and there by a patch of watery blue. the whole earth was steaming and the forest was absolutely smoking. one could have sworn it was on fire in a dozen places when the spirals of mist rose and broke and vanished like the steam clouds from locomotive chimneys. he crossed the courtyard to the go-down, undid the locking bar and found what he wanted. half a dozen mattocks stood by the rubber bales--he had noticed them when the stores had been taken out for the expedition; they were still in the same place and, taking two of them, he went to the break in the wall that gave exit from the courtyard and called to the soldiers, who were busy at work rebuilding their huts. they came running. he could not speak twenty words of their language, but he made them line up with a movement of his arm. then he addressed them in a perfectly unprintable speech. it was delivered in unshod american--a language he had not spoken for years. it took in each individual of the whole gang, it told them they were dogs and sons of dogs, killers of men, unmentionable carrion, cayotes, kites, and that he would have hanged them each and individually with his own hands (and i believe by some legerdemain of strength he would), but that they were without hearts, souls or intellect, not responsible creatures, tools of villains that he, adams, would expose and get even with yet. furthermore, that if by a look or movement they disobeyed his orders, he would make them sweat tears and weep blood, so help him god. amen. they understood what he said. at least they understood the gist of it. they had found a new and angry master, and not an eye was raised when adams stood silent; some looked at their toes and some at the ground, some looked this way, some that, but none at the big, ferocious man, with three weeks' growth of beard, standing before them and, literally, over them. then he chose two of them and motioned them to follow to the guest house. there he brought them into the sleeping room and pointed to the body of meeus, motioning them to take it up and carry it out. the men rolled their eyes at the sight of the _chef de poste_, but they said no word; one took the head, the other the feet, and between them they carried the burden, led by their new commander, through the dwelling room, across the veranda and then across the yard. the rest of the soldiers were in a group near the gate. when they saw the two men and their burden, they set up a chattering like a flock of magpies, which, however, instantly ceased at the approach of adams. he pointed to the two mattocks which he had placed against the wall. they understood what he meant; the last _chef de poste_ had shot himself in the presence of the district commissioner, and they had dug his grave. "here," said adams, stopping and pointing to a spot at a convenient distance from the walls. when the body was buried, adams stood for a second looking at the mound of earth, wet and flattened down by blows of the spades. he had no prayers to offer up. meeus would have to go before his maker just as he was, and explain things--explain all that business away there at the silent pools and other things as well. prayers over his tomb or flowers on it would not help that explanation one little bit. then adams turned away and the soldiers trooped after him. he had looked into the office and seen the rifles and ammunition which they had placed there out of the wet. a weak man would have locked the office door and so have deprived the soldiers of their arms, but adams was not a weak man. he led his followers to the office, handed them their arms, carefully examining each rifle to see that it was clean and uninjured, drew them up on a line, addressed them in some more unprintable language but in a milder tone, dismissed them with a wave of his hand and returned to the house. as he left them the wretched creatures all gave a shout--a shout of acclamation. this was the man for them--very different from the pale-faced meeus--this was a man they felt who would lead them to more unspeakable butchery than meeus had ever done. therefore they shouted, piled their arms in the office and returned to the rebuilding of their huts with verve. they were not physiognomists, these gentlemen. berselius awoke from sleep at noon, but he was so weak that he could scarcely move his lips. fortunately there were some goats at the fort, and adams fed him with goats' milk from a spoon, just as one feeds an infant. then the sick man fell asleep and the rain came down again--not in a thunder shower this time, but steadily, mournfully, playing a tattoo on the zinc roof of the veranda, filling the place with drizzling sounds, dreary beyond expression. with the rain came gloom so deep that adams had to light the paraffin lamp. there were no books, no means of recreation, nothing to read but the old official letters and the half-written report which the dead man had left on the table before leaving earth to make his report elsewhere. adams having glanced at this, tore it in pieces, then he sat smoking and thinking and listening to the rain. toward night a thunderstorm livened things up a little, and a howling wind came over the forest on the heels of the storm. adams came out on the veranda to listen. he could have sworn that a great sea was roaring below in the darkness. he could hear the waves, the boom and burst of them, the suck-back of the billows tearing the shrieking shale to their hearts, the profound and sonorous roar of leagues of coast. imagination could do anything with that sound except figure the reality of it or paint the tremendous forest bending to the wind in billows of foliage a hundred leagues long; the roar of the cotton-woods, the cry of the palm, the sigh of the withered euphorbias, the thunderous drumming of the great plantain leaves, all joining in one tremendous symphony led by the trumpets of the wind, broken by rainbursts from the rushing clouds overhead, and all in viewless darkness, black as the darkness of the pit. this was a new phase of the forest, which since the day adams entered it first, had steadily been explaining to him the endlessness of its mystery, its wonder, and its terror. chapter xxxii moonlight on the pools now began for adams a time of trial, enough to break the nerve of any ordinary man. day followed day and week followed week, berselius gaining strength so slowly that his companion began to despair at last, fancying that the main fountain and source of life had been injured, and that the stream would never flow again but in a trickle, to be stopped at the least shock or obstruction. the man was too weak to talk, he could just say "yes" and "no" in answer to a question, and it was always "better" when he was asked how he felt, but he never spoke a word of his own volition. nearly every day it rained, and it rained in a hundred different ways--from the thunderous shower-bath rush of water that threatened to beat the roof in, to the light spitting shower shone through by the sun. sometimes the clouds would divide, roll up in snow-white billows of appalling height, and over the fuming foliage a rainbow would form, and flocks of birds, as if released by some wizard, break from the reeking trees. adams could hear their cries as he stood at the foot wall watching them circle in the air, and his heart went out to them, for they were the only living things in the world around him that spoke in a kindly tongue or hinted at the tenderness of god. all else was vast and of tragic proportions. the very rainbow was titanic; it seemed primeval as the land over which it stretched and the people to whom it bore no promise. but the forest was the thing which filled adams's heart with a craving for freedom and escape that rose to a passion. he had seen it silent in the dry season; he had seen it divided by the great rain-wall and answering the downpour with snow-white billows of mist and spray; he had heard it roaring in the dark; it had trapped him, beaten him with its wet, green hands, sucked him down in its quagmires, shown him its latent, slow, but unalterable ferocity, its gloom, its devilment. the rubber collector who had helped to carry berselius to the fort had gone back to his place and task--the forest had sucked him back. this gnome had explained without speaking what the gloom and the quagmire, and the rope-like lianas had hinted, what the silent pools had shouted, what the vulture and the kite had laid bare, what the heart had whispered: _there is no god in the forest of m'bonga, no law but the law of the leopard, no mercy but the mercy of death._ the forest had become for adams a living nightmare--his one desire in life now was to win free of it, and never did it look more sinister than when, rainbow-arched and silently fuming, it lay passive, sun-stricken, the palms bursting above the mist and the great clouds rolling away in billows, as if to expose fully the wonder of those primeval leagues of tree-tops sunlit, mist-strewn, where the feathery fingers of the palms made banners of the wrack and the baobabs held fog-banks in their foliage. at the end of the third week berselius showed signs of amendment. he could raise himself now in bed and speak. he said little, but it was evident that his memory had completely returned, and it was evident that he was still the changed man. the iron-hearted berselius, the man of daring and nerve, was not here, he had been left behind in the elephant country in the immeasurable south. the mist had departed entirely from his mind; his whole past was clear before him, and with his new mind he could reckon it up and see the bad and the good. the extraordinary fact was that in reviewing this past he did not feel terrified--it seemed a dead thing and almost as the past of some other man. all those acts seemed to berselius to have been committed by a man who was now dead. he could regret the acts of that man and he could seek to atone for them, but he felt no personal remorse. "he was not i," would have reasoned the mind of berselius; "those acts were not my acts, because _now i could not commit them_," so he would have reasoned had he reasoned on the matter at all. but he did not. in that wild outburst by the silent pools the ego had screamed aloud, raving against itself, raving against the trick that fate had played it, by making it the slave of two personalities, and then torturing it by showing it the acts of the old personality through the eyes of the new. when the brain fever had passed, it awoke untroubled; the junction had been effected, the new berselius was it, and all the acts of the old berselius were foreign to it and far away. it is thus the man who gets religion feels when the great change comes on his brain. after the brain-storm and the agony of new birth comes the peace and the feeling that he is "another man." he feels that all his sins are washed away; in other words, he has lost all sense of responsibility for the crimes he committed in the old life, he has cast them off like an old suit of clothes. the old man is dead. ah, but is he? can you atone for your vices by losing your smell and taste for vice, and slip out of your debt for crime by becoming another man? does the old man ever die? the case of berselius stirs one to ask the question, which is more especially interesting as it is prompted by a case not unique but almost typical. the interesting point in berselius's case lay in the question as to whether his change of mind was initiated by the injury received in the elephant country or by the shock at the silent pools. in other words, was it due to some mechanical pressure on the brain produced by the accident, or was it due to "repentance" on seeing suddenly unveiled the hideous drama in which he had taken part? this remains to be seen. at the end of the fourth week berselius was able to leave his bed, and every day now marked a steady improvement in strength. not a word about the past did he say, not a question did he ask, and what surprised adams especially, not a question did he put about meeus, till one day in the middle of the fifth week. berselius was seated in one of the arm chairs of the sitting room when he suddenly raised his head. "by the way," said he, "where is the _chef de poste_?" "he is dead," replied adams. "ah!" said berselius; there was almost a note of relief in his voice. he said nothing more and adams volunteered no explanation, for the affair was one entirely between meeus, himself, and god. a few minutes later, berselius, who seemed deep in thought, raised his head again. "we must get away from here. i am nearly strong enough to go now. it will be a rough journey in these rains, but it will be a much shorter road than the road we came by." "how so?" "we came from yandjali right through the forest before striking south to here; we will now make straight for the river, along the rubber road. i think the post on the river which we will reach is called m'bina, it is a hundred miles above yandjali; we can get a boat from there to leopoldsville. i have been thinking it all out this morning." "how about a guide?" "these soldiers here know the rubber track, for they often escort the loads." "good," said adams. "i will have some sort of litter rigged up and we will carry you. i am not going to let you walk in your present condition." berselius bowed his head. "i am very sensible," said he, "of the care and attention you have bestowed on me during the past weeks. i owe you a considerable debt, which i will endeavour to repay, at all events, by following your directions implicitly. let the litter be made, and if you will send me in the corporal of those men, i will talk to him in his own language and explain what is to be done." "good," said adams, and he went out and found the corporal and sent him in to berselius. "good!" the word was not capacious enough to express what he felt. freedom, light, humanity, the sight of a civilized face, for these he ached with a great longing, and they were all there at the end of the rubber road, only waiting to be met with. he went to the fort wall and shook his fist at the forest. "another ten days," said adams. the forest, whose spirit counted time by tens of thousands of years, waved its branches to the wind. a spit of rain from a passing cloud hit adams's cheek, and in the "hush" of the trees there seemed a murmur of derision and the whisper of a threat. "it is not well to shake your fist at the gods--in the open." adams went back to the house to begin preparations, and for the next week he was busy. from some spare canvas and bamboos in the go-down he made a litter strong enough to carry berselius--he had to do nearly all the work himself, for the soldiers were utterly useless as workmen. then stores had to be arranged and put together in a convenient form for carrying; clothes had to be mended and patched--even his boots had to be cobbled with twine--but at last all was ready, and on the day before they started the weather improved. the sun came out strong and the clouds drew away right to the horizon, where they lay piled in white banks like ranges of snow-covered mountains. that afternoon, an hour before sunset, adams announced his intention of going on a little expedition of his own. "i shall only be a few hours away," said he, "five at most." "where are you going?" asked berselius. "oh, just down into the woods," replied adams. then he left the room before his companion could ask any more questions and sought out the corporal. he beckoned the savage to follow him, and struck down the slope in the direction of the silent pools. when they reached the forest edge he pointed before them and said, "matabayo." the man understood and led the way, which was not difficult, for the feet of the rubber collectors had beaten a permanent path. there was plenty of light, too, for the moon was already in the sky, only waiting for the sun to sink before blazing out. when they were half-way on their journey heavy dusk fell on them suddenly, and deepened almost to dark; then, nearly as suddenly, all the forest around them glowed green to the light of the moon. the silent pools and the woods, when they reached them, lay in mist and moonlight, making a picture unforgettable for ever. it recalled to adams that picture of doré's, illustrating the scene from the "idylls of the king," where arthur labouring up the pass "all in a misty moonlight," had trodden on the skeleton of the once king, from whose head the crown rolled like a rivulet of light down to the tarn--the misty tarn, where imagination pictured death waiting to receive it and hide it in his robe. the skeleton of no king lay here, only the poor bones still unburied of the creatures that a far-off king had murdered. the rain had washed them about, and adams had to search and search before he found what he had come to find. at last he saw it. the skull of a child, looking like a white stone amidst the grass. he wrapped it in leaves torn from the trees near by, and the grim corporal stood watching him, and wondering, no doubt, for what fetish business the white man had come to find the thing. then adams with the dreary bundle under his arm looked around him at the other remains and swore--swore by the god who had made him, by the mother who had borne him, and the manhood that lay in him, to rest not nor stay till he had laid before the face of europe the skull of papeete and the acts of the terrible scoundrel who for long years had systematically murdered for money. then, followed by the savage, he turned and retook his road. at the wood's edge he looked back at the silent scene, and it seemed to look at him with the muteness and sadness of a witness who cannot speak, of a woman who cannot tell her sorrow. chapter xxxiii the river of gold next morning they started. the corporal, three of the soldiers, and the two porters made up the escort. berselius, who was strong enough to walk a little way, began the journey on foot, but they had not gone five miles on their road when he showed signs of fatigue, and adams insisted on him taking to the litter. it was the same road by which félix had led them, but it was very different travelling; where the ground had been hard underfoot it was now soft, and where it had been elastic it was now boggy; it was more gloomy, and the forest was filled with watery voices; where it dipped down into valleys, you could hear the rushing and mourning of waters. tiny trickles of water had become rivulets--rivulets streams. away in the elephant country it was the same, the dry river-bed where they had found the carcass of the elephant, was now the bed of rushing water. the elephant and antelope herds were wandering in clouds on the plains. a hundred thousand streams from tanganyika to yandjali were leaping to form rivers flowing for one destination, the congo and the sea. on the second day of their journey, an accident happened; one of the porters, released for a spell from bearing the litter, and loitering behind, was bitten by a snake. he died despite all adams's attempts to save him, and, leaving his body to be buried by the leopards, they passed on. but the soldiers, especially the corporal, took the matter strangely. these bloodthirsty wretches, inured to death and thinking nothing of it, seemed cast down, and at the camping place they drew aside, chattered together for a few minutes, and then the corporal came to berselius and began a harangue, his eyes rolling toward adams now and then as he proceeded. berselius listened, spoke a few words, and then turned to adams. "he says you have brought something with you that is unlucky, and that unless you throw it away, we shall all die." "i know what he means," replied adams; "i have brought a relic from that village by the silent pools. i shall not throw it away. you can tell him so." berselius spoke to the man who still stood sullenly waiting, and who was opening his mouth to continue his complaints, when adams seized him by the shoulders, turned him round, and with a kick, sent him back to his companions. "you should not have done that," said berselius; "these people are very difficult to deal with." "difficult!" said adams. he stared at the soldiers who were grouped together, slapped the mauser pistol at his side, and then pointed to the tent. the men ceased muttering, and came as beaten dogs come at the call of their master, seized the tent and put it up. but berselius still shook his head. he knew these people, their treachery, and their unutterable heartlessness. "how far are we from the river now?" asked adams, that night, as they sat by the fire, for which the corporal by some miracle of savagery had found sufficient dry fuel in the reeking woods around them. "another two days' march," replied berselius, "i trust that we shall reach it." "oh, we'll get there," said adams, "and shall i tell you why? well, we'll get there just because of that relic i am carrying. god has given me it to take to europe. to take to europe and show to men that they may see the devilment of this place, and the work of satan that is being carried out here." berselius bowed his head. "perhaps you are right," said he, at last, slowly and thoughtfully. adams said no more. the great change in his companion stood as a barrier between him and the loathing he would have felt if berselius had been still himself. the great man had fallen, and was now very low. that vision of him in his madness by the silent pools had placed him forever on a plane above others. god had dealt with this man very visibly, and the hand of god was still upon him. next day they resumed their journey. the soldiers were cheerful and seemed to have forgotten all about their grievance, but berselius felt more uneasy than ever. he knew these people, and that nothing could move them to mirth and joy that was not allied to devilment, or treachery, or death. but he said nothing, for speech was useless. next morning when they woke they found the soldiers gone; they had taken the porter with them, and as much of the provisions as they could steal without disturbing the white men. "i thought so," said berselius. adams raged and stormed, but berselius was perfectly calm. "the thing i fear most," said he, "is that they have led us out of our road. did you notice whether we were in the track for the last mile or so of our journey yesterday?" "no," replied adams, "i just followed on. good god! if it is so we are lost." now, the rubber road was just a track so faint, that without keeping his eyes on the ground where years of travel had left just a slight indication of the way, a european would infallibly lose it. savages, who have eyes in their feet, hold it all right, and go along with their burdens even in the dark. adams searched, but he could find no track. "we must leave all these things behind us," said berselius, pointing to the tent and litter. "i am strong enough to walk; we must strike through the forest and leave the rest to chance." "which way?" asked adams. "it does not matter. these men have purposely lost us, and we do not know in the least the direction of the river." adams's eyes fell on a bundle wrapped in cloth. it was the relic. he knelt down beside it, and carefully removed the cloth without disturbing the position of the skull. he noted the direction in which the eye-holes pointed. "we will go in that direction," said he. "we have lost ourselves, but god has not lost us." "let it be so," replied berselius. adams collected what provisions he could carry, tied the skull to his belt with a piece of rope taken from the tent, and led the way amidst the trees. two days later, at noon, still lost, unutterably weary, they saw through the trees before them a sight to slay all hope. it was the tent and the litter just as they had left them. two days' heart-breaking labour had brought them to this by all sorts of paths. they had not wandered in a circle. they had travelled in segments of circles, and against all mathematical probability, had struck the camp. but the camp was not tenantless. someone was there. a huge man-like form, a monstrous gorilla, the evil spirit that haunted the forest, bent and gray and old-looking, was picking the things about, sniffing at them, turning them over. when they saw him first, he was holding the tent-cloth between both his hands just as a draper holds a piece of cloth, then he ripped it up with a rending sound, flung the pieces away, and began turning over the litter. he heard the steps of the human beings, and sat up, looking around him, sniffing the air. he could not see them, for he was purblind. the human beings passed on into the terrible nowhere of the forest. when you are lost like this, you cannot rest. you must keep moving, even though you are all but hopeless of reaching freedom. two days later they were still lost, and now entirely hopeless. to torment their hearts still more, faint sun-rays came through the leaves overhead. the sun was shining overhead; the sun they would never see again. it was the very end of all things, for they had not eaten for twelve hours now. the sun-rays danced, for a breeze had sprung up, and they could hear it passing free and happily in the leaves overhead. berselius cast himself down by a huge tree and leaned his head against the bark. adams stood for a moment with his hand upon the tree-bole. he knew that when he had cast himself down he would never rise again. it was the full stop which would bring the story of his life to a close. he was standing like this when, borne on the breeze above the tree-tops, came a sound, stroke after stroke, sonorous and clear. the bell of a steamboat! it was the voice of the congo telling of life, hope, relief. * * * * * berselius did not hear it. sunk in a profound stupor, he would not even raise his head. adams seized his companion in his arms and came facing the direction of the breeze. he walked like a man in his sleep, threading the maze of the trees on, on, on, till before him the day broke in one tremendous splash of light, and the humble frame-roof of m'bina seemed to him the roofs of some great city, beyond which the river flowed in sheets of burnished gold. chapter xxxiv the substitute district commissioner de wiart, chief at m'bina, was a big man with a blond beard and a good-natured face. he worked the post at m'bina with the assistance of a subordinate named van laer. de wiart was a man eminently fitted for his post. he had a genius for organization and overseeing. he would not have been worth a centime away up-country, for his heart was far too good to allow him to personally supervise the working of the niggers, but at m'bina he was worth a good deal to the government that employed him. this man who would not hurt a fly--this man who would have made an excellent father of a family--was terrible to his subordinates when he took a pen in his hand. he knew the mechanism of every _chef de poste_ in his district, and the sort of letter that would rouse him up, stimulate him to renewed action, and the slaves under him to renewed work. van laer was of quite a different type. van laer had the appearance of a famished hound held back by a leash. he was tall and thin. he had been a schoolmaster dismissed from his school for a grave offence; he had been a billiard-marker; he had walked the streets of brussels in a frock-coat and tall hat, a "guide" on the lookout for young foreigners who wished to enjoy the more dubious pleasures of the city. he had been many things, till, at the age of thirty-five, he became a servant of the crown. the pale blue eyes of van laer held in them a shallowness and murderous cruelty, an expression of negation and coldness combined with mind such as one finds nowhere in the animal kingdom, save that branch of it which prides itself on its likeness to god. his thumbs were cruelly shaped and enormous. a man may disguise his soul, he may disguise his mind, he may disguise his face, but he cannot disguise his thumbs unless he wears gloves. no one wears gloves on the congo, so van laer's thumbs were openly displayed. he had been six months now at m'bina and he was sick of the place, accounts were of no interest to him. he was a man of action, and he wanted to be doing. he could make money up there in the forest at the heart of things; here, almost in touch with civilization, he was wasting his time. and he wanted money. the bonus-ache had seized him badly. when he saw the great tusks of green ivory in their jackets of matting, when he saw the bales of copal leafed round with aromatic unknown leaves, and speaking fervently of the wealth of the tropics and the riches of the primeval forests, when he saw the tons of rubber and remembered that this stuff, which in the baskets of the native collectors looks like fried potato chips, in europe becomes, by the alchemy of trade, minted gold, a great hunger filled his hungry soul. at m'bina great riches were eternally flowing in and flowing out. wealth in its original wrappings piled itself on the wharf in romantical packets and bales, piled itself on board steamers, floated away down the golden river, and was replaced by more wealth flowing in from the inexhaustible forests. the sight of all this filled van laer with an actual physical hunger. he could have eaten that stuff that was wealth itself. he could have devoured those tusks. he was gargantua as far as his appetite was concerned, and for the rest he was only van laer driving a quill in the office of de wiart. he did not know that he was here on probation; that the good-natured and seemingly lazy de wiart was studying him and finding him satisfactory, that very soon his desires would be fulfilled, and that he would be let loose like a beast on the land of his longing, a living whip, an animated thumb-screw, a knife with a brain in its haft. when the soldiers had lost berselius and adams, they struck at once for m'bina, reaching it in a day's march. here they told their tale. _chef de poste_ meeus was dead. they had escorted a sick white man and a big white man toward m'bina. one night three leopards had prowled round the camp and the soldiers had gone in pursuit of them. the leopards escaped, but the soldiers could not find the white men again. de wiart listened to this very fishy tale without believing a word of it, except in so far as it related to meeus. "where did you lose the white men?" asked de wiart. the soldiers did not know. one does not know where one loses a thing; if one did, then the thing would not be lost. "just so," said de wiart, agreeing to this very evident axiom, and more than ever convinced that the story was a lie. meeus was dead and the men had come to report. they had delayed on the road to hold some jamboree of their own, and this lie about the white men was to account for their delay. "did anyone else come with you as well as the white men?" asked de wiart. "yes, there was a porter, a yandjali man. he had run away." de wiart pulled his blond beard meditatively, and looked at the river. from the office where he was sitting the river, great with the rains and lit by the sun which had broken through the clouds, looked like a moving flood of gold. one might have fancied that all the wealth of the elephant country, all the teeming riches of the forest, flowing by a thousand streams and disdaining to wait for the alchemy of trade, had joined in one pactolian flood flowing toward leopoldsville and the sea. de wiart was not thinking this. he dismissed the soldiers and told them to hold themselves in readiness to return to m'bassa on the morrow. that evening he called van laer into the office. "_chef de poste_ meeus of fort m'bassa is dead," said de wiart; "you will go there and take command. you will start to-morrow." van laer flushed. "it is a difficult post," said de wiart, "wild country, and the natives are the laziest to be found in the whole of the state. the man before meeus did much harm; he had no power or control, he was a weak man, and the people frankly laughed at him. actually rubber came in here one-third rubbish, the people were half their time in revolt, they cut the vines in two districts. i have a report of his saying, 'there is no ivory to be got. the herds are very scarce, and the people say they cannot make elephants.' fancy writing nigger talk like that in a report. i replied in the same tone. i said, 'tell the people they must make them: and make them in a hurry. tell them that they need not trouble to make whole elephants, just the tusks will do--eighty-pound tusks, a hundred-pound if possible.' but sarcasm was quite thrown away on him. he listened to the natives. once a man does that he is lost, for they lose all respect for him. they are just like children, these people; once let children get in the habit of making excuses and you lose control. "meeus was a stronger man, but he left much to be desired. he had too much whalebone in his composition, not enough steel, but he was improving. "you will find yourself at first in a difficult position. it always is so when a _chef de poste_ dies suddenly and even a few days elapse before he is replaced. the people get out of hand, thinking the white man is gone for ever. however, you will find yourself all right in a week or so, if you are firm." "thank you," said van laer. "i have no doubt at all that i will be able to bring these people into line. i do not boast. i only ask you to keep your eye on the returns." next day van laer, escorted by the soldiers, left m'bina to take up the station at fort m'bassa left vacant by the death of _chef de poste_ andreas meeus. three days later at noon de wiart, drawn from his house by shouts from the sentinels on duty saw, coming toward him in the blazing sunshine, a great man who stumbled and seemed half-blinded by the sunlight, and who was bearing in his arms another man who seemed dead. both were filthy, ragged, torn and bleeding. the man erect had, tied to his waistbelt by a piece of liana, a skull. fit emblem of the forest he had passed through and the land that lay behind it. chapter xxxv paris one hot day in june schaunard was seated in the little office just behind his shop. he was examining an improved telescopic sight which had just been put upon the market by an opponent, criticizing it as one poet criticizes the poem of another poet--that is to say, ferociously. to him, thus meditating, from the rue de la paix suddenly came a gush of sound which as suddenly ceased. the shop door had opened and closed again, and schaunard leaving his office came out to see who the visitor might be. he found himself face to face with adams. he knew him by his size, but he would scarcely have recognized him by his face, so brown, so thin and so different in expression was it from the face of the man with whom he had parted but a few months ago. "good day," said adams. "i have come to pay you for that gun." "ah, yes, the gun," said schaunard with a little laugh, "this is a pleasant surprise. i had entered it amidst my bad debts. come in, monsieur, come into my office, it is cooler there, and we can talk. the gun, ah, yes. i had entered that transaction in ledger d. come in, come in. there, take that armchair, i keep it for visitors. well, and how did the expedition go off?" "badly," said adams. "we are only back a week. you remember what you said to me when we parted? you said, 'don't go.' i wish i had taken your advice." "why, since you are back sound and whole, it seems to me you have not done so badly--but perhaps you have got malaria?" the old man's sharp eyes were investigating the face of the other. schaunard's eyes had this peculiarity, that they were at once friendly to one and cruel, they matched the eternal little laugh which was ever springing to his lips--the laugh of the eternal mocker. schaunard made observations as well as telescopic sights and wind-gauges--he had been making observation for sixty years--he took almost as much interest in individual human beings as in rifles, and much more interest in humanity than in god. he was afflicted with the malady of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries--he did not believe in god, only instead of hiding his disease under a cloak of mechanical religion, or temporizing with it, he frankly declared himself to be what he was, an atheist. this fact did not interfere with his trade--a godly gunmaker gets no more custom than an atheistical one; besides, schaunard did not obtrude his religious opinions after the fashion of his class, he was a good deal of a gentleman, and he was accustomed to converse familiarly with emperors and kings. "no, it is not malaria," replied adams, following the old man who was leading the way into the office. "i never felt better in my life. it is just the congo. the place leaves an impression on one's mind, m. schaunard, a flavour that is not good." he took the armchair which schaunard kept for visitors. he was only a week back--all he had seen out there was fresh to him and very vivid, but he felt in schaunard an antagonistic spirit, and he did not care to go deeper into his experiences. schaunard took down that grim joke, ledger d, placed it on the table and opened it, but without turning the leaves. "and how is monsieur le capitaine?" asked he. "he has been very ill, but he is much better. i am staying with him in the avenue malakoff as his medical attendant. we only arrived at marseilles a week ago." "and madame berselius, how is she?" "madame berselius is at trouville." "the best place this weather. _ma foi_, you must find it warm here even after africa--well, tell me how you found the gun to answer." adams laughed. "the gun went off--in the hands of a savage. all your beautiful guns, monsieur schaunard, are now matchwood and old iron, tents, everything went, smashed to pieces, pounded to pulp by elephants." he told of the great herd they had pursued and how in the dark it had charged the camp. he told of how in the night, listening by the camp fire, he had heard the mysterious boom of its coming, and of the marvellous sight he had watched when berselius, failing in his attempt to waken the zappo zap, had fronted the oncoming army of destruction. schaunard's eyes lit up as he listened. "ah," said he, "that is a man!" the remark brought adams to a halt. he had become strangely bound up in berselius; he had developed an affection for this man almost brotherly, and schaunard's remark hit him and made him wince. for schaunard employed the present tense. "yes," said adams at last, "it was very grand." then he went on to tell of berselius's accident, but he said nothing of his brain injury, for a physician does not speak of his patient's condition to strangers, except in the vaguest and most general terms. "and how did you like the belgians?" asked the old man, when adams had finished. "the belgians!" adams, suddenly taken off his guard, exploded; he had said nothing as yet about the congo to anyone. he could not help himself now; the horrors rushed to his mouth and escaped--the cry of the great mournful country--the cry that he had brought to europe with him in his heart, found vent. schaunard sat amazed, not at the infamies pouring from adams's mouth, for he was well acquainted with them, but at the man's vehemence and energy. "i have come to europe to expose him," finished adams. "expose who?" "leopold, king of the belgians." "but, my dear monsieur adams, you have come to waste your time; he is already exposed. expose leopold, king of the belgians! say at once that you are going to expose the sun. he doesn't care. he exposes himself. his public and his private life are common property." "you mean to say that everyone knows what i know?" "precisely, and perhaps even more, but everyone has not seen what you have seen, and that's all the difference." "how so?" "in this way, monsieur; let us suppose that you have just seen a child run over in the rue de la paix. you come in here and tell me of it; the horror of it is in your mind, but you cannot convey that horror to me, simply because i have not seen what you have seen. still, you can convey a part of it, for i know the rue de la paix, it is close to me, outside my door, and i know french children. "you come to me and tell me of hideous sights you have seen in africa. that does not move me a tenth so much, for africa is very far away--it is, in fact, for me a geographical expression; the people are niggers i have never seen, dwelling in a province i have never heard of. you come to seek sympathy for this people amongst the french public? well, i tell you frankly you are like a man searching in a dark room for a black hat that is not there." "nevertheless i shall search." "as monsieur wills, only don't knock yourself against the chairs and tables. ah, monsieur, monsieur, you are young and a medical man. remain so, and don't lose your years and your prospects fighting the impossible. now listen to me, for it is old schaunard of the rue de la paix who is speaking to you. the man you would expose, as you term it, is a king to begin with; to go on with, he is far and away the cleverest king in christendom. that man has brains enough to run what you in america call a department store. every little detail of his estate out there, even to the cap guns and rifles of the troops, he looks after himself; that's why it pays. it is a bad-smelling business, but it doesn't poison the nose of europe, because it is so far away. still, smells are brought over in samples by missionaries and men like you, and people say 'faugh!' do you think he did not take that into his consideration when he planned the affair and laid down the factory? if you think so, you would be vastly mistaken. he has agents everywhere--i have met them, apologists everywhere--in the press, in society, in the church. the roman catholic church is entirely his; he is triple-ringed with politicians, priests, publicists, and financiers, all holding their noses to keep out the stench and all singing the _laus leopold_ at the top of their voices. "ah! you don't know europe. i do, from the ballplatz to willhelmstrasse, from the winter palace to the elysée, my trade has brought me everywhere, and if you could see with my eyes, you would see the great, smooth plain of ice you hope to warm with your poor breath in the name of humanity." "at all events i shall try," replied adams, rising to go. "well, try, but don't get frozen in making the trial----" "oh, the gun--well, look here--you are starting on another hunting expedition, it seems to me, a more dangerous one, too, than the last, for there is no forest where one loses oneself more fatally than the forest of social reform--pay me when you come back." "very well," said adams, laughing. "only if you are successful though." "very well." "and, see here, in any event come and tell me the result. _bon jour_, monsieur, and a word in your ear----" the old man was opening the shop door. "yes?" "don't go." schaunard closed his door and retired to his office to chuckle over his joke, and adams walked off down the rue de la paix. paris was wearing her summer dress; it was the end of the season, and the streets were thronged with foreigners--the moor from morocco, in his white burnous, elbowed the slav from moscow; the eiffel tower had become a veritable tower of babel; the theatres were packed, the _cafés_ crowded. austrian, russian, english, and american gold was pouring into the city--pouring in ceaselessly from the four corners of the world and by every great express disgorging at the gare du nord, the gare de l'est, and the gare de lyons. to adams, fresh from the wilderness and the forest, fresh from those great, silent, sunlit plains of the elephant country and the tremendous cavern of the jungle, the city around him and the sights affected him with vividness and force. here, in the centre of the greatest civilization that the world has ever seen, he stood fresh from that primeval land. he had seen civilization with her mask off, her hair in disorder, her foot on the body of a naked slave and the haft of a blood-stained knife between her teeth, he was watching her now with her mask on, her hair in powder, caruso singing to her; sitting amidst her court of poets, philosophers, churchmen, placemen, politicians, and financiers. it was a strange experience. he took his way down the rue de rivoli and then to the avenue malakoff, and as he walked the face of the philosophic schaunard faded from his mind and was replaced by the vision of maxine berselius. opposites in the world of thought often awaken images one of the other, just because of the fact that they are opposites. maxine was not at trouville. she had met them at the railway station on the day of their arrival. _la joconde_ had been cabled for from leopoldsville, and the great yacht had brought them to marseilles. nothing had been cabled as to berselius's accident or illness, and madame berselius had departed for trouville, quite unconscious of anything having happened to her husband. maxine was left to discover for herself the change in her father. she had done so at the very first sight of him, but as yet she had said no word. chapter xxxvi dreams when adams arrived at the avenue malakoff he found berselius in the library. he was seated in a big armchair, and m. pinchon, his secretary, a man dry-looking as an account-book, bald, and wearing spectacles, was just leaving the room with some shorthand notes of business letters to be typed. berselius was much changed; his hair was quite gray, his eyes, once so calm, forceful, and intrinsically brilliant, had lost their lustre, his face wore the expression of a confirmed invalid. great discontent was the predominant feature of this expression. it was only within the last few days that this had appeared. on recovering from the hardships of the forest and on the voyage home, though weak enough, he had been serene, mild, amiable and rather listless, but during the last few days something was visibly troubling him. he had "gone off," to use an expressive phrase sometimes employed by physicians. a strange thing had happened to berselius. ever since the recovery of his memory his new self had contemplated the past from the heights of new birth, calmly conscious of the fact that this past belonged to a man who was dead. the more he examined this past the more he loathed the man to whom it had belonged, but the difference between that man and himself was so profound that he felt, rightly, that he was not _he_. three mornings ago berselius, who rarely dreamt, had awakened from a long night of hunting in dreamland. in dreamland he had cast off his new personality and became his old self, and then, in his hunting shirt and with a cordite rifle in his hand, accompanied by the zappo zap, he had tracked elephant herds across illimitable plains. he had awakened to his new self again with the full recognition in his mind that only a few moments ago he had been thinking with that other man's brain, acting under his passions, living his life. the berselius of dreamland had not the remotest connection with, or knowledge of, the berselius of real life. yet the berselius of real life was very intimately connected with the berselius of dreamland, knew all his actions, knew all his sensations, and remembered them to the minutest detail. the next night he did not dream at all--not so on the third night, when the scene of horror by the silent pools was reenacted, himself in the original _role_. the incidents were not quite the same, for scenes from real life are scarcely ever reproduced on the stage of dreamland in their entirety; but they were ghastly enough in all conscience, and berselius, awake and wiping the sweat from his brow, saw them clearly before him and remembered the callousness with which he had watched them but a few moments ago. no man can command his dreams; the dreaming man lives in a world beyond law, and it came as a shock to berselius that his old self should be alive in him like this, powerful, active, and beyond rebuke. physically, he was a wreck of his old self, but that was nothing to the fact which was now borne in on him--the fact that this new mentality was but a thin shell covering the old, as the thin shell of earth, with its flowers and pleasant landscapes, covers the burning hell which is the earth's core. the thing was perfectly natural. a great and vivid personality, and forty years of exuberant and self-willed life had at a stroke been checked and changed. the crust of his mind had cooled; tempestuous passions had passed from the surface, giving place to kindlier emotions, but the furnace was there beneath the flower garden just as it is in the case of the earth. captain berselius was still alive, though suppressed and living in secrecy. at night, touched by the magic wand of sleep, he became awake, and became supreme master of the tenement in the cellars of which he was condemned to sleep by day. so far from having been touched by death, captain berselius was now secure from death or change; a thing not to be reasoned with or altered--beyond human control--yet vividly alive as the fabled monster that inhabits the cellars of glamis castle. between the dual personalities of the man complete fission had taken place, a terrible accident of the sort condemning the cast-off personality to live in darkness beyond the voice of mind or amendment. "well," said adams, as he entered the room. "how are you to-day?" "oh, about the same, about the same. if i could sleep properly i would mend, but my sleep is broken." "i must give you something to alter that." berselius laughed. "drugs?" "yes, drugs. we doctors cannot always command health, but we can command sleep. do you feel yourself able to talk for a bit?" "oh, yes, i feel physically well. sit down, you will find some cigars in that cabinet." adams lit a cigar and took his seat in an armchair close to his companion. all differences of rank and wealth were sunk between these two men who had gone through so much together. on their return, when berselius had desired adams to remain as his medical attendant, he had delegated m. pinchon as intermediary to deal with adams as to the financial side of the question. adams received a large salary paid monthly in advance by the secretary. berselius did not have any hand in the matter, thus the feeling of employer and employed was reduced to vanishing point and the position rendered more equal. "you know," said adams, "i have always been glad to do anything i can for you, and i always shall be, but since i have come back to paris i have been filled with unrest. you complain of sleeplessness--well, that is my disease." "yes?" "it's that place over there; it has got into my blood. i declare to god that i am the last man in the world to sentimentalize, but that horror is killing me, and i must act--i must do something--even if i have to go into the middle of the place de la concorde and shout it aloud. i shall shout it aloud. i'm not made so that i can stand seeing a thing like that in silence." berselius sat with his eyes fixed on the carpet; he seemed abstracted and scarcely listening. he knew perfectly well that adams was acquainted with the affair at the silent pools, but the subject had never been mentioned between them, nor was it now. "that missionary i met on the return home at leopoldsville," went on adams, "he was a baptist, a man, not a religion-machine. he gave me details from years of experience that turned my heart in me. with my own eyes i saw enough----" berselius held up his hand. "let us not speak of what we know," said he. "the thing is there--has been there for years--can you destroy the past?" "no; but one can improve the future." adams got up and paced the floor. "now, now as i am talking to you, that villainy is going on; it is like knowing that a murder is slowly being committed in the next house and that one has no power to interfere. when i look at the streets full of people amusing themselves; when i see the _cafés_ crammed, and the rich driving in their carriages; the churches filled with worshippers worshipping a god who serenely sits in heaven without stretching a hand to help his poor, benighted creatures--when i see all this and contrast it with what i have seen, i could worship _that_!" he stopped, and pointed to the great gorilla shot years ago in german west africa by berselius. "that was a being at least sincere. whatever brutalities he committed in his life, he did not talk sentiment and religion and humanitarianism as he pulled his victims to pieces, and he did not pull his victims to pieces for the sake of gold. he was an honest devil, a far higher thing than a dishonest man." again berselius held up his hand. "what would you do?" "do? i'd break that infernal machine which calls itself a state, and i'd guillotine the ruffian that invented it. i cannot do that, but i can at least protest." berselius, who had helped to make the machine, and who knew better than most men its strength, shook his head sadly. "do what you will," said he. "if you need money my funds are at your disposal, but you cannot destroy the past." adams, who knew nothing of berselius's dream-obsession, could not understand the full meaning of these words. but he had received permission to act, and the promise of that financial support without which individual action would be of no avail. he determined to act; he determined to spare neither berselius's money nor his own time. but the determination of man is limited by circumstance, and circumstance was at that moment preparing and rehearsing the last act of the drama of berselius. chapter xxxvii berselius beholds his other self on the morning after berselius's conversation with adams, berselius left the avenue malakoff, taking his way to the avenue des champs elysées on foot. the change in the man was apparent even in his walk. in the old days he was rapid in his movements, erect of head, keen of eye. the weight of fifteen years seemed to have suddenly fallen on his shoulders, bowing them and slowing his step. he was in reality carrying the most terrible burden that a man can carry--himself. a self that was dead, yet with which he had to live. a past which broke continually up through his dreams. he was filled with profound unrest, irritation and revolt; everything connected with that other one, even the money he had made and the house he had built for himself and the pursuits he had followed, increased this irritation and revolt. he had already formed plans for taking a new house in paris, but to-day, as he walked along the streets, he recognized that paris itself was a house, every corner of which belonged to that other one's past. in the avenue champs elysées, he hailed a _fiacre_ and drove to the house of his lawyer, m. cambon, which was situated in the rue d'artiles. cambon had practically retired from his business, which was carried on now by his son. but for a few old and powerful clients, such as berselius, he still acted personally. he was at home, and berselius was shown into a drawing room, furnished heavily after the heart of the prosperous french _bourgeois_. he had not to wait long for the appearance of the lawyer, a fat, pale-faced gentleman, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles, tightly buttoned up in a frock-coat, the buttonhole of which was adorned with the red rosette of the legion of honour. cambon had known berselius for years. the two men were friends, and even more, for cambon was the depository of berselius's most confidential affairs. "well," said the lawyer, "you have returned. i saw a notice of your return in the _echo de paris_, and indeed, this very day i had promised myself the pleasure of calling on you. and how is madame berselius?" "she is at trouville." "i had it in my mind that you proposed to remain away twelve months." "yes, but our expedition came to an end." berselius, in a few words, told how the camp had been broken up, without referring, however, to his accident; and the fat and placid cambon listened, pleased as a child with the tale. he had never seen an elephant except at the jardin d'acclimatation. he would have run from a milch-cow. terrible in the law courts, in life he was the mildest of creatures, and the tale had all the attraction that the strong has for the weak and the ferocious for the mild. but even as he listened, sitting there in his armchair, he was examining his visitor with minute attention, trying to discover some clue to the meaning of the change in him. "and now," said berselius, when he had finished, "to business." he had several matters to consult the lawyer about, and the most important was the shifting of his money from the securities in which they were placed. cambon, who was a large holder of rubber industries, grew pale beneath his natural pallor when he discovered that berselius was about to place his entire fortune elsewhere. instantly he put two and two together. berselius's quick return, his changed appearance, the fact that suddenly and at one sweep he was selling his stock. all these pointed to one fact--disaster. the elephant story was all a lie, so resolved cambon, and, no sooner had he bowed his visitor out, than he rushed to the telephone, rang up his broker, and ordered him to sell out his rubber stock at any price. berselius, when he left the lawyer's house, drove to his club. the selling of his rubber industry shares had been prompted by no feeling of compunction; it was an act entirely dictated by the profound irritation he felt against the other one who had made his fortune out of those same rubber industries. he wished to break every bond between himself and the infernal entity that dominated him by night. surely it was enough to be that other one at night, without being perpetually haunted by that other one's traces by day. in the place de l'opera, his _fiacre_ paused in a crowd of vehicles. berselius heard himself hailed. he turned his head. in a barouche drawn up beside his carriage, was seated a young and pretty woman. it was sophia melmotte, a flame from his past life, burning now for a space in the life of a russian prince. "_ma foi_," said sophia, as her carriage pushed up till it was quite level with berselius. "so you are back from--where was it you went to? and how are the tigers? why, heavens, how you are changed! how gloomy you look. one would think you had swallowed a hearse and had not digested the trappings----" to all of which berselius bowed. "_you_ are just the same as ever," said he. the woman flushed under her rouge, for there was something in berselius's tone that made the simple words an insult. before she could reply, however, the block in the traffic ceased, and as the carriage drove on berselius bowed again to her coldly, and as though she were a stranger with whom he had spoken for a moment, and whom he had never seen before. at the club in the smoking room, where he went for an absinthe before luncheon, he met colonel tirard, the very man who had presided at the banquet given to him on the day of his leaving for africa. this man, who had been his friend, this man, in whose society he had always felt pleasure, was now obnoxious to him. and after a while the weird fact was borne in on the mind of berselius that tirard was not talking to him. tirard was talking to the man who was dead--the other berselius. the new rifle for the army, which filled tirard's conversation, would have been an interesting subject to the old berselius; it was absolutely distasteful to the new. now, for the first time, he quite clearly recognized that all the friends, pursuits, and interests that had filled his life till this, were useless to him and dead as the cast-off self that had once dominated his being. not only useless and dead, but distasteful in a high degree. he would have to re-create a world of interests for himself out of new media. he was living in a world where all the fruit and foliage and crops had been blighted by some wizard's wand; he would have to re-plant it over anew, and at the present moment he did not know where to cast about him for a single seed. yet he did not give in all at once. like a person persisting in some disagreeable medicine, hoping to become accustomed to it, he continued his conversation with tirard. after luncheon, he sat down to a game of écarté in the card-room with an old acquaintance, but after half an hour's play he left the table on the plea of indisposition and left the club, taking his way homeward on foot. near the madeleine occurred one of those incidents which, in tragic lives, appear less incidents than occurrences prepared by fate, as though she would say, "look and deny me if you dare." toward berselius was approaching a victoria drawn by two magnificent horses, and in the victoria lolled a man. an old man with a gray beard, who lolled on the cushions of the carriage, and looked about him with the languid indifference of a king and the arrogance of a megalomaniac. it was leopold, king of the belgians. when berselius's eyes fell upon that face, when he saw before him that man whom all thinking men abhor, a cold hand seemed laid upon his heart, as though in that person he beheld the dead self that haunted his dreams by night, as though he saw in the flesh berselius, the murderer, who, by consent, had murdered the people of the silent pools; the murderer, by consent, who had crushed millions of wretched creatures to death for the sake of gold; the villain of europe, who had spent that gold in nameless debauchery; the man whose crimes ought to have been expiated on the scaffold, and whose life ought to have been cut short by the executioner of justice, many, many years ago. it was thus at one stroke that berselius saw his other self, the self that haunted him in his dreams, saw it clearly, and in the light of day. the terrible old man in the carriage passed on his way and berselius on his. when he reached home, in the hall, just as he was handing his hat to a servant, maxine appeared at the door of the library. her beauty, innocence, and sweetness formed a strange vision contrasted with that other vision he had seen near the madeleine. was it possible that god's world could hold two such creatures, and that god's air should give them breath? for a week or ten days after this, berselius remained in his own suite of apartments without leaving the house. it was as if the sight of leopold, so triumphantly alive, had shown him fully his own change and his weakness had demonstrated to him clearly that he was but the wraith of what he had been. chapter xxxviii the revolt of a slave the day after that on which berselius had seen leopold, madame berselius, moved by one of those fits of caprice common to women of her type, came back suddenly from trouville. she knew of her husband's return, but she knew nothing of the injury or of the alteration that had come in him until maxine, who met her at the station, hinted at the fact. berselius was standing at the window of his private sitting room when madame berselius was announced. he turned to greet her; even as he turned she perceived the change. this was not the man who had left her a few months ago, strong, confident, impassive; the man who had been her master and before whom she had shrunk like a slave. intuition told her that the change was not the change wrought by sickness--berselius was not ill, he was gone, leaving another man in his place. they conversed for some time on indifferent matters, and then madame berselius took her departure for her own apartments. but she left the room of berselius a changed woman, just as he had returned to it a changed man. the slave in her had found her freedom. utterly without the capacity for love and without honour, without conscience and with a vague superstition to serve for religion, madame berselius had, up to this, been held in her place by the fear of her husband. his will up to this had been her law; she had moved in the major affairs of life under his direction, and even in the minor affairs of life everything had to be surrendered at his word. and now she hated him. she had never hated him before, she had admired him; indeed, as far as her power of admiration went, his strength had appealed to her as only strength can appeal to a woman of her type; but now that his strength was gone hatred of him rose up in her heart, petty yet powerful, a dwarf passion that had been slumbering for years. when the engine seizes the engineer in its wheels, when the slave gets power over his master, cruel things happen, and they were to happen in the case of berselius. madame's rooms were so far away from the rooms of her husband that they might have been living in different houses. there was none of the intimacy of married life between this couple; they met formally at meal times, and it was at _déjeuner_ on the morning after her return that she showed openly before adams, maxine, and the servants her contempt for the man who had once held her in subjection. without a rude word, simply by her manner, her tone, and her indifference to him, she humbled to the dust the stricken man and proclaimed the full measure of his disaster. as day followed day the dominance of the woman and the subjection of the man became more marked. madame would, if the spirit took her, countermand her husband's orders; once, with absolute rudeness, she, at table and before the minister of foreign affairs, who was a guest, turned to ridicule a remark which berselius had let escape. the flush that came to his cheek told maxine that her father's sensibilities were not dead--he was dominated. nothing could be stranger than this reduction of a man from greatness to insignificance. the old berselius dying, bound in chains, would have mastered this woman with one glance of his eye. the new berselius, free, wealthy, and with all his material powers at command, was yet her creature, an object of pity to his daughter and of derision to his servants. eight days after her return madame berselius, now free and her own mistress, left paris for vaux on a short visit to some friends, little dreaming of the momentous event that was to cause her return. chapter xxxix maxine on the night of the day upon which berselius had paid his visit to m. cambon, adams, seated in the smoking room at a writing table before a broad sheet of white paper covered with words, suddenly took the paper, tore it up, and threw the pieces in a wastepaper-basket. he had been trying to put in language the story of the congo as it had been revealed to him. it was all there in his mind like a tremendous dramatic poem: the great sunlit spaces of the elephant country watched over by the vultures, the eternal and illimitable forests old as memnon, young as spring, unwithered and unbroken by the suns and rains and storms of the ages; the river flooding to the sea, and the people to whom this place belonged, and the story of their misery and despair. when he contrasted what he had written with what was in his mind, he recognized the hopelessness of his attempt. he had not the power to put on paper more than the shadow of what he had seen and of what he knew. to represent that people under the heel of that fate was a task for an æschylus. sitting thus before the picture he could not reproduce, there rose before his mind another picture he had seen that day. it was a large photograph of the laocoon. he had seen it in brentano's window, and, now, with the eye of memory, he was looking at it again. that wonderful work of art washed up to us by the ages, that epic in marble, expressed all that words refused to say: the father and the children in the toils of fate; the hand upholding for a moment the crushing coil of the serpent, the face raised to a sky devoid of god or pity; the agony, the sweat and the cruelty, all were there; and as adams gazed, the python-like lianas of the forest became alive in his mind, the snake-like rubber vine twined in coils, circling about and crushing a nation and its children, remote from help and from god, as laocoon and his sons. ages have passed since the sculptor of that marble laid down his chisel and gazed at his completed work. little dreamt he that thousands of years later it would stand as a parable, representing civilization in the form of the python which he had carved with such loathing yet such loving care. adams, in the grasp of this startling thought, was recalled from reverie by a sound behind him. someone had entered the room. it was maxine berselius. they had seen very little of each other since his return. adams, indeed, had purposely avoided her as much as it is possible for one person to avoid another when both are dwelling in the same house. the pride of manhood warned him against this woman who was rich and the daughter of the man from whom he received a salary. maxine knew nothing of the pride of manhood; she only knew that he avoided her. she was dressed entirely in white with a row of pearls for her only ornament. she had just returned from some social function, and adams as he rose to meet her noticed that she had closed the door. "dr. adams," said the girl, "forgive me for disturbing you at this hour. for days i have wished to speak to you about my father. i have put it off, but i feel i must speak--what has happened to him?" she took a seat in an armchair, and adams stood before her with his back to the mantelpiece and his hands behind him. the big man did not answer for a moment. he stood there like a statue, looking at his questioner gravely and contemplatively, as a physician looks at a patient whose case is not quite clear. then he said, "you notice a change in your father?" "no," said maxine, "it is more than a change. he is quite different--he is another man." "when we were hunting out there," said adams, "captain berselius had an accident. in trying to rescue a servant he was caught by an elephant and flung some distance; he hurt his head, and when he recovered consciousness his memory was quite gone. it slowly returned----" he paused, for it was impossible to give details, then he went on--"i noticed, myself, as the memory was returning, that he seemed changed; when he had fully recovered his memory, the fact was obvious. he was, as you say, quite different--in fact, just as you see him now." "but can an injury change a person like that?" "yes; an injury to the head can change a person completely." maxine sighed. she had never seen the dark side of her father; she had never loved him in the true sense of the word, but she had respected him and felt a pride in his strength and dominance. the man who had returned from africa seemed to her an inferior being; the wreck, in fact, of the man she had always known. "and this happened to him," said she, "when he was trying to save a servant's life?" "ah," said adams, "if you could have seen it, you would have called it something even higher than that--it was a sublime act." he told her the details, even as he had told them to schaunard, but with additions. "i myself was paralyzed--i could only cling to the tree and watch. the fury of that storm of beasts coming down on one was like a wind--i can put it no other way--like a wind that stripped one's mind of everything but just the power of sight. i can imagine now the last day, when the sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood. it was as bad as that--well, _he_ did not lose his mind or nerve, he found time to think of the man who was lying drugged with hemp, and he found courage enough in his heart to attempt to save him. he was fond of the man, for the man was a great hunter though an absolute savage, without heart or soul. "without heart or soul----" adams paused. there was something about maxine berselius that made her different from the ordinary woman one meets in life--some inheritance from her father, perhaps, who knows? but through the sweetness of her nature which spoke in voice and expression, through her loveliness and her womanliness, there shone a light from within. like the gleam from the lamp that lives in an opal, this mind-brightness of maxine's pierced the clouds of her beauty capriciously, now half-veiled, now shining forth. it was the light of that flame which men call originality. maxine saw the world by the light of her own lamp. adams, though he had seen far more of the world than she, had seen it by the light of other people's lamps. the hostage house of yandjali would have told maxine infinitely more than it told adams. she would have read in meeus's face a story that he never deciphered; she would have seen in the people of the silent pools a whole nation in chains, when he with his other-people-begotten ideas of niggers and labour only saw a few recalcitrant blacks. it wanted skulls and bones to bring him to a sense of the sorrow around him; the sight of these people would have told maxine of their tears. this instinct for the truth of things made her a reader of people. adams had interested her at first sight, because she found him difficult to read. she had never met a man like him before; he belonged to a different race. the man in him appealed powerfully to the woman in her; they were physical affinities. she had told him this in a hundred ways half unconsciously and without speech before they parted at marseilles, but the mind in him had not appealed to the mind in her. she did not know his mind, its stature or its bent, and until that knowledge came to her she could not love him. as he stood with his back to the fireplace after that pronouncement on the spiritual and moral condition of the zappo zap, his thoughts strayed for a moment with a waft of the wing right across the world to the camping place by the great tree. out there now, under the stars, the tree and the pool were lying just as he had seen them last. away to the east the burst elephant gun was resting just where it had been dropped; the bones of the giraffe, clean-picked and white, were lying just where the gun had laid them; and the bones of the man who had held the gun were lying just where the leopards had left him. adams knew nothing of this triangle drawn by death; he still fancied the zappo zap alive and deadly. stirred into speech by that thought he went on: "a cannibal--a creature worse than a tiger--that was the being for whom your father risked his life." "a cannibal?" said maxine, opening her eyes wide. "yes; a soldier of the government who was detailed to act as our guide." "a soldier--but what government employs cannibals as soldiers?" "oh," said adams, "they call them soldiers, that is just a name. slave drivers is the real name, but the government that employs them does not use the word slave--oh, no, everyone would be shocked--_scoundrels_!" he spoke the word with suddenly flashing eyes, uplifted head, and a face as stern the face of themis. he seemed for a moment fronting some invisible foe, then, smothering his wrath, he went on: "i lose control of myself when i think of what i have seen--the suffering, the misery, and the wretchedness. i saw enough at first to have made me open my eyes, but the thing was not shown to me really till i saw the bones of murdered people--people whom i had seen walking about alive--lying there a few weeks later, just skeletons; a little child i had talked to and played with----" he stopped and turned to the fireplace and rested his elbow on the mantel. he had turned his back on maxine, and volumes could not have said more than what was expressed by that abrupt stoppage of speech and turning away. the girl scarcely breathed till the man turned from the mantelpiece and faced her again. there was no trace of emotion on his face, but the trace of a struggle with it. maxine's eyes were filled with tears. "i am sorry," said he, "that i should have dragged this subject before you at all. why should i torment your heart as well as my own?" she did not reply for a moment. she was tracing the vague pattern of the carpet with her eyes, her chin resting on her hand, and the light from above made a halo of the burnished red-gold hair that was her crowning charm. then she said, speaking slowly, "i am not sorry. surely if such things are, they ought to be known. why should i turn away my face from suffering? i have never done so in paris, and i have seen much of the misery of paris, for i have gone amongst it as much as a girl can, but what you tell me is beyond what i have ever heard of, or read of, or dreamed. tell me more, give me facts; for, frankly, though i believe you, i cannot yet fully realize, and with my mind fully believe. i am like thomas; i must put my fingers in the wounds." "are you brave enough to look at material evidence?" asked adams. "yes; brave enough to face the suffering of others if not my own----" he left the room and in a few minutes later returned with a parcel. he took from it the skull he had brought with him through everything to civilization. maxine's eyes dilated when she saw the thing, but she did not turn pale, and she looked steadfastly at it as adams turned it in his hands and showed her by the _foramen magnum_ the hacks in the bone caused by the knife. she put out her finger and touched them, then she said, "i believe." adams put the skull on the table; curious and small and ferocious and repellent it looked. one would never have imagined the black face, the grin, and the rolling eyes of the creature to whom it had once belonged. one thing only about it touched the heart with sadness--its size. "it is a child's," said maxine. "yes; the child i told you of--all that remains of it." he was about to wrap the thing up again when the girl interposed. "let it lie there whilst you tell me; it will bring things nearer to me. i am not afraid of it--poor, poor creature. tell me all you know--tell me the worst. i am not a young lady for the moment, please, just a person listening." he took his seat in an armchair opposite to her, and resting his elbows on his knees, talking just as if he were talking to a man, found the words he could not find when, pen in hand, half an hour ago, he had tried to express himself in writing. he told of the hostage house at yandjali, and the wretched creatures penned like animals eating their miserable food; he told of m'bassa and the hostage house there, with its iron rings and chains; he told how all over that vast country these places were dotted, not by the hundred but by the thousand; he told of the misery of the men who were driven into the dismal forests, slaves of masters worse than tigers, and of a task that would never end as long as rubber grew and christ was a name in europe and not a power; he told the awful fact that murder there was used every day as an agricultural implement, that people were operated upon, and suffered amputation of limbs, not because of disease; and that their sex and age--those two last appeals of nature to brutality--had no voice; he told the whole bitter tale of tears and blood, but he could not tell her all, for she was a girl, and it would be hard to speak even before a man of the crimes against nature, the crimes against men, against women, and against children, that even if the congo state were swept away to-morrow, will leave belgium's name in the world's history more detestable than the names of the unspeakable cities sunk in the dead sea. maxine listened, entranced, swayed between the terror of the tale and the power of the man who was telling it. ah! if he could have spoken to europe as he spoke to her; if he could have made europe see as he made her see, what a whirlwind of indignation would have arisen; but he could not. it was the magnet of her sympathy that marshalled the facts, clad them in burning language, and led them forth in battalions that stormed her mind and made her believe what seemed unbelievable. without that sympathy, his words would have been cold and lifeless statements bearing little conviction. when he had finished, she did that which a woman never does unless moved by the very highest excitement. she rose up and paced the floor thrice. without speaking, she walked the length of the room, then she turned to adams. "but this must cease." "this shall cease," said he, "if i can only make myself heard. to-day--to-night--just before you came in, i was trying to put the thing on paper--trying to put down what i have seen with my own eyes, and heard with my own ears, but the ink seems ice. what i write seems nothing, nothing beside what i have seen. the mere statement that so many were killed, so many were tortured, conveys nothing of the reality. the thing is too big for me. god made it, i suppose; but i wish to god i had never seen it." maxine was standing now with her hands resting on the back of an armchair. she seemed scarcely listening to what her companion was saying. she was listening, but she was thinking as well. "you cannot do everything yourself," said she, at last. "you must get others to help, and in this i can, perhaps, assist you. will you go to-morrow and see monsieur pugin? i do not know him personally, but i know a friend of his. i will send him a note early to-morrow morning, and the servant can bring back the letter of introduction. you could call upon him to-morrow afternoon." "who is monsieur pugin?" this question, showing such a boundless ignorance of every-day french life and literature, rather shocked maxine. she explained that ary pugin, the author of "absolution" and twenty other works equally beautiful, was above all other men fitted to bring home to france the story of this great sin. "absolution," that masterpiece, had shown france her cruelty in the expulsion of the religious orders. france had read it weeping, drying her tears with one hand and continuing the expulsion of the religious orders with the other. that, however, was not pugin's fault; he had done his best. it was not his fault that logic and sentiment are so largely constituent of the french nature, making between them that paradox, the french mind. "i will go and see him," said adams, when the girl had explained what pugin was, what pugin did, and what pugin had written. "a man like that could do more with a stroke of his pen, than i with weary years of blundering attempts to write. i can never thank you enough for listening to me. it is strange, but half the weight of the thing seems to have passed from my mind." "to mine," she replied. then, with charming _naïveté_, she held out both hands to him. "good night." as he held the door open, and as she passed out, he realized that, during the last few months, his faith in the goodness of god--the old simple faith of his childhood--had been all but stolen by ferocious and fiendish hands from his mind, and that just now, in some miraculous way, it had been returned. it was as though the gentle hands of maxine had put it back. maxine, when she reached her own apartments, turned on the electric light in her sitting room, and sat down at once to write to the friend who was a friend of pugin's. this friend was sabatier. she had studied art under him, and between artist and pupil lay that mysterious bond which unites craftsmen. for maxine was great in knowledge and power, and above all in that instinct without which an artist is at best an animated brush, a pencil under the dominion of mechanical force. as she wrote, she little dreamed that the sympathy burning in her heart and moving to eloquence her pen, was a thing born not from the sufferings of an afflicted people, but of the love of a man. a child of her mind begotten by the man she had just left, and whom, that night, she had learned to love. chapter xl pugin pugin lived in the boulevard haussmann. he had begun life quite low down in the parisian world on the quays as apprentice to manasis, a jew book-dealer, who has been dead twenty-five years, whose money has been dispersed, whose name has been forgotten, of whom nothing remains on earth but the few hours a day of time filched from him by pugin. pugin had a hard and bitter fight for twenty years before he obtained recognition. the garret and starvation act had been unduly prolonged in the case of this genius, and it seemed a mystery where and how in the ruined city which is at the heart of every city, in that _cour des miracles_ where the bohemians camp, he had found, like a crystal vase, his exquisite style, preserved it unbroken by mischance or shock of fate, and carried it safely at last to the hands of fame. he was very rich now, very powerful, and very fortunate. charitable, too, and ever ready to assist a fellow-worker in straitened circumstances, and to-day as he sat reading in the cool recesses of his library, and listening to the sound of the paris he loved floating in with the warm june air through the open window, he felt at peace with all the world and in a mood to do justice to his bitterest enemy. the striped sun-blinds filtered the blaze outside, letting pass only a diffused and honey-coloured twilight; a great bowl of roses filled the room with the simple and deep poetry of summer, the story of the hedges and the fields, of orchards shot through with the voices of birds, of cattle knee-deep in cool water where the dragon-flies keep up their eternal dance to the flute-like ripple of the river amidst the reeds. pugin, his book upon his knees, was enjoying these pictures of summer woven by perfume, when a servant entered and handed him adams's card and the letter of introduction written by sabatier. he ordered the visitor to be shown in. adams, when he entered, found himself before a small man with a big head; an ugly little man, with a look of kindness and a very gracious and charming manner. to pugin adams seemed a giant. a giant bronzed by unknown suns, talking french indifferently well, and with a foreign accent. an interesting person, indeed, but a being quite beyond his range of knowledge. pugin, in physical matters, was timid as a rabbit. he had never travelled farther than trouville or ostend, and when he indicated a chair, and when these two sat down to talk to each other, the mastiff-man felt instinctively the presence of the rabbit-man, and was at a loss how to begin. not for long, though. bluffly, and with little grace enough, but with earnestness and a cunning one would never have suspected, he told of maxine's great admiration for the author's work, and how she had suggested the enlistment of the said author in the crusade against crime which he, adams, was endeavouring to raise. pugin listened, making little bows, sniffing the lettuce which the mastiff-man had so cunningly placed before his nose. then honestly and plainly and well, adams told his tale, and the rabbit held up its hands in horror at the black doings disclosed to it. but it was horror divorced from sentiment. pugin felt almost as great a revulsion toward the negroes upon whom these things were done as toward the doers. he could not see the vast drama in its true proportions and its poetical setting of forest, plain, and sky. the outlandish names revolted him; he could not see yandjali and its heat-stricken palms or m'bassa burning in the sun. but he listened politely and it was this that chilled the heart of the story-teller who instinctively felt that though he had shocked his hearer, he had not aroused that high spirit of revolt against injustice which converts a man into a living trumpet, a living axe, or a living sword. pugin would have been a great force could his sentiment have been awakened; but he could not see palm trees. "what would you have? you cannot grow baobabs on the boulevards." "_ma foi!_" said he, "it is terrible what you tell me, but what are we to do?" "i thought you might help," said adams. "i? with all the power possible and goodwill. it is evident to me that should you wish for success in this matter, you should found a society." "yes?" "there is nothing done in a public way without coöperation. you must found a society; you may use my name. i will even let you put it on the committee list. i will also subscribe." now pugin was on the committee lists of half a dozen charitable and humanitarian concerns. his secretary had them all down in a book; but pugin himself, lost in his art and the work of his life, had forgotten their very names. so would it be with this. "thanks," said the visitor. pugin would lend his purse to the cause, and his name, but he would not lend his pen--simply because he could not. to every literary man there are dead subjects; this question was dead to the author of "absolution"--as uninspiring as cold mutton. "thanks," said adams, and rose to take his leave. his rough-hewn mind understood with marvellous perspicuity pugin's position. "and one moment," cried the little man, after he had bidden his visitor good-bye and the latter was leaving the room. "one moment; why did i not think of it before? you might go and see ferminard." he ran to a desk in the corner of the room, took a visiting card and scribbled ferminard's address upon it, explaining as he wrote that ferminard was the deputy for ---in provence; a socialist it is true, but a terrible man when roused; that the very name of injustice was sufficient to bring this lion from his den. "tell him pugin said so," cried he, following his visitor this time out on the landing and patting him on the shoulder in a fatherly manner, "and you will find him in the rue auber, no. 14; it is all on the card; and convey my kind regards to mademoiselle ----, that charming lady to whose appreciation of my poor work i owe the pleasure of your visit." "nice little man," said adams to himself as he walked down the boulevard haussmann. he found ferminard at home, in an apartment smelling of garlic and the south. ferminard, a tall, black-bearded creature, with a glittering eye; a brigand from the rhone valley who had flung himself into the politics of his country as a torpedo flings itself into the sea, greeted adams with effusion, when he read pugin's card; gave him cigarettes, and shut the open window in honour of his guest. he worked himself into a state of indignation over adams's story; as a matter of fact he knew the whole thing well; but he was too polite to discount his visitor's grievance, besides it gave him an opportunity to declaim--and of course the fact that a king was at the bottom of it all, added keenness to the arrows of his invective. as adams listened, delighted to have awakened such a trumpet; as he listened to ferminard thundering against all that over there, speaking as though he were addressing the chambre, and as though he had known africa intimately from his childhood, he noticed gradually and with alarm that the topic was changing; just a moment ago it was africa and its luckless niggers; the provençal imagination picturing them in glowing colours, and the provençal tongue rolling off their disabilities and woes. one would have fancied from the fervour of the man that is was ferminard who had just returned from the congo, not adams. well, a moment after, and africa had quite fallen out of the discussion. as a child lets a noah's ark fall from its hands--elephants, zebras and all on to the floor whilst he grasps for a new toy--so ferminard let africa tumble whilst he grasped for socialism, found it and swung it like a rattle, and socialism went the way of africa as he seized at last that darling toy--himself. the speech, in its relationship to the subject in point, was the intellectual counterpart of the cry of those mechanical pigs which the street venders blow up, and which, standing on a board, scream in the face of oxford street, loudly at first, and then, as the figure collapses, weakening in voice to the buzzing of a fly. ferminard was, in fact, a great child with a good heart, a provençal imagination, a power of oratory, a quickness in seizing upon little things and making them seem great, coupled with a rather obscure understanding as to the relative value of mountains and mole-hills. a noise maker of a first-class description, but useless for any serious work. _feu de bruit_ was his motto, and he lived up to it. it is only when you try to enlist men on your side in some great and holy cause, that you come to some knowledge of the general man's weakness and want of holiness--your own included. adams, during the fortnight that followed his visit to pugin, had this fact borne in on him. all the thinking minds of the centre of civilization were so busy thinking thoughts of their own making, that it was impossible to attract their attention for more than a moment; from bostoc the dramatist to bastiche the anarchist, each individual was turning his own crank diligently, and not to be disturbed, even by papeete's skull. with such a thing in one's hand, picked up like some horrible talisman which, if not buried, will eventually cast its spell upon human thought and the future of the world; with such a thing in one's hand, surely the church would present itself to the mind as a court of appeal. but as the roman catholic church had actually put its broad back against the door of the torture chamber, and was, in fact, holding it tight shut whilst papeete's head was being hacked from his body, it would scarcely be logical to bring out the victim's skull hoping for redress. other denominations being of such little power in france, adams determined to leave the attempt to rouse them till he reached england, whither he determined to go as soon as berselius's health would permit him. one evening, a fortnight after his visit to pugin, on his return to the avenue malakoff, maxine met him in the hall. he saw at once from her face that something had happened. berselius was worse; that afternoon he had suddenly developed acute neuralgia of the right side of the head, and this had been followed almost immediately by twitching and numbness of the left arm. thénard had been summoned and he had diagnosed pressure on the brain, or, at least, irritation from depressed bone, due to the accident. he declared himself for operation, and he had gone now to make arrangements for nurses and assistants. "he will operate this evening," said maxine. "and madame berselius?" "i have telegraphed for her." chapter xli the return of captain berselius berselius, for the last fortnight, had been going back, slowly going from bad to worse, and keeping the fact to himself. sulphonal, trional, morphia, each tried in turn had no power to prevent him from dreaming. sleep as soundly as he would, just as he was awaking, the black blanket of slumber, turned up at a corner or an edge by some mysterious hand, would reveal a dream or part of one. there was nothing in these dreams to terrify him when he was dreaming them; in them, he was just the old brave berselius that nothing could terrify, but there was often a good deal to terrify him when he awoke. many of them were quite innocent and as fatuous as dreams are wont to be, but even these innocent dreams fretted the soul of the waking man, for in every scrap and vestige of them he recognized the mind of that other personality. after the first few days, his intellect, so severe and logical, began to lose its severity and logic, and to take up sides with his heart and to cry aloud against the injustice of this persecution. why should he be haunted like this? he felt no trace of remorse now for the past; the sense of injustice swallowed all that. every day seemed to drive that past further off, and to increase the sense of detachment from that other man and his works; yet every night a hand, like the hand of some remorseless chess player, put things back in their places. with the falling of the curtain of sleep he became metamorphosed. then came the day when the evil he was suffering from declared itself in a physical manner and thénard was called in. thénard found his patient in bed. his mind was quite clear, but the pupils of his eyes were unequal; there was numbness in the left arm and want of grip in the hand. he had been prepared for the change evident in berselius's face and manner, for maxine had told him in a few words of the accident and loss of memory, and as he took his seat by the bedside he was about to put some questions relative to the injury, when berselius forestalled him. berselius knew something about medicine. he guessed the truth about his own case, and he gave a succinct account of the accident and the loss of memory following it. "this is due to the result of the injury, is it not?" said berselius, pointing to his left arm when he had finished. "i am afraid so," said tthénard, who knew his patient, and that plain speaking would be best. "some pressure?" "so i imagine." "oh, don't be afraid of speaking out. i don't mind the worst. will an operation remove that pressure?" "if, as i imagine, there is some pressure from the inner table of the skull on the brain, it will." "well, now," said berselius, "i want you to listen to me attentively; ever since that accident, or, at least, since i regained memory, i have felt that i am not the same man. only in sleep do i become myself again--do you understand me? i have quite different aims and objects; my feelings about things are quite different; my past before the accident is ruled off from my present--that is, when i am awake. "when i dream i become my old self again--is that not strange?" "no," said thénard, "every man is double. we have numerous cases where, from accident or other circumstances, a man's personality changes; one side of his nature is suppressed. there is one strange point about your case, though, and that is the waking up of the suppressed personality so vividly during sleep; but in your case it is perhaps not so strange." "why not?" "because, and excuse me for being personal even though i am complimentary, your personality as i knew you before your accident was so profound, and vivid, and powerful, that even though it is suppressed it must speak. and it speaks in dreams." "so!--perhaps you are right. now tell me, if you operate and remove the pressure, may i become myself again?" "you may." "even after all this time?" "the mind," said thénard, "has nothing to do with time. at the battle of the nile, a sea captain, one of those iron-headed englishmen, was struck on his iron head with fragment of shell. he lost his memory. eight months after he was trephined; he awoke from the operation completing the order he was giving to his sailors when the accident cut him short----" "i would be the same man. i would not be tormented with the other self which is me, now?" "possibly--i do not say probably, but possibly." "then," said berselius, "for god's sake, operate at once." "i would like to wait for another twelve hours," said thénard, rising and re-examining the slight dent of his patient's skull. "why?" "well, to see if things may be cleared up a bit, and the necessity for operation be removed." "operate." "you know, in every operation, however slight, there is an element of danger to life." "life! what do i care? i insist on your operating. not another night shall pass----" "as you will," said thénard. "and now," said berselius, "make your preparations, and send me my secretary." * * * * * at twelve o'clock that night, maxine was seated in the library, with a book which she had been vainly trying to read face downward on the floor beside her. thénard, his assistant surgeon, and two nurses, had arrived shortly after ten. operating table, instruments, everything necessary had been brought, set up, and fixed by thénard's own man. adams had no part in the proceedings except as a looker-on. no man could assist thénard in an operation who was not broken to the job, for, when operating thénard became quite a different person to the every-day thénard of lecture room and hospital ward. that harsh voice which we noticed in him in the first pages of this book when on entering the lecture room of the beaujon he could not find his coloured chalks, came out during an operation, and he would curse his assistant to the face for the slightest fault or fancied fault, and he would speak to the nurses as no frenchman ever spoke to frenchwoman unless with deliberate intent to insult. when the last stitch was in, all this changed; nurses and assistant forgot what had been said, and in the ease of released tension, worshipped more than ever the cadaverous genius who was now unwinding from his head and mouth the antiseptic gauze in which he always veiled them when operating. the clock on the mantel pointed to a few minutes past the hour, when the door opened, and adams came in. maxine rose to meet him. she read both good and bad news in his face. "the operation has been successful, but there is great weakness." he rolled an armchair for her to sit down, and then he told her as much as she could understand. thénard had found a slight depression of the inner table of the skull, and some congestion and thickening of the dura mater. it all dated from the accident. there would, without doubt, have been severe inflammation of the brain, but for berselius's splendid condition at the time of the accident, and the fact that adams had bled him within an hour of the injury. thénard had relieved the pressure by operation, but there was great weakness. it was impossible to say what the result would be yet. "has he regained consciousness?" "he is just recovering from the anæsthetic." the girl was silent for a moment, then she asked where thénard was. "he has left. he has to operate again to-night on a case which has just called for him by telephone. he asked me to tell you that everything possible has been done. he will call in the morning, and he has left everything till then in my hands." "i shall not go to bed," said maxine. "i could not sleep, and should my father want to see me, i shall be ready." "yes," said adams, "perhaps it will be better so. i will go up and stay with him, and i will call you if it is necessary." he left the room, and maxine took up the book she had dropped, but she could not read. her eyes, travelling about the room, rested here and there on the trophies and the guns and the wild implements of destruction collected by the hunter, who was now lying upstairs, like a child dandled on the dark knees of death. the books on philosophy, natural history, oceanography, and history, in their narrow cases contrasted strangely with the weapons of destruction and the relics of the wild. the room was like a mirror of the mind of berselius, that strange mind in which the savage dwelt with the civilized man, and the man of valour by the side of the philosopher. but the strangest contrast in the room was effected by maxine herself--the creation of berselius--his child, blossoming like a beautiful and fragile flower, amidst the ruins of the things he had destroyed. when, after daybreak, adams came to find her, she was asleep. berselius, awaking from a sleep that had followed the effects of the anæsthetic, had asked for her. thénard had fixed upon the white marble bathroom adjoining berselius's sleeping chamber as his operating theatre, and after the operation the weakness of the patient was so great, and the night so hot, they determined to make up a bed for him there, as it was the coolest room in the house. it was a beautiful room. walls, pillars, floor and ceiling, of pure white carrara marble, and in the floor, near the window, a sunk bath, which, when not in use, was covered by a grating of phosphor bronze, showing a design of sea serpents and seaweed. there were no basins or lavatory arrangements, nothing at all to break the pure and simple charm of this ideal bathing-place whose open french window showed, beyond a balcony of marble, the tops of trees waving against the blue sky of early morning. berselius was lying on the bed which had been arranged for him near the door; his eyes were fixed on the waving tree tops. he turned his head slightly when maxine entered, and looked at her long and deliberately. in that one glance maxine saw all. he was himself again. the old, imperious expression had returned; just a trace of the half-smile was visible about his lips. the great weakness of the man, far from veiling the returned personality, served as a background which made it more visible. one could see the will dominating the body, and the half-helpless hands lying on the coverlet presented a striking contrast to the inextinguishable fire of the eye. maxine sat down on the chair by the bed. she did not attempt to stroke the hand near her, and she smothered whatever emotion she felt, for she knew the man who had returned. "your mother?" said berselius, who had just sufficient voice to convey interrogation as well as words. "she has not returned yet; we telegraphed for her, she will be here to-day." "ah!" the sick man turned his head again, and fixed his eyes on the tree tops. the hot, pure, morning air came through the open window, bringing with it the chirruping and bickering of sparrows; a day of splendour and great heat was breaking over paris. life and the joy of life filled the world, the lovely world which men contrive to make so terrible, so full of misery, so full of tears. suddenly berselius turned his head, and his eyes found adams with a not unkindly gaze in them. "well, doctor," he said, in a voice stronger than the voice with which he had spoken to maxine. "this is the end of our hunting, it seems." adams, instead of replying, took the hand that was lying on the coverlet, and berselius returned the pressure, and then relinquished his hold. just a handshake, yet it told adams in some majestic way, that the man on the bed knew that all was up with him, and that this was good-bye. berselius then spoke for a while to maxine on indifferent things. he did not mention his wife's name, and he spoke in a cold and abstracted voice. he seemed to adams as though he were looking at death, perfectly serenely, and with that level gaze which never in this world had been lowered before man or brute. then he said he was tired, and wished to sleep. maxine rose, but the woman in her had to speak. she took the hand on the coverlet, and berselius, who was just dozing off, started awake again. "ah!" said he, as though he had forgotten something, then he raised the little hand of maxine and touched it with his lips. then he asked that his wife should be sent to him on her return. alone, he closed his eyes and one might have fancied that he slept, yet every now and then his eyelids would lift, and his eyes, unveiled by drowsiness, would fix themselves on some point in the room with the intent gaze of a person who is listening; so in the forest, or on the plain, or by the cane brake had he often listened at night, motionless, gun in hand and deadly, for the tiger or the water buck. half an hour passed and then from the adjoining room came a footstep, the door opened gently, and madame berselius entered. she was dressed just as she had traveled from vaux. she had only just arrived, to find death in the house, and as she looked at the figure on the bed she fancied she beheld it indeed. closing the door gently she approached the bed. no, it was not death but sleep. he was breathing evenly and rhythmically, sleeping, apparently, as peacefully as a child. she was about to turn away when, like a bather who has ventured into some peaceful tropic rock pool wherein lurks an octopus, she found herself seized and held. berselius's eyes were open, he was not asleep. his gaze was fixed on hers, and he held her with his eyes as the cat holds the bird or the python the man. he had been waiting for her with the patience and the artfulness of the hunter, but no game had ever inspired such ferocity in him as this woman, vile and little, who yet had abased him to the earth. he was dying, but what beast full of life is more dangerous than the dying tiger? as berselius gazed at the woman, she, with all her will urging her body to retreat, approached him. then, her knees touching the bed, she fell on her knees beside him and his hand fell on her shoulder. holding her thus, he gazed on her coldly, dispassionately, and critically, as an emperor of old might have gazed on a defaulting slave. then, as though his anger had turned to disgust, as though disdaining to waste a word on her, he struck her full in the face with the back of his right hand, a blow that caused her to cry out and sent her groveling on the marble floor, where a moment after the nurse on duty, attracted by the cry, found her. berselius was dead, but the mocking smile on his lips remained, almost justified by the words of the nurse imploring the woman on the floor to calm herself and restrain her grief. whatever his life may have been, his death affected adams strangely. the magnetism of the man's character had taken a strong hold upon him, fascinating him with the fascination that strength alone can exercise. and the man he regretted was not the ambiguous being, the amended berselius, so obviously a failure, but the real berselius who had returned to meet death. chapter xlii amidst the lilies one day in march, nine months later, at champrosay, in the garden of a little cottage near the paris road, maxine berselius stood directing the movements of an old man in a blue blouse--father champardy by name, and a gardener by profession. on the death of her father, maxine had come to an arrangement with her mother, eminently suited to the minds and tastes of both women. maxine absolutely refused to touch any part of the colossal fortune left by her father. she knew how it had been come by, and as she had a small fortune of her own, a very small fortune of some ten thousand francs a year settled on her by an uncle at her birth, she determined to live on it, and go her own way in life. art was to her far preferable to society, and in a little cottage with one woman for a servant, ten thousand francs a year were affluence. madame berselius, who had no scruple in using money obtained in any way whatsoever, fell in with her daughter's views after a few formal objections. gillette had furnished the cottage as only a french firm can furnish a cottage, and the garden, which had gone to decay, maxine had furnished herself with the help of father champardy. adams, after the death of berselius, had lingered on in paris to settle up his affairs, going back to the rue dijon and taking up his old life precisely at the point where he had broken it off. but he was richer by three things. two days after berselius's death, news came to him from america of the death of an uncle whom he had never seen and the fact that he had inherited his property. it was not very much as money goes in america, but it was real estate in new york city and would bring in some seven or eight hundred pounds a year. he was richer by the experience he had gained and the humanity he had discovered in himself, and he was richer by his love for maxine. but love itself was subordinate in the mind of adams to the burning question that lay at his heart. he had put his hand to the plough, and he was not the man to turn aside till the end of the furrow was reached. he would have time to go to america, in any event, to look after his property. he decided to stay some months in england; to attack the british lion in its stronghold; to explain the infamies of the congo, and then cross the atlantic and put the matter before the american eagle. he did. for seven months he had been away, and every week he had written to maxine, saying little enough about the progress of his work, and frequently using the cryptic statement, "i will tell you everything when i come back." and "he will be back to-day," murmured maxine, as she stood in the little garden watching the old man at his work. the newness and the freshness of spring were in the air, snow that had fallen three days ago was nearly gone, just a trace of it lay on the black earth of the flower beds; white crocuses, blue crocuses, snow-drops, those first trumpeters of spring, blew valiantly in the little garden, the air was sharp and clear, and the sky above blue and sparkling. great masses of white cloud filled the horizon, sun-stricken, fair, and snow-bright, solid as mountains, and like far-off mountains filled with the fascination and the call of distance. "spring is here," cried the birds from the new-budding trees. the blackbird in dr. pons's garden to the left, answered a rapturous thrush in the trees across the way, children's voices came from the paris road and the sounds of wheels and hoofs. a sparrow with a long straw in its beak flew right across maxine's garden, a little winged poem, a couplet enclosing the whole story of spring. maxine smiled as it vanished, then she turned; the garden gate had clicked its latch, and a big man was coming up the path. there was only father champardy to see; and as his back was turned, he saw nothing and as he was deaf, he heard nothing. the old man, bent and warped by the years, deaf, and blind to the little love-scene behind him, was, without knowing it, also a poem of spring; but not so joyous as the poem of the sparrow. "and now tell me all," said maxine, as they sat in the chintz-hung sitting room before a bright fire of logs. they had finished their private affairs. the day was two hours older, and a sunbeam that had pointed at them through the diamond-paned window had travelled away and vanished. the day was darker outside, and it was as though spring had lost her sportive mood and then withdrawn, not wishing to hear the tale that adams had to tell. in adams's hand papeete's skull had been a talisman of terrible and magical power, for with it he had touched men, and the men touched had disclosed their worth and their worthlessness. it had been a lamp which showed him society as it is. the life and death of berselius had been an object lesson for him, teaching vividly the fact that evil is indestructible; that wash yourself with holy water or wash yourself with soap, you will never wash away the evil being that you have constructed by long years of evil-doing and evil-thinking. his pilgrimage in search of mercy and redress for a miserable people had emphasized the fact. the great crime of the congo stood gigantic, like a shadowy engine for the murdering of souls. "destroy that," said the devil triumphantly. "you cannot, for it is past destruction; it has passed into the world of the ideal. no man's hand may touch it; it is beyond the reach like the real self of your friend berselius. sweep the congo state away to-morrow; this will remain. a thing soul-destroying till the end of time. it began small in the brain of one ruinous man, god whom i hate! look at it now. "it has slain ten million men and it will slay ten million more, that is nothing; it has ruined body and soul, the stokers who fed it and the engineers who worked it, that is nothing; it has tangled in its wheels and debased the consciences of five nations, that is nothing. it is eternal--that is everything. "since i was flung out of heaven, i have made many things, but this is my masterpiece. if i and all my works were swept away, leaving only this thing, it would be enough. in the fiftieth century it will still have its clutch on man, yea, and to the very end of time." cause and effect, my friend, in those two words you have the genius of this machine which will exist forever in the world of consequence, a world beyond divine or human appeal. in england, adams had found himself confronted with the dull lethargy of the people, and the indifference of the established church. the two great divisions of christ's church were at the moment at death grapples over the question of education. only amongst the noncomformists could be found any real response to the question which was, and is, the test question which will disclose, according to its answer, whether christianity is a living voice from on high, or an echo from the pagan past; and a debased echo at that. debased, for if adams could have stood in the agora of athens and told his tale of horror and truth, could demosthenes have taken up the story; could leopold the barbarian have been a king in those days, and have done in those days, under the mandate of a deluded greece, what he has done under the mandate of a deluded england; what a living spirit would have run through athens like a torch, how the phalanxes would have formed, and the beaked ships at piræus torn themselves from their moorings, to bring to athens in chains the ruffian who had murdered and tortured in her name! to complete the situation and give it a touch of hopelessness, he found that others had striven well, yet almost vainly in the field. men working for truth and justice as other men work for gold, had attacked the public with solid battalions of facts, tabulated infamies; there had been meetings, discussions, words, _palabres_, as they say in the south; but the murderer had calmly gone on with his work, and england had put out no hand to stay him. but it was not till he reached america, that adams found himself fighting the machine itself. one great man with a living voice he found--mark twain--and one great paper, at least. these had raised their voices calling for justice--with what result? two side facts the skull of papeete showed to the searcher, as a lamp shows up other things than the things searched for. the deadness of the english church to the spiritual, and the corruption of his own countrymen. when he had finished, it was dark outside. the firelight lit up the little room. glancing through the diamond-paned window at that happy interior, one would never have guessed that the man by the fire had been telling the girl by his side not a love story, but the story of the world's greatest crime. maxine, whose hand was resting on the hand of her companion, said nothing for a moment after he had ceased speaking. then, in a half-whisper, and leaning her forehead on his hand, "poor things," sighed maxine. so attuned were her thoughts to the thoughts of her companion, that she voiced the very words that were in his mind, as gazing beyond his own happiness and a thousand miles of sea and forest, he saw again the moonlight on the mist of the silent pools, and the bleached and miserable bones. the end note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see 12556-h.htm or 12556-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.net/1/2/5/5/12556/12556-h/12556-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.net/1/2/5/5/12556/12556-h.zip) a master ... of fortune being further adventures of captain kettle by cutcliffe hyne author of "captain kettle," "the stronger hand," "the lost continent," etc. illustrated by stanley l. wood 1898 [illustration: attired in high rubber thigh boots and leather-bound black oilskins. frontispiece.] [illustration] contents chapter i. in quarantine. chapter ii. the little wooden god with the eyes. chapter iii. a quick way with rebels. chapter iv. the new republic. chapter v. the looting of the "indian sheriff". chapter vi. the wire-milkers. chapter vii. the derelict. chapter viii. to capture an heiress. chapter ix. a matter of justice. chapter x. dago divers. chapter xi. the dear insured. chapter xii. the fire and the farm. list of illustrations attired in high rubber thigh boots and leather-bound black oilskins (frontispiece). he came and stood with one foot on kettle's breast in the attitude of a conqueror. the little army could only march in single file. "you insolent little blackguard, you dare to speak to me like that!" he picked up the man and sent him after the knife. "i'm a british subject". out of the middle of these spectators jumped the mild, delicate hamilton. strangers came up and wrung kettle's unwilling hand. dedication to captain owen kettle my dear kettle,-with some considerable trepidation, i venture to offer you here the dedication of your unauthorized biography. you will read these memoirs, i know, and it is my pious hope that you do not fit the cap on yourself as their hero. of course i have sent you along your cruises under the decent disguise of a purser's name, and i trust that if you do recognize yourself, you will appreciate this nice feeling on my part. believe me, it was not entirely caused by personal fear of that practical form which i am sure your displeasure would take if you caught any one putting you into print. even a working novelist has his humane moments; and besides if i made you more recognizable, there might be a more dangerous broth stirred up, with an ugly international flavor. would it be indiscreet to bring one sweltering day in bahia to your memory, where you made play with a german (or was he a scandinavian?) and a hundredweight drum of good white lead? or might one hint at that little affair which made odessa bad for your health, and indeed compelled you to keep away from black sea ports entirely for several years? i trust, then, that if you do detect my sin in making myself without leave or license your personal historian, you will be induced for the sake of your present respectability to give no sign of a ruffled temper, but recognize me as part of the cross you are appointed to bear, and incidentally remember my forbearance in keeping so much really splendid material (from my point of view) in snug retirement up my sleeve. finally, let me remind you that i made no promises not to publish, and that you did. not only were you going to endow the world with a book of poems, but i was to have a free copy. this has not yet come; and if, for an excuse, you have published no secular verse, i am quite willing to commute for a copy of the book of hymns, provided it is suitably inscribed. c.j.c.h. oak vale, bradford, june 27, 1899. chapter i in quarantine "the pay is small enough," said captain kettle, staring at the blue paper. "it's a bit hard for a man of my age and experience to come down to a job like piloting, on eight pound a month and my grub." "all right, capt'n," replied the agent. "you needn't tell me what i know already. the pay's miserable, the climate's vile, and the bosses are beasts. and yet we have more applicants for these berths on the congo than there are vacancies for. and f'why is it, capt'n? because there's no questions asked. the congo people want men who can handle steamers. their own bloomin' belgians aren't worth a cent for that, and so they have to get danes, swedes, norwegians, english, eytalians, or any one else that's capable. they prefer to give small pay, and are willing to take the men that for various reasons can't get better jobs elsewhere. guess you'll know the crowd i mean?" "thoroughly, sir," said kettle, with a sigh. "there are a very large number of us. but we're not all unfortunate through our own fault." "no, i know," said the agent. "rascally owners, unsympathetic board of trade, master's certificate suspended quite unjustly, and all that--" the agent looked at his watch. "well, capt'n, now, about this berth? are you going to take it?" "i've no other choice." "right," said the agent, and pulled a printed form on to the desk before him, and made a couple of entries. "let's see--er--is there a mrs. kettle?" "married," said the little sailor; "three children." the agent filled these details on to the form. "just as well to put it down," he commented as he wrote. "i'm told the congo free state has some fancy new pension scheme on foot for widdys and kids, though i expect it'll come to nothing, as usual. they're a pretty unsatisfactory lot all round out there. still you may as well have your chance of what plums are going. yer age, capt'n?" "thirty-eight." "and--er--previous employment? well, i suppose we had better leave that blank as usual. they never really expect it to be filled in, or they wouldn't offer such wretchedly small pay and commission. you've got your master's ticket to show, and that's about all they want." "there's my wife's address, sir. i'd like my half-pay sent to her." "she shall have it direct from brussels, skipper, so long as you are alive--i mean, so long as you remain in the congo service." captain kettle sighed again. "shall i have to wait long before this appointment is confirmed?" "why, no," said the agent. "there's a boat sailing for the coast to-morrow, and i can give you an order for a passage by her. of course my recommendation has to go to brussels to be ratified, but that's only a matter of form. they never refuse anybody that offers. they call the government 'leopold and co.' down there on the congo. you'll understand more about it when you're on the spot. "i'm sorry for ye, capt'n, but after what you told me, i'm afraid it's the only berth i can shove you into. however, don't let me frighten ye. take care of yourself, don't do too much work, and you may pull through all right. here's the order for the passage down coast by the liverpool boat. and now i must ask you to excuse me. i've another client waiting." * * * * * in this manner, then, captain owen kettle found himself, after many years of weary knocking about the seas, enlisted into a regular government service; and although this government, for various reasons, happened to be one of the most unsatisfactory in all the wide, wide world, he thrust this item resolutely behind him, and swore to himself that if diligence and crew-driving could bring it about, he would rise in that service till he became one of the most notable men in africa. "what i want is a competence for the missus and kids," he kept on repeating to himself, "and the way to finger that competence is to get power." he never owned to himself that this thirst for power was one of the greatest curses of his life; and it did not occur to him that his lust for authority, and his ruthless use of it when it came in his way, were the main things which accounted for his want of success in life. captain kettle's voyage down to the congo on the british and african s.s. _m'poso_ gave time for the groundwork of coast language and coast thought (which are like unto nothing else on this planet) to soak into his system. the steamer progressed slowly. she went up rivers protected by dangerous bars; she anchored in roadsteads, off forts, and straggling towns; she lay-to off solitary whitewashed factories, which only see a steamer twice a year, and brought off little doles of cargo in her surf-boats and put on the beaches rubbishy manchester and brummagem trade goods for native consumption; and the talk in her was that queer jargon with the polyglot vocabulary in which commerce is transacted all the way along the sickly west african seaboard, from the goree to st. paul de loanda. every white man of the _m'poso's_ crew traded on his own private account, and kettle was initiated into the mysteries of the unofficial retail store in the forecastle, of whose existence captain image, the commander, and mr. balgarnie, the purser, professed a blank and child-like ignorance. kettle had come across many types of sea-trader in his time, but captain image and mr. balgarnie were new to him. but then most of his surroundings were new. especially was the congo free state an organization which was quite strange to him. when he landed at banana, captain nilssen, pilot of the lower congo and captain of the port of banana, gave him advice on the subject in language which was plain and unfettered. "they are a lot of swine, these belgians," said captain nilssen, from his seat in the madeira chair under the veranda of the pilotage, "and there's mighty little to be got out of them. here am i, with a wife in kjobnhavn and another in baltimore, and i haven't been able to get away to see either of them for five blessed years. and mark you, i'm a man with luck, as luck goes in this hole. i've been in the lower river pilot service all the time, and got the best pay, and the lightest jobs. there's not another captain in the congo can say as much. some day or other they put a steamboat on the ground, and then they're kicked out from the pilot service, and away they're off one-time to the upper river above the falls, to run a launch, and help at the rubber palaver, and get shot at, and collect niggers' ears, and forget what champagne and white man's chop taste like." "you've been luckier?" "some. i've libbed for lower congo all my time; had a home in the pilotage here; and got a dash of a case of champagne, or an escribello, or at least a joint of fresh meat out of the refrigerator from every steamboat i took either up or down." "but then you speak languages?" said kettle. "seven," said captain nilssen; "and use just one, and that's english. shows what a fat lot of influence this état du congo has got. why, you have to give orders even to your boat-boys in coast english if you want to be understood. french has no sort of show with the niggers." now white men are expensive to import to the congo free state, and are apt to die with suddenness soon after their arrival, and so the state (which is in a chronic condition of hard-up) does not fritter their services unnecessarily. it sets them to work at once so as to get the utmost possible value out of them whilst they remain alive and in the country. a steamer came in within a dozen hours of kettle's first stepping ashore, and signalled for a pilot to boma. nilssen was next in rotation for duty, and went off in his boat to board her, and he took with him captain owen kettle to impart to him the mysteries of the great river's navigation. the boat-boys sang a song explanatory of their notion of the new pilot's personality as they caught at the paddles, but as the song was in fiote, even nilssen could only catch up a phrase here and there, just enough to gather the drift. he did not translate, however. he had taken his new comrade's measure pretty accurately, and judged that he was not a man who would accept criticism from a negro. so having an appetite for peace himself, he allowed the custom of the country to go on undisturbed. the steamer was outside, leaking steam at an anchorage, and sending out dazzling heliograms every time she rolled her bleached awnings to the sun. the pilot's boat, with her crew of savages, paddled towards her, down channels between the mangrove-planted islands. the water spurned up by the paddle blades was the color of beer, and the smell of it was puzzlingly familiar. "good old smell," said nilssen, "isn't it? i see you snuffling. trying to guess where you met it before, eh? we all do that when we first come. what about crushed marigolds, eh?" "crushed marigolds it is." "guess you'll get to know it better before you're through with your service here. well, here we are alongside." the steamer was a portuguese, officered by portuguese, and manned by krooboys, and the smell of her drowned even the marigold scent of the river. her dusky skipper exuded perspiration and affability, but he was in a great hurry to get on with his voyage. the forecastle windlass clacked as the pilot boat drew into sight, heaving the anchor out of the river floor; the engines were restarted so soon as ever the boat hooked on at the foot of the jacob's ladder; and the vessel was under a full head of steam again by the time the two white men had stepped on to her oily deck. "when you catch a portuguese in a hurry like this," said nilssen to kettle as they made their way to the awninged bridge, "it means there's something wrong. i don't suppose we shall be told, but keep your eyes open." however, there was no reason for prying. captain rabeira was quite open about his desire for haste. "i got _baccalhao_ and passenger boys for a cargo, an' dose don' keep," said he. "we smelt the fish all the way from banana," said nilssen. "guess you ought to call it stinking fish, not dried fish, captain. and we can see your nigger passengers. they seem worried. are you losing 'em much?" "i done funeral palaver for eight between loanda an' here, an' dem was a dead loss-a. i don' only get paid for dem dat lib for beach at boma. dere was a fire-bar made fast to the leg of each for sinker, an' dem was my dead loss-a too. i don' get paid for fire-bars given to _gastados_--" his english failed him. he shrugged his shoulders, and said "sabbey?" "sabbey plenty," said nilssen. "just get me a leadsman to work, captain. if you're in a hurry, i'll skim the banks as close as i dare." rabeira called away a hand to heave the lead, and sent a steward for a bottle of wine and glasses. he even offered camp stools, which, naturally, the pilots did not use. in fact, he brimmed with affableness and hospitality. from the first moment of his stepping on to the bridge, kettle began to learn the details of his new craft. as each sandbar showed up beneath the yellow ripples, as each new point of the forest-clad banks opened out, nilssen gave him courses and cross bearings, dazing enough to the unprofessional ear, but easily stored in a trained seaman's brain. he discoursed in easy slang of the cut-offs, the currents, the sludge-shallows, the floods, and the other vagaries of the great river's course, and punctuated his discourse with draughts of rabeira's wine, and comments on the tangled mass of black humanity under the forecastle-head awning. "there's something wrong with those passenger boys," he kept on repeating. and another time: "guess those niggers yonder are half mad with funk about something." but rabeira was always quick to reassure him. "now dey lib for congo, dey not like the idea of soldier-palaver. dere was nothing more the matter with them but leetle sickness." "oh! it's recruits for the state army you're bringing, is it?" asked kettle. "if you please," said rabeira cheerfully. "slaves is what you english would call dem. laborers is what dey call demselves." nilssen looked anxiously at his new assistant. would he have any foolish english sentiment against slavery, and make a fuss? nilssen, being a man of peace, sincerely hoped not. but as it was, captain kettle preserved a grim silence. he had met the low-caste african negro before, and knew that it required a certain amount of coercion to extract work from him. but he did notice that all the portuguese on board were armed like pirates, and were constantly on the _qui vive_, and judged that there was a species of coercion on this vessel which would stick at very little. the reaches of the great beer-colored river opened out before them one after another in endless vistas, and at rare places the white roofs of a factory showed amongst the unwholesome tropical greenery of the banks. nilssen gave names to these, spoke of their inhabitants as friends, and told of the amount of trade in palm-oil and kernels which each could be depended on to yield up as cargo to the ever-greedy steamers. but the attention of neither of the pilots was concentrated on piloting. the unrest on the forecastle-head was too obvious to be overlooked. once, when the cackle of negro voices seemed to point to an immediate outbreak, rabeira gave an order, and presently a couple of cubical green boxes were taken forward by the ship's krooboys, broken up, and the square bottles which they contained, distributed to greedy fingers. "dashing 'em gin," said nilssen, looking serious. "guess a portugee's in a bad funk before he dashes gin at four francs a dozen to common passenger boys. i've a blame' good mind to put this vessel on the ground--by accident--and go off in the gig for assistance, and bring back a state launch." "better not risk your ticket," said kettle. "if there's a row, i'm a bit useful in handling that sort of cattle myself." nilssen eyed wistfully a swirl of the yellow water which hid a sandbar, and, with a sigh, gave the quartermaster a course which cleared it. "guess i don't like ructions myself," he said. "hullo, what's up now? there are two of the passenger boys getting pushed off the forecastle-head by their own friends on to the main deck." "they look a mighty sick couple," said kettle, "and their friends seem very frightened. if this ship doesn't carry a doctor, it would be a good thing if the old man were to start in and deal out some drugs." it seemed that rabeira was of the same opinion. he went down to the main deck, and there, under the scorching tropical sunshine, interviewed the two sick negroes in person, and afterwards administered to each of them a draught from a blue glass bottle. then he came up, smiling and hospitable and perspiring, on to the bridge, and invited the pilots to go below and dine. "chop lib for cabin," said he; "palm-oil chop, plenty-too-much-good. you lib for below and chop. i take dem ship myself up dis next reach." "well, it is plain, deep water," said nilssen, "and i guess you sabbey how to keep in the middle as well as i do. come along, kettle." the pair of them went below to the baking cabin and dined off a savory orange-colored stew, and washed it down with fiery red wine, and dodged the swarming, crawling cockroaches. the noise of angry negro voices came to them between whiles through the hot air, like the distant chatter of apes. the dane was obviously ill at ease and frightened; the englishman, though feeling a contempt for his companion, was very much on the alert himself, and prepared for emergencies. there was that mysterious something in the atmosphere which would have bidden the dullest of mortals prepare for danger. up they came on deck again, and on to the bridge. rabeira himself was there in charge, dark, smiling, affable as ever. nilssen looked sharply down at the main deck below. "hullo," said he, "those two niggers gone already? you haven't shifted them down below, i suppose?" the portuguese captain shrugged his shoulders. "no," he said, "it was bad sickness, an' dey died an' gone over the side. i lose by their passage. i lose also the two fire-bar which i give for funeral palaver. ver' disappointing." "sudden kind of sickness," said nilssen. "dis sickness is. it make a man lib for die in one minute, clock time. but it don' matter to you pilot, does it? you lib for below--off duty--dis las' half hour. you see nothing, you sabby nothing. i don'-want no trouble at boma with doctor palaver. i make it all right for you after. sabby?" "oh, i tumble to what you're driving at, but i was just thinking out how it works. however, you're captain of this ship, and if you choose not to log down a couple of deaths, i suppose it's your palaver. anyway, i don't want to cause no ill-will, and if you think it's worth a dash, i don't see why i shouldn't earn it. it's little enough we pick up else in this service, and i've got a wife at home in liverpool who has to be thought about." kettle drew a deep breath. "it seems to me," he said, looking very hard at the portuguese, "that those men died a bit too sudden. are you sure they were _pukka_ dead when you put them over the side?" "oh, yes," said rabeira smilingly, "an' dey made no objection. it was best dey should go over quick. bodies do not keep in this heat. an' pilot, i do you square-a, same as with nilssen. you shall have your dash when doctor-palaver set." "no," said kettle, "you may keep it in your own trousers, captain. money that you've fingered, is a bit too dirty for me to touch." "all right," said rabeira with a genial shrug, "so much cheaper for me. but do not talk on the beach, dere's good boy, or you make trouble-palaver for me." "i'll shut my head if you stop at this," said kettle, "but if you murder any more of those poor devils, i'll see you sent to join them, if there's enough law in this state to rig a gallows." the portuguese did not get angry. on the contrary, he seemed rather pleased at getting what he wanted without having to bribe for it, and ordered up fresh glasses and another bottle of wine for the pilots' delectation. but this remained untouched. kettle would not drink himself, and nilssen (who wished to be at peace with both sides) did not wish to under the circumstances. to tell the truth, the dane was beginning to get rather scared of his grim-visaged little companion; and so, to prevent further recurrence to unpleasant topics, he plunged once more into the detail of professional matters. here was a grassy swamp that was a deep water channel the year before last; there was a fair-way in the process of silting up; there was a mud-bar with twenty-four feet, but steamers drawing twenty-seven feet could scrape over, as the mud was soft. the current round that bend raced at a good eleven knots. that bank below the palm clump was where an italian pilot stuck the _m'poso_ for a month, and got sent to upper congo (where he was eaten by some rebellious troops) as a recompense for his blunder. almost every curve of the river was remembered by its tragedy, and had they only known it, the steamer which carried them for their observation had hatching within her the germs of a very worthy addition to the series. more trouble cackled out from the forecastle-head, and more of the green gin cases were handed up to quell it. the angry cries gradually changed to empty boisterous laughter, as the raw potato spirit soaked home; and the sullen, snarling faces melted into grotesque, laughing masks; but withal the carnival was somewhat grisly. it was clear that more than one was writhing with the pangs of sickness. it was clear also that none of these (having in mind the physicking and fate of their predecessors) dared give way, but with a miserable gaiety danced, and drank, and guffawed with the best. two, squatting on the deck, played _tom-tom_ on upturned tin pans; another jingled two pieces of rusty iron as accompaniment; and all who in that crowded space could find foot room, danced _shuff-shuff-shuffle_ with absurd and aimless gestures. the fort at chingka drew in sight, with a b. and a. boat landing concrete bags at the end of its wharf; and on beyond, the sparse roofs of the capital of the free state blistered and buckled under the sun. the steamer, with hooting siren, ran up her gaudy ensign, and came to an anchor in the stream twenty fathoms off the state wharf. a yellow-faced belgian, with white sun helmet and white umbrella, presently came off in the doctor's boat, and announced himself as the health officer of the port, and put the usual questions. rabeira lied pleasantly and glibly. sickness he owned to, but when on the word the doctor hurriedly made his boat-boys pull clear, he laughed and assured him that the sickness was nothing more than a little fever, such as any one might suffer from in the morning, and be out, cured, and making merry again before nightfall. that kind of fever is known in the congo, and the doctor was reassured, and bade his boat-boys pull up again. yet because of the evil liver within him, his temper was short, and his questioning acid. but captain rabeira was stiff and unruffled and wily as ever, and handed in his papers and answered questions, and swore to anything that was asked, as though care and he were divorced forever. kettle watched the scene with a drawn, moist face. he did not know what to do for the best. it seemed to him quite certain that this oily, smiling scoundrel, whom he had more than half suspected of a particularly callous and brutal double murder, would be given _pratique_ for his ship, and be able to make his profits unrestrained. the shipmaster's _esprit de corps_ prevented him from interfering personally, but he very much desired that the heavens would fall--somehow or other--so that justice might be done. a _dens ex machina_ came to fill his wishes. the barter of words and the conning of documents had gone on; the doctor's doubts were on the point of being lulled for good; and in a matter of another ten seconds _pratique_ would have been given. but from the forecastle-head there came a yell, a chatter of barbaric voices, a scuffle and a scream; a gray-black figure mounted the rail, and poised there a moment, an offence to the sunlight, and then, falling convulsively downwards, hit the yellow water with a smack and a spatter of spray, and sank from sight. a couple of seconds later the creature reappeared, swimming frenziedly, as a dog swims, and by a swirl of the current (before anybody quite knew what was happening) was swept down against the doctor's boat, and gripped ten bony fingers upon the gunwhale and lifted towards her people a face and shoulders eloquent of a horrible disorder. instantly there was an alarm, and a sudden panic. "_sacre nom d'un pipe_," rapped out the belgian doctor; "_variole!_" "small-pox lib," whimpered his boat-boys, and before their master could interfere, beat at the delirious wretch with their oars. he hung on tenaciously, enduring a perfect avalanche of blows. but mere flesh and bone had to wither under that onslaught, and at last, by sheer weight of battering, he was driven from his hold, and the beer-colored river covered him then and for always. after that, there was no further doubt of the next move. the yellow-faced doctor sank back exhausted in the stern sheets of the gig, and gave out sentence in gasps. the ship was declared unclean until further notice; she was ordered to take up a berth a mile away against the opposite bank of the river till she was cleared of infection; she was commanded to proceed there at once, to anchor, and then to blow off all her steam. the doctor's tortured liver prompted him, and he spoke with spite. he called rabeira every vile name which came to his mind, and wound up his harangue by rowing off to chingka to make sure that the guns of the fort should back up his commands. the portuguese captain was daunted then; there is no doubt about that. he had known of this outbreak of small-pox for two days, had stifled his qualms, and had taken his own peculiar methods of keeping the disease hidden, and securing money profit for his ship. he had even gone so far as to carry a smile on his dark, oily face, and a jest on his tongue. but this prospect of being shut up with the disorder till it had run its course inside the walls of the ship, and no more victims were to be claimed, was too much for his nerve. he fled like some frightened animal to his room, and deliberately set about guzzling a surfeit of neat spirit. nilssen, from the bridge, fearful for his credit with the state, his employer, roared out orders, but nobody attended to them. mates, quartermasters, krooboys, had all gone aft so as to be as far as possible from the smitten area; and in the end it was kettle who went to the forecastle-head, and with his own hands let steam into the windlass and got the anchor. he stayed at his place. an engineer and fireman were still below, and when nilssen telegraphed down, they put her under weigh again, and the older pilot with his own hands steered her across to the quarantine berth. then kettle let go the anchor again, paid out and stoppered the cable, and once more came aft; and from that moment the new _regime_ of the steamer may be said to have commenced. in primitive communities, from time immemorial, the strongest man has become chieftain through sheer natural selection. societies which have been upheaved to their roots by anarchy, panic, or any of these more perfervid emotions, revert to the primitive state. on this portuguese ship, authority was smashed into the smallest atoms, and every man became a savage and was in danger at the hands of his fellow savage. rabeira had drunk himself into a stupor before the boilers had roared themselves empty through the escapes. the two mates and the engineers cowered in their rooms as though the doors were a barrier against the small-pox germs. the krooboys broached cargo and strewed the decks with their half-naked bodies, drunk on gin, amid a litter of smashed green cases. meals ceased. the portuguese cook and steward dropped their collective duties from the first alarm; the kroo cook left the rice steamer because "steam no more lib"; and any one who felt hunger or thirst on board, foraged for himself, or went without satisfying his wants. nobody helped the sick, or chided the drunken. each man lived for himself alone--or died, as the mood seized him. nilssen took up his quarters at one end of the bridge, frightened, but apathetic. with awnings he made himself a little canvas house, airy, but sufficient to keep off the dews of night. when he spoke, it was usually to picture the desolation of one or other of the mrs. nilssens on finding herself a widow. as he said himself, he was a man of very domesticated notions. he had no sympathy with kettle's constantly repeated theory that discipline ought to be restored. "guess it's the captain's palaver," he would say. "if the old man likes his ship turned into a bear garden, 'tisn't our grub they're wasting, or our cargo they've started in to broach. anyway, what can we do? you and i are only on board here as pilots. i wish the ship was in somewhere hotter than africa, before i'd ever seen her." "so do i," said kettle. "but being here, it makes me ill to see the way she's allowed to rot, and those poor beasts of niggers are left to die just as they please. four more of them have either jumped overboard, or been put there by their friends. the dirt of the place is awful. they're spreading small-pox poison all over the ship. nothing is ever cleaned." "there's dysentery started, too." "very well," said kettle, "then that settles it. we shall have cholera next, if we let dirt breed any more. i'm going to start in and make things ship-shape again." "for why?" "we'll say i'm frightened of them as they are at present, if you like. will you chip in and bear a hand? you're frightened, too." "oh, i'm that, and no error about it. but you don't catch me interfering. i'm content to sit here and take my risks as they come, because i can't help myself. but i go no further. if you start knocking about this ship's company they'll complain ashore, and then where'll you be? the congo free state don't like pilots who do more than they're paid for." "very well," said kettle, "i'll start in and take my risks, and you can look on and umpire." he walked deliberately down off the bridge, went to where the mate was dozing against a skylight on the quarter deck, and stirred him into wakefulness with his foot. "well?" said the man. "turn the hands to, and clean ship." "what!" "you hear me." the mate inquired, with abundant verbal garnishings, by what right kettle gave the order. "because i'm a better man than you. because i'm best man on board. do you want proof?" apparently the mate did. he whipped out a knife, but found it suddenly knocked out of his hand, and sent skimming like a silver flying fish far over the gleaming river. he followed up the attack with an assault from both hands and feet, but soon discovered that he had to deal with an artist. he gathered himself up at the end of half a minute's interview, glared from two half-shut eyes, wiped the blood from his mouth, and inquired what kettle wanted. "you heard my order. carry it out." the man nodded, and went away sullenly muttering that his time would come. "if you borrow another knife," said kettle cheerfully, "and try any more of your games, i'll shoot you like a crow, and thank you for the chance. you'll go forrard and clean the forecastle-head and the fore main deck. be gentle with those sick! second mate?" "si, señor." "get a crew together and clean her up aft here. do you want any rousing along?" apparently the second mate did not. he had seen enough of captain kettle's method already to quite appreciate its efficacy. the krooboys, with the custom of servitude strong on them, soon fell-to when once they were started. the thump of holy-stones went up into the baking air, and grimy water began to dribble from the scuppers. with the chief engineer kettle had another scuffle. but he, too, was eased of the knife at the back of his belt, thumped into submissiveness, and sent with firemen and trimmers to wash paint in the stewy engine-room below, and clean up the rusted iron work. and then those of the passenger boys who were not sick, were turned-to also. with captain rabeira, kettle did not interfere. the man stayed in his own room for the present, undisturbed and undisturbing. but the rest of the ship's complement were kept steadily to their employment. they did not like it, but they thought it best to submit. away back from time unnumbered, the african peoples have known only fear as the governing power, and, from long acclimatization, the portuguese might almost count as african. this man of a superior race came and set himself up in authority over them, in defiance of all precedent, law, everything; and they submitted with dull indifference. the sweets of freedom are not always appreciated by those who have known the easy luxury of being slaves. the plague was visibly stayed from almost the very first day that kettle took over charge. the sick recovered or died; the sound sickened no more; it seemed as though the disease microbes on board the ship were glutted. a mile away, at the other side of the beer-colored river, the rare houses of boma sprawled amongst the low burnt-up hills, and every day the doctor with his bad liver came across in his boat under the blinding sunshine to within shouting distance, and put a few weary questions. the formalities were slack enough. nilssen usually made the necessary replies (as he liked to keep himself in the doctor's good books), and then the boat would row away. nilssen still remained gently non-interferent. he was paid to be a pilot by the état indépendant du congo--so he said--and he was not going to risk a chance of trouble, and no possibility of profit, by meddling with matters beyond his own sphere. especially did he decline to be co-sharer in kettle's scheme for dealing out justice to captain rabeira. "it is not your palaver," he said, "or mine. if you want to stir up trouble, tell the state authorities when you get ashore. that won't do much good either. they don't value niggers at much out here." "nor do i," said kettle. "there's nothing foolish with me about niggers. but there's a limit to everything, and this snuff-colored dago goes too far. he's got to be squared with, and i'm going to do it." "guess it's your palaver. i've told you what the risks are." "and i'm going to take them," said kettle grimly. "you may watch me handle the risks now with your own eyes, if you wish." he went down off the bridge, walked along the clean decks, and came to where a poor wretch lay in the last stage of small-pox collapse. he examined the man carefully. "my friend," he said at last, "you've not got long for this world, anyway, and i want to borrow your last moments. i suppose you won't like to shift, but it's in a good cause, and anyway you can't object." he stooped and lifted the loathsome bundle in his arms, and then, in spite of a cry of expostulation from nilssen, walked off with his burden to rabeira's room. the portuguese captain was in his bunk, trying to sleep. he was sober for the first time for many days, and, in consequence, feeling not a little ill. kettle deposited his charge with carefulness on the littered settee, and rabeira started up with a wild scream of fright and a babble of oaths. kettle shut and locked the door. "now look here," he said, "you've earned more than you'll ever get paid in this life, and there's a tolerably heavy bill against you for the next. it looks to me as if it would be a good thing if you went off there to settle up the account right now. but i'm not going to take upon myself to be your hangman. i'm just going to give you a chance of pegging out, and i sincerely hope you'll take it. i've brought our friend here to be your room mate for the evening. it's just about nightfall now, and you've got to stay with him till daybreak." "you coward!" hissed the man. "you coward! you coward!" he screamed. "think so?" said kettle gravely. "then if that's your idea, i'll stay here in the room, too, and take my risks. god's seen the game, and i'll guess he'll hand over the beans fairly." perspiration stood in beads on all their faces. the room, the one unclean room of the ship, was full of breathless heat, and stale with the lees of drink. kettle, in his spruce-white drill clothes, stood out against the squalor and the disorder, as a mirror might upon a coal-heap. the portuguese captain, with nerves smashed by his spell of debauch, played a score of parts. first he was aggressive, asserting his rights as a man and the ship's master, and demanding the key of the door. then he was warlike, till his frenzied attack earned him such a hiding that he was glad enough to crawl back on to the mattress of his bunk. then he was beseeching. and then he began to be troubled with zoological hauntings, which occupied him till the baking air cooled with the approach of the dawn. the smitten negro on the settee gave now and then a moan, but for the most part did his dying with quietness. had kettle deliberately worked for that purpose, he could not have done anything more calculated to make the poor wretch's last moments happy. "oh, massa!" he kept on whispering, "too-much-fine room. you plenty-much good for let me lib for die heah." and then he would relapse into barbaric chatterings more native to his taste, and fitting to his condition. captain kettle played his parts as nurse and warder with grave attention. he sat perspiring in his shirt sleeves, writing at the table whenever for a moment or two he had a spell of rest; and his screed grew rapidly. he was making verse, and it was under the stress of severe circumstances like these that his muse served him best. the fetid air of the room throbbed with heat; the glow from the candle lamp was a mere yellow flicker; and the portuguese, who cowered with twitching fingers in the bunk, was quite ready to murder him at the slightest opening: it was not a combination of circumstances which would have inspired many men. morning came, with a shiver and a chill, and with the first flicker of dawn, the last spark of the negro's life went out. kettle nodded to the ghastly face as though it had been an old friend. "you seemed to like being made use of," he said. "well, daddy, i hope you have served your turn. if your skipper hasn't got the plague in his system now, i shall think god's forgotten this bit of africa entirely." he stood up, gathered his papers, slung the spruce white drill coat over his arm, and unlocked the door. "captain rabeira," he said, "you have my full permission to resume your occupation of going to the deuce your own way." with which parting salutation, he went below to the steamer's bathroom and took his morning tub. half an hour passed before he came to the deck again, and nilssen met him at the head of the companion-way with a queer look on his face. "well," he said, "you've done it." "done what?" "scared rabeira over the side." "how?" "he came scampering on deck just now, yelling blue murder, and trying to catch crawly things that weren't there. guess he'd got jim-jams bad. then he took it into his head that a swim would be useful, and before any one could stop him, he was over the side." "well?" "he's over the side still," said the dane drily. "he didn't come to the surface. guess a crocodile chopped him." "there are plenty round." "naturally. we've been ground baiting pretty liberally these last few weeks. well, i guess we are about through with the business now. not nervous about yourself, eh?" "no," said kettle, and touched his cap. "god's been looking on at this gamble, as i told rabeira last night, and he dealt over the beans the way they were earned." "that's all right," said nilssen cheerfully. "when a man keeps his courage he don't get small-pox, you bet." "well," said kettle, "i suppose we'll be fumigated and get a clean bill in about ten days from now, and i'm sure i don't mind the bit of extra rest. i've got a lot of stuff i want to write up. it's come in my head lately, and i've had no time to get it down on paper. i shouldn't wonder but what it makes a real stir some day when it's printed; it's real good stuff. i wonder if that yellow-faced belgian doctor will live to give us _pratique_?" "i never saw a man with such a liver on him." "d'you know," said kettle, "i'd like that doctor to hang on just for another ten days and sign our bill. he's a surly brute, but i've got to have quite a liking for him. he seems to have grown to be part of the show, just like the crows, and the sun, and the marigold smell, and the crocodiles." "oh," said nilssen, "you're a blooming poet. come, have a cocktail before we chop." chapter ii. the little wooden god with the eyes. the colored mrs. nilssen, of banana, gave the pink gin cocktails a final brisk up with the swizzle-stick, poured them out with accurate division, and handed the tray to captain kettle and her husband. the men drank off the appetizer and put down the glasses. kettle nodded a word of praise for the mixture and thanks to its concoctor, and mrs. nilssen gave a flash of white teeth, and then shuffled away off the veranda, and vanished within the bamboo walls of the pilotage. nilssen sank back into his long-sleeved madeira chair, a perfect wreck of a man, and kettle sat up and looked at him with a serious face. "look here," he said, "you should go home, or at any rate run north for a spell in grand canary. if you fool with this health-palaver any longer, you'll peg out." the dane stared wistfully out across the blue south atlantic waters, which twinkled beyond the littered garden and the sand beach. "yes," he said, "i'd like well enough to go back to my old woman in boston again, and eat pork and beans, and hear her talk of culture, and the use of missionaries, and all that good old homey rot; but i guess i can't do that yet. i've got to shake this sickness off me right here, first." "and i tell you you'll never be a sound man again so long as you lib for congo. take a trip home, captain, and let the salt air blow the diseases out of you." "if i go to sea," said the pilot wearily, "i shall be stitched up within the week, and dropped over to make a hole in the water. i don't know whether i'm going to get well anywhere, but if i do, it's right here. now just hear me. you're the only living soul in this blasted congo free state that i can trust worth a cent, and i believe you've got grit enough to get me cured if only you'll take the trouble to do it. i'm too weak to take on the job myself; and, even if i was sound, i reckon it would be beyond my weight. i tell you it's a mighty big contract. but then, as i've seen for myself, you're a man that likes a scuffle." "you're speaking above my head. pull yourself together, captain, and then, perhaps, i'll understand what you want." nilssen drew the quinine bottle toward him, tapped out a little hill of feathery white powder into a cigarette paper, rolled it up, and swallowed the dose. "i'm not raving," he said, "or anywhere near it; but if you want the cold-drawn truth, listen here: i'm poisoned. i've got fever on me, too, i'll grant, but that's nothing more than a fellow has every week or so in the ordinary way of business. i guess with quinine, whiskey, and pills, i can smile at any fever in africa, and have done this last eight years. but it's this poison that gets me." "bosh," said kettle. "if it was me that talked about getting poisoned, there'd be some sense in it. i know i'm not popular here. but you're a man that's liked. you hit it off with these belgian brutes, and you make the niggers laugh. who wants to poison you?" "all right," said nilssen; "you've been piloting on the congo some six months now, and so of course you know all about it. but let me know a bit better. i've watched the tricks of the niggers here-away for a good many years now, and i've got a big respect for their powers when they mean mischief." "have you been getting their backs up, then?" "yes. you've seen that big ju-ju in my room?" "that foul-looking wooden god with the looking-glass eyes?" "just that. i don't know where the preciousness comes in, but it's a thing of great value." "how did you get hold of it?" "well, i suppose if you want to be told flatly, i scoffed it. you see, it was in charge of a passenger boy, who brought it aboard the _m'poso_ at matadi. he landed across by canoe from vivi, and wanted steamer passage down to boma by the _m'poso_. i was piloting her, and i got my eye on that ju-ju[1] from the very first. captain image and that thief of a purser balgarnie were after it, too, but as it was a bit of a race between us as to who should get it first, one couldn't wait to be too particular." [footnote 1: a ju-ju in west african parlance may be a large carved idol, or merely a piece of rag, or skin, or anything else that the native is pleased to set up as a charm. ju-ju also means witchcraft. if you poison a man, you put ju-ju on him. if you see anything you do not understand, you promptly set it down as ju-ju. similarly chop is food, and also the act of feeding. "one-time" is immediately.] "what did you want it for? did you know it was valuable then?" "oh, no! i thought it was merely a whitewashed carved wood god, and i wanted it just to dash to some steamer skipper who had dashed me a case of fizz or something. you know?" "yes, i see. go on. how did you get hold of it?" "why, just went and tackled the passenger-boy and dashed him a case of gin; and when he sobered up again, where was the ju-ju? i got it ashore right enough to the pilotage here in banana, and for the next two weeks thought it was my ju-ju without further palaver. "then up comes a nigger to explain. the passenger-boy who had guzzled the gin was no end of a big duke--witch-doctor, and all that, with a record of about three hundred murders to his tally--and he had the cheek to send a blooming ambassador to say things, and threaten, to try and get the ju-ju back. of course, if the original sportsman had come himself to make his ugly remarks, i'd soon have stopped his fun. that's the best of the congo free state. if a nigger down here is awkward, you can always get him shipped off as a slave--soldier, that is--to the upper river, and take darned good care he never comes back again. and, as a point of fact, i did tip a word to the commandant here and get that particular ambassador packed off out of harm's way. but that did no special good. before a week was through up came another chap to tackle me. he spoke flatly about pains and penalties if i didn't give the thing up; and he offered money--or rather ivory, two fine tusks of it, worth a matter of twenty pounds, as a ransom--and then i began to open my eyes." "twenty pounds for that ju-ju! why, i've picked up many a one better carved for a shilling." "well, this bally thing has value; there's no doubt about that. but where the value comes in, i can't make out. i've overhauled it times and again, but can't see it's anything beyond the ordinary. however, if a nigger of his own free will offered two big tusks to get the thing back, it stands to reason it's worth a precious sight more than that. so when the second ambassador came, i put the price down at a quarter of a ton of ivory, and waited to get it." kettle whistled. "you know how to put on the value," he said. "that's getting on for £400 with ivory at its present rates." "i was badly in want of money when i set the figure. my poor little wife in bradford had sent me a letter by the last antwerp mail saying how hard-up she was, and the way she wrote regularly touched me." "i don't like it," kettle snapped. "what, my being keen about the money?" "no; your having such a deuce of a lot of wives." "but i am so very domesticated," said nilssen. "you don't appreciate how domesticated i am. i can't live as a bachelor anywhere. i always like to have a dear little wife and a nice little home to go to in whatever town i may be quartered. but it's a great expense to keep them all provided for. and besides, the law of most countries is so narrow-minded. one has to be so careful." kettle wished to state his views on bigamy with clearness and point, but when he cast his eyes over the frail wreck of a man in the madeira chair, he forebore. it would not take very much of a jar to send captain nilssen away from this world to the place of reckoning which lay beyond. and so with a gulp he said instead: "you're sure it's deliberate poisoning?" "quite. the nigger who came here last about the business promised to set ju-ju on me, and i told him to do it and be hanged to him. he was as good as his word. i began to be bad the very next day." "how's it managed?" "don't know. they have ways of doing these things in africa which we white men can't follow." "suspect any one?" "no. and if you're hinting at mrs. nilssen in the pilotage there, she's as staunch as you are, bless her dusky skin. besides, what little chop i've managed to swallow since i've been bad, i've always got out of fresh unopened tins myself." "ah," said kettle; "i fancied some one had been mixing up finely powdered glass in your chop. it's an old trick, and you don't twig it till the doctors cut you up after you're dead." "as if i wasn't up to a kid's game like that!" said the sick man with feeble contempt. "no, this is regular ju-ju work, and it's beyond the belgian doctor here, and it's beyond all other white men. there's only one cure, and that's to be got at the place where the poisoning palaver was worked from." "and where's that?" captain nilssen nodded down the narrow slip of sand, and mangroves, and nut palms, on which the settlement of banana is built, and gazed with his sunken eyes at the smooth, green slopes of africa beyond. "dem village he lib for bush," he said. "up country village, eh? they're a nice lot in at the back there, according to accounts. but can't you arrange it by your friend the ambassador?" "he's not the kind of fool to come back. he's man enough to know he'd get pretty well dropped on if i could get him in my reach again." "then tell the authorities here, and get some troops sent up." "what'd be the good of that? they might go, or they mightn't. if they did, they'd do a lot of shooting, collect a lot of niggers' ears, steal what there was to pick up, and then come back. but would they get what i want out of the witch-doctor? not much. they'd never so much as see the beggar. he'd take far too big care of his mangy hide. he wouldn't stop for fighting-palaver. he'd be off for bush, one-time. no, kettle, if i'm to get well, some white man will have to go up by his lonesome for me, and square that witch-doctor by some trick of the tongue." "which is another way of saying you want me to risk my skin to get you your prescription?" "but, my lad, i won't ask you to go for nothing. i don't suppose you are out here on the congo just for your health. you've said you've got a wife at home, and i make no doubt you're as fond of her and as eager to provide for her as i am for any of mine. well and good. here's an offer. get me cured, and i'll dash you the ju-ju to make what you can out of it." kettle stretched out his fingers. "right," he said. "we'll trade on that." and the pair of them shook hands over the bargain. it was obvious, if the thing was to be done at all, it must be set about quickly. nilssen was an utter wreck. prolonged residence in this pestilential congo had sapped his constitution; the poison was constantly eating at him; and he must either get relief in a very short time, or give up the fight and die. so that same afternoon saw kettle journeying in a dug-out canoe over the beer-colored waters of the river, up stream, toward the witch-doctor's village. two savages (one of them suffering from a bad attack of yaws) propelled the craft from her forward part in erratic zig-zags; amidships sat captain kettle in a madeira chair under a green-lined white umbrella; and behind him squatted his personal attendant, a krooboy, bearing the fine old coast name of brass pan. the crushed marigold smell from the river closed them in, and the banks crept by in slow procession. the main channels of the congo kettle knew with a pilot's knowledge; but the canoe-men soon left these, and crept off into winding backwaters, with wire-rooted mangroves sprawling over the mud on their banks, and strange whispering beast-noises coming from behind the thickets of tropical greenery. the sun had slanted slow; ceibas and silk-cotton woods threw a shade dark almost as twilight; but the air was full of breathless heat, and kettle's white drill clothes hung upon him clammy and damp. behind him, in the stern of the canoe, brass pan scratched himself plaintively. dark fell and the dug-out was made fast to a mangrove root. the africans covered their heads to ward off ghosts, and snored on the damp floor of the canoe. kettle took quinine and dozed in the madeira chair. mists closed round them, white with damp, earthy-smelling with malaria. then gleams of morning stole over the trees and made the mists visible, and kettle woke with a seaman's promptitude. he roused brass pan, and brass pan roused the canoe-men, and the voyage proceeded. through more silent waterways the clumsy dug-out made her passage, where alligators basked on the mudbanks and sometimes swam up from below and nuzzled the sides of the boat, and where velvety black butterflies fluttered in dancing swarms across the shafts of sunlight; and at last her nose was driven on to a bed of slime, and kettle was invited to "lib for beach." brass pan stepped dutifully over the mud, and captain kettle mounted his back and rode to dry ground without as much as splashing the pipeclay on his dainty canvas shoes. a bush path opened out ahead of them, winding, narrow, uneven, and the man with the yaws went ahead and gave a lead. as a result of exposure to the night mists of the river, captain kettle had an attack of fever on him which made him shake with cold and burn with heat alternately. his head was splitting, and his skin felt as though it had been made originally to suit a small boy, and had been stretched to near bursting-point to serve its present wearer. in the forest, the path was a mere tunnel amongst solid blocks of wood and greenery; in the open beyond, it was a slim alley between grass-blades eight feet high; and the only air which nourished them as they marched was hot enough to scorch the lungs as it was inhaled. and if in addition to all this, it be remembered that the savages he was going to visit were practising cannibals, were notoriously treacherous, were violently hostile to all whites (on account of many cruelties bestowed by belgians), and were especially exasperated against the stealer of their idol, it will be seen that from an ordinary point of view captain kettle's mission was far from appetizing. the little sailor, however, carried himself as jauntily as though he were stepping out along a mere pleasure parade, and hummed an air as he marched. in ordinary moments i think his nature might be described as almost melancholy; it took times of stress like these to thoroughly brighten him. the path wound, as all native paths do wind, like some erratic snake amongst the grasses, reaching its point with a vast disregard for distance expended on the way. it led, with a scramble, down the sides of ravines; it drew its followers up steep rock-faces that were baked almost to cooking heat by the sun; and finally, it broke up into fan-shape amongst decrepit banana groves, and presently ended amongst a squalid collection of grass and wattle huts which formed the village. dogs announced the arrival to the natives, and from out of the houses bolted men, women, and children, who dived out of sight in the surrounding patches of bush. the man with the yaws explained: "dem belgians make war-palaver often. people plenty much frightened. people think we lib for here on war-palaver." "silly idiots!" said captain kettle. "hullo, by james! here's a white man coming out of that chimbeque!" "he god-man. lib for here on gin-palaver." "trading missionary, is he? bad breed that. and the worst of it is, if there's trouble, he'll hold up his cloth, and i can't hit him." he advanced toward the white man, and touched his helmet. "_bon jour, monsieur_." "howdy?" said the missionary. "i'm as english as yourself--or rather amurrican. know you quite well by sight, captain. seen you on the steamers when i was stationed at our headquarters in boma. what might you be up here for?" "i've a bit of a job on hand for captain nilssen of banana." "old cappie nilssen? know him quite well. married him to that bengala wife of his, the silly old fool. well, captain, come right into my chimbeque, and chop." "i'll have some quinine with you, and a cocktail. chop doesn't tempt me just now. i've a dose of fever on hand." "got to expect that here, anyway," said the missionary. "i haven't had fever for three days now, but i'm due for another dose to-morrow afternoon. fever's quite regular with me. it's a good thing that, because i can fit in my business accordingly." "i suppose the people at home think you carry the glad tidings only?" "the people at home are impracticable fools, and i guess when i was 'way back in boston i was no small piece of a fool too. i was sent out here 'long with a lot more tenderfeet to plant beans for our own support, and to spread the gospel for the glory of america. well, the other tenderfeet are planted, and i'm the only one that's got any kick left. the beans wouldn't grow, and there was no sort of living to be got out of spreading a gospel which nobody seemed to want. so i had to start in and hoe a new row for myself." "set up as a trader, that is?" "you bet. it's mostly grist that comes to me: palm-oil, rubber, kernels, and ivory. timber i haven't got the capital to tackle, and i must say the ivory's more to figure about than finger. but i've got the best connection of any trader in gin and guns and cloth in this section, and in another year i'll have made enough of a pile to go home, and i guess there are congregations in boston that'll just jump at having a returned congo missionary as their minister." "i should draw the line at that, myself," said kettle stiffly. "dare say. you're a britisher, and therefore you're a bit narrow-minded. we're a vury adaptable nation, we amurricans. say, though, you haven't told me what you're up here for yet? i guess you haven't come just in search of health?" captain kettle reflected. his gorge rose at this man, but the fellow seemed to have some sort of authority in the village, and probably he could settle the question of nilssen's ailment with a dozen words. so he swallowed his personal resentment, and, as civilly as he could, told the complete tale as nilssen had given it to him. the trader missionary's face grew crafty as he listened. "look here, you want that old sinner nilssen cured?" "that's what i came here for." "well, then, give me the ju-ju, and i'll fix it up for you." "the ju-ju's to be my fee," said kettle. "i suppose you know something about it? you're not the kind of man to go in for collecting valueless curiosities." "nop. i'm here on the make, and i guess you're about the same. but i wouldn't be in your shoes if the people in the village get to know that you've a finger in looting their idol." "why?" "oh, you'll die rather painfully, that's all. better give the thing up, captain, and let me take over the contract for you. it's a bit above your weight." kettle's face grew grim. "is it?" he said. "think i'm going to back down for a tribe of nasty, stinking, man-eating niggers? not much." "well," said the missionary, "don't get ruffled. i've got no use for quarrelling. go your way, and if things turn out ugly don't say i didn't give you the straight cinch, as one white man to another in a savage country. and now, it's about my usual time for siesta." "right," said kettle. "i'll siesta too. my fever's gone now, and i'm feeling pretty rocky and mean. sleep's a grand pick-me-up." they took off their coats, and lay down then under filmy mosquito bars, and presently sleep came to them. indeed, to kettle came so dead an unconsciousness that he afterward had a suspicion (though it was beyond proof) that some drug had been mixed with his drink. he was a man who at all times was extraordinarily watchful and alert. often and often during his professional life his bare existence had depended on the faculty for scenting danger from behind the curtain of sleep; and his senses in this direction were so abnormally developed as to verge at times on the uncanny. cat-like is a poor-word to describe his powers of vigilance. but there is no doubt that in this case his alertness was dulled. the fatigue of the march, his dose of fever, his previous night of wakefulness in the canoe, all combined to undermine his guard; and, moreover, the attack of the savages was stealthy in the extreme. like ghosts, they must have crept back from the bush to reconnoitre their village; like daylight ghosts, they must have surrounded the trader missionary's hut and peered at the sleeping man between the bamboos of the wall, and then made their entrance; and it must have been with the quickness of wild beasts that they made their spring. kettle woke on the instant that he was touched, and started to struggle for his life, as indeed he had struggled many a time before. but the numbers of the blacks put effective resistance out of the question. four of them pressed down each arm on to the bed, four each leg, three pressed on his head. their animal faces champed and gibbered at him; the animal smell of them made him splutter and cough. captain kettle was not a man who often sought help from others; he was used to playing a lone-handed fight against a mob; but the suddenness of the attack, the loneliness of his surroundings, and the dejection due to his recent dose of fever, for the first instant almost unnerved him, and on the first alarm he sang out lustily for the missionary's help. there was no answer. with a jerk he turned his head, and saw that the other bed was empty. the man had left the hut. for a time the captive did not actively resist further. in a climate like that of the congo one's store of physical strength is limited, and he did not wish to earn unnecessarily severe bonds by wasting it. as it was, he was tied up cruelly enough with grass rope, and then taken from the hut and flung down under the blazing sunshine outside. presently a fantastic form danced up from behind one of the huts, daubed with colored clays, figged out with a thousand tawdry charms, and cinctured round the middle by a girdle of half-picked bones. he wafted an evil odor before him as he advanced, and he came up and stood with one foot on kettle's breast in the attitude of a conqueror. this was the witch-doctor, a creature who held power of life and death over all the village, whom the villagers suffered to test them with poison, to put them to unnamable tortures, to rob them as he pleased,--to be, in fact, a kind of insane autocrat working any whim that seized him freely in their midst. the witch-doctor's power of late had suffered. the white man nilssen had "put bigger ju-ju" on him, and under its influence had despoiled him of valuable property. now was his moment of counter triumph. the witch-doctor stated that he brought this other white man to the village by the power of his spells; and the villagers believed him. there was the white man lying on the ground before them to prove it. remained next to see what the witch-doctor would do with his captive. the man himself was evidently at a loss, and talked, and danced, and screamed, and foamed, merely to gain time. he spoke nothing but fiote, and of that tongue kettle knew barely a single word. but presently the canoe-man with the yaws was dragged up, and, in his own phrase, was bidden to act as "linguister." "he say," translated the man with the yaws, "if dem big ju-ju lib back for here, he let you go." "and if not?" [illustration: he came and stood with one foot on kettle's breast in the attitude of a conqueror.] the interpreter put a question, and the witch-doctor screamed out a long reply, and then stooped and felt the captive over with his fingers, as men feel cattle at a fair. "well?" said kettle impatiently; "if he doesn't get back the wooden god, let's hear what the game is next?" "me no sabbey. he say you too small and thin for chop." captain kettle's pale cheeks flushed. curiously enough it never occurred to him to be grateful for this escape from a cannibal dinner-table. but his smallness was a constant sore to him, and he bitterly resented any allusion to it. "tell that stinking scarecrow i'll wring his neck for him before i'm quit of this village." "me no fit," said the linguister candidly. "he kill me now if i say that, same's he kill you soon." "oh, he's going to kill me, is he?" the interpreter nodded emphatically. "or get dem big ju-ju," he added. "ask him how cappie nilssen can be cured." the man with the yaws put the question timidly enough, and the witch-doctor burst into a great guffaw of laughter. then after a preliminary dance, he took off a little packet of leopard skin, which hung amongst his other charms, and stuffed it deep inside kettle's shirt. the interpreter explained: "him say he put ju-ju on cappie nilssen, and can take it off all-e-same easy. him say you give cappie nilssen dis new ju-ju for chop, an' he live for well one-time." "he doesn't make much trouble about giving it me, anyway," kettle commented. "looks as if he felt pretty sure he'd get that idol, or else take the change out of my skin." but, all the same, when the question was put to him again as to whether he would surrender the image, he flatly refused. there was a certain pride about kettle which forbade him to make concessionary treaties with an inferior race. so forthwith, having got this final refusal, the blacks took him up again, and under the witch-doctor's lead carried him well beyond the outskirts of the village. there was a cleared space here, and on the bare, baked earth they laid him down under the full glare of the tropical sunshine. for a minute or so they busied themselves with driving four stout stakes into the ground, and then again they took him up, and made him fast by wrists and ankles, spread-eagle fashion, to the stakes. at first he was free to turn his head, and with a chill of horror he saw he was not the first to be stretched out in that clearing. there were three other sets of stakes, and framed in each was a human skeleton, picked clean. with a shiver he remembered travellers' tales on the steamers of how these things were done. but then the blacks put down other stakes so as to confine his head in one position, and were proceeding to prop open his mouth with a piece of wood, when suddenly there seemed to be a hitch in the proceedings. the witch-doctor asked for honey--kettle recognized the native word--and none was forthcoming. without honey they could not go on, and the captive knew why. one man was going off to fetch it, but then news was brought that the krooboy brass pan had been caught, and the whole gang of them went off helter-skelter toward the village--and again kettle knew the reason for their haste. so there he was left alone for the time being with his thoughts, lashed up beyond all chance of escape, scorched by an intolerable sun, bitten and gnawed by countless swarms of insects, without chance of sweeping them away. but this was ease compared with what was to follow. he knew the fate for which he was apportioned, a common fate amongst the congo cannibals. his jaws would be propped open, a train of honey would be led from his mouth to a hill of driver ants close by, and the savage insects would come up and eat him piecemeal while he still lived. he had seen driver ants attack a house before, swamp fires lit in their path by sheer weight of numbers, put the inhabitants to flight, and eat everything that remained. and here, in this clearing, if he wanted further proof of their power, were the three picked skeletons lying stretched out to their stakes. there are not many men who could have preserved their reason under monstrous circumstances such as these, and i take it that there is no man living who dare up and say that he would not be abominably frightened were he to find himself in such a plight. in these papers i have endeavored to show captain owen kettle as a brave man, indeed the bravest i ever knew; but i do not think even he would blame me if i said he was badly scared then. he heard noises from the village which he could not see beyond the grass. he heard poor brass pan's death-shriek; he heard all the noises that followed, and knew their meaning, and knew that he was earning a respite thereby; he even heard from over the low hills the hoot of a steamer's siren as she did her business on the yellow waters of the congo, in crow flight perhaps not a good rifle-shot from where he lay stretched. it seemed like a fantastic dream to be assured in this way that there were white men, civilized white men, men who could read books and enjoy poetry, sitting about swearing and drinking cocktails under a decent steamer's awnings close by this barbaric scene of savagery. and yet it was no dream. the flies that crept into his nose and his mouth and his eye-sockets, and bit him through his clothing, and the hateful sounds from the village assured him of all its reality. the blazing day burnt itself to a close, and night came hard upon its heels, still baking and breathless. the insects bit worse than ever, and once or twice kettle fancied he felt the jaws of a driver ant in his flesh, and wondered if news would be carried to the horde in the ant-hill, which would bring them out to devour their prey without the train of honey being laid to lure them. moreover, fever had come on him again, and with one thing and another it was only by a constant effort of will that he prevented himself from giving way and raving aloud in delirium. it was under these circumstances, then, that the missionary came to him again, and once more put in a bid for the ju-ju which lay at the pilotage. kettle roundly accused the man of having betrayed him, and the fellow did not deny it with any hope of being believed. he had got to get his pile somehow, so he said: the ju-ju had value, and if he could not get hold of it one way, he had to work it another. and finally, would kettle surrender it then, or did he want any more discomfort. now i think it is not to the little sailor's discredit to confess that he surrendered without terms forthwith. "the thing's yours for when you like to fetch it," he snapped out ungraciously enough, and the missionary at once stooped and cut the grass ropes, and set to chafing his wrists and ankles. "and now," he said, "clear out for your canoe at the river-side for all you're worth, captain. there's a big full moon, and you can't miss the way." "wait a bit," said kettle. "i'm remembering that i had an errand here. can you give me the right physic to pull captain nilssen round?" "you have it in that leopard-skin parcel inside your shirt. i saw the witch-doctor give it you." "oh! you were looking on, were you?" "yes." "by james! i've a big mind to leave my marks on you, you swine!" the trader missionary whipped out a revolver. "guess i'm heeled, sonny. you'd better go slow. you'd--" there was a rush, a dodge, a scuffle, a bullet whistling harmlessly up into the purple night, and that revolver was captain kettle's. "the cartridges you have in your pocket." "i've only three. here they are, confound you! now, what are you going to do next? you've waked the village. you'll have them down on you in another moment. run, you fool, or they'll have you yet." "will they?" said kettle. "well, if you want to know, i've got poor old brass pan to square up for yet. i liked that boy." and with that, he set off running down a path between the walls of grasses. a negro met him in the narrow cut, yelled with surprise, and turned. he dropped a spear as he turned, and kettle picked it up and drove the blade between his shoulder-blades as he ran. then on through the village he raged like a man demented. with what weapons he fought he never afterward remembered. he slew with whatever came to his hand. the villagers, wakened up from their torpid sleep, rushed from the grass and wattle houses on every hand. kettle in his berserk rage charged them whenever they made a stand, till at last all fled from him as though he were more than human. bodies lay upon the ground staring up at the moon; but there were no living creatures left, though the little sailor, with bared teeth and panting breath, stood there waiting for them. no; he had cleared the place, and only one other piece of retribution lay in his power. the embers of a great fire smouldered in the middle of the clearing, and with a shudder (as he remembered its purpose) he shovelled up great handfuls of the glowing charcoal and sowed it broadcast on the dry grass roofs of the chimbeques. the little crackling flames leaped up at once; they spread with the quickness of a gunpowder train; and in less than a minute a great cataract of fire was roaring high into the night. then, and not till then, did captain kettle think of his own retreat. he put the three remaining cartridges into the empty chambers of his revolver, and set off at a jog-trot down the winding path by which he had come up from the river. his head was throbbing then, and the stars and the grasses swam before his eyes. the excitement of the fight had died away--the ills of the place gripped every fibre of his body. had the natives ambushed him along the path, i do not think he could possibly have avoided them. but those natives had had their lesson, and they did not care to tamper with kettle's _ju-ju_ again. and so he was allowed to go on undisturbed, and somehow or other he got down to the river-bank and the canoe. he did not do the land journey at any astonishing pace. indeed, it is a wonder he ever got over it at all. more than once he sank down half unconscious in the path, and up all the steeper slopes he had to crawl animal fashion on all-fours. but by daybreak he got to the canoe, and pushed her off, and by a marvellous streak of luck lost his way in the inner channels, and wandered out on to the broad congo beyond. i say this was a streak of luck, because by this time consciousness had entirely left him, and on the inner channels he would merely have died, and been eaten by alligators, whereas, as it was, he got picked up by a state launch, and taken down to the pilotage at banana. it was mrs. nilssen who tediously nursed him back to health. kettle had always been courteous to mrs. nilssen, even though she was as black and polished as a patent leather boot; and mrs. nilssen appreciated captain owen kettle accordingly. with captain nilssen, pilot of the lower congo, kettle had one especially interesting talk during his convalescence. "you may as well take that troublesome wooden god for yourself now," said nilssen. "but, if i were you, i'd ship it home out of harm's way by the next steamer." "hasn't that missionary brute sent for it yet?" captain nilssen evaded the question. "i'll never forget what you've done for me, my lad. when you were brought in here after they picked you up, you looked fit to peg out one-time, but the only sane thing you could do was to waggle out a little leopard-skin parcel, and bid me swallow the stuff that was inside. you'd started out to get me that physic, and, by gum, you weren't happy till i got it down my neck." "well, you look fit enough now." "never better." "but about the missionary brute?" "well, my lad, i suppose you're well enough to be told now. he's got his trading cut short for good. that nigger with the yaws who paddled you up brought down the news. the beggars up there chopped him, and i'm sure i hope he didn't give them indigestion." "my holy james!" "solid. his missionary friends here have written home a letter to boston which would have done you good to see. according to them, the man's a blessed martyr, nothing more or less. the gin and the guns are left clean out of the tale; and will boston please send out some more subscriptions, one-time? you'll see they'll stick up a stained-glass window to that joker in boston, and he'll stand up there with a halo round his head as big as a frying-pan. and, oh! won't his friends out here be resigned to his loss when the subscriptions begin to hop in from over the water." "well, there's been a lot of trouble over a trumpery wooden idol. i fancy we'd better burn it out of harm's way." "not much," said nilssen with a sigh. "i've found out where the value comes in, and as you've earned them fairly and squarely, the dividends are yours to stick to. one of those looking-glass eyes was loose, and i picked it out. there was a bit of green glass behind. i picked out the other eye, and there was a bit of green glass at the back of that too." "oh, the niggers'll use anything for ju-ju." "wait a bit. i'd got my notions as to what that green glass was, and so i toted them in my pocket up and down the river and asked every man who was likely to know a jewel what he thought. they aren't green glass at all. they're emeralds. they're come from the lord knows where, but that doesn't matter. they're worth fifty pounds apiece at the very lowest, and they're yours, my lad, to do what you like with." captain kettle lay back on his pillow and smiled complacently. "that money'll just set up my missis nicely in a lodging-house. now i can go on with my work here, and know that whatever happens she and the kids are provided for." "eh, well," said nilssen with a sigh, "she'll be nicely fixed up now. i wish i could make provision like that for my old women." chapter iii. a quick way with rebels. another bullet came silently up out of the distance, and the nigger second engineer of the launch gave a queer little whimper and fell down _flop_, and lay with his flat nose nuzzling the still warm boiler. a hole, which showed up red and angry against the black wool just underneath his grass cap, made the diagnosis of his injury an easy matter. the noise of the shot came to them quite a long time afterward, when the little puff of smoke which had spirted up from the distant sandbank had already begun to thin under the sunshine; but it was that gun-crack, and not the sight of the dead engineer, which gave the working negroes their final scare. with loud children's cries, and queer dodgings of fear, they pitched down their working tools, and fled to where the other black soldiers and passengers were lying on the iron floor-plates of the launch, in security below her water-line. the belgian commandant, from his shelter at the other side of the boiler, swore volubly, and clay, the english doctor, laughed and twanged out a music-hall tune on his banjo. kettle, intent on getting his vessel once more under command, was for driving the negro crew back to their work by the simple methods peculiar to the british merchant officer. but this commandant balliot forbade, and, as he was kettle's superior in the congo free state service, that small mariner had (very much against his grain) to obey. "we shall have these fellows rebelling next," said the commandant, "if you push them too hard; and if they join the rest, where shall we be?" "there are a thousand of your troops in the mutiny already, according to your tally," said kettle stiffly, "and i don't see that if this hundred joined them it would make much difference to us, one way or the other. besides," he added, almost persuasively, "if i had the handling of them they would not join the others. they would stay here and do as they were told." "captain kettle," snapped the commandant, "you have heard my orders. if i have any more of this hectoring spirit from you, i shall report your conduct when we get back to stanley pool." "you may report till you're black in the face," said kettle truculently; "but if you don't put a bit more backbone into things, you'll do it as a ghost and not as a live man. look at your record up to date. you come up here at the head of a fine expedition; you set your soldiers to squeeze the tribes for rubber and ivory; they don't bring in enough niggers' ears to show that they've used their cartridges successfully, and so you shoot them down in batches; and then you aren't man enough to keep your grip on them, but when they've had enough of your treatment, they just start in and rebel." "one man can't fight a thousand." "you can't, anyway. if the doc and i had turned up with this launch half an hour later, your excellent troops would have knocked you on the head and chopped you afterward. but i'd like to remind you that we ran in-shore and took you away in spite of their teeth." "you are very brave," sneered the commandant, "you and monsieur le docteur." "well, you see," said kettle with cheerful insult, "our grandfathers didn't run away at waterloo, and that gives us something to go upon." "i put you under arrest," screamed the belgian. "i will have satisfaction for this later. i----" "steady on," said clay, with a yawn. he put down his banjo, stretched, and stood up. behind him the bullets pattered merrily against the iron plating. "why on earth do you two keep on nagging? look at me--i'm half drunk as usual, and i'm as happy as a lord. take a peg, each of you, and sweeten your tempers." they glared at him from each side. "now it's not the least use either of you two trying to quarrel with me. we might as well all be friends together for the little time we've got. we've a good deal in common: we're all bad eggs, and we're none of us fit for our billets. monsieur le commandant, you were a sous-officier in belgium who made brussels too hot to hold you; you come out here, and you're sent to govern a district the size of russia, which is a lot beyond your weight. "friend kettle, you put a steamer on the ground in the lower congo; you probably had a bad record elsewhere, or you'd never have drifted to the congo service at all; and now you're up here on the haut congo skippering a rubbishy fourpenny stern-wheel launch, which of course is a lot beneath your precious dignity. "and i--well, i once had a practice at home; and got into a row over a woman; and when the row was through, well, where was the practice? i came out here because no one will look at me in any other quarter of the globe. i get wretched pay, and i do as little as i possibly can for it. i'm half-seas over every day of the week, and i'm liked because i can play the banjo." "i don't see what good you're getting by abuse like this," said kettle. "i'm trying to make you both forget your silly naggling. we may just as well be cheerful for the bit of time we've got." "bit of time!" "well, it won't be much anyway. here's the launch with a hole shot in her boiler, and no steam, drifted hard and fast on to a sandbank. on another bank, eight hundred yards away, are half a regiment of rebel troops with plenty of good rifles and plenty of cartridges, browning us for all they're worth. their friends are off up stream to collect canoes from those villages which have been raided, and canoes they'll get--likewise help from the recently raided. when dark comes, away they'll attack us, and personally, i mean to see it out fighting, and they'll probably chop me afterward, and the odds are i give some of them bad dyspepsia. about that i don't care two pins. but i don't intend to be caught alive. that means torture, and no error about it." he shivered. "i've seen their subjects after they've played their torture games on them. my aunt, but they were a beastly sight." the commandant shivered also. he, too, knew what torture from the hands of those savage central african blacks meant. "i should blow up the launch with every soul on board of her," he said, "if i thought there was any chance of their boarding with canoes." "well, you can bet your life they'll try it," said kettle, "if we stay here." "but how can we move? we can't make steam. and if we do push off this bank, we shall drift on to the next bank down stream." "that's your idea," said kettle. "haven't you got a better?" "you must not speak to me like that," said balliot, with another little snap of dignity and passion. "i'm your senior officer." "at the present rate you'll continue to be that till about nightfall," said kettle unpleasantly, "after which time we shall be killed, one way or another, and our ranks sorted out afresh." "now, you two," said clay, "don't start wrangling again." he took a bottle out of a square green case, and passed it. "here, have some gin." "for god's sake, doc, dry up," said kettle, "and pull yourself together, and remember you're a blooming englishman." clay's thin yellow cheeks flushed. "what's the use?" he said with a forced laugh. "'tisn't as if anybody wanted to see any of us home again." "i'm wanted," said kettle, sharply, "by my wife and kids. i've got them to provide for, and i'm not going to shirk doing it. let me have my own way, and i can get out of this mess; yes, and out of a dozen worse messes on beyond it. the thing's nothing if only it's tackled the right way." "how shall you set about it," asked the commandant. "by giving orders, and taking mighty big care that everybody on this ship carries them out." commandant balliot rubbed at his close, scrubby beard, and bared his teeth viciously. behind him, from the distant sandbank, the rebel bullets rapped unceasingly at the launch's iron plating. "but i am the senior in rank," he repeated again. "officially i could not resign the command in your favor." "yes, i know. but here's the situation packed small: if you climb up, and do the large, and perch on your blessed rank, we shall probably see this day out, but we certainly sha'n't see another in. you're at the end of your string, and you can't deny it." "but if you've a suggestion to make which will save us, make it, and i will act." "no," snapped kettle. "i'll either be boss and carry out my schemes my own way; or else, if we stay on as we are, i hold my tongue, and you can go on and arrange the funeral." "if you can get us out of this mess--" "i've said i can." "then i will let you take the command." "well and good. in the first place--" "wait a minute. i resign to you temporarily; but, understand, even if i wished to, i could not do this officially. when we get down to leopoldville--when we get down to the next post even--" "oh, you can collar the blooming credit," said kettle contemptuously, "when we do get clear away to any of your own headquarters. i'm not looking for gratitude either from a belgian or from the congo free state. they don't like englishmen." "you are not a lovable nation," said commandant balliot spitefully. "now," said kettle, thrusting his fierce little face close up to the other, "understand once and for all that i will not have england abused, neither do i take any more of your lip for myself. i'm captain of the whole of this show now, by your making, and i intend to be respected as such, and hold a full captain's ticket. you'll call me 'sir' when you speak, and you'll take orders civilly and carry them out quick, or, by james! you'll find your teeth rammed down your throat in two twinkles of a handspike. savvy that?" the man of the weaker nation subsided. there was no law and order here to fall back upon. there was nothing but unnerving savagery and vastness. the sandbar where their wrecked launch lay was out in the middle of the congo, perhaps eight miles from the park-like lands which stretched indefinitely beyond either bank. the great river astern of her glared like a mirror under the intolerable sunshine; came up and swirled around her flanks in yellow, marigold-smelling waves; and then joined up into mirror shape again till the eye ached in regarding it. the baking sky above was desolate even of clouds; there was no help anywhere; and on another distant sandbank, where here and there little bushes of powder smoke sprouted up like a gauzy foliage, a horde of barbarous blacks lusted to tear out his life. in commandant balliot's own heart hope was dead. but it seemed that this detestable englishman had schemes in his head by which their lives might yet be saved. he had been given a sample of the englishmen's brazen daring already. after his troops mutinied, and pandemonium reigned in the village where he was quartered, the englishman had steamed up with his paltry stem-wheel launch, and by sheer dash and recklessness had carried him and his last parcel of faithful men away in spite of the mutineers' teeth. it was an insane thing to do, and when he had (as senior officer) complimented kettle on the achievement, the little sailor had coldly replied that he was only carrying out his duty and earning his pay. and he had further mentioned that it was lucky for commandant balliot that he was a common, low-down britisher, and not a fancy belgian, or he would have thought of his own skin first, and steamed on comfortably down river and just contented himself with making a report. the white engineer of the launch--a drunken scot--had, it seemed, been killed in the sortie, which, of course, was regretable; but balliot (who disliked the scot personally) had omitted to make the proper condolences; and it was at this that kettle had taken umbrage and turned the nasty edge of his tongue outward. "now," said captain kettle, "enough time's been wasted. we will start business at once, please. that boiler's got to be mended, first." "but," said balliot, "it's under fire all the time." "i can see that for myself," said the little sailor, "without being reminded by a subordinate who wasn't asked to speak. we take things as we find them, and so it's got to be mended under fire. moreover, as the chief engineer of this vessel was killed ashore, and the second engineer was shot overboard, there's others that will have to take rating as engine-room officers. commandant balliot, have you any mechanics amongst your lot?" "i have one man who acted as armorer-sergeant. he is very inefficient." "he must do his best. can you handle a drill or a monkey wrench, yourself?" "no." "then i shall find you a laborer's job. doc, are you handy with tools?" "only with those of my own trade," said clay. "i'm pretty inefficient all round," he added, with a shrug, "or else i shouldn't be here." "very well," said kettle, "then i'll rate myself chief engineer." he got up, and walked round to where the black second engineer, the last man shot, still nuzzled the boiler plates exactly in the same position where he had first fallen. he lifted one of the man's arms, and let it go. it jerked back again like a spring. "well, daddy," he said, "you didn't take long to get stiff. they shot you nice and clean, anyway. i guess we'll let the river and the crocodiles bury you." with a sharp heave, he jerked the rigid body on to the rail, and even for the short second it poised there the poor dead clay managed to stop another of those bullets which flew up in such deadly silence from that distant sandbank. "good-by," said kettle, as he toppled the corpse over, and it fell with a splash, stiff-limbed into the yellow water. he watched the body as it bobbed up again to the surface, and floated with the stream out into the silvery sunshine. "good-by, cocky," said he. "you've been a good nigger, and, as you were shot doing your duty, they'll set you on at the place where you've gone to, one of the lightest jobs they've got suitable for a black pagan. that's a theological fact. you'll probable turn to and stoke; i'll be sending you down presently another batch of heathen to shovel on the fire. i've got a biggish bill against those beggars on that sandbank yonder for the mischief they've done." but it was no place there to waste much time on sentiment. the woodwork of the shabby little steamer was riddled with splintered holes; the rusted iron plating was starred with gray lead-splashes; and every minute more bullets ploughed furrows in the yellow waters of the river, or whisped through the air overhead, or hit the vessel herself with peremptory knocks. it is all very well to affect a contempt for a straggling ill-aimed fire such as this; but, given a long enough exposure to it, one is bound to be hit; and so, if the work was to be attempted, the quicker it was set about the more chance there was of getting it finished. they use wood fuel on these small, ungainly steamers which do their business up in the savage heart of africa on the waters of the haut congo, and because every man with a gun for many reasons feels himself to be an enemy of the free state, the steamers carry their firing logs stacked in ramparts round their boilers and other vital parts. but wood, as compared with coal, is bulky stuff to carry, and as the stowage capacity of these stern-wheelers is small, they have to make frequent calls to rebunker. indeed, it was for this purpose that kettle had originally put in at the village where commandant balliot had his headquarters; and, as other events happened there which he had not calculated upon, he had steamed out into the broad river again without a chance of taking any logs on board, and, in fact, with his stock of fuel down very near to the vanishing-point. on this account, therefore, after the fatal shot into the boiler, and the subsequent disablement and drifting on to the sandbank, all repairing work had to be done under full exposure to the fire of the mutineers. the central african negro is a fairly stolid person, and as the sight of a little slaughter does not in the least upset his nerves, he can stand bullet hail for a good long time without emotion, especially if there is no noise and bustle attached to it. but once let a scare get rubbed home into his stupid brain, and let him get started off on the run, and he is an awkward person to stop. but kettle did not start to hustle his black laborers back to work at once. he knew that there would be heavy mortality amongst them once they were exposed to fire, and he wanted to lose as few of them as possible. he had got use for them afterward. so for long enough he worked alone, and the bullets spattered around him gayly. he hammered out a lead templet to cover the wound in the boiler, which, of course, as bad luck would have it, was situated at a place where three plates met; and then whilst balliot's armorer with fire and hammer beat out a plate of iron the exact counterpart of this, he rigged a ratchet drill and bored holes through the boiler's skin to carry the necessary bolts. clay volunteered assistance once, but as he was told he would be asked for help when it was needed, he squatted down under the sheltered side of the boiler again, and smoked, and played more music-hall ditties on the banjo. commandant balliot held to a sullen silence. he was growing to have a poisonous hatred for this contemptuous little englishman who by sheer superiority had made him give up his treasured dictatorship, and he formed schemes for the englishman's discomfiture in the near future. but for the present he hoped very much that the man would not be killed; he recognized, with fresh spasms of anger every time he thought about it, that without captain kettle there would be no future--at any rate on this earth--for any of them. and meanwhile captain owen kettle, stripped to shoes and trousers, sweated over his work in the baking heat. twice had a bullet grazed him, once on the neck, and once on the round of a shoulder, and red stains grew over the white satin of his skin. the work was strange to him certainly, but he set about it with more than an amateur's skill. all sailors have been handy with their fingers from time immemorial, but the modern steamer-sailor, during his apprenticeship as mate, has to turn his hand to a vast variety of trades. he is painter, carpenter, stevedore, crew-driver, all in one day; and on the next he is doctor, navigator, clerk, tailor, and engineer. and especially he is engineer. he must be able to drive winch, windlass, or crane, like an artist; he must have a good aptitude for using hand tools; and if he can work machine tools also, it is so much the better for him. yes, captain kettle put the patch on that boiler like a workman. he fitted his bolts, and made his joints; then luted the manhole and bolted that back in place; and then stepped down while a couple of negroes sluiced him with water from gourds, and rubbed him clean and dry with handfuls of wild cotton waste. so far, although the incessant hail of bullets had pitted the boiler's skin in a hundred places, no second shot had found a spot sufficiently soft to make a puncture. the range of the bombardment was long, perhaps, and though a bullet at seven hundred yards may, with convenience, kill a man, it will not pierce seven-eighths boiler plate. and so, theoretically, the boiler was safe for the time being. but practically it was otherwise. the boiler was by no means new. it was corroded with years, and incapacity, and neglect, as is the custom with all parts of boats and machinery on the haut congo. but it had been brought up to that waterway by carriers at vast expense from matadi, the highest steamer port on the lower congo, probably costing three months and a dozen lives in transit, so that it was debited in the books of the free state as being worth its weight in silver, and destined to be used on without replacement till it saw fit to burst. so kettle knew that in places it would be not much thicker than stout brown paper, and was quite aware that if any of the pattering bullets investigated one of these patches, he would have to do his work over again. he had a strong--and, i think, natural--disinclination for this. he had come through terrific risks during the last four hours, and could not expect to do so a second time with equal immunity; his two wounds smarted; and (although it sounds ludicrous that such a thing should have weight) the dirt inseparable from such employment jarred against his neat and cleanly habits, and filled him with unutterable disgust. the moment, he conceived, was one for hurry. he told off four of the negroes as trimmers and stokers, and set commandant balliot over them to see that they pressed on with their work; he sent clay with a huge gang of helpers overboard on the lee side to risk the crocodiles, and dig away the sand; and he himself, with a dozen paddlers, got into the dug-out canoe, which was his only boat, and set to carrying out a kedge and line astern. all of these occupations took time, and when at last steam had mounted to a working pressure in the battered gauge, and they got on board again, two of his canoe-men had been shot, and one of clay's party had been dragged away into deep water by a prowling crocodile. as no one else was competent, kettle himself took charge of the engines, and roared his commands with one hand on the throttle, and the other on the reversing gear; clay, for the moment, was quartermaster, and stood to the wheel on the upper deck; and balliot, under the tuition of curses and revilings, drove the winch, which heaved and slacked on the line made fast to the kedge. the little steamer rolled and squeaked and coughed, and the paddle-wheel at her stern kicked up a compost of sand and mud and yellow water that almost choked them with its crushed marigold scent. the helm swung over alternately from hard-a-starboard to hard-a-port; the stern-wheel ground savagely into the sand, first one way and then the other; and the gutter, which she had delved for herself in the bank, grew gradually wider and more deep. then slowly she began to make real progress astern. "now, heave on that kedge," kettle yelled, and the winch bucked and clattered under a greater head of steam, and the warp sung to the strain; and presently the little vessel slid off the bank, picked up her anchor, and was free to go where she pleased. "hurrah," cried balliot, "we are saved. you are a brave man, captain." "i didn't ask you to speak," retorted kettle. "we aren't out of the wood by a long chalk yet." "but we are out of their fire now. we shall be disturbed no further." "no, my lad, but we've got a precious heap of disturbing to do on our own account before we've squared up for this tea party. i'm going to drop down stream to somewhere quiet where we can fill up with wood, and then i'm coming back again to give your late tommies bad fits." "but i don't authorize this. i didn't foresee--" "very likely not. but a fat lot i care for that. fact remains that i'm skipper here, and i'm going to do as i think best. i've got it in mind that my two engineers and a lot of good niggers have been shot by those disgusting savages over yonder, and i don't permit that sort of thing without making somebody pay a pretty steep bill for the amusement. so i'm going down stream to wood up, and then we'll come back and make them pay for the tea party." "you are exceeding your powers. i warn you." "if any of my inferiors on board ship don't keep their heads shut when they aren't spoken to," said kettle unpleasantly, "i always disarrange their front teeth. if i have any more palaver from you, you'll get to know what it feels like." he shouted up the companion way--"on top there, quartermaster?" "hullo?" said clay. "keep her down river to m'barri-m'barri. that's a twelve-mile run from here. there are two big cotton woods in a line which will bring you to the landing. you know the channel?" "i ought to. i've been up and down it times enough. but i guess i don't--at least, not now." "fuddled again, are you? then i'll con you from here. you see three trees growing on that island bang ahead? keep her on those." he turned to a couple of stalwart niggers at his side--"say, you boys, you lib for top, one-time. you take dem doctor's gin-bottle, and you throw him overboard, one-time. if dem doctor he make palaver, you throw him overboard too. away with you now. by james! we got to get discipline in this ship somehow, and i'm a man that can teach it. here, you black swine at that furnace, go slow with those logs, or we won't be able to steam her half-way." he bustled about the little vessel, turning every soul on board to some employment or other; and those of the newcomers who did not know his wishes, and were not quick enough for his taste, received instruction in a manner which is understood by men all the world over, be their skins black, or white, or yellow. the process might not be very pleasant for those who came in contact with it, but it was very effective for the purpose aimed at. in sea parlance kettle had to "break up" some half-dozen of them before all hands acquiesced to his dictatorship; but they were quick to see there was a man over them this time, and involuntarily they admired his virility even while they rubbed ruefully at their bumps; and during the times of stress that came afterward, none of these africans were so smart to obey as those on whom their taskmaster's hand had originally come heaviest. the period of instruction was short. it began when the little stern-wheeler slipped off the bank and got under weigh. it was completed satisfactorily during the twelve miles run down the river. the boat was steered into m'barri-m'barri creek, made hastily fast to trees on the bank, and exuded her people in an armed rush. they had possession of the place almost before the villagers knew of their arrival, and proceeded to the object of their call. there was no especial show of violence. the women and the children were imprisoned in the huts; the men were given axes, and sent off into the forest to cut and gather fuel; and, meanwhile, the landing party set themselves to eat what they fancied and to carry off any store of ivory and rubber that they might chance upon. there was nothing remarkable in the manoeuvre. it is the authorized course of proceedings when a free state launch goes into the bank for wood and supplies. the villagers brought down the logs smartly enough, and waxed quite friendly on finding that none of the hostage women and children had been killed or maltreated during their absence. they duly gave up the german axes which had been loaned to them, and carried the wood aboard. kettle arranged its disposition. he had solid defences built up all round the vulnerable boiler and engines. he had a stout breastwork built all round inside the rail of the lower deck, quite stout enough to absorb a bullet even if fired at point-blank range. and he had another breastwork built on the third deck, above the cabins, so that he turned the flimsy little steamer into a very staunch, if somewhat ungainly, floating fort. he got on board the rubber and ivory he had collected, and had it struck down below--the dividends of the state have to be remembered first, even at moments of trouble like these--and then he gave orders, and the vessel set off again up stream. on the lower deck he stayed himself during the journey back, and gave instructions to commander balliot in the art of engine-driving. balliot was sullen at first, and showed little inclination to acquire so warm and grimy a craft, and fenced himself behind his dignity. but kettle put forth his persuasive powers; he did not hit the man, he merely talked; and under the merciless lash of that vinegary little tongue, balliot repented him of his stubbornness, and set himself to acquire the elementary knack of engine nursing and feeding and driving. "and now," said kettle, cheerfully, when the pupil had mastered the vague outlines of his business, "you see what can be done by kindness. i haven't hit you once, and you know enough already not to blow her up if only you're careful. don't you even sham stupid again; and, see here, don't you grit your teeth at me when you think i'm not looking, or i'll beat you into butcher's meat when i've hammered these rebels, and have a bit of spare time. you want to learn a lot of manners yet, mr. commandant balliot, and where i come from we teach these to foreigners free of charge. just you remember that i'm your better, my man, and give me proper respect, or i'll lead you a life a nigger's yellow dog wouldn't fancy." now the revolted troops, when they saw the launch wriggle off the bank where she was stuck, and steam away down stream, were filled with exasperation, because they had confidently anticipated making a barbecue out of commandant balliot in return for many cruelties received, and doing the same by any other europeans whom they might catch on the steamer, because, being white, they would be presumably relatives of balliot. it never occurred to their simple minds that the launch would return, much less that she would offer them battle; so when indeed she did appear again, they were in the midst of a big consultation about their future movements. however, the african who owns a gun, be he revolted soldier or mere peaceful farmer, never lets that weapon go far away from his hand, for fear that his neighbor should send him away into the land of shadows in order to possess it. and so a fusillade was soon commenced. but the launch, armed with her fine rampart of logs, bore it unflinchingly, and steamed up within a hundred yards of the thick of them, and just held there in her place, with her wheel gently flapping against the stream, and opened a vicious fire from fifty muzzles. of modern rifles kettle had only twenty on board, but he had an abundance of those beautiful instruments known as "trade guns," and at shot-range a man can be killed just as definitely by a dose of pot-leg out of a gas-pipe barrel as he can by a dum-dum bullet sent through scientific rifling. indeed, for close-quarter righting pot-leg is far more comprehensive, and far less likely to miss than the lonely modern bullet. moroever, his crew had quite as much dread for him as they had for the enemy, and as a consequence they fought with a briskness which made even their grim little chief approve. the crowd of mutineers did not, however, offer themselves to be browned like a pack of helpless sheep for long. they were africans who had been born in an atmosphere of scuffle and skirmish, and death had no especial terrors for them. moreover, they had learnt certain elements of the modern art of war from white officers; and now, in the moment of trial, their dull brains worked, and the crafty knowledge came back to them. they were a thousand strong; they had friends all round--cannibal friends--who would come to help in the fight and share in the loot; and, moreover, they had canoes. other well-manned canoes also were fast coming to their help down stream. in the canoes then they put off, and kettle smiled grimly as he saw the move. he had thought of this before, but it was greater luck than he had dared hope for. but now the enemy had given himself over into his hand. the one strong position of the stern-wheel launch was her forward part. the congo is full of snags and floating logs which cannot always be avoided, and so all steamers are strengthened to stand contact with them; and he could give them the stem now without risk to himself. he pretended flight when the canoes first came out, standing across toward the further bank of the river, which was some dozen miles away. the rebels fell into the lure, and paddled frantically after him. canoe after canoe put out, as fast as they could be manned. the white men on the steamer were running away; they were frightened; there was spoil and revenge to be got for the taking. and from unseen villages on the islands and on the bank other canoes shot out to get their share. in the mean while kettle consolidated his defences. frantically he worked, and like trojans clay and the negroes labored under him. all that drunken doctor's limp _laissez faire_ was gone now. the blood of some fighting ancestor had warmed up inside him. he might be physically weak and unhandy, but the lust of battle filled him up like new drink, and he forgot his disgraceful past, and lived only for the thrill of the present moment. the log barricades had to be lashed and strutted so that no collision could unship them, and all hands sweated and strained in that tropical heat, till the job could not be bettered. and at the after part of the lower deck, commandant balliot, driven on also by the strong-willed man whom nobody on board could resist, tended the engines with all his brain and nerve, and did his best to make the fighting machine perfect. "now," said kettle at last, "as we have got those fool tommies nicely tailed out about the river, we'll quit this running-away game, and get to business. mr. chief engineer, open that throttle all it'll go, and let her rip, and mind you're standing by for my next order. doc, you keep your musketry class well in hand. don't waste shots. but when you see me going to run down a canoe, stand by to give them eternal ginger when they're ten yards from the stern. i'll whistle when you're to fire." captain kettle went on to the upper deck and took over the wheel, and screwed it over hard-a-port. the little top-heavy steamer swung round in a quick circle, lurching over dangerously to the outside edge. she ran for half a mile up stream, and then turned again and came back at the top of her gait. she was aiming at one particular canoe, which for a while came on pluckily enough to meet her. but african nerve has its limits, and the sight of this strange uncouth steamer, which followed so unflinchingly their every movement, was too much for the sweating paddlers. they turned their ponderous dug-out's head, and tried to escape. kettle watched them like a cat. he had the whistle string in his teeth, so as to leave him both hands free for the steering wheel, and when the moment came he threw back his head, and drew the string. the scream of the steam whistle was swamped instantly in the roar of a blasting volley. not many of the shots hit--for the african is not a marksman--but the right effect was gained. the blacks in the canoe ducked and flinched; they were for the moment quite demoralized; and before they could man their paddles again, the stern-wheeler's stem had crushed into their vessel, had cut a great gash from one side, had rolled it over, and then mounted the wreck, and drove down stream across the top of it. a few more angry shots snapped out at the black bodies swimming in the yellow water. "hold up, there," kettle ordered, "and let them swim if they can, and chance the crocodiles. they've got their gruel. load up now, and get ready for the next." he turned the launch again, and stood across the stream down the strung-out line of canoes, occasionally making feints at them, but ramming no more for the present. they all fired at him as he passed them; indeed, a wild, scattered fire was general from all the fleet; but his log armor protected him from this, and he steamed grimly on, without returning a shot. at the furthermost end of the line he turned sharply again, and ran down the last canoe, just as he had run down the other; and then he deliberately started to drive the whole fleet together into one solid flock. he had the speed of them, and with rifle fire they could not damage him, but for all that it was not easy work. they expected the worst, and made desperate efforts to scatter and escape; finally, he drove them altogether in one hopeless huddle--cowed, scared, and tired out; and then he brought the stern-wheeler to a sudden stop just above them, and made clay shout out terms in the native tongue. they were to throw all their weapons overboard into the river. they did it without question. they were to throw their paddles overboard. they did that also. they were to tie all their canoes together into one big raft. they obeyed him there, too, with frenzied quickness. he took the raft in tow and steamed off down river to the headquarters free state post of the upper river. he was feeling almost complacent at the time. he had shown commandant balliot what he was pleased to term a quick way with rebels. but commandant balliot, whose life had been saved, and army disarmed and brought back from rebellion in spite of himself, was not the man to let any vague feeling of gratitude overweigh his own deep sense of injury. he was incompetent, and he knew it, but kettle had been tactless enough to tell him so; and, moreover, kettle had thrown out the national gibe about waterloo, which no belgian can ever forgive. commandant balliot gritted his teeth, and rubbed at his scrubby beard, and melodramatically vowed revenge. he said nothing about it then; he even sat at meat with the two englishmen, and shared the ship duties with them without so much as a murmur. he could not but notice, too, that kettle said nothing more now about being supreme chief, and had, in fact, tacitly dropped back to his old position as skipper of the launch. but balliot brooded over the injuries he had received at the hands of this truculent little sailor, and they grew none the smaller from being held in memory. kettle's own method of reporting his doings, too, was not calculated to endear him to the authorities. he steamed down to headquarters at leopoldville, went ashore, and swung into the commandant's house with easy contempt and assurance. he gave an arid account of the launch's voyage up the great river to the centre of africa and back, and then in ten words described balliot's disaster, his rescue, and its cost. "and so," he wound up, "as the contract was outside mr. balliot's size, i took it in my own hands and carried it through. i've brought back your blooming army down here. it's quite tame now." the commandant at leopoldville nodded stiffly, and said he would confer with captain kettle's senior officer, commandant balliot, after which kettle would probably hear something further. "all right," said the little man. "i should tell you, too, that mr. balliot's not without his uses. with a bit of teaching i got him to handle my engines quite decent for an amateur." he turned to go, but stopped again in the glare of the doorway. "oh, there's one other thing. i want to recommend to you doctor clay. he's a good man, clay. he stood by me well in the trouble we had, after he got roused up. i'd like to recommend him for promotion." "i will see if commandant balliot--as senior officer--adds his recommendation to yours," said the other drily. "good-morning to you for the present." captain kettle went down to the beach, and stepped along the gangway on to the stern-wheel launch. the working negroes on the lower deck stopped their chatter for the moment as he passed, and looked up at him with a queer mixture of awe and admiration. from above came the tinkle of a banjo and the roar of an english song. the doctor was free, and was amusing himself according to his fashion. kettle got his accordion and went up on the hurricane deck and joined him, and till near on sundown the pair of them sat there giving forth music alternately. there was a fine contrast between them. the disreputable doctor deliberately forgot everything of the past, and lived only for the reckless present; the shipmaster had got his wife and children always filling half his memory, and was in a constant agony lest he should fail to properly provide for them. and as a consequence clay's music was always of the lighter sort, and was often more than impolite; while kettle's was, for the most part, devotional, and all of it sober, staid, and thoughtful. they were a strong contrast, these two, but they pulled together with one another wonderfully. kettle used sometimes to wonder why it was, and came to the conclusion that it was the tie of music which did it. but clay never worried about the matter at all. he was not the man to fill his head with useless problems. but on this afternoon their concert was cut short before its finish. commandant balliot came back to the launch with satisfaction on his streaming face, and two armed black soldiers plodding at his heels. "well," said kettle, "have they made you a colonel yet, or are they only going to give you the congo medal?" "you sacred pig," said balliot, "you talked to m. le commandant here of rebels. what are you but a rebel? i have told him all, and he has sent me to arrest you." "good old waterloo," said kettle cheerfully. "i bet you lied, and because you are both belgians, i suppose he believed you." the fat man gritted his teeth. "you talked of having a short way with rebels yourself. you will find that we have a short way here, too. you are under arrest." "so you've said." balliot said a couple of words in the native to one of his followers, and the man produced a pair of rusty handcuffs and held them out alluringly. kettle's pale cheeks flushed darkly. "no," he said, "by james! no, that's not the way for a thing like you to set about it." he jumped to his feet, and thrust his savage little face close to the black soldier's eyes. "give me dem handcuffs." the man surrendered them limply, and kettle flung them overboard. balliot was trying to get a revolver from the leather holster at his waist, but kettle, who had his weapon in a hip pocket, was ready first, and covered him. "throw up your hands!" commandant balliot did so. he knew enough about captain kettle to understand that he meant business. "tell your soldiers to drop their guns, or i'll spread their brains on the deck." balliot obeyed that order also. "now, doc," said kettle in a different tone, "pack your traps and go ashore." "what for?" asked clay. "because i'm going to take this steamer for a cruise up river. i don't mind getting the sack; i'd reckoned on that. but, by james! i'm not going to be arrested by these belgian brutes, and that's final." "well, i suppose they would string you up, or shoot you, to soothe their precious dignity, from what his whiskers here says." "they're not going to get the chance," snapped kettle. "handcuffs, by james! here, clear out, doc, and let me get the ship under way." "no," said clay. "i fancy i've had about enough of the congo free state service, too. i'll come, too." "don't be an idiot." dr. clay gave a whimsical laugh. "have i ever been anything else all my life?"--he went across and took the revolver out of balliot's holster--there, i've burnt my boats. i've disarmed his whiskers here, and defied authority, and that gives them a _casus belli_ against me. you'll have to take me along now out of sheer pity." "very well," said kettle; "help me to shove the three of them into one of the empty rooms below, and then mount guard on them to see they don't make a row. we mustn't have them giving the alarm of this new game till we've got a start on us. you're a good soul, doc. i'll never forget this of you." and so captain owen kettle finally severed his connection with the congo free state service, and set off at once again as his own master. he had no trouble with the black crew of the launch. the men half adored, half dreaded him; and, anyway, were prepared to take his orders before any others. they got the little vessel under weigh again, and just before the gang-plank was pulled in, commandant balliot and his disarmed escort were driven on to the beach. the belgian was half wild with mortification and anger. "you have won now," he screamed. "but you will be fetched back, and i myself will see that you are disgracefully hanged." "if you come after me and worry me," said kettle, coolly, "i'll give you my men to chop. just you remember that, mr. waterloo. i think you know already that i am a fellow that never lies." chapter iv the new republic the fighting ended, and promptly both the invaders and the invaded settled down to the new course of things without further exultation or regret. an hour after it had happened, the capture of the village was already regarded as ancient history, and the two white men had got a long way on in their discussion on its ultimate fate. "no," captain kettle was saying, "no being king for me, doctor, thank you. i've been offered a king's ticket once, and that sickened me of the job for good and always. the world's evidently been going on too long to start a new kingdom nowadays, and i'm too much of a conservative to try and break the rule. no, a republic's the thing, and, as you say, i'm the stronger man of the two of us. doc, you may sign me on as president." dr. clay turned away his face, and relieved his feelings with a grin. but he very carefully concealed his merriment. he liked kettle, liked him vastly; but at the same time he was more than a little scared of him, and he had a very accurate notion that the man who failed to take him seriously about this new scheme, would come in contact with trouble. the scheme was a big one; it purposed setting up a new state in the heart of the état du congo, on territory filched from that power; but the little sailor was in deadly earnest over the project, and already he had met with extraordinary luck in the initial stages. central africa is a country where determined _coups de main_ can sometimes yield surprising results. the recent history of these two vagabond white men cannot be given in this place with any web of detail. they had gone through their apprenticeship amongst these african inlands as officers of the congo free state; they had been divorced from that service with something of suddenness; and a purist might have held that the severance of their ties was complicated with something very near akin to piracy. i know that they had been abominably oppressed; i know that kettle chose running away with his steamer to the alternative of handcuffs and disgrace, and a possible hanging to follow; but there was no getting over the fact that the stern-wheeler was free state property, and that these two had alienated it to their own uses. the black crew of the launch and the black soldiers on board, some seventy head all told, they had little trouble in dragooning into obedience. the central african native never troubles himself much about niceties of loyalty, and as the sway of the congo free state (or "buli matdi," as it is named by the woolly aboriginal), had been brutally tyrannous, the change of allegiance had worried them little. besides, they had been in contact with captain kettle before, and knew him to be that admirable thing, a man, and worthy of being served; while clay, whom they also knew, amused them with his banjo, and held powerful _ju-ju_ in the shape of drugs; and so they went blithely enough where they were led or driven, and described themselves as soldiers or slaves, whichever word happened to come handiest. the african of the interior never worries his head about the terms of his service. so long as he has plenty of food, and a master to do all the thinking for him, he is quite content to work, or steal, or fight, or be killed, as that master sees fit to direct. the progress of the little stern-wheel steamer on her return journey up the haut congo might also give rise to misapprehension here at home, if it were described exactly as it happened. there are no ship's chandlers in central africa, and it is the custom there, when you lack stores, to go to a village on the bank and requisition anything that is available. the arab slave-traders who once held the country did this; the prehistoric people before them founded the custom; and the free state authorities, their lineal descendants, have not seen fit to change the policy. at least, they may have done so in theory at brussels, but out there, in practice, they have left this matter _in statu quo_. there is a massive conservatism about the heart of africa with which it is dangerous to tamper. if you rob a man in that region, he merely respects your superior power. if you offer him payments, he promptly suspects you of weakness, and sets his clumsy mind at work to find the method by which you may be robbed of whatever you have not voluntarily surrendered. "of course," said kettle, taking up the thread of his tale again, "it's understood that we run this country for our own advantage first." "what other object should white men have up-country in africa?" said clay. "we don't come here merely for our health." "but i've got a great notion of treating the people well besides. when we have made a sufficient pile--and, mark you, it must be all in ivory, as there's nothing else of value that can be easy enough handled--we shall clear out for the coast, one-time. and then we must realize on the ivory, and then we can go home and live as christians again." he stared through the doorway of the hut at the aching sunshine beyond. "oh, lord! think of it, doc--home! england! decent clothes! regular attendance in chapel on sundays, and your soul well cared for and put into safe going order again!" "oh, my soul doesn't bother me. but england! that's fine to think about, old man, isn't it? england!" he repeated dreamily. "yes, i suppose i should have to change my name if i did go back. i don't know, though. it'd have blown over by now, perhaps; things do blow over, and if i went to a new part of the country i expect i could still stick to the old name, and not be known from adam. yes, things do blow over with time, and if you don't make too much stir when you go back. i should have to keep pretty quiet; but i bet i'd have a good time for all that. fancy the luxury of having good glenlivet in a cask again, with a tap half-way up, after the beastly stuff one got on the coast, or, worse still, what one gets up here--and that's no whiskey at all!" "well, you needn't worry about choosing your home drinks just now," said kettle. "'palaver no set' here by a very long chalk yet, and till it is you'll have to go sober, my lad, and keep a very clear head." clay came to earth again. "sorry, skipper," he said, "but you set me off. 'tisn't often i look across at either to-morrow or yesterday. as you say, it's a very dry shop this, and so the sooner we get what we want and quit, the sooner we shall hit on a good time again. and the sooner we clear out, too, the less chance we have of those beastly belgians coming in here to meddle. you know we've had luck so far, and they haven't interfered with us. but we can't expect that for always. the congo free state's a trading corporation, with dividends to make for the firm of leopold and co., in brussels, and they don't like trade rivals. what stealing can be done in the country, they prefer to do themselves." "when the time comes," said the little sailor grimly, "we shall be ready for them, and if they interfere with me, i shall make the congo free state people sit up. but in the mean while they are not here, and i don't see that they need be expected. they can trace us up the congo from leopoldville, if you like, by the villages we stopped at--one, we'll say, every two hundred miles--but then we find this new river, and where are we? the river's not charted; it's not known to any of the free state people, or i, being in their steamboat service, would have been told of it; and the entrance is so well masked at its congo end by islands, that no one would guess it was there. the congo's twenty miles wide where our river comes in, and very shallow, and the steamer-channel's right at the further bank. if they'd another englishman in their service up here, i'd not say; but don't you tell me that the half-baked dutchmen and dagos who skipper their launches would risk hunting out a new channel, and blunder on it that way." "no," said clay, "i'm with you there. but word travels amongst the natives. you can't get over that." "that's where the risk comes in. but i've done my best to make it travel slow. i've got hold of that beast of a witch-doctor, who deserves hanging anyway for all the poor wretches he's killed, and i've told him that as soon as word slips out downriver of our being here, he'll get shot, one-time. he's a man of influence, that witch-doctor, and i shouldn't wonder but what he makes the natives keep their heads shut for quite a long time." "it may be professional prejudice, but i rather hope that local practitioner gets his gruel somehow before we clear out." clay shivered. "he's a cruel devil. remember the remains of those two poor sacrificed wretches we found when we got here?" kettle shrugged his shoulders. "i know. but what could one do? niggers always are like that when they're left to play about alone--as these here have been, i suppose, since creation day. we couldn't pin the sacrifices on to the witch-doctor, or else, of course, we'd have strung him up. we could only just give him an order for these customs to stop one-time, and stand by to see it carried out. but we start the thing from now, on fresh, sensible lines. we're going to have no foolery about the nigger being as good as a white man. he isn't, and no man that ever saw him where he grows ever thought so." "speaking scientifically," said clay, "it has always struck me that a nigger is an animal placed by the scheme of creation somewhere between a monkey and a white man. you might bracket him, say, with a portugee." "about that," said kettle; "and if you treat him as more, you make him into a bad failure, whereas if he's left alone, he's a bit nasty and cruel. now i think, doc, there's a middle course, and that's what i'm going to try here whilst we're making our pile. we've grabbed four tidy villages already, and that makes a good beginning for this new republic; and when we've got things organized a bit more, and have a trifle of time, we can grab some others. and, by james! doc, there's a name for you--the new republic!" "i seem to think it's been used in a book somewhere." "the new republic!" kettle repeated relishingly. "it goes well. it's certain to have been used before, but it's good enough to be used again. some day, perhaps, it'll have railways, and public-houses, and a postal service, and some day it may even issue stamps of its own." "with your mug in the middle!" captain kettle reddened. "i don't see why not," he said stiffly. "i started the show, and by james! whilst i'm running it, the new republic's got to hum; and when i'm gone, i shall be remembered as some one out of the common. i'm a man, doctor clay, that's got a high sense of duty. i should think it wrong to stay here sweating ivory out of these people, if i didn't put something into them in return." "well, you do seem to have got a hold over them, and that's a fact, and i guess you will be able to make them--" he broke off, and burst into a cackle of laughter. "oh, my christian aunt, look there!" a mob of natives were reverently approaching the hut, two of them carrying skinny chickens. the witch-doctor led the advance. kettle guessed what was intended, and got up from his seat to interfere. "oh, look here, skipper," clay pleaded, "don't spoil the show. let's do the traveller for once, and observe the 'interesting native customs.' you needn't be afraid; they're going to sacrifice the bigger hen to you, right enough." captain kettle allowed himself to be persuaded, and sat back again. the mob of negroes came up to the doorway of the hut, and the witch-doctor, with many prostrations to the little sailor, made a long speech. then the larger of the two fowls entered into the ceremony, and was slain with a sword, and the witch-doctor, squatting on the ground, read the omens. kettle accepted the homage with glum silence, evidently restraining himself, but when clay's turn came, and the smaller and scraggier of the chickens yielded up life in his honor, he hitched up his feet, and squatted cross-legged on the chair, and held up his hand palm outward, after the manner of some grotesque chinese idol. a sense of the absurd was one of the many things which had hampered this disreputable doctor all through his unlucky career. the negroes, however, took it all in good part, and in time they departed, well satisfied. but kettle wore a gloomy face. "funny, wasn't it?" said clay. "i call it beastly," kettle snapped. "this sort of thing's got to stop. i'm not going to have my new republic dirtied by shows like that." "well," said clay flippantly, "if you will set up as a little tin god on wheels, you must expect them to say their prayers to you." "i didn't do anything of the kind. i merely stepped in and conquered them." "put it as you please, old man. but there's no getting over it that that's what they take you for." "then, by james! it comes to this: they shall be taught the real thing!" "what, you'll import a missionary?" "i shall wade in and teach them myself." "phew!" whistled clay. "if you're going to start the new jerusalem game on the top of the new republic, i should say you'll have your hands full." "probably," said kettle grimly; "but i am equal to that." "and you'll not have much time left to see after ivory palaver." "i shall go on collecting the ivory just the same. i shall combine business with duty. and"--here he flushed somewhat--"i'm going to take the bits of souls these niggers have got, and turn them into the straight path." clay rubbed his bald head. "if you're set on it," said he, "you'll do it; i quite agree with you there. but i should have thought you'd seen enough of the nigger to know what a disastrous animal he is after some of these missionaries have handled him." "yes," said kettle; "but those were the wrong sort of missionary--wrong sort of man to begin with; wrong sort of religion also." and then, to dr. clay's amazement, his companion broke out into a violent exposition of his own particular belief. it was the first time he had ever heard kettle open his lips on the subject of religion, and the man's vehemence almost scared him. throughout the time they had been acquainted, he had taken him to be like all other lay white men on the congo, quite careless on the subject, and an abhorrer of missions and all their output; and, lo! here was an enthusiast, with a violent creed of his very own, and with ranting thunders to heave at all who differed from him by so much as a hairs-breadth. here was a devotee who suddenly, across a great ocean of absence, remembered the small chapel in south shields, where during shore days he worshipped beside his wife and children. here was a prophet, jerked by circumstances into being, trumpeting the tenets of an obscure sect with something very near to inspiration. he preached and preached on till the tropical day burned itself out, and the velvety night came down, and with it the mists from the river. the negroes of the village, with their heads wrapped up to keep off the ghosts, shivered as they listened to "dem small whiteman make ju-ju" across the clearing. clay listened because he could not get away. he knew the man well, yes, intimately; he was constantly dealing him out unpalatable flippancies; but in this new, this exalted mood, he did not care to do less than give attention. the man seemed to have changed; his eyes were bright and feverish; his face was drawn; his voice had lost its shipmaster's brusqueness, and had acquired the drone of the seaman's shore conventicle. there was no doubt about his earnestness; in clay's mind, there was no doubt about the complications which would ensue from it. when dr. clay lay down on his bed that night, his mind was big with foreboding. ever since that entanglement with the woman occurred, which ruined forever his chance of practicing in england, he had gone his way with a fine recklessness as to consequences. he had lived for the day, and the day only; he had got to the lowest peg on the medical scale; and any change would be an improvement. he carried with him an incomplete case of instruments, a wire-strung banjo, and a fine taste in liquor and merriment as stock-in-trade, and if any of the many shapes which death assumes in the congo region came his way, why there he was ready to journey on. but during these last weeks a chance had appeared of returning to england with a decent competency, and he jumped at it with an eagerness which only those who have at one time or other "gone under" themselves can appreciate. in effect he had entered into a partnership with captain owen kettle over a filibustering expedition--although they gave the thing different names--and from the first their ivory raiding had been extraordinarily successful. if only they could collect on undisturbed for another six months at the same rate, and then get their spoils down to the coast and shipped, the pair of them stepped into a snug competence at once. but this latest vagary of his partner's seemed to promise disruption of the whole enterprise. he did not see how kettle could possibly carry out this evangelizing scheme, on which he had so suddenly gone crazed, without quite neglecting his other commercial duties. however, in the course of the next day or so, as he witnessed captain kettle's method of spreading his faith, clay's forebodings began to pass away. there was nothing of the hypocrite about this preaching sailor; but, at the same time, there was nothing of the dreamer. he exhorted vast audiences daily to enter into the narrow path (as defined by the tyneside chapel), but, at the same time, he impressed on them that the privilege of treading this thorny way in no manner exempted them from the business of gathering ivory, by one means or another, for himself and partner. kettle had his own notions as to how this proselytizing should be carried on, and he set about it with a callous disregard for modern precedent. he expounded his creed--the creed of the obscure tyneside chapel--partly in coast-english, partly in the native, partly through the medium of an interpreter, and he commanded his audience to accept it, much as he would have ordered men under him to have carried out the business of shipboard. if any one had doubts, he explained further--once. but he did not allow too many doubts. one or two who inquired too much felt the weight of his hand, and forthwith the percentage of sceptics decreased marvellously. clay watched on, non-interferent, hugging himself with amusement, but not daring to let a trace of it be seen. "and i thought," he kept telling himself with fresh spasms of suppressed laughter, "that that man's sole ambition was to set up here as a sort of robber baron, and here he's wanting to be mahomet as well. the crescent or the sword; kettleism or kicks; it's a pity he hasn't got some sense of humor, because as it is i've got all the fun to myself. he'd eat me if i told him how it looked to an outsider." once, with the malicious hope of drawing him, he did venture to suggest that kettle's method of manufacturing converts was somewhat sudden and arbitrary, and the little sailor took him seriously at once. "of course it is," said he. "and if you please, why shouldn't it be? my intelligence is far superior to theirs at the lowest estimate; and therefore i must know what's best for them. i order them to become members of my chapel, and they do it." "they do it like birds," clay admitted. "you've got a fine grip over them." "i think they respect me." "oh, they think you no end of a fine man. in fact they consider you, as i've said before, quite a little tin--" "now stop it, doc. i know you're one of those fellows that don't mean half they say, but i won't have that thrown against me, even in jest." "well," said clay, slily, "there's no getting over the fact that some person or persons unknown sacrificed a hen up against the door of this hut under cover of last night, and i guess they're not likely to waste the fowl on me." "one can't cure them of their old ways all at once," said kettle, with a frown. "and some genius," clay went on, "has carved a little wooden image in trousers and coat, nicely whitewashed, and stuck up on that old _ju-ju_ tree down there by the swamp. i saw it when i was down there this morning. of course, it mayn't be intended to be a likeness of you, skipper, but it's got a pith helmet on, which the up-country nigger doesn't generally add to portraits of himself; and moreover, it's wearing a neat torpedo beard on the end of its chin, delicately colored vermilion." "well?" said kettle sourly. "oh, that had got a hen sacrificed in front of it, too, that's all. i recognize the bird; he was a game old rooster that used to crow at me every time i passed him." "beastly pagans," kettle growled. "there's no holding some of them yet. they suck up the glad tidings like mother's milk at first, and they're back at their old ways again before you've taught them the tune of a hymn. i just want to catch one or two of these backsliders. by james! i'll give them fits in a way they won't forget." but if captain kettle was keen on the conversion of the heathen to the tenets of the tyneside chapel, he was by no means forgetful of his commercial duties. he had always got mrs. kettle, the family, and the beauties of a home life in an agricultural district at the back of his mind, and to provide the funds necessary for a permanent enjoyment of all these items close at hand, he worked both clay and himself remorselessly. ivory does not grow on hedgerows even in africa, and the necessary store could by no means be picked up even in a day, or even in a matter of weeks. ivory has been looked upon by the african savage, from time immemorial, not as an article of use, but as currency, and as such it is vaguely revered. he does not often of his own free will put it into circulation; in fact, his life may well pass without his once seeing it used as a purchasing medium; but custom sits strong on him, and he likes to have it by him. an african chief of any position always has his store of ivory, usually hidden, sometimes in the bush, sometimes buried--for choice, under the bed of a stream. it is foolish of him, this custom, because it is usually the one thing that attracts the white man to his neighborhood, and the white man's visits are frequently fraught with disaster; but it is a custom, and therefore he sticks to it. he is not a highly reasoning animal, this central african savage. the african, moreover, is used to oppression--that is, he either oppresses or is oppressed--and he is dully callous to death. so the villages were not much surprised at kettle's descents upon them, and usually surrendered to him passively on the mere prestige of his name. they were pleasantly disappointed that he omitted the usual massacre, and in gratitude were eager to accept what they were pleased to term his _ju-ju_, but which he described as the creed of the tyneside chapel. they reduced him to frenzy about every second day by surreptitiously sacrificing poultry in his honor; but he did not dare to make any very violent stand against this overstepping of the rubric, lest (as was hinted to him) they should misinterpret his motive, and substitute a plump nigger baby for the more harmless spring chicken. it is by no means easy to follow the workings of the black man's brain in these matters. but all the time he went on gathering ivory--precious ivory, worth as much as a thousand pounds a ton if he could but get it home. some of it had been buried for centuries, and was black-brown with age and the earth; some was new, and still bloody-ended and odorous; but he figured it all out into silk dresses for mrs. kettle, and other luxuries for those he loved, and gloated even over the little _escribellos_ which lay about on the village refuse heaps as not being worthy to hide with the larger tusks. and, between-whiles, he preached to the newly conquered, ordered them to adopt the faith of the south shields chapel, and finally sang them hymns, which he composed himself especially to suit their needs, to the tunes of "hold the fort," and "from greenland's icy mountains," which he played very sweetly on the accordion. captain kettle might be very keen after business, but at the same time it could never be laid to his charge that he was ever forgetful of the duty he owed to the souls of these heathen who came under his masterful thumb. dr. clay, however, watched all the proceedings now with a jubilant mind. as a political division, the much-talked-of new republic might be said to lack cohesion, but as a conquered tract of country it was very pleasantly in awe of captain kettle. a very comfortable store of ivory was stored in the principal hut of each village they came to, which clay, who commanded the rear guard, always took care to "put _ju-ju_ on" after his senior officer at the head of the force had marched out of the village _en route_ for the next, that being the most satisfactory fashion of warding off pilferers. and last but not least, they had agreed upon their route of exit to a sea-coast, and (in theory at any rate) considered it eminently practicable. the congo, of course, _via_ leopoldville, matadi, and banana was barred to them, on account of their trouble with the free state authorities. their original idea had been to cross the great continent eastward by way of the great lakes, and take shipping somewhere by mozambique or zanzibar. but the barbarous difficulties of that route daunted even kettle, when they began to consider it in detail, and the advantages of the french congo territory showed up brightly in comparison. they still had the little stern-wheel steamer that was filched--i beg their pardon, captured from the free state, and in her, with the loot on board, they must creep down the congo again, almost to stanley pool, steaming by night only, hiding at the back of islands during the days, always avoiding observation. and then they must strike across country due west, till they made the head-waters of the ogowe, and so down to the sea, fighting a way through whatever tribes tried to impede them. the french customs would take their toll of the ivory, of course, but that could not be helped; but after that, a decent steamer again, and the sea, and home. it was an appetizing prospect. but castles in the clouds have been built before, and often it is the unexpected that sets them trundling; and in this case such an ordinary occurrence as a tornado stepped into the reckoning and split this sighed-for edifice of success and prosperity with all completeness. there had been no tornado to clear the atmosphere for nine whole days, and the country was unendurable accordingly. the air was stagnant with heat, and reeked with the lees of stale vegetation. the sky overhead was full of lurid haze, which darkened the afternoon almost to a twilight, and in the texture of this haze, indicated rather than definitely seen, was a constant nicker of lightning. it was the ordinary heat-lightning of the tropics, which is noiseless, but it somehow seemed to send out little throbs into the baking air, till, at times, to be alive was for a white man almost intolerable. [illustration: the little army could only march in single file.] under this discomfort, a predatory column was marching on from one captured village to another, whose possible store of ivory had so far not been gleaned. the road was the ordinary african bush-path, intensely winding and only foot-sole wide; the little army, with kettle at its head, could only march in single file, and clay, who brought up the straggling rear, sweated and panted quite half a mile behind his leader. every one knew the tornado was approaching, and both the worn and haggard white men and the sweating, malodorous blacks hoped for it with equal intensity. for be it known that the tropical tornado passes through the stale baked air at intervals, like some gigantic sieve, dredging out its surplus heat and impurities. the which is a necessity of nature; else even the black man could not endure in those regions. and in due time, though it lingered most cruelly in its approach, the tornado burst upon them, coming with an insane volley of rain and wind and sound, that filled the forests with crashings, and sent the parched earth flying in vicious mud-spirts. in a northern country such a furious outburst would have filled people with alarm; but here, in the tropic wilderness, custom had robbed the tornado of its dignity; and no one was awed. indeed the blacks fairly basked in its violence, turning their glistening bodies luxuriously under the great ropes of rain. the march stopped at the first outbreak of the squall. kettle bolted to a rock ahead of him, and squatted down in a dry lee, sucking up great draughts of the new cool air. there are times when a drop of five degrees of temperature can bring earthly bliss of a quality almost unimaginable. and there he stayed, philosophically waiting till the tornado should choose to blow itself out. the wind had started with a roar and a sudden squall, reaching the full climax of its strength in a matter of thirty seconds, and then with equal hurry it ended, leaving the country it had scoured full of a fresh, cool, glistening calm. kettle rose to his feet, shook his clothes into shape, and gave the order to start. the black soldiers stepped out in his wake, and for half a mile he strode at their head through the new-made mud of the path. but then he was suddenly brought up all standing. word had been tediously handed down the long straggling line of men that there had been an accident in the rear; that a great tree had fallen to the blast; and finally that "dem dokitar, he lib for die." swiftly kettle turned, and worked his way back down the narrow lane of the path. the negroes he hustled against watched him with stupid stares, but he gave them little notice. leaving out the facts that clay was his only white companion and assistant, he had grown strangely to like the man, and the vague report of the accident filled him with more than dismay. he had over a mile to go before he came upon the scene, and when he did get there he found that the first report had exaggerated. clay was not dead, but he lay unconscious on the ground, pinned there by a great cotton-wood which had crashed down before the fury of the wind, and which had fallen across his right leg. to move the tree was an impossibility; but with a sailor's resourcefulness kettle set his men to dig beneath it, so that the imprisoned leg might be released that way; and himself gave them a lead. clay, fortunately for himself, remained the whole time in a state of blank unconsciousness, and at last he was released, but with his leg horribly mangled. a hammock had meanwhile been rigged, and in this he was carried back to the village from which they had set out. kettle led the retreat in front of the hammock bearers. he left his force of soldiers and carriers to follow, or straggle, or desert, as they pleased. the occupation of ivory raiding had completely passed from his mind; he had forgotten his schemes of wholesale conversion; he had nothing but clay's welfare left at his heart. he got the wounded man under cover of one of the village huts, and there, with the help of stimulants, poor clay's senses came back to him, he was lividly pale with pain and the shock, but he was game to the backbone, and made no especial complaint. indeed, he was rather disposed to treat the whole thing humorously. "all the result of having a musical ear," he explained. "i made the boy who carried it put my banjo in a hollow of that tree out of the wet, and when i saw the old stick was going to crash down, i made a grab for the 'jo, and got it right enough. well, i wasn't sufficiently nippy in jumping out of the way, it seems, and as the old banjo's busted for good, i shall have to trouble you for a funeral march on the accordion, skipper." "funeral be hanged!" said kettle. "you're worth a whole cemetery full of dead men yet." "speaking as a doctor," said clay cheerfully, "i may tell you that your unprofessional opinion is rot. now, if i'd a brother sawbones here to perform amputation, i might have a chance--say, one in a thousand." "your leg ought to be cut off?" "just there, above the knee. that'll mortify in twenty hours from now. thank the lord i never wasted much morphia on the niggers. there's plenty in stock. so it won't worry me much." "look here," said kettle, "i will cut that leg off for you." "you! my good skipper, you're a handy man, i know, but what the blazes do you know about amputation?" "you've got to teach me. you can show me the tools to use, and draw diagrams of where the arteries come." "by the powers, i've a great mind to. there's something pretty rich in giving an amputation lecture with one's own femorals as a subject." "you'd better," said kettle grimly, "or i shall cut it off without being taught. i like you a lot too well, my man, to let you die for want of a bit of help." and so, principally because the grotesqueness of the situation appealed to his whimsical sense of humor, clay forthwith proceeded to pose as an anatomy demonstrator addressing a class, and expounded the whole art of amputation, handling the utensils of the surgeon's craft with the gusto of an expert, and never by shudder or sigh showing a trace of the white feather. he carried the whole thing through with a genial gayety, pointing his sentences now with a quip, now with some roguish sparkle of profanity, and finally he announced that the lecture was complete and over, and then he nodded familiarly at his wounded limb. "by-bye, old hoof!" he said. "you've helped carry the rest of me into some queer scrapes, one time and another. but we've had good times together, as well as bad, you and i, and anyway, i'm sorry to lose you. and now, skipper," said he, "get off your coat and wade in. i've put on the esmarch's bandage for you. don't be niggardly with the chloroform--i've got a good heart. and remember to do what i told you about that femoral artery, and don't make a mistake there, or else there'll be a mess on the floor. shake hands, old man, and good luck to your surgery; and anyway, thank you for your trouble." i fancy that i have made it clear before that captain kettle was a man possessed not only of an iron nerve, but also of all a sailor's handiness with his fingers; but here was a piece of work that required all his coolness and dexterity. at home, on an operating table, with everything at hand that antiseptic surgery could provide, with highly trained surgeons and highly trained nurses in goodly numbers, it would have been a formidable undertaking; but there, among those savage surroundings, in that awful loneliness which a white man feels so far away from all his kin, it was a very different matter. it makes me shiver when i think how that little sailor must have realized his risks and his responsibility. it was a situation that would have fairly paralyzed most men. but from what can be gathered from the last letter that the patient ever wrote, it is clear that kettle carried out the operation with indomitable firmness and decision; and if indeed some of his movements were crude, he had grasped all the main points of his hurried teaching, and he made no single mistake of any but pedantic importance. clay woke up from the anaesthetic, sick, shaken, but still courageous as ever. "well," he gasped, "you've made a fine dot-and-go-one of me, skipper, and that's a fact. when you chuck the sea, and get back to england, and set up in a snug country practice as general practitioner, you'll be able to look back on your first operation with pride." kettle, shaken and white, regarded him from a native stool in the middle of the hut. "i can't think," he said, "how any men can be doctors whilst there's still a crossing to sweep." "oh," said clay, "you're new at it now, and a bit jolted up. but the trade has its points. i'll argue it out with you some day. but just at present i'm going to try and sleep. i'm a bit jolted up, too." now, it is a melancholy fact to record that dr. clay did not pull round again after his accident and the subsequent operation. to any one who knows the climate, the reason will be easily understood. in that heated air of central equatorial africa, tainted with all manner of harmful germs, a scratch will take a month to heal, and any considerable flesh wound may well prove a death warrant. captain kettle nursed his patient with a woman's tenderness, and clay himself struggled gamely against his fate; but the ills of the place were too strong for him, and the inevitable had to be. but the struggle was no quick thing of a day, or even of a week. the man lingered wirily on, and in the mean while kettle saw the marvellous political structure, which with so much labor and daring he had built up, crumbling to pieces, as it were, before his very eyes. a company of arab slave-traders had entered the district, and were recapturing his subject villages one by one. at the first attack runners came to him imploring help. it was useless to send his half-baked soldiers without going himself. they knew no other leader; there was not a negro among them fit to take a command; and he himself was tied. he said nothing to clay, but just sent a refusal, and remained at his post. again and again came clamorous appeals for help against these new invaders, and again and again he had to give the same stubborn refusal. his vaunted new republic was being split up again into its primitive elements; the creed of the south shields chapel was being submerged under a wave of red-hot mohammedanism; and the ivory, that hard-earned ivory, with all its delicious potentialities, was once more being lifted by alien raiders, and this time forever beyond his reach. clay got some inkling of what was going on, and repeatedly urged him to be off at once and put things straight in person. "don't you worry about me, skipper," he'd say. "i'll get along here fine by myself. nobody'll come to worry me. and if they did, they'd let me alone. i'm far too unwholesome-looking to chop just now." but kettle always stolidly refused to leave him. indeed, with difficulty (for he was at all times a painfully truthful man) he used to lie to his patient and say that there was no need for him to go at all; that everything was going on quite as they could wish; and that he was vastly enjoying the relaxation of a holiday. but in sober fact things were going very much awry. and every day they got worse. even his original bevy of troops, those he had brought up with him into the country on the stern-wheel launch, seemed to grasp the fact that his star was in the descendant. there was no open mutiny, for they still feared him too much personally to dare that; but in the black unwatched nights they stole away from the village, and every day their numbers thinned, and the villagers followed their lead; and when the end came, the two lonely white men had the village to themselves. clay's last words were typical of him. kettle, with devotional intent, had been singing some hymn to him, which he had composed as being suitable for the occasion. but the dying man's ears were dulled, and he mistook both air and words. "you're a good fellow to sing me that," he whispered. "i know you don't like striking up that sort of music. by jove! i heard that song last at the pav. good old piccadilly circus." and then a little later: "i say, skipper. i'm close on the peg-out. there's a girl in winchester--but hang her, anyway. no, you've been my best pal. you're to have all my share of the loot--the ivory, i mean. you savvy, i leave it to you in my last will and testament, fairly and squarely. and skipper, i'm sorry i ragged you about your mug on those new republic stamps. if ever a man deserved what he wanted in that line, you're--you're--" the voice failed. "yes?" said kettle, and stooped nearer. clay feebly winked. "you're him," he whispered. "so long, old cock." captain kettle buried his friend in the first gold of the next dawn under a magnolia tree, which was hung with sweet-scented blossoms, in the middle of the village. during the heat of the day he composed a copy of verses to his memory, and when the sun had dropped somewhat, he went out with his knife to carve them on the tree above the grave. it appeared that the village was not so completely deserted as seemed to the eye, or, at any rate, that he had been watched. on the newly turned earth was a chicken, which had been sacrificed in the orthodox fashion; and for once he beheld the sight without resentment. he raised his hat to the dead, and "doc," he said, "this hen-killing is bang against my principles, but i won't say anything now. i guess it's some nigger's way of showing respect to you, and, by james! you're a fellow that ought to be admired. if only it hadn't been for that tree falling down, there'd have been two men round here that would have left their mark on africa, and you're one of them. well, old man, you're gone, and i hope you're looking down this moment--or up, as the case may be--to read this bit of poetry i'm going to stick above your head. it's worth attention. it's about the best sample of rhyme i ever hoisted out." chapter v the looting of the "indian sheriff." captain kettle dived two fingers into the bowl of odorous, orange-colored palm-oil chop, and fished out a joint suspiciously like a nigger baby's arm. he knew it was a monkey's; or at least he was nearly certain it was a monkey's; but he ate no more from that particular bowl. the tribe he was with were not above suspicion of cannibalism, and though their hospitality was lavish, it was by no means guaranteed as to quality. the head-man noticed his action, and put a smiling question: "you no like dem climb-climb chop? tooth him plenty sore?" "no," said kettle, "my teeth are all in good working order, daddy, thanks. but now you mention it, the monkey is a bit tough. not been stewed long enough, perhaps." the head-man gave an order, and presently a woman at the cooking fire outside brought another calabash into the hut, and set it at the little sailor's feet. the head-man examined and explained: "dem's dug chop, too-plenty-much fine. you fit?" "i fit," said kettle; "that'll suit me down to the ground, daddy. stewed duck is just the thing i like, and palm-oil sauce isn't half bad when you're used to it. i'll recommend your pub to my friends, old one-eye, when i get home." he dipped his digits into the stew, and drew forth a doubtful limb. he regarded it with a twitching nose and critical eye. "thundering heavy-boned duck this, of yours, daddy." "me no savvy?" said his host questioningly. "i say dem dug he got big bone. he no fit for fly. he no say quack-quack." "oh, i savvy plenty," said the one-eyed man, smiling. "dem not quack-quack dug, dem bow-wow dug. you see him bow-wow dis morning. you hit him with foot, so." "ugh," said kettle, "dog stew, is it? yes, i know the animal, if you say he's the one i kicked. i had watched the brute eating garbage about the village for half an hour, and then when he wanted to chew my leg, i hit him. ugh, daddy, don't you bring on these delicacies quite so sudden, or i shall forget my table manners. african scavenger dog! and i saw him make his morning meal. here, missis, for heaven's sake take this dish away." the glistening black woman stepped forward, but the head-man stopped her. there was some mistake here. he had killed the best dog in the village for captain kettle's meal, and his guest for some fastidious reason refused to eat. he pointed angrily to the figured bowl. "dug chop," said he. "too-much-good. you chop him." this rejection of excellent food was a distinct slur on his ménage, and he was working himself up into passion. "you chop dem dug chop one-time," he repeated. the situation was growing strained, and might well culminate in fisticuffs. but captain kettle, during his recent many months' sojourn as a lone white man in savage africa, had acquired one thing which had never burdened him much before, and that was tact. he did not openly resent the imperative tone of his host, which any one who had known him previously would have guessed to be his first impulse. but neither at the same time did he permit himself to be forced into eating the noxious meal. he temporized. with that queer polyglot called coast english, and with shreds from a score of native dialects, he made up a tattered fabric of speech which beguiled the head-man back again into good humor; and presently that one-eyed savage squatted amicably down on his heels, and gave an order to one of his wives in attendance. the lady brought kettle's accordion, and the little sailor propped his back against the wattle wall of the hut, and made music, and lifted up his voice in song. the tune carried among the lanes and dwellings of the village, and naked feet _pad-padded_ quickly up over dust and the grass; the audience distributed itself within and without the head-man's hut, and listened enrapt; and the head-man felt the glow of satisfaction that a london hostess feels when she has hired for money the most popular drawing-room entertainer of the day, and her guests condescend to enjoy, and not merely to exhibit themselves as _blases_. but captain kettle, it must be confessed, felt none of the artist's pride in finding his art appreciated. he had always the south shields chapel at the back of his mind, with its austere code and creed, and he felt keenly the degradation of lowering himself to the level of the play-actor; even though he was earning his bare existence--and had been doing all through the heart of barbarous africa--by mumming and carolling to tribes whose trade was murder and cannibalism. he felt an infinite pity for himself when he reflected that many a time nothing but a breakdown, or a loudly bawled hymn, or a series of twisted faces, had been the only thing which stood between him and the cooking fires. but there was no help for it. he was a fighting man, but he could not do battle with a continent; and so he had either to take the only course which remained, and lower himself (as he considered it) to the level of the music-hall pariah, and mouth and mow to amuse the mob, or else accept the alternative which even the bravest of men might well shrink from in dismay. his travel through the black heart of this black continent may have been paralleled by that of other obscure heroes who voyaged from grim necessity and not for advertisement, but the history of it, as it was told me in his simple log-book style, far surpasses the wonder of any of those travels which find a place in published volumes. he had started, a completely destitute man, from a spot far up on the haut congo, amidst treacherous hostile population. he had not a friend in africa, black or white. he had no resources save his tongue, his thews, an empty revolver, and his mother wit, and yet he had won a slow way down to the western seaboard through a hundred hostile tribes, where an army would have been eaten up, and a marco polo might well have failed. it would suit my pleasure finely to write of this terrific journey, with its dangers, its finesses, and its infinite escapes; it would gratify me to the quick if i might belaud to the full of my appreciation the endurance, and the grand resourcefulness, of this little sailor cast so desperately out of his more native element; but the account of the travel is reserved for the pen of captain kettle himself, and so the more professional scribe may not poach upon his territory. i had it from his own lips that the perils of the way made him see the poetry of it all, and he said to himself that here was the theme for that great epic, which would be the _chef d'oeuvre_ of his literary life. it is to be written in blank verse, with the hymns and secular songs he sang at each stop given in an appendix, and he confidently hopes that it will stand out as something conspicuous and distinct against the sombre background of prosaic travel books. his arrival at the coast was an achievement that made him almost faint with joy. xenophon and his ten thousand greeks hailed the sea, we are told, with a mighty shout. but to them thalassa was merely a way-mark, a sign that they were nearing home. to kettle it was more, far more, although he could not define the relationship. he had dwelt upon the sea the greater part of his days; he had got his meagre living from her; and although at all times she had been infinitely hard and cruel to him, and he had cursed her day in and day out with all a seaman's point and fluency, she had wrapped herself into his being in a way he little guessed, till separation showed him the truth. he had seen the glint of her through the trees as he entered this last village of his march, but the air was too dull with heat for him to catch so much as a whiff of her refreshing saltness, and for the present he could not go down to greet her. he was still the lonely troubadour, dressed in a native cloth around the loins, with a turban of rags upon his head, and a battered accordion slung from his back, come in from afar to sing and pull faces for a dinner. the meal, for reasons which have been stated, was not a success, but payment had to be rendered all the same. he sang with noise, and made antics such as experience had taught him would be acceptable; and the audience, to whom a concert of this kind was a rarity, howled to him to go on. there was no escape. he had to sing till he could sing no more. it was far on into the night when a couple of native _tom-tom_ players rescued him. the musical appetites of the village had been whetted rather than appeased, and as no more could be got out of this wandering minstrel, why then they were quite ready to listen to local instruments and melody. dancing commenced, and the heat and the noise grew, and presently kettle managed to slip away and walk out through the yam and manioc gardens, and the banana groves, to the uproarious beach beyond. he threw himself wearily down on the warm white sand, and when the great rollers swept in and crashed into noisy bellowing surf, the spindrift from it drove on him, and refreshed him luxuriously. it was almost worth going through all he had suffered to enjoy the pleasures of that greeting. for long-enough he filled his eye on the creaming fringes of the surf, and then he glanced over it at the purple plain of ocean which lay level and unruffled beyond. a great african moon glowed above it in the night, and the lonely vastness of it all gratified him like the presence of a friend. "you are a decent old puddle," he murmured to himself, "though i say it that's got precious little from you beyond mud and slashing. it's good to be back in reach of the stink of you again." he lay on where he was deep into the night, revelling in the companionship of the sea, till the many-colored land-crabs began to regard him as mere jetsam. he was not consciously thinking. he was letting his mind rest in an easy torpor; but from time to time he let his eyes range through the purple dark with a seaman's mechanical watchfulness. the noise of the _tom-toms_ and the dancing from the village behind him had died away, and nothing but the sounds from the bush, and the din of the surf, remained to show that the world was alive. the moon, too, had been smothered by a cloud bank, and night lay huddled close round him, with a texture like black velvet. then, with a jump he was on his feet, and trembling violently. another old friend was in his neighborhood--a steamer. her masthead light had just twinkled into view. he got up and began walking nervously toward her along the hard, white sands. he saw her first in the northwest, coming from some port in the bight of biafra probably, and the odds were she was heading south along the coast. presently he picked up her red port light. yes, he admitted to himself with a sigh, she was making for one of the ports to southward, for sette camma perhaps, or loango, or landana, or kabenda, and he calmed himself down with the discovery. had she been heading north, he had it in him to have swum out to her through the surf and the sharks, and chanced being picked up. he was sick of this savage africa which lay behind him. the sight of those two lights, the bright white, and the duller red, let him know how ravenous was his hunger to see once more a white man and a white man's ship, and to feel the sway of a deck, and to smell the smells of oil, and paint, and christian cookery, from which he had been for such a weary tale of days divorced. the steamer drew on till she came a-beam, and the red port light was eclipsed, and "carrying no stern light," was captain kettle's comment. there was a small glow from her deck and two or three of her ports were lit, but for the most part she crept along as a mysterious black ship voyaging into a region of blackness. it was too dark to make out more than her bare existence, but kettle took a squint at the southern cross, which hung low in the sky like an ill-made kite, to get her bearings, and so made note of her course, and from that tried to deduce her nationality. from the way she was steering he reckoned she came from batanga or cameroons, which are in german territory, and so set her down as sailing originally from marseilles or hamburg, and anyway decided that she was not one of the liverpool boats which carry all the west coast trade to england. but as he watched, she seemed to slew out of her course. she lengthened out before him across the night, as her bows sheered in toward the land, till he saw her broadside on, and then she hung motionless as a black blot against the greater blackness beyond. captain kettle summed the situation: "rounded up and come to an anchor. there'll be a factory somewhere on the beach there. but i don't know, though. that one-eyed head-man said nothing about a factory, and if there was one, why doesn't she whistle to raise 'em up so's they'd be ready to bring off their bit o' trade in the surf-boats when day breaks?" a cloud slid away in the sky, and the moon shone out like the suddenly opened bulb of a dark lantern. the oily surface of the sea flashed up into sight, and on it sat the steamer--a picture in black and silver. she lay there motionless as the trees on the beach, and the reason for her state was clear. her forefoot soared stiffly aloft till it was almost clear of the water; her stern was depressed; her decks listed to port till it was an acrobatic feat to make passageway along them. captain kettle whistled to himself long and dismally. "piled her up," he muttered, "that's what her old man has done. hit a half-ebb reef, and fairly taken root there. he's not shoved on his engines astern either, and that means she's ripped away half her bottom, and he thinks she'll founder in deep water if he backs her off the ground." a tiny spit of flame, pale against the moonlight, jerked out from under the awnings of the steamer's upper bridge. the noise of the shot came some time afterward, no louder than the cracking of a knuckle. "by james! somebody's getting his gun into use pretty quick. well, it's some one else's trouble, and not mine, and i guess i'm going to stay on the beach, and watch, and not meddle." he frowned angrily as though some one had made a suggestion to him. "no, by james! i'm not one of those that seeks trouble unnecessarily." but all the same he walked off briskly along the sand, keeping his eyes fixed on the stranded steamer. that some sort of a scuffle was going on aboard of her was clear from the shouts and the occasional pistol shots, which became louder as he drew more near; and captain kettle, connoisseur as he was of differences of this sort on the high seas, became instinctively more and more interested. and at last when he came to a small canoe drawn up on the beach above high-water mark, he paused beside it with a mind loaded with temptation as deep as it would carry. the canoe was a dug-out, a thing of light cotton-wood, with washboards forward to carry it through a surf. a couple of paddles and a calabash formed its furniture, and its owner probably lived in the village where he had sung for his dinner over-night. of course, to borrow her--merely to borrow her, of course--without permission was-another splatter of pistol shots came from the steamer, and a yelping of negro voices. captain kettle hesitated no longer. he laid hands on the canoe's gunwale, and ran her down into the edge of the surf. he had barely patience to wait for a smooth, but, after three rollers had roared themselves into yeast and quietude, he ran his little craft out till the water was arm-pit deep, and then scrambled on board and paddled furiously. but it is not given to the european to equal the skill of the black on african surf beaches, and, as might be expected, the next roller that swooped in overended the canoe, and sent it spinning like a toy through the broken water. but captain kettle had gained some way; and if he could not paddle the little craft to sea, he could at least swim her out; and this he proceeded to do. he was as handy as an otter in the water, and besides, there was something here which was dragging him to seaward very strongly. his soul lusted for touch with a steamer again with a fierceness which he did not own even to himself. even a wrecked steamer was a thing of kinship to him then. he swam the dug-out through the last drench and backtow of the surf, rocked her clear from part of her watery load, and then, with a feeling of relief, clambered gingerly on board and baled the rest over the gunwale with his hands. it is not good to stay over-long in these seas which fringe the west african beaches, by reason of the ground shark which makes them his hunting-ground. and then he manned the paddle, knelt in the stern, and went the shortest way to the steamer which perched on the rock. the moon was still riding in the sky, but burnt with a pale light now, as dawn had jumped up from behind the shore forests. all things were shown clearly. among other matters, kettle noted from trifles in her garnishing, which read clear as print to a seaman's eye, that the steamer was not french or german as he had guessed before, but hailed from his own native islands. moreover, her funnel told him that she was not one of the two regular lines from liverpool, which do all the commerce of the coast. but he had no time for fresh speculations just then as to her business. the scuffling on board had been growing more and more serious, and it was clear that the blacks of her complement were giving the whites more than they cared about. kettle knew enough of the custom of the coast to be able to sum the situation. "her krooboys have broken out of hand," he commented. "that's what's the trouble. you come down here from england with just enough white men to handle your vessel to sierra leone, and then you ship krooboys to work cargo and surf-boats, and do everything except steer, and as long as nothing happens, your krooboy is a first-class hand. two cupfuls of rice and a bit offish is all the grub he wants; he'll work sixteen hours a day without a grunt; and he'll handle a winch or a steam crane with any geordie donkey-man that has been grounded in the shops. but just put your steamboat on the ground where he thinks she can't get off, and there's a different tune to play. he's got a notion that the ship's his, and the cargo's his, to loot as he likes, and if he doesn't get 'em both, he's equal to making trouble. seems to me he's making bad trouble now." by this time it was plain that the black men had got entire possession of the lower parts of the ship. the small handful of whites were on the top of the fiddley, and while most were fighting to keep the africans back, a couple were frenziedly working to get a pair of davits swung outboard, and a lifeboat which hung from them lowered into the water. it was clear they had given up all hope of standing by the ship; and presently they got the boat afloat, and slid down to her in hurried clusters by the davit falls, and then unhooked and rowed away from the steamer's side in a skelter of haste. coals and any other missile that came handy were showered upon them by the krooboys who manned the rail, to which they replied with a few vicious revolver shots; and then the boat drew out of range. captain kettle, in his clumsy canoe, paddled up close to her and nodded, and gave the boat's people a "good-morning." the greeting was quaintly enough out of place, but nobody seemed to notice that. each party was too occupied in staring at the other. those in the lifeboat saw a little lean european, naked to the waist, clad only in a turban and native cloth, and evidently (from the color of his skin) long inured to that state. kettle saw a huddle of fugitives, all of them scared, and many of them bloody with wounds. the man who was steering the white boat, the steamer's mate he was, according to the gold lace on his cuff, spoke first. "well," he said, "you're a funny enough looking beachcomber. what do you want, anyway?" captain kettle felt himself to redden all over under the tan of his skin. neatness in clothes was always a strong point with him, and he resented the barbarism of his present get-up acutely. "if i wanted a job at teaching manners, i could find one in your boat, that's certain," was his prompt retort. "and when i'd finished with that, i could give some of you a lesson in pluck without much harm being done. i wonder if you call yourselves white men to let a crowd of niggers clear you out of your ship like that?" "now, look here, robinson crusoe," said the man at the steering oar, "our tempers are all filed up on the raw edge just now, and if you give much lip, this boat will be rowed over the top of your noah's ark before you know what's hit it. you paddle back to your squaw and piccaninnies on the beach, robinson, and don't you come out here to mock your betters when they're down on their luck. we've nothing to give you except ugly words, and you'll get them cheap." "well, mr. mate," said kettle, "i haven't heard white man's english for a year, but if you can teach me anything new, i'm here to learn. i've come across most kinds of failure in my time, but a white man who lets himself be kicked off his ship by a parcel of krooboys, and who disgraces great britain by being a blooming englishman, is a specimen that's new to me. but perhaps i'm making a mistake? perhaps you're a dutchman or a dago that's learnt the language? or perhaps, to judge from that cauliflower nose of yours, you're something that's escaped out of a freak museum? you haven't a photo about you by any chance? i'd like to send one home to south shields. my missis is a great hand at collecting curiosities which you only see in foreign parts." the mate bent on the steering gear with sudden violence, turned the lifeboat's head with a swirl, and began sculling her toward the canoe. but a tall, thin man sitting beside him in the stern-sheets said something to him in an undertone, and the mate reluctantly let the oar drag limp in the water, and sat himself down, and ostentatiously made ready to roll a cigarette. "now, look here," said the tall man, "i don't suppose you want to quarrel." "i've been in quarrels before for the sheer fun of the thing," said kettle, who was determined that at any rate no apology should come from his side. "so have i," said the tall man, "but i've no time for empty amusement just now. i'm down here on business. i'm trying to start a new steamer line to work this coast and get away the monopoly from the other companies. that boat stuck yonder--the _indian sheriff_ she's called--is my venture, and she represents about all i've got, and she isn't underwritten for a sixpence. i've been going nap or nothing on this scheme, and at present it looks uncommon like nothing. what i'm anxious about now, is to see if i can't make some arrangement for salvage." "i can understand it would be useful to you." "it might be useful to others besides me. now, there's you, for instance. i dare say you've got a nice little establishment ashore, and some simple comforts, and a bit of influence in your village. but you spoke about your wife at home in south shields just now, and i make no doubt that if you'd got a tidy sum of money in your pocket you'd be as pleased as not to get home to her again?" captain kettle was on the point of breaking out into explanations and disavowals, but a thought came to him, and he refrained. "well," he said, "i'm waiting to hear your offer." "here it is, then. you go ashore now, raise your village, bring off every nigger you can scare up, swamp the krooboys on that steamboat and keep her from being looted, and i solemnly promise you 25 per cent. of her value and the value of what she has in her." "yes," said kettle thoughtfully. "that's a square enough offer, and it's made before witnesses, and i believe the courts would make you stick to it." "ho!" grunted the mate, "robinson's a sea lawyer, is he? courts, he talks about." kettle ignored the suggestion. "should i know your name, sir?" he asked of the tall man. "i'm nicholson sheriff. if you know liverpool, you'll have heard of me." "you were with kevendales?" "that's me. i left there two years ago, to start on my own." "h'm," said the little sailor in the canoe. "i was master of one of kevendale's ships once. it was me that had misfortune with the _armenia_." "by gum! are you captain kettle that piled up the old _atrocity_ on that iceberg? i'm sorry to see you come down to this, captain." "captain kettle," said the sulky mate, "that was in the congo pilot service?" "yes," said kettle. "then, captain," said the mate, "i take back what i said about you being robinson crusoe. you may have met with misfortune, but, by the lord, you're a man all the way through. you've made the ports down there on the congo just ring with the way you kept your end up with those beastly belgians. and now when any englishman goes ashore at boma or matadi or any place on the river, they're fit to eat him." the compliment had its doubtful side, but kettle bowed with pleasure. "mr. mate," he said, "i should have been more polite to you. i forgot you were a man who had just come through an anxious time." "anxious time! my holy grandmother! you should have just seen. it was my watch below when she took the ground, and i give you my word for it, there's deep water marked in the chart where she struck. third mate had the bridge, and he rang for engines hard astern. nothing happened. from the first moment she hit, the krooboys got the notion she was their ship by all the rules of the coast, and they played up to that tune like men. they bashed in the heads of the two engineers who tried to handle the reversing gear, and fairly took the ship below; and when the old man came out in his pyjamas and started his fancy shooting on deck, they just ran in on him and pulled him into kybobs. "the second mate pegged out a week ago with black-water fever. so there was only me and mr. sheriff here, and the third left that were worth counting." he wagged a stubby finger contemptuously at the rest of his boat's crew. "half this crowd don't know enough english to take a wheel, and the rest of them come from happy dutchland, where they don't make soldiers, bless their silly eyes. i can tell you i'm not feeling sweet about it myself. i left a bran new suit of clothes and an accra finger-ring on that blame' ship." "well, never mind the rest of the tale now," said sheriff. "here we are kicked overboard, and glad enough to save our bare skins, i'll own. we won't go into the question of manning british ships with foreigners just now. what's interesting me is the fact that those krooboys have got hatches off already, and are standing by the cranes and winches. i've seen them work cargo before all up and down the coast, and know the pace they can put into it, and if we don't move quick they'll scoff that ship clear down to the ceilings of her holds." a winch chain rattled, and a sling load of cloth bales swung up to one of her derrick sheaves. "my faith, look at that! they've begun to broach cargo by now, and there are some of the beggars setting to lower the surf-boats to ferry it on to the beach." the mate rapped out sulphurous wishes for the krooboys' future state. "yes, yes," said sheriff, "but we're wasting time. come now, captain, you heard my offer, and you seemed to like it. i'm waiting for you to fill your part of the bargain. away with you ashore, and bring off your army and take possession." "i'm afraid, sir," said kettle honestly, "you've been taking a little too much for granted. i've got no establishment ashore. i'm just what you see--a common tramp, or worse, seeing that i've been play-acting for my dinners of late. and as for any help those niggers ashore could give, why, i shouldn't recommend it. the one-eyed old son of a dog who's head-man, has served on ships according to his own telling, and he'll have the same notions about loot as your own krooboys. the coast nigger hereabouts has got a fancy that any ship on the beach is cumshaw for himself, and you'll not knock it out of him without some hard teaching. no, mr. sheriff, to call in that one-eyed head-man and his friends--who it makes me hot to think i had to sing and dance to not six hours back--would only pile up the work ahead of us. much best tackle the ship as she is." "what!" said sheriff. "do you mean to say we can retake her? you don't know what those boys are like. i tell you they were fair demons when we left, and they'll be worse now, because they are certain to have got liquor inside them by this. it's not a bit of use your counting on these deckhands and stokers in the boat. they're not a penn'oth of use, the whole lot of them." "well," said kettle diffidently, "i'd got my eye on that packet of cartridge beside you on the thwart. if they were four-fiftys--" "they are--let's look--four--five--nought. yes, well?" captain kettle pulled a well-cleaned revolver out of his waist-cloth. "i've carried this empty for a whole year now, sir, but i don't think i've forgot my shooting." "i can speak here," said the mate. "i've heard of his usefulness that way on the congo. when captain kettle lets off his gun, mr. sheriff, it's a funeral. by gum, if he's a way of getting the ship again, i'm on for helping. look! there's that steward's boy, tins, going into my room this minute. i've a suit of clothes there that have never been put on, and he'll have them for a cert if we don't look quick." "now then, captain," said sheriff, "if there's anything going to be done, get a move on you." kettle paddled the dug-out alongside, and stepped into the lifeboat. his eye glittered as he tore open the wrapping of the cartridges and reloaded his revolver. it was long since he had known the complacent feel of the armed man. "now," he said, "there's one more thing. i'm not in uniform, but i hold a master's ticket, and i've got to be skipper." "you can take the berth for me," said the mate. "i'll say outright it's a lot above my weight." "and i've offered it to you already," said sheriff. "go on, man, and give your orders." captain kettle's first desire was to get back to the steamer whence the boat had come, and this the mixed crew of foreigners at the oars had scruples about carrying out. but kettle and the mate got furiously at work on them with their hands, and in less than a minute the men were doing as they were bidden, except, that is, a trio who were too badly wounded to sit up, and who were allowed to wallow on the floor gratings. the mate straddled in the stern and steered her with an oar, and the white painted boat pulled heavily toward the stranded vessel. the krooboys in possession were quick to see her coming. a mob of them gathered on the bridge deck, gibbering and shouting, and threatening with their hands; and even before the boat drew within range, they commenced a vigorous fusilade of coal lumps. kettle had all a cleanly man's dislike for these dirty missiles, and he halted the boat just beyond the limit of their fire, and stood up himself, and sighted the revolver over the crook of his left elbow. he dropped one man, and the others raged at him. he dropped a second, and still with an impotent courage they stood their ground. he brought a third shrieking to the deck, and then, and not before, did the others turn to run, and he shot a fourth to hurry their going. then he turned to the rowers in the lifeboat. "give way, you thieves," he shouted at them; "set me aboard whilst the coast is clear.--mr. mate, round her up under those davit tackles." again the krooboys tried to prevent the boarding, but again the fire of that terrible revolver drove them yelping to shelter, and the boat drew up with a bump and a swirl under the dangling ropes. kettle clambered forward along the thwarts, and swarmed up one fall with a monkey's quickness, and the mate, a man of wooden courage, raced him up the other. sheriff could not climb; they had to haul him up the ship's side by brute force in a bowline; and providentially they were allowed to do this uninterrupted. the foreign crew of the lifeboat, limp with scare, would have been mere slaughter-pigs on board even if they could have been lured there, which was improbable, and so they were bidden to haul off out of shot, and wait till they were needed. now there was no question here of risking a hand-to-hand encounter. the krooboys on board mustered quite fifty head, and most of them were men of enormous physical strength. so the three invaders went into the chart-house, from the ports of which they could command the bridge deck and the main fore deck, and shot the door-bolts by way of making themselves secure. the walls were of iron, and the roof was of iron; the place was a perfect stronghold in its way; and as there was no chance of its being stormed without due notice, they tacitly called a halt to recover breath. "here," said sheriff, "is the poor old skipper's whisky. i guess a second mate's nip all round will do us no harm." "here," said kettle, "are the old man's canary cigars, nice and black and flavory, and i guess one of them's more in my line, sir, thanking you all the same. i haven't come across a christian smoke for more dreary months than i care to think about." the mate was peering through one of the forward ports. "there's the door of my room wide open," he grunted. "i bet those new clothes of mine are gone. they're just the thing to take a nigger's eye--good thick blue broadcloth." captain kettle wiped the perspiration from his forehead with a bare, sinewy arm. "now," he said, "enough time's been wasted. we must keep those toughs on the move, or they'll find leisure to think, and be starting some fresh wickedness." "if we go out of this chart-house," said sheriff doubtfully, "they'll swamp us by sheer weight. you must remember we've only got two pistols, yours and mine. the poor old skipper's is lost." "i'm going to try what a little quiet talking-to will do first, sir. i used to be a bit useful with my tongue, if i haven't lost the trick. but before that, i'm going to borrow this white drill coat and pants of your late old man's, if you don't mind. you'd hardly think it, sir, if you knew the trials i've gone through in that beastly africa, but i believe it's the want of a decent pair of trousers that's hurt me more than anything." captain kettle dressed himself with care, and put on a white-covered uniform cap; and then, happening to see a pair of scissors, he took them up and trimmed his beard before the glass. sheriff looked on at these preparations with fidgeting impatience, and from without there was a clamor of negro voices taking counsel. but the little sailor was not to be hurried. he went through his toilet with solemn deliberation, and then he opened the chart-house door and went out beneath the baking sunshine of the bridge-deck beyond. a cluster of krooboys stood at the further end of it, cackling with talk, and at sight of him they called their friends on the main deck below, who began to come up as fast as they could get foot on the ladders. they showed inclinations for a rush, but kettle held up his left hand for them to keep back, and they obeyed the order. they saw that vicious revolver gripped in his right fingers, and they respected its powers. he addressed them with a fine fluency of language. he had a good command of sailor's english, and also of coast english, both of which are specially designed for forcible comment; and he knew, moreover, scraps from a score of native dialects, which, having arabic for a groundwork, are especially rich in those parts of speech-which have the highest vituperative value. the black man is proverbially tough, and a whip, moral or physical, which will cut the most hardened of whites to ribbons, will leave him unmoved. an artist in words may rail at him for an hour without making him flicker an eyelash, or a yankee mate might hammer him with a packing-case lid (always supposing there was no nail in it) for a like period without jolting from him so much as a cry or a groan. and so i think it speaks highly for captain kettle's powers when, at the end of three minutes' talk, he caused many of those krooboys to visibly wince. you cannot touch a krooboy's feelings by referring insultingly to his mother, because he has probably very dim recollections of the lady; you can not rile him by gibing comments on his personal appearance; but still there are ways of getting home to him, and kettle knew the secret. "you make fight-palaver," he said, "you steal, you take ship, you drink cargo gin, and you think your _ju-ju_ fine _ju-ju._ but my _ju-ju_ too-plenty-much better, and i fit for show it you again if dis steal-palaver no stop one-time." they began to move threateningly toward him. "very well," he said, "then i tell you straight; you no fit to be called black boys. you bushmen. bah! you be bushmen." the maddened krooboys ran in, and the wicked revolver spoke out, and then kettle nipped into the deck-house and slammed the door to on his heels. the black ape-like faces jabbered and mowed at the window ports, and brawny arms were thrust in, grappling viciously, but the mate drew out camp-stools from a locker, and with these the three white men stabbed and hit at every face or arm which showed itself. there was no more shooting, and there was no need for it. by sheer weight of blows the whites kept the enemy from climbing through the windows, and so long as the windows were not stormed, the iron house was safe to them. and presently one of the head-men blew his boatswain's whistle, and the attack drew off. promptly kettle reloaded his revolver and stepped out into the open. "now," he said, "you seen my _ju-ju?_ you savvy him too-big _ju-ju_? you want any more of it? no. then get away aft with you. you hear? you lib for bottom deck back there, one-time." he rushed at them, one slight, slim, white-clad white man against all that reeking, shining mob, and they struggled away before him in grotesque tumblings and jostlings, like a flock of sheep. but at the break of the deck he paused and looked below him, and the fight all dropped away from his face. no. 3 hatch lay open before him, with the covers thrown here and there. from it was creeping up a thin blue smoke, with now and then a scarlet trail of flame. here was a complication. "so you gluttonous, careless brutes have set fire to her, have you? here, who was in the engine room?" discipline was coming back. a man in black trousers, with a clout round his neck, stepped out. "you? well, slip below, and turn steam into the donkey." "steam no lib, sar. cranes die when we try to work him just now." "oh, you holy crowd of savages! well, if we can't use the hose, you must hand buckets--and sharp, too. that fire's gaining. now then, head-men, step out." "i second head-man, sar." "i head-man, sar." "get buckets, tubs, tins--anything that'll hold water, and look sharp. if you boys work well now, i'll overlook a lot that's been done. if you don't, i'll give you fits. try and get below, some of you, and pull away what's burning. probably you'll find some of your dear relations down there, drunk on gin and smoking pipes. you may knock them on the head if you like, and want to do a bit more murder. they deserve it." but though half a dozen of the krooboys, who were now thoroughly tamed, tried to get down the hatch, the fire was too strong for them. even the water when it came did little to check the burning, for though it sent up great billows of steam, the flames shot out fiercer and higher every moment. in that sweltering climate it does not take very much inducement to make a fire settle down thoroughly to work, once it gets anything like a tolerable start. to add to the trouble, news of the wreck had been carried to the village behind the beach where captain kettle had sung for his lodging over-night, and the one-eyed head-man there and his friends were coming off to share in the spoil as fast as canoes could bring them. they, too, would have their theories as to the ownership of wrecked cargoes on the west african coast, and as they were possessed of trade guns, they were not like to forego what they considered their just rights without further fighting. but as it happened, a period was put to the scene on the steamer with considerable suddenness. sheriff, who had been making sure that there were no krooboys lurking forward who could take them from the rear, came up and looked upon the fire with a blanched face. "excuse me, skipper," he said, and turned and bawled for the lifeboat to come alongside. "no hurry for that yet," said kettle, angrily. "don't scare the men, sir. and don't you give orders without my sanction. you made me captain here, and, by james! captain i'll be. we're handicapped for want of the hose, but we're going to try and get this fire under without. anyway, there's no question of leaving the ship yet." "good god, man, don't niggle about that now. i know what i'm saying. there's eight tons of powder in that hold." "and we may be blown up against the sky as a thin kind of rain any minute? well, sir, you're owner, and as you seem to have acted as purser on board, you ought to know. but hadn't we better ask the mate for his cargo-book first, so as to make sure?" he turned and looked, but sheriff had gone, and was sliding down into the lifeboat which had come alongside. "well, i don't like leaving the ship, and i suppose for that matter he wouldn't either, being owner, and being uninsured. but as mr. sheriff's gone in such a blazing hurry, it's probably time for me to go too, if i'm to land home any time in south shields again." he hailed the lower deck with a sharp order. "you boys, there, knock off. knock off work, i say, and throw down your buckets. there's powder stowed down below, and it'll be going off directly. gunpowder, you savvy, shoot-powder, go _fizz--boosh--bang_!" there was a sharp clatter of understanding and explanation, but no movement. the african is not great at making deductions. captain kettle had to give a definite order. "now, overboard with you, all hands, and lib for beach. no time for lower boats. you all fit for swim." they took the hint, and began leaping the bulwark rail like a swarm of black frogs. "good-by, boys," he said, in valediction. "you'll find it cheaper to be good and virtuous next time. you haven't stay enough in you for a real good fight." and then he went to where the davits dangled over the water, and slid down to the boat, while the frightened crew cursed him aloud for keeping them waiting. not much was said as they rowed away. the all-nation rowers were openly terrified; the mate had all his attention used up in steering to a hair; and sheriff sat with his shoulders humped beside his ears in the position of a man who expects a blow. captain kettle held his peace. he knew that mere words could not urge the sweating crew to heavier effort, and he puffed at his treasured cigar as any smoker would who had been divorced from tobacco for so many a month, and does not know when he will meet with his next indulgence. and in due time the powder was fired, and the steamer was turned into a vast volcano of steam and smoke and flame, which vomited iron and human limbs, and which sent forth an air blast which drove the boat before it like the hurricane of a tornado. and then the _debris_ from the sky foamed down into the water, and then there was a long, long silence. save for some inconsiderable flotsam, the steamer and all that was in her had vanished eternally. the canoes from the village were paddling for the beach again. they were alone on a lonely sea. no man seemed to have a thought he wished to share. the mate was the first to speak. he patted a bundle whose outer housing was a pillow-case, which lay on the thwart beside him. "well," he said, "it's been a close thing. i darn nearly lost those new clothes of mine." "it might have been worse," said sheriff; "we might well all have been killed. but as it is," he added with a sigh, "we've merely got to start fresh from the bottom again. anyway, kettle, i'm obliged to you for what you have done." the little sailor frowned. "it's kind of you, sir, to say that. but i hate being beaten. and it's no excuse to say i did my best. i hadn't figured on that fire and the powder, and that's a fact." "i wonder," said the mate thoughtfully, "which of those beggars scoffed that gold zodiac ring of mine. that steward's boy, tins, i expect. took the ring and left the new blue suit. well, by gum, they're a funny lot, those boys." chapter vi the wire-milkers "look here," said sheriff, "you compel me to be brutal, but the fact is, they've had enough of you here in lagos. so far as i can see, you've only got the choice of two things. you can have a free passage home to england as a distressed seaman by the next steamer, and you know what that means. the steamer gets paid a shilling a day, and grubs and berths you accordingly, and you earn your 'bacca money by bumming around the galley and helping the cook peel spuds. or else, if you don't like that, you can do the sensible thing, and step into the billet i offer you." "by james!" said kettle, "who's going to turn me out of lagos; tell me that, sir?" "don't get wrathful with me. i'm only telling you what you'll find out to be the square truth if you stay on long enough. the authorities here will be equal to handling you if you try to buck against them." "but, sir, they have no right to touch me. this isn't french territory, or german, or any of those clamped-down places. the town's as english as liverpool, and i'm a respectable man." "the trouble of it is," said sheriff drily, "they say you are not. there are a limited number of white men here in lagos--perhaps two hundred all told--and their businesses and sources of income are all more or less visible to the naked eye. yours aren't. in the language of the--er--well--the police court, you've no visible means of subsistence, and yet you always turn out neat, and spruce, and tidy; you've always got tobacco; and apparently you must have meals now and again, though i can't say you've got particularly fat on them." "i've never been a rich man, sir. i've never earned high wages--only once as much as fifteen pounds a month--and there's the missis and the family to provide for; and, as a consequence, i've never had much to spend on myself. it would surprise a gentleman who's been wealthy like you, mr. sheriff, to see the way i can make half-a-crown spin out." "it surprises me to see how you've made nothing at all spin out," said sheriff; "and as for the lagos authorities i was speaking about, it's done more; it's made them suspicious. hang it, man, be reasonable; you must see they are bound to be suspicious." captain kettle's brown face grew darker in tint, and he spoke with visible shame. "i've come by a living, sir, honest, but i couldn't bear it to be told aloud here to all the world how it was done. i may be down, mr. sheriff, but i have my pride still." sheriff spread his hands helplessly. "that's no kind of answer," he said. "they won't let you continue to stay here in lagos on an explanation like that. come now, kettle, be sensible: put yourself in the authorities' place. they've got a town to administer--a big town--that not thirty years ago was the most murderous, fanatical, rowdy dwelling of slave-traders on the west coast of africa. to-day, by dint of careful shepherding, they've reduced it to a city of quiet respectability, with a smaller crime rate than birmingham; and in fact made it into a model town suitable for a story-book. you don't see the government much, but you bet it's there, and you bet it isn't asleep. you can bet also that the nigger people here haven't quite forgotten the old days, and would like to be up to a bit of mischief every now and again, just for old association's sake, which of course the government is quite aware of. "now there's nothing that can stir up niggers into ructions against a white man's government better than a white man, as has been proved tons of times already, and here are you already on the carpet quite equal to the job. i don't say you are up to mischief, nor does the government, but you must see for yourself that they'd be fools if they didn't play for safety and ship you off out of harm's way." "i must admit," said kettle ruefully, "that there's sense in what you say, sir." "are you going to give a free and open explanation of your means of employment here in lagos, and earn the right to stay on openly, or are you going to still stick to the mysterious?" the little sailor frowned. "no, sir," he said; "as i told you before, i have my pride." "very-well, then. now, are you going to be the distressed seaman, and be jeered at all the run home as you cadge round for your 'baccy money, or are you going to do the sensible thing, and step into this billet i've put in your way?" "you corner me." "i'm glad to hear it, and let me tell you it hasn't been for want of trying. man, if i hadn't liked you, i would not have taken all this trouble to put a soft thing ready to your hand." "i believe you want service out of me in return, sir," said kettle stiffly. sheriff laughed. "you aren't the handiest man in the world to get on with, and if i hadn't been an easy-tempered chap i should have bidden you go to the deuce long enough ago. of course, i want something out of you. a man who has just lost a fortune, and who is down on his luck like i am, can't afford to go in for pure philanthropy without any possible return. but, at the same time, i'm finding you a job at fifty pound a month with a fortnight's wages paid in advance, and i think you might be decently grateful. by your own telling, you never earned so much as four sovereigns a week before." "the wages were quite to my taste from the beginning, sir; don't think me ungrateful there. but what i didn't like was going to sea without knowing beforehand what i was expected to do. i didn't like it at first, and i refused the job then; and if i take it now, being, as you say, cornered, you're not to understand that it's grown any the tastier to me." "we shouldn't pay a skipper a big figure like that," said sheriff drily, "if we didn't want something a bit more than, the ordinary out of him. you may take it you are getting fifteen pounds a month as standard pay, and the extra thirty-five for condescending to sail with sealed orders. but what i told you at first i repeat now: i've got a partner standing in with me over this business, and as he insists on the whole thing being kept absolutely dark till we're away at sea, i've no choice but to observe the conditions of partnership." some thirty minutes later than this, mr. sheriff got out of his 'rickshaw on the marina and went into an office and inquired for mr. white. one of the colored clerks (who, to do credit to his english education, affected to be utterly prostrated by the heat) replied with languor that mr. white was upstairs; upon which sheriff, mopping himself with a handkerchief, went up briskly. white, a gorgeously handsome young hebrew, read success from his face at once. "i can see you've hooked your man," said he. "that's good business; we couldn't have got another as good anywhere. have a cocktail?" "don't mind if i do. it's been tough work persuading him. he's such a suspicious, conscientious little beggar. shout for your boy to bring the cocktail, and when we're alone, i'll tell you about it." "i'll fix up your drink myself, old man. where's the swizzle-stick? oh, here, behind the angostura bottle. and there's a fresh lime for you--got a basket of them in this morning. now you yarn whilst i play barmaid." mr. sheriff tucked his feet on the arms of a long-chair and picked up a fan. he sketched in the account of his embassage with humorous phrase. the hebrew had been liberal with his cocktail. he said himself that he made them so beautifully that no one could resist a second; and so, with a sigh of gusto, sheriff gulped down number two and put the glass on the floor. "no," he said; "no more. they're heavenly, i'll grant, but no more. we shall want very clear heads for what's in front of us, and i'm not going to fuddle mine for a commencement. i can tell you we have been very nearly wrecked already. it was only by the skin of my teeth i managed to collar master kettle. i only got him because i happened to know something about him." "did you threaten to get him into trouble over it? what's he done?" "oh, nothing of that sort. but the man's got the pride of an emperor, and it came to my knowledge he'd been making a living out of fishing in the lagoon, and i worked on that. look out of that window; it's a bit glary with the sun full on, but do you see those rows of stakes the nets are made fast on? well, one of those belongs to captain owen kettle, and he works there after dark like a native, and dressed as one. you know he's been so long living naked up in the bush that his hide's nearly black, and he can speak all the nigger dialects. but i guessed he'd never own up that he'd come so low as to compete with nigger fishermen, and i fixed things so that he thought he'd have to tell white lagos what was his trade, or clear out of the colony one-time. it was quite a neat bit of diplomacy." "you have got a tongue in you," said white. "when a man's as broke as i am, and as desperate, he does his best in talk to get what he wants. but look here, mr. white, now we've got kettle, i want to be off and see the thing over and finished as soon as possible. it's the first time i've been hard enough pushed to meddle with this kind of racket, and i can't say i find it so savory that i'm keen on lingering over it." the jew shrugged his shoulders. "we are going for money," he said. "money is always hard to get, my boy, but it's nice, very nice, when you have it." keen though sheriff was to get this venture put to the trial, brimming with energy though he might be, it was quite out of the question that a start could be made at once. a small steamer they had already secured on charter, but she had to be manned, coaled, and provisioned, and all these things are not carried out as quickly in lagos as they would be in liverpool, even though there was a kettle in command to do the driving. and, moreover, there were cablegrams to be sent, in tedious cypher, to london and elsewhere, to make the arrangements on which the success of the scheme would depend. the jew was the prime mover in all this cabling. he had abundance of money in his pocket, and he spent it lavishly, and he practically lived in the neighborhood of the telegraph office. he was as affable as could be; he drank cocktails and champagne with the telegraph staff whenever they were offered; but over the nature of his business he was as close as an oyster. a breath of suspicion against the scheme would wreck it in an instant, and, as there was money to be made by carrying it through, the easy, lively, boisterous mr. white was probably just then as cautious a man as there was in africa. but preparations were finished at last, and one morning, when the tide served, the little steamer cast off from her wharf below the marina, and steered for the pass at the further side of the lagoon. the bar was easy, and let her through with scarcely so much as a bit of spray to moisten the dry deck planks, and sheriff pointed to the masts of a branch-boat which had struck the sand a week before, and had beaten her bottom out and sunk in ten minutes, and from these he drew good omens about this venture, and at the same time prettily complimented kettle on his navigation. but kettle refused to be drawn into friendliness. he coldly commented that luck and not skill was at the bottom of these matters, and that if the bar had shifted, he himself could have put this steamer on the ground as handily as the other man had piled up the branch-boat. he refused to come below and have a drink, saying that his place was on the bridge till he learned from observation that either of the two mates was a man to be trusted. and, finally, he inquired, with acid formality, as to whether his employers wished the steamer brought to an anchor in the roads, or whether they would condescend to give him a course to steer. sheriff bade him curtly enough to "keep her going to the s'uth'ard," and then drew away his partner into the stifling little chart-house. "now," he said, "you see how it is. our little admiral up there is standing on his temper, and if he doesn't hear the plan of campaign, he's quite equal to making himself nasty." "i don't mind telling him some, but i'm hanged if i'm going to tell him all. there are too many in the secret already, what with you and the two in london; and as i keep on telling you, if one whiff of a suspicion gets abroad, the whole thing's busted, and a trap will be set that you and i will be caught in for a certainty." "poof! we're at sea now, and no one can gossip beyond the walls of the ship. besides kettle is far too staunch to talk. he's the sort of man who can be as mum as the grave when he chooses. but if you persist in refusing to trust him, well, i tell you that the thought of what he may be up to makes me frightened." "now look here, my boy," said white, "you force me to remind you that i'm senior partner here, and to repeat that what i say on this matter's going to be done. i flatly refuse to trust this kettle with the whole yarn. we've hired him at an exorbitant fee--bought him body and soul, in fact, as i've no doubt he very well understands--and to my mind he's engaged to do exactly as he's told, without asking questions. but as you seem set on it, i'll meet you here; he may be told a bit. fetch him down." but as kettle refused to come below, on the chilly plea of business, the partner went out under the awnings of the upper bridge, where the handsome white, with boisterous, open-hearted friendliness, did his best to hustle the little sailor into quick good humor. "don't blame me, skipper, or sheriff here either, for the matter of that, for making all this mystery. we're just a couple of paid agents, and the bigger men at the back insisted that we should keep our mouths shut till the right time. there's nothing wrong with this caution, i'm sure you'll be the first to say. you see they couldn't tell from that distance what sort of man we should be able to pick up at lagos. i guess they never so much as dreamed that we'd have the luck to persuade a chap like you to join." "you are very polite, sir," said kettle formally. "not a bit of it. i'm not the sort of boy to chuck civility away on an incompetent man. now look here, captain. we're on for making a big pile in a very short time, and you can stand in to finger your share if you'll, only take your whack of the work." "there's no man living more capable of hard work than me, sir, and no man keener to make a competence. i've got a wife that i'd like to see a lot better off than i've ever been able to make her so far." "i'm sure mrs. kettle deserves affluence, and please the pigs she shall have it." "but it isn't every sovereign that might be put in her way," said the sailor meaningly, "that mrs. kettle would care to use." "i guess i find every sovereign that comes to my fingers contains twenty useful shillings." "i will take your word for it, sir. mrs. kettle prefers to know that the few she handles are cleanly come by." mr. white gritted his handsome teeth, shrugged his shoulders, and made as if he intended to go down off the bridge. but sheriff stopped him. "we'd better have it out," sheriff suggested; "as well now as later." "put it in your own words, then. i don't seem able to get started. you," he added significantly, "know as well as i do what to say." "very well. now, look here, kettle. this mystery game has gone on long enough, and you've got to be put on the ground floor, like the rest of us. did you ever dabble in stocks?" "no, sir." "but you know what they are?" "i've heard the minister i sit under ashore give his opinion from the pulpit on the stock exchange, and those who do business there. the minister of our chapel, sir, is a man i always agree with." this was sufficiently unpromising, but sheriff went doggedly on. "i see your way of looking at it: the whole crowd of stock operators are a gang of thieves that no decent man would care to touch?" "that's much my notion." "and they are quite unworthy of protection?" "they can rob one another to their heart's content for all i care." sheriff smiled grimly. "that's what i wanted to hear you say, captain. this cruise we are on now is not exactly a pleasure trip." "i guessed that, of course, from the pay that was offered." "what we are after is this: the cape to england telegraph cable stops at several places on the road, and we want to get hold of one of the stations and work it for our own purposes for an hour or so. if we can do that, our partners in london will bring off a speculation in south african shares that will set the whole lot of us up for life." "and who pays the piper? i mean where will the money for your profit come from?" white was quicker than sheriff to grasp the situation. "from inside the four walls of the stock exchange. s'elp me, captain, you needn't pity them. there are lots of men there, my friends too, who would have played the game themselves if they had been sharp enough to think of it. we have to be pretty keen in the speculation business if we want to make money out of it." captain kettle buttoned his coat, and stepped to the further end of the bridge with an elaborate show of disgust. "you are on the stock exchange yourself, sir?" "er--connected with it, captain." [illustration: "you insolent little blackguard, you dare to speak to me like that!"] "i can quite understand our minister's opinion of stock gamblers now. perhaps some day you may hear it for yourself. he's a great man for visiting jails and carrying comfort to the afflicted." "by gad!" said white, "you insolent little blackguard, you dare to speak to me like that!" "i use what words i choose," said kettle, truculently. "i'd have said the same to your late king solomon if i hadn't liked his ways; but if i was pocketing his pay, i should have carried out his orders all the same." he bent down to the voice hatch, and gave a bearing to the black quartermaster in the wheel-house below, and the little steamer, which had by this time left behind her the vessels transhipping cargo in the roads, canted off on a new course to the southward. "hullo," said sheriff, "what's that mean? where are you off to now?" kettle mentioned the name of a lonely island standing by itself in the atlantic. but sheriff and the jew were visibly startled. mr. sheriff mopped at a very damp forehead with his pocket handkerchief. "have you heard anything then?" he asked, "or did you just guess?" "i heard nothing before, or i should not have signed on for this trip, sir. but having come so far i'm going to earn out my pay. what's done will not be on my conscience. the shipmaster's blameless in these matters; it's the owner who drives him that earns his punishment in the hereafter; and that's sound theology." "but how did you guess, man, how did you know where we were bound?" "a shipmaster knows cable stations as well as he knows owners' agents' offices ashore. any fool who had been told your game would have put his finger on that island at once. that's the loneliest place where the cable goes ashore all up and down the coast, and it isn't british, and what more could you want?" with these meagre assurances, messieurs sheriff and white had to be content, as no others were forthcoming. captain kettle refused to be drawn into further talk upon the subject, and the pair went below to the stuffy little cabin more than a trifle disconsolate. "well, here's the man you talked so big about," said white, bitterly. "as soon as we get out at sea, he shows himself in his true colors. why, he's a blooming methodist. but if he sells us when it comes to the point, and there's a chance of my getting nabbed, by gad i'll murder him like i would a rat." "if he offers a scrimmage," said sheriff, "you take my tip, and clear out. he's a regular glutton for a fight; i know he's armed; and he could shoot the buttons off your coat at twenty yards. no, mr. white; make the best or the worst of captain kettle as you choose, but don't come to fisticuffs with him, or as sure as you are living now, you'll finish out on the under side then. and mind, i'm not talking by guess-work. i know." "i shall not stick at much if this show's spoiled. why, the money was as good as in our pockets, if he hadn't cut up awkward." "don't throw up the sponge till some one else does it for you. look here, i know this man kettle a lot better than you do. he wants the pay very badly. and when it comes to sticking up the cable station, you'll see him do the work of any ten like us. i tell you, he's a regular demon when it comes to a scuffle." it was in this attitude, then, that the three principal members of the little steamer's complement voyaged down over those warm tropical seas which lay between lagos and the isle of their hopes and fears. two of them kept together, and perfected the detail of their plans for use in every contingency; but the other kept himself icily apart, and for an occupation, when the business of the ship did not require his eye, wrapped himself up in the labor of literary production. he even refused to partake of meals at the same table with his employers. the island first appeared to them as a huddle of mountains sprouting out of the sea, which grew green as they came more near, and which finally showed great masses of foliage growing to the crown of the splintered heights, with a surf frilling the bays and capes at their foot. there was a town in the hug of one of these bays, and toward it the little steamer rolled as though she had been an ordinary legitimate trader. she brought up to an anchor in the jaws of the bay, half-way between the lighthouse and the rectangular white building on the further beach, and after due delay, a negro doctor, pulled up by a surf-boat full of other negroes, came off and gave her pratique. the rectangular white building, standing in the sea breeze by itself away from the town beyond, was the cable station, but for the present they faced it with their backs. kettle had seen it before; the other two acted as though it were the last thing to trouble their minds. there was no going ashore for any of them yet; indeed, the less they advertised their personal identity, the more chance there was of getting off untraced afterward. night fell with such suddenness that one could almost have imagined the sun was permanently extinguished. round the rim of the bay lights began to kindle, and presently (when the wind came off the land) strains of music floated out to them. "some saint's day," sheriff commented. "st. agatha's," said kettle with a sigh. "hello, kettle. i thought you were a straight-laced chapel goer. what have you to do with saints and their days?" "i was told that one once, sir, and i can't help remembering it. you see the date is february 5th, and that's my eldest youngster's birthday." sheriff swore. "i wish you'd drop that sort of sentimental bosh, skipper; especially now. i want to get this business over first, and then, when i go back with plenty in my pocket, i can begin to think of family pleasures and cares again. come now, have you thought out what we can do with the steamer after we've finished our job here?" "run up with the coast and sink her, and then go ashore in the surf-boat at some place where the cable doesn't call, and leave that as soon as possible for somewhere else." "it will be a big saving of necks," said kettle drily. "why sir, you've been a steamer-owner in your time, and you must know how we're fixed. you've given up your papers here, and you're known. you can't go into another port in the whole wide world without papers, and as far as forging a new set, why that's a thing that hasn't been done this thirty years outside a story-book." mr. white came up to hear. "i don't see that," he said. "you fellows don't understand everything in jerusalem," said kettle, with a cheerful insult, and walked away. captain kettle regarded sheriff as a gull, and pitied him accordingly; but white he recognized as principal knave, and disliked him accordingly. but when the start was made for the raid, some hour and a half before the dawn, kettle was not backward in fulfilling his paid-for task. himself he saw a surf-boat lowered into the water and manned by black krooboy paddlers; himself he saw his two employers down on the thwarts, and then followed them; and himself he sat beside the head-man who straddled in the stern sheets at the steering oar, and gave him minute directions. the boat was avoiding the bay altogether. she was making for the strip of sand in front of the cable station, and except when she was shouldered up on the back of a roller, the goal was out of sight all the time. "there's a rare swell running, and it's a mighty bad beach to-night," kettle commented. "i hope you gentlemen can swim, for the odds are you'll have to do it inside the next ten minutes." "if we are spilt getting ashore," said white, "how do you say we'll get off again?" "the lord knows," said kettle. "well, you're a cheerful companion, anyway." "i wasn't paid for a yacht skippering job and asked to say nice things which weren't true. but if you don't fancy the prospect, go back and try a trade that's less risky. you mayn't like honest work, but it strikes me this kind of contract's out your weight anyway." the jew looked as if he would like to let loose his tongue, and perhaps handle a weapon, but his motto was "business first," and he could not afford to have an open fracas with kettle then. so he swallowed his resentment, and said, "get on," and clung dizzily on to his thwart. as each roller passed tinder her, the surf-boat swooped higher and higher, and the laboring paddles seemed to give her less and less momentum. the head-man strained at the steering oar. the krooboys had hard work to keep their perches on the gunwale. at last the head-man shouted, and the paddles ceased. they were waiting for a smooth. roller after roller swept under them, and the boat rode them dizzily, but kept her place just beyond the outer edge of the surf. from over his shoulder, the head-man watched the charging seas with animal intentness. then with a sudden shriek he gave the word, and the paddles stabbed the water into spray. the heavy boat rushed forward again, and a great towering sea rushed after her. it reared her up, stern uppermost, and passed, leaving her half swamped by its foaming passage; and then came another sea, and the boat broached to and spilt. the krooboys jumped like black frogs from either gunwale, and kettle jumped also, and made his way easily to the sand, being used to this experience. but sheriff was pulled on to the beach with difficulty, and the jew was hauled there in a state verging on the unconscious. he looked at the fearsome surf, and shuddered openly. "how shall we get off again?" he gasped. "more swimming," said kettle tersely. "and perhaps not manage it at all. you'd better give up the game, and go off decently to-morrow morning from the custom house wharf." but mr. white, whatever might be the list of his failings, was certainly possessed of dogged pluck, and as he had got that far with his enterprise, did not intend to desert it. he got rid of the sea-water that was within him, and resolutely led the way to the cable station, which loomed square and solid through the dusk. sheriff followed, and captain kettle, with his hands in his pockets, brought up the rear. the krooboys, according to their orders, stayed on the beach, brought in the boat, collected her furniture, and got all ready for relaunching. white seemed to know the way as if he had been there before. he went up to the building, entered through an open door, and strode quietly in his rubber-soled shoes along a dark passage. at the end was a room in partial darkness, and a man who watched a spot of light which darted hither and back, and between whiles wrote upon paper. to him white went up, and clapped a cold revolver muzzle against the nape of his neck. "now," he said, "i want the loan of your instrument for about an hour. if you resist, you'll be shot. the noise of the shot will bring out the other men on the station, and they'll be killed also. there are plenty of us here, and we are well armed, and we intend to have our own way. if you are not anything short of a fool, you'll go and sit on that chair, and keep quiet till you're given leave to talk." "i don't think i'll argue it with you," said the operator coolly. he got up and sat where he was told, and kettle, according to arrangement, stood guard over him. "i suppose you malefactors know," he added, "that there are certain pains and penalties attached to this sort of amusement, and that you are bound to get caught quite soon, whether you shoot me or let me go?" nobody answered him. white had sat down at the instrument table, and was tapping out messages like a man well accustomed to the work. "of course with those black mask things over your faces i couldn't recognize you again, even if i was put in the box; but, my good chaps, your steamer's known, there's no getting over that. much better clear out before any mischief's done, and own up you've made a mistake." white turned on the man with a sudden fury. "if you don't keep your silly mouth shut, i'll have you throttled," he threatened, and after that the only noise that broke the silence was the _tap--taptap--taptapping_ of the telegraph instrument. only two men in that darkened room knew what message was being dispatched, and these were white and the dispossessed operator. the one worked with cool, steady industry, and the other listened with strained intentness. sheriff was outside the door keeping guard on the rest of the house. but kettle, from his station behind the operator's chair, listened with a strange disquietude. he had been told that the object of the raid was to arrange a stock exchange robbery, and to this he had tacitly agreed. according to his narrow creed (as gathered from the south shields chapel) none but rogues and thieves dealt in stocks and shares, and if these chose to rob one another, an honest man might well look on non-interferent. but what guarantee had he that this robbery was not planned to draw plunder from the outside public as well? the pledged word of mr. white. and that was worth? he smiled disdainfully when he thought of the slenderness of its value. _tap--taptap--tap--tap--taptap_, said the tantalizing instrument, going steadily on with its hidden speech. the stifling heat of the room seemed to get more oppressive. the mystery of the thing beat against kettle's brain. of course he could not read the deposed operator's thoughts, though he could see easily that the man was reading the messages which white was so glibly sending off. but it was clear that the man's agitation was growing; growing, too, out of all proportion to the coolness he had shown when his room was first invaded. at last an exclamation was forced from him, almost, as it seemed, involuntarily. "oh, you ghastly scoundrel," he murmured, and on that kettle spoke. he could not stand the mystery any longer. "tell me," he said, "exactly what message that man's sending." "but i forbid you to do any such thing," said white, and reached for his revolver. but before his fingers touched it, he looked up and saw kettle's weapon covering him. "you put that down," came the crisp order, and white obeyed it nervously enough. "and now go and stand in the middle of the room till i give you leave to shift." white did this also. he grasped the fact that captain kettle was not in a mood to be trifled with. "now, mr. telegraph clerk, as you understand this tack-hammer language, and as i could see you've been following all the messages that's been sent, just tell me the whole lot of it, please, as near as you can remember." "he called up london first, and gave what sounded like a registered address, and sent the word 'corruscate.' that's probably code; anyway i don't know what it meant. then he called the cape, and sent a message to the governor. he hadn't got to the end, and there was no signature, but it was evidently intended to make them believe that it was sent from the colonial office at home." "well," said kettle, "what was the message?" "good lord, man, he's directing the governor to declare war on the transvaal. you know there's been trouble with them lately, and they'll believe that it comes from the right place. if this is some stock-jobbing plant--" "it is." "then, by heavens, it'll be carried through unless you let me stop it at once. the thing's plausible enough--" but here white recovered from his temporary scare, and cut in with a fine show of authority. "s'help me, kettle, you're making a pretty mess of things. you make me knock off in the middle of a message, and they'll not know what's up at the other end if i don't go on. look at that mirror." "i see the spot of light winking about." "that's the operator at the next station calling me." "but is it true what this gentleman's been telling me?" "i suppose it is, more or less. but what of that? what did you lose your temper for like this? you knew quite well what we came here for." "i knew you came to steal money from stockbrokers. i knew nothing about going to try and run my country in for a war." "poof, that's nothing. the war would not hurt you and me. besides, it must go on now. i've cabled my partner in london to be a bear in kaffirs for all he's worth. we must smash all the instruments here so they can't contradict the news, and then be off." "your partner can be a bear or any other kind of beast, in any sort of niggers he chooses, but i'm not going to let you run england into war at any price." "pah, my good man, what does that matter to you? what's england ever done for you?" "i live there," said kettle, "when i'm at home, and as i've lived everywhere else in the world, i'm naturally a bit more fond of the old shop than if i'd never gone away from her beach. no, mr. white, england's never done anything special for me that i could, so to speak, put my finger on, but--ah would you!" white, in desperation, had made a grab at the revolver lying on the instrument table, but with a quick rush kettle possessed himself of it, and mr. white found himself again looking down the muzzle of captain kettle's weapon. but a moment later the aim was changed. sheriff, hearing the whispered talk, had come in through the doorway to see what it was about, and promptly found himself favored in his turn. "shift your pistol to muzzle end, and bring it here." sheriff obeyed the order promptly. he had seen enough of captain kettle's usefulness as a marksman not to dispute his wishes. "did you know that we came here to stir up a war between our folks at home and the transvaal?" "i suppose so." "and smash up the telegraph instruments afterward, so that it could not be contradicted till it was well under way?" "that would have been necessary." "and you remember what you told me on that steamboat? oh! you liar!" said kettle, and sheriff winced. "i'm so beastly hard up," he said. captain kettle might have commented on his own poverty, but he did not do this. instead, he said: "now we'll go back to the ship, and of course you'll have to scuttle her just as if you'd brought off your game here successfully. run england in for a bloody war, would you, just for some filthy money? by james! no. come, march. and you, mr. telegraph clerk, get under weigh with that deaf and dumb alphabet of yours, and ring up the cape, and tell them what's been sent is all a joke, and there's to be no war at all." "i'll do that, you may lay your heart on it," said the operator. "but mr. i-don't-know-what-your-name-is, look here. hadn't you better stay? i'll see things are put all right. but if you go off with those two sharks, it might be dangerous." "thank you, kindly, sir," said kettle; "but i'm a man that's been accustomed to look after myself all the world over, and i'm not likely to get hurt now. those two may be sharks, as you say, but i'm not altogether a simple little lamb myself." "i shall be a bit uneasy for you. you're a good soul whoever you may be, and i'd like to do something for you if i could." "then, sir," said kettle, "just keep quiet, here, and get on with your work contradicting that wire, and don't send for any of those little portuguese soldiers with guns to see us off. it's a bad beach, and we mayn't get off first try, and if they started to annoy us whilst we were at work, i might have to shoot some of them, which would be a trouble." "i'll see to that," said the operator. "we'll just shake hands if you don't mind, before you go. there's more man to the cubic inch about you than in any other fellow i've come across for a long time. i've no club at home now, or i'd ask you to look me up. but i dare say we shall meet again some time. so long." "good-by, sir," said kettle, and shook the operator by the hand. then he turned, and drove the other two raiders before him out of the house, and down to the beach, and, with the krooboys, applied himself to launching the surf-boat through the breakers. "run the old shop into a war, would you?" he soliloquized to two very limp, unconscious figures, as the krooboys got the surf-boat afloat after the third upset. "it's queer what some men will do for money." and then, a minute later, he muttered to himself: "by james! look at that dawn coming up behind the island there; yellow as a lemon. now, that is fine. i can make a bit of poetry out of that." chapter vii the derelict "her cargo'll have shifted," said the third mate, "and when she got that list her people will have felt frightened and left her." "she's a scary look to her, with her yard-arms spiking every other sea," said captain image, "and her decks like the side of a house. i shouldn't care to navigate a craft that preferred to lie down on her beam ends myself." "take this glass, sir, and you'll see the lee quarter-boat davit-tackles are overhauled. that means they got at least one boat in the water. to my mind she's derelict." "yard-arm tackles rigged and overhauled, too," said captain image. "she'll have carried a big boat on the top of that house amidships, and that's gone, too. well, i hope her crew have got to dry land somewhere, or been picked up, poor beggars. nasty things, those old wind-jammers, mr. strake. give me steam." "but there's a pile of money in her still," said the third mate, following up his own thoughts. "she's an iron ship, and she'll be two thousand tons, good. likely enough in the 'frisco grain trade. seems to me a new ship, too; anyway, she's got those humbugging patent tops'ls." "and you're thinking she'd be a nice plum if we could pluck her in anywhere?" said image, reading what was in his mind. "well, me lad, i know that as well as you, and no one would be pleaseder to pocket £300. but the old _m'poso's_ a mailboat, and because she's got about a quarter of a hundredweight of badly spelt letters on board, she can't do that sort of salvage work if there's no life-saving thrown in as an extra reason. besides, we're behind time as it is, with smelling round for so much cargo, and though i shall draw my two and a-half per cent, on that, i shall have it all to pay away again, and more to boot, in fines for being late. no, i tell you it isn't all sheer profit and delight in being skipper on one of those west african coast boats. and there's another thing: the chief was telling me only this morning that they've figured it very close on the coal. we only have what'll take us to liverpool ourselves, without trying to pull a yawing, heavy, towing thing like that on behind us." strake drummed at the white rail of the bridge. he was a very young man, and he was very keen on getting the chance of distinguishing himself; and here, on the warm, windless swells abeam, the chance seemed to sit beckoning him. "i've been thinking, sir, if you can lend me half a dozen men, i could take her in somewhere myself." "i'm as likely to lend you half a dozen angels. look at the deck hands; look at the sickly trip this has been. we've had to put some of them on double tricks at the wheel already, and as for getting any painting done, or having the ship cleaned up a bit, why, i can see we shall go into liverpool as dirty as a geordie collier. besides, mr. strake, i believe i've told you once or twice already that you're not much use yourself, but anyway you're the best that's left, and i'm having to stand watch and watch with you as it is. if the mate gets out of his bed between here and home, it'll be to go over the side, and the second mate's nearly as bad with that nasty blackwater fever only just off him; and there you are. mr. strake, if you have a penn'oth of brains stowed away anywhere, i wish to whiskers you'd show 'em sometimes." "old man's mad at losing a nice lump of salvage," thought strake. "natural, i guess." so he said quietly: "ay, ay, sir," and walked away to the other end of the bridge. captain image followed him half-way, but stopped irresolutely with his hand on the engine-room telegraph. on the fore main deck below him his old friend, captain owen kettle, was leaning on the rail, staring wistfully at the derelict. "poor beggar," image mused, "'tisn't hard to guess what he's thinking about. i wonder if i could fix it for him to take her home. it might set him on his legs again, and he's come low enough, lord knows. if i hadn't given him a room in the first-class for old times' sake, he'd have had to go home, after his trouble on the west coast, as a distressed seaman, and touch his cap to me when i passed. i've not done badly by him, but i shall have to pay for that room in the first-class out of my own pocket, and if he was to take that old wind-jammer in somewhere, he'd fork out, and very like give me a dash besides. "yes, i will say that about kettle; he's honest as a barkeeper, and generous besides. he's a steamer sailor, of course, and has been most of these years, and how he'll do the white wings business again, lord only knows. forget he hasn't got engines till it's too late, and then drown himself probably. however, that's his palaver. where we're going to scratch him up a crew from's the thing that bothers me. well, we'll see." he leaned down over the bridge rail, and called. kettle looked up. "here a minute, captain." poor kettle's eye lit, and he came up the ladders with a boy's quickness. image nodded toward the deserted vessel. "fine full-rigger, hasn't she been? what do you make her out for?" "'frisco grain ship. stuff in bulk. and it's shifted." "looks that way. have you forgotten all your 'mainsail haul' and the square-rig gymnastics?" "i'm hard enough pushed now to remember even the theory-sums they taught at navigation school if i thought they would serve me." "i know. and i'm as sorry for you, captain, as i can hold. but you see, it's this: i'm short of sailormen; i've barely enough to steer and keep the decks clean; anyway i've none to spare." "i don't ask for fancy goods," said kettle eagerly. "give me anything with hands on it--apes, niggers, stokers, what you like, and i'll soon teach them their dancing steps." captain image pulled at his moustache. "the trouble of it is, we are short everywhere. it's been a sickly voyage, this. i couldn't let you have more than two out of the stokehold, and even if we take those, the old chief will be fit to eat me. you could do nothing with that big vessel with only two beside yourself." "let me go round and see. i believe i can rake up enough hands somehow." "well, you must be quick about it," said image. "i've wasted more than enough time already. i can only give you five minutes, captain. oh, by the way, there's a nigger stowaway from sarry leone you can take if you like. he's a stonemason or some such foolishness, and i don't mind having him drowned. if you hammer him enough, probably he'll learn how to put some weight on a brace." "that stonemason's just the man i can use," said kettle. "get him for me. i'll never forget your kindness over this, captain, and you may depend upon me to do the square thing by you if i get her home." captain kettle ran off down the bridge and was quickly out of sight, and hard at his quest for volunteers. captain image waited a minute, and he turned to his third mate. "now, me lad," he said, "i know you're disappointed; but with the other mates sick like they are, it's just impossible for me to let you go. if i did, the company would sack me, and the dirty board of trade would probably take away my ticket. so you may as well do the kind, and help poor old cappie kettle. you see what he's come down to, through no fault of his own. you're young, and you're full to the coamings with confidence. i'm older, and i know that luck may very well get up and hit me, and i'll be wanting a helping hand myself. it's a rotten, undependable trade, this sailoring. you might just call the carpenter, and get the cover off that smaller lifeboat." "you think he'll get a crew, then, sir, and not our deckhands?" "him? he'll get some things with legs and arms to them, if he has to whittle 'em out of kindling-wood. it's not that that'll stop cappie kettle now, me lad." the third mate went off, sent for the carpenter, and started to get a lifeboat cleared and ready for launching. captain image fell to anxiously pacing the upper bridge, and presently kettle came back to him. "well, captain," he said, "i got a fine crew to volunteer, if you can see your way to let me have them. there's a fireman and a trimmer, both english; there's a third-class passenger--a dago of some sort, i think he is, that was a ganger on the congo railway--and there's mr. dayton-philipps; and if you send me along your nigger stonemason, that'll make a good, strong ship's company." "dayton-philipps!" said image. "why, he's an officer in the english army, and he's been in command of haussa troops on the gold coast, and he's been some sort of a resident, or political thing up in one of those nigger towns at the back there. what's he want to go for?" "said he'd come for the fun of the thing." captain image gave a grim laugh. "well, i think he'll find all the fun he's any use for before he's ashore again. extraordinary thing some people can't see they're well off when they've got a job ashore. now, mr. strake, hurry with that boat and get her lowered away. you're to take charge and bring her back; and mind, you're not to leave the captain here and his gang aboard if the vessel's too badly wrecked to be safe." he turned to kettle. "excuse my giving that last order, old man, but i know how keen you are, and i'm not going to let you go off to try and navigate a sieve. you're far too good a man to be drowned uselessly." the word was "hurry," now that the final decision had been given, and the davit tackles squeaked out as the lifeboat jerked down toward the water. she rode there at the end of her painter, and the three rowers and the third mate fended her off, while kettle's crew of nondescripts scrambled unhandily down to take their places. the negro stowaway refused stubbornly to leave the steamer, and so was lowered ignominiously in a bowline, and then, as he still objected loudly that he came from sa' leone, and was a free british subject, some one crammed a bucket over his head, amidst the uproarious laughter of the onlookers. captain kettle swung himself down the swaying jacob's ladder, and the boat's painter was cast off; and under three oars she moved slowly off over the hot sun-kissed swells. advice and farewells boomed like a thunderstorm from the steamer, and an animated frieze of faces and figures and waving headgear decorated her rail. ahead of them, the quiet ship shouldered clumsily over the rollers, now gushing down till she dipped her martingale, now swooping up again, sending whole cataracts of water swirling along her waist. the men in the boat regarded her with curious eyes as they drew nearer. even the three rowers turned their heads, and were called to order therefor by the mate at the tiller. a red ensign was seized jack downward in her main rigging, the highest note of the sailorman's agony of distress. on its wooden case, in her starboard fore-rigging, a dioptric lens sent out the faint green glow of a lamp's light into the sunshine. the third mate drew attention to this last "lot of oil in that lamp," he said, "or it means they haven't deserted her very long. to my mind, it must have been in yesterday's breeze her cargo shifted, and scared her people into leaving her." "we shall see," said kettle, still staring intently ahead. the boat was run up cannily alongside, and kettle jumped into the main chains and clambered on board over the bulwarks. "now, pass up my crew, mr. strake," said he. "i'm coming myself next, if you don't mind," said the third mate, and did so. "must obey the old man's orders," he explained, as they stood together on the sloping decks. "you heard yourself what he said, captain." "well, mr. mate," said kettle grimly, "i hope you'll decide she's seaworthy, because, whatever view you take of it, as i've got this far, here i'm going to stay." the mate frowned. he was a young man; he was here in authority, and he had a great notion of making his authority felt. captain kettle was to him merely a down-on-his-luck free-passage nobody, and as the mate was large and lusty he did not anticipate trouble. so he remarked rather crabbedly that he was going to obey his orders, and went aft along the slanting deck. it was clear that the vessel had been swept--badly swept. ropes-ends streamed here and there and overboard in every direction, and everything movable had been carried away eternally by the sea. a goodly part of the starboard bulwarks had vanished, and the swells gushed in and out as they chose. but the hatch tarpaulins and companions were still in place; and though it was clear from the list (which was so great that they could not walk without holding on) that her cargo was badly shifted, there was no evidence so far that she was otherwise than sound. the third mate led the way on to the poop, opened the companion doors and slide, and went below. kettle followed. there was a cabin with state rooms off it, littered, but dry. strake went down on his knees beneath the table, searching for something. "lazaret hatch ought to be down here," he explained. "i want to see in there. ah, it is." he got his fingers in the ring and pulled it back. then he whistled. "half-full of water," he said. "i thought so from the way she floated. it's up to the beams down here. likely enough she'll have started a plate somewhere. 'fraid it's no go for you, captain. why, if a breeze was to come on, half the side of her might drop out, and she'd go down like a stone." now to kettle's honor be it said (seeing what he had in his mind) he did not tackle the man as he knelt there peering into the lazaret. instead he waited till he stood up again, and then made his statement coldly and deliberately. "this ship's not too dangerous for me, and i choose to judge. and if she'll do for me, she's good enough for the crew i've got in your boat. now i want them on deck, and at work without any more palaver." "do you, by god!" said the mate, and then the pair of them closed without any further preliminaries. they were both of them well used to quick rough-and-tumbles, and they both of them knew that the man who gets the first grip in these wrestles usually wins, and instinctively each tried to act on that knowledge. but if the third mate had bulk and strength, kettle had science and abundant wiriness; and though the pair of them lost their footing on the sloping cabin floor at the first embrace, and wriggled over and under like a pair of eels, captain kettle got a thumb artistically fixed in the bigger man's windpipe, and held it there doggedly. the mate, growing more and more purple, hit out with savage force, but kettle dodged the bull-like blows like the boxer he was, and the mate's efforts gradually relaxed. but at this point they were interrupted. "that wobbly boat was making me sea-sick," said a voice, "so i came on board here. hullo, you fellows!" kettle looked up. "mr. philipps," he said, "i wish you'd go and get the rest of our crew on deck out of the boat." "but what are you two doing down there?" "we disagreed over a question of judgment. he said this ship isn't safe, and i shouldn't have the chance to take her home. i say there's nothing wrong with her that can't be remedied, and home i'm going to take her, anyway. it might be the one chance in my life, sir, of getting a balance at the bank, and i'm not going to miss it." "ho!" said dayton-philipps. "if you don't like to come, you needn't," said kettle. "but i'm going to have the stonemason and the dago, and those two coal-heavers. perhaps you'd better go back. it will be wet, hard work here; no way the sort of job to suit a soldier." dayton-philipps flushed slightly, and then he laughed. "i suppose that's intended to be nasty," he said. "well, captain, i shall have to prove to you that we soldiers are equal to a bit of manual labor sometimes. by the way, i don't want to interfere in a personal matter, but i'd take it as a favor if you wouldn't kill strake quite. i rather like him." "anything to oblige," said kettle, and took his thumb out of the third mate's windpipe. "and now, sir, as you've so to speak signed on for duty here, away with you on deck and get those four other beauties up out of the boat." dayton-philipps touched his hat and grinned. "ay, ay, sir," he said, and went back up the companion. shortly afterward he came to report the men on board, and kettle addressed his late opponent. "now, look here, young man, i don't want to have more trouble on deck before the hands. have you had enough?" "for the present, yes," said the third mate huskily. "but i hope we'll meet again some other day to have a bit of further talk." "i am sure i shall be quite ready. no man ever accused me of refusing a scrap. but, me lad, just take one tip from me: don't you go and make captain image anxious by saying this ship isn't seaworthy, or he'll begin to ask questions, and he may get you to tell more than you're proud about." "you can go and get drowned your own way. as far as i am concerned, no one will guess it's coming off till they see it in the papers." "thanks," said kettle. "i knew you'd be nice about it." the third mate went down to his boat, and the three rowers took her across to the _m'poso_, where she was hauled up to davits again. the steamer's siren boomed out farewells, as she got under way again, and kettle with his own hands unbent the reversed ensign from the ship's main rigging, and ran it up to the peak and dipped it three times in salute. he breathed more freely now. one chance and a host of unknown dangers lay ahead of him. but the dangers he disregarded. dangers were nothing new to him. it was the chance which lured him on. chances so seldom came in his way, that he intended to make this one into a certainty if the efforts of desperation could do it. alone of all the six men on the derelict, captain kettle had knowledge of the seaman's craft; but, for the present, thews and not seamanship were required. the vessel lay in pathetic helplessness on her side, liable to capsize in the first squall which came along, and their first effort must be to get her in proper trim whilst the calm continued. they knocked out the wedges with their heels, and got the tarpaulins off the main hatch; they pulled away the hatch covers, and saw beneath them smooth slopes of yellow grain. as though they were an invitation to work, shovels were made fast along the coamings of the hatch. the six men took these, and with shouts dropped down upon the grain. and then began a period of homeric toil. the fireman and the coal-trimmer set the pace, and with a fine contempt for the unhandiness of amateurs did not fail to give a display of their utmost. kettle and dayton-philipps gamely kept level with them. the italian ganger turned out to have his pride also, and did not lag, and only the free-born british subject from sierra leone endeavored to shirk his due proportion of the toil. but high-minded theories as to the rights of man were regarded here as little as threats to lay information before a justice of the peace; and under the sledge-hammer arguments of shovel blows from whoever happened to be next to him, the unfortunate colored gentleman descended to the grade of nigger again (which he had repeatedly sworn never to do), and toiled and sweated equally with his betters. the heat under the decks was stifling, and dust rose from the wheat in choking volumes, but the pace of the circling shovels was never allowed to slacken. they worked there stripped to trousers, and they understood, one and all, that they were working for their lives. a breeze had sprung up almost as soon as the _m'poso_ had steamed away, and hourly it was freshening: the barometer in the cabin was registering a steady fall; the sky was banking up with heavy clouds. kettle had handled sheets and braces and hove the vessel to so as to steady her as they worked, but she still labored heavily in the sea, and beneath them they could hear the leaden swish of water in the floor of the hold beneath. their labor was having its effect, and by infinitesimal gradations they were counteracting the list and getting the ship upright; but the wind was worsening, and it seemed to them also that the water was getting deeper under their feet, and that the vessel rode more sluggishly. so far the well had not been sounded. it is no use getting alarming statistics to discourage one's self unnecessarily. but after night had fallen, and it was impossible to see to work in the gloomy hold any longer without lamps, captain kettle took the sounding-rod and found eight feet. he mentioned this when he took down the lanterns into the hold, but he did not think it necessary to add that as the sounding had been taken with the well on the slant it was therefore considerably under the truth. still he sent dayton-philipps and the trimmer on deck to take a spell at the pumps, and himself resumed his shovel-work alongside the others. straight away on through the night the six men stuck to their savage toil, the blood from their blistered hands reddening the shafts of the shovels. every now and again one or another of them, choked with the dust, went to get a draft of lukewarm water from the scuttlebutt. but no one stayed over long on these excursions. the breeze had blown up into a gale. the night overhead-was starless and moonless, but every minute the black heaven was split by spurts of lightning, which showed the laboring, dishevelled ship set among great mountains of breaking seas. the sight would have been bad from a well-manned, powerful steamboat; from the deck of the derelict it approached the terrific. with the seas constantly crashing on board of her, to have left the hatches open would have been, in her semi-waterlogged condition, to court swamping, and after midnight these were battened down, and the men with the shovels worked among the frightened, squeaking rats in the closed-in box of the hold. there were four on board the ship during that terrible night who openly owned to being cowed, and freely bewailed their insanity in ever being lured away from the _m'poso_. dayton-philipps had sufficient self-control to keep his feelings, whatever they were, unstated; but kettle faced all difficulties with indomitable courage and a smiling face. "i believe," said dayton-philipps to him once when they were taking a spell together at the clanking pumps, "you really glory in finding yourself in this beastly mess." "i have got to earn out the salvage of this ship somehow," kettle shouted back to him through the windy darkness, "and i don't much care what work comes between now and when i handle the check." "you've got a fine confidence. i'm not grumbling, mind, but it seems very unlikely we shall be still afloat to-morrow morning." "we shall pull through, i tell you." "well," said dayton-philipps, "i suppose you are a man that's always met with success. i'm not. i've got blundering bad luck all along, and if there's a hole available, i get into it." captain kettle laughed aloud into the storm. "me!" he cried. "me in luck! there's not been a man more bashed and kicked by luck between here and twenty years back. i suppose god thought it good for me, and he's kept me down to my bearings in bad luck ever since i first got my captain's ticket. but he's not cruel, mr. philipps, and he doesn't push a man beyond the end of his patience. my time's come at last. he's given me something to make up for all the weary waiting. he's sent me this derelict, and he only expects me to do my human best, and then he'll let me get her safely home." "good heavens, skipper, what are you talking about? have you seen visions or something?" "i'm a man, mr. philipps, that's always said my prayers regular all through life. i've asked for things, big things, many of them, and i'll not deny they've been mostly denied me. i seemed to know they'd be denied. but in the last week or so there's been a change. i've asked on, just as earnestly as i knew how, and i seemed to hear him answer. it was hardly a voice, and yet it was like a voice; it appeared to come out of millions of miles of distance; and i heard it say: 'captain, i do not forget the sparrows, and i have not forgotten you. i have tried you long enough. presently you shall meet with your reward.'" dayton-philipps stared. was the man going mad? "and that's what it is, sir, that makes me sure i shall bring this vessel into some port safely and pocket the salvage." "look here, skipper," said dayton-philipps, "you are just fagged to death, and i'm the same. we've been working till our hands are raw as butcher's meat, and we're clean tired out, and we must go below and get a bit of sleep. if the ship swims, so much the better; if she sinks, we can't help it; anyway, we're both of us too beat to work any more. i shall be 'seeing things' myself next." "mr. philipps," said the little sailor gravely, "i know you don't mean anything wrong, so i take no offence. but i'm a man convinced; i've heard the message i told you with my own understanding; and it isn't likely anything you can say will persuade me out of it. i can see you are tired out, as you say, so go you below and get a spell of sleep. but as for me, i've got another twenty hours' wakefulness in me yet, if needs be. this chance has mercifully been sent in my way, as i've said, but naturally it's expected of me that i do my human utmost as well to see it through." "if you stay on at this heart-breaking work, so do i," said dayton-philipps, and toiled gamely on at the pump. there he was still when day broke, sawing up and down like an automaton. but before the sun rose, utter weariness had done its work. his bleeding fingers loosed themselves from the break, his knees failed beneath him, and he fell in an unconscious stupor of sleep on to the wet planking of the deck. for half an hour more kettle struggled on at the pump, doing double work; but even his flesh and blood had its breaking strain; and at last he could work no more. he leaned dizzily up against the pump for a minute or so, and then with an effort he pulled his still unconscious companion away and laid him on the dry floor of a deck-house. there was a pannikin of cold stewed tea slung from a hook in there, and half a sea biscuit on one of the bunks. he ate and drank greedily, and then went out again along the streaming decks to work, so far as his single pair of hands could accomplish such a thing, at getting the huge derelict once more in sailing trim. the shovels meanwhile had been doing their work, and although the list was not entirely gone, the vessel at times (when a sea buttressed her up) floated almost upright. the gale was still blowing, but it had veered to the southward, and on the afternoon of that day kettle called all hands on deck and got her under way again, and found to his joy that the coal-trimmer had some elementary notion of taking a wheel. "i rate you as mate," he said in his gratitude, "and you'll draw salvage pay according to your rank. i was going to make mr. philipps my officer, but--" "don't apologize," said dayton-philipps. "i don't know the name of one string from another, and i'm quite conscious of my deficiency. but just watch me put in another spell at those infernal pumps." the list was of less account now, and the vessel was once more under command of her canvas. it was the leak which gave them most cause for anxiety. likely enough it was caused by the mere wrenching away of a couple of rivets. but the steady inpour of water through the holes would soon have made the ship grow unmanageable and founder if it was not constantly attended to. where the leak was they had not a notion. probably it was deep down under the cargo of grain, and quite unget-at-able; but anyway it demanded a constant service at the pumps to keep it in check, and this the bone-weary crew were but feebly competent to give. they were running up into the latitude of the bay, too, and might reasonably expect that "biscay weather" would not take much from the violence of the existing gale. however, the dreaded bay, fickle as usual, saw fit to receive them at first with a smiling face. the gale eased to a plain smiling wind; the sullen black clouds dissolved away into fleckless blue, and a sun came out which peeled their arms and faces as they worked. during the afternoon they rose the brown sails of a portuguese fishing schooner, and kettle headed toward her. let his crew be as willing as they would, there was no doubt that this murderous work at the pumps could not be kept up for a voyage to england. if he could not get further reinforcements, he would have to take the ship into the nearest foreign port to barely save her from sinking. and then where would be his sighed-for salvage? wofully thinned, he thought, or more probably whisked away altogether. captain kettle had a vast distrust for the shore foreigner over questions of law proceedings and money matters. so he made for the schooner, hove his own vessel to, and signalled that he wished to speak. a boat was slopped into the water from the schooner's deck, and ten swarthy, ragged portuguese fishermen crammed into her. a couple pushed at the oars, and they made their way perilously over the deep hill and dale of ocean with that easy familiarity which none but deep-sea fishermen can attain. they worked up alongside, caught a rope which was thrown them, and nimbly climbed over on to the decks. two or three of them had a working knowledge of english; their captain spoke it with fluent inaccuracy; and before any of them had gone aft to kettle, who stood at the wheel, they heard the whole story of the ship being found derelict, and (very naturally) were anxious enough by some means or another to finger a share of the salvage. even a ragged portuguese _baccalhao_ maker can have his ambitions for prosperity like other people. their leader made his proposal at once. "all right-a, captain, i see how you want. we take charge now, and take-a you into ferrol without you being at more trouble." "nothing of the kind," said kettle. "i'm just wanting the loan of two or three hands to give my fellows a spell or two at that pump. we're a bit short-handed, that's all. but otherwise we're quite comfortable. i'll pay a.b.'s wages on liverpool scale, and that's a lot more than you dagos give amongst yourselves, and if the men work well i'll throw in a dash besides for 'bacca money.'" [illustration: he picked up the man and sent him after the knife.] "ta-ta-ta," said the portuguese, with a wave of his yellow fist. "it cannot be done, and i will not lend you men. it shall do as i say; we take-a you into ferroll. do not fear-a, captain; you shall have money for finding sheep; you shall have some of our salvage." dayton-philipps, who was standing near, and knew the little sailor's views, looked for an outbreak. but kettle held himself in, and still spoke to the man civilly. "that's good english you talk," he said. "do all your crowd understand the language?" "no," said the fellow, readily enough, "that man does not, nor does him, nor him." "right--oh!" said kettle. "then, as those three man can't kick up a bobbery at the other end, they've just got to stay here and help work this vessel home. and as for the rest of you filthy, stinking, scale-covered cousins of apes, over the side you go before you're put. thought you were going to steal my lawful salvage, did you, you crawling, yellow-faced--ah!" the hot-tempered portuguese was not a man to stand this tirade (as kettle anticipated) unmoved. his fingers made a vengeful snatch toward the knife in his belt, but kettle was ready for this, and caught it first and flung it overboard. then with a clever heave he picked up the man and sent him after the knife. he tripped up one of the portuguese who couldn't speak english, dragged him to the cabin companion, and toppled him down the ladder. dayton-philipps (surprised at himself for abetting such lawlessness) captured a second in like fashion, and the english fireman and coal-trimmer picked up the third and dropped him down an open hatchway on to the grain in the hold beneath. but there were six of the fishermen left upon the deck, and these did not look upon the proceedings unmoved. they had been slow to act at first, but when the initial surprise was over, they were blazing with rage and eager to do murder. the italian and the sierra leone nigger ran out of their way on to the forecastle head, and they came on, vainglorious in numbers, and armed with their deadly knives. but the two english roughs, the english gentleman, and the little english sailor, were all of them men well accustomed to take care of their own skins; the belaying pins out of the pinrail seemed to come by instinct into their hands, and not one of them got so much as a scratch. it was all the affair of a minute. it does not do to let these little impromptu scrimmages simmer over long. in fact, the whole affair was decided in the first rush. the quartette of english went in, despising the "dagos," and quite intending to clear them off the ship. the invaders were driven overboard by sheer weight of blows and prestige, and the victors leaned on the bulwark puffing and gasping, and watched them swim away to their boat through the clear water below. "ruddy dagos," said the roughs. "set of blooming pirates," said kettle. but dayton-philipps seemed to view the situation from a different point. "i'm rather thinking we are the pirates. how about those three we've got on board? this sort of press-gang work isn't quite approved of nowadays, is it, skipper?" "they no speakee english," said kettle drily. "you might have heard me ask that, sir, before i started to talk to that skipper to make him begin the show. and he did begin it, and that's the great point. if ever you've been in a police court, you'll always find the magistrate ask, 'who began this trouble?' and when he finds out, that's the man he logs. no, those fishermen won't kick up a bobbery when they get back to happy portugal again; and as for our own crowd here on board, they ain't likely to talk when they get ashore, and have money due to them." "well, i suppose there's reason in that, though i should have my doubts about the stonemason. he comes from sierra leone, remember, and they're great on the rights of man there." "quite so," said kettle. "i'll see the stonemason gets packed off to sea again in a stokehold before he has a chance of stirring up the mud ashore. when the black man gets too pampered, he has to be brought low again with a rush, just to make him understand his place." "i see," said dayton-phillips, and then he laughed. "there's something that tickles you, sir?" "i was thinking, skipper, that for a man who believes he's being put in the way of a soft thing by direct guidance from on high, you're using up a tremendous lot of energy to make sure the almighty's wishes don't miscarry. but still i don't understand much about these matters myself. and at present it occurs to me that i ought to be doing a spell at those infernal pumps, instead of chattering here." the three captive portuguese were brought up on deck and were quickly induced by the ordinary persuasive methods of the merchant service officer to forego their sulkiness and turn-to diligently at what work was required of them. but even with this help the heavy ship was still considerably undermanned, and the incessant labor at the pumps fell wearily on all hands. the bay, true to its fickle nature, changed on them again. the sunshine was swamped by a driving gray mist of rain; the glass started on a steady fall; and before dark, kettle snugged her down to single topsails, himself laying out on the foot-ropes with the portuguese, as no others of his crew could manage to scramble aloft with so heavy a sea running. the night worsened as it went on; the wind piled up steadily in violence; and the sea rose till the sodden vessel rode it with a very babel of shrieks, and groans, and complaining sounds. toward morning, a terrific squall powdered up against them and hove her down, and a dull rumbling was heard in her bowels to let them know that once more her cargo had shifted. for the moment, even kettle thought that this time she was gone for good. she lost her way, and lay down like a log in the water, and the racing seas roared over her as though she had been a half-tide rock. by a miracle no one was washed overboard. but her people hung here and there to eyebolts and ropes, mere nerveless wisps of humanity, incapable under those teeming cataracts of waves to lift so much as a finger to help themselves. then to the impact of a heavier gasp of the squall, the topgallant masts went, and the small loss of of top-weight seemed momentarily to ease her. kettle seized upon the moment. he left the trimmer and one of the portuguese at the wheel, and handed himself along the streaming decks and kicked and cuffed the rest of his crew into activity. he gave his orders, and the ship wore slowly round before the wind, and began to pay away on the other tack. great hills of sea deluged her in the process, and her people worked like mermen, half of their time submerged. but by degrees, as the vast rollers hit and shook her with their ponderous impact, she came upright again, and after a little while shook the grain level in her holds, and assumed her normal, angle of heel. dayton-philipps struggled up and, hit kettle on the shoulder. "how's that, umpire?" he bawled. "my faith, you are a clever, sailor." captain kettle touched his hat. "god bore a hand there, sir," he shouted through the wind. "if i'd tried to straighten her up like that without outside help, every man here would have been fish-chop this minute." even dayton-philipps, sceptical though he might be, began to think there was "something in it" as the voyage went on. to begin with, the leak stopped. they did not know how it had happened, and they did not very much care. kettle had his theories. anyway it stopped. to go on with, although they were buffeted with every kind of evil weather, all their mischances were speedily rectified. in a heavy sea, all their unstable cargo surged about as though it had been liquid, but it always shifted back again before she quite capsized. the mizzen-mast went bodily overboard in one black rain-squall because they were too short-handed to get sail off it in time, but they found that the vessel sailed almost as well as a brig, and was much easier for a weak crew to manage. all hands got covered with salt-water boils. all hands, with the exception of kettle--who remained, as usual, neat--grew gaunt, bearded, dirty, and unkempt. they were grimed with sea-salt, they were flayed with violent suns; but by dint of hard schooling they were becoming handy sailormen, all of them, and even the negro stonemason learned to obey an order without first thinking over its justice till he earned a premonitory hiding. in the throat of the english channel a blundering steamship did her best to run them down, and actually rasped sides with the sailing-vessel as she tore past into the night; but nobody made an attempt to jump for safety on to her decks, nobody even took the trouble to swear at her with any thing like heartfelt profanity. "it's a blooming flying dutchman we're on," said the coal-trimmer who acted as mate. "there's no killing the old beast. only hope she gets us ashore somehow, and doesn't stay fooling about at sea forever just to get into risks. i want to get off her. she's too blooming lucky to be quite wholesome somehow." kettle had intended to make a channel port, but a gale hustled him north round land's end, "and you see," he said to dayton-philipps, "what i get for not being sufficiently trustful. the old girl's papers are made out to cardiff, and here we are pushed round into the bristol channel. by james! look, there's a tug making up to us. thing like that makes you feel homey, doesn't it, sir?" the little spattering tug wheeled up within hail, tossing like a cork on the brown waves of the estuary, and the skipper in the green pulpit between the paddle-boxes waved a hand cheerily. "seem to have found some dirty weather, captain," he bawled. "want a pull into cardiff or newport?" "cardiff. what price?" "say £100." "i wasn't asking to buy the tug. you're putting a pretty fancy figure on her for that new lick of paint you've got on your rails." "i'll take £80." "oh, i can sail her in myself if you're going to be funny. she's as handy as a pilot-boat, brig rigged like this, and my crew know her fine. i'll give you £20 into cardiff, and you're to dock me for that." "twenty wicked people. now look here, captain, you don't look very prosperous with that vessel of yours, and will probably have the sack from owners for mishandling her when you get ashore, and i don't want to embitter your remaining years in the workus, so i'll pull you in for fifty quid." "£20, old bottle nose." "come now, captain, thirty. i'm not here for sport. i've got to make my living." "my man," said kettle, "i'll meet you and make it £25, and i'll see you in aden before i give a penny more. you can take that, or sheer off." "throw us your blooming rope," said the tug skipper. "there, sir," said kettle _sotto voce_ to dayton-philipps, "you see the marvellousness of it? god has stood by me to the very end. i've saved at least £10 over that towage, and, by james! i've seen times when a ship mauled about like this would have been bled for four times the amount before a tug would pluck her in." "then we are out of the wood now?" "we'll get the canvas off her, and then you can go below and shave. you can sleep in a shore bed this night, if you choose, sir, and to-morrow we'll see about fingering the salvage. there'll be no trouble there now; we shall just have to ask for a check and lloyds will pay it, and then you and the hands will take your share, and i--by james! mr. philipps, i shall be a rich man over this business. i shouldn't be a bit surprised but what i finger a snug £500 as my share. oh, sir, heaven's been very good to me over this, and i know it, and i'm grateful. my wife will be grateful too. i wish you could come to our chapel some day and see her." "you deserve your luck, captain, if ever a man did in this world, and, by jove! we'll celebrate it. we've been living on pig's food for long enough. we'll find the best hotel in cardiff, and we'll get the best dinner the _chef_ there can produce. i want you to be my guest at that." "i must ask you to excuse me," said kettle. "i've received a good deal just lately, and i'm thankful, and i want to say so. if you don't mind, i'd rather say it alone." "i understand, skipper. you're a heap better man than i am, and if you don't mind, i'd like to shake hands with you. thanks. we may not meet again, but i shall never forget you and what we've seen on this murderous old wreck of a ship. hullo, there's cardiff not twenty minutes ahead. well, i must go below and clean up after you've docked her." chapter viii to capture an heiress the _parakeet_ had discharged the last of her coal into the lighters alongside, had cast off from the mooring buoys, and was steaming out of the baking heat of suez harbor on her way down toward the worse heat of the red sea beyond. the clatter and dirt of the-working ships, with the smells of hot iron and black humanity, were dying out astern, and presently she slowed up to drop the pilot into his boat, and then stood on again along her course. a passenger, a young man of eight or nine-and-twenty, lounged on a camp-stool under the upper bridge awning, and watched the _parakeet's_ captain as he walked briskly across and across, and presently, when the little sailor faced him, he nodded as though he had decided something that was in his thoughts. "well, sir?" said captain kettle. "i wish you wouldn't look so anxious. we've started now, and may as well make up our minds to go through it comfortably." "quite so," said kettle. "i'm thinking out how we are to do this business in comfort--and safety," and with that he resumed his walk. the man beside him had introduced himself when the black workers were carrying the _parakeet's_ cargo of coal in baskets from the holds to the lighters alongside; and kettle had been rather startled to find that he carried a letter of introduction from the steamboat's owners. the letter gave him no choice of procedure. it stated with clearness that mr. hugh wenlock, solicitor, had laid his wishes before them, and that they had agreed to further these wishes (through the agency of their servant--captain owen kettle) in consideration of the payment of £200 sterling. the _parakeet_ was a cargo tramp, and carried no passenger certificate, but a letter of recommendation like this was equivalent to a direct order, and kettle signed mr. wenlock on to his crew list as "doctor," and put to sea with an anxious mind. wenlock waited awhile, watching squalid suez sink into the sea behind; and then he spoke again. "look here, captain," he said, "those south arabian ports have got a lot worse reputation than they really deserve. the people down there twenty years ago were a pack of pirates, i'll grant you, but nowadays they know that if they get at any of their old games, a british gunboat promptly comes up next week and bombards them at two-mile range, and that's not good enough. they may not be honest from inclination, but they've got the fear of the gunboat always handy, and that's a wonderful civilizing power. i tell you, captain, you needn't be frightened; that pirate business is exploded for now and always." "i know all about the piratical hankerings of those south arabian niggers, sir," said kettle stiffly, "and i know what they can do and what they can't do as well as any man living. and i know also what i can do myself at a push, and the knowledge leaves me pretty comfortable. but if you choose to think me frightened, i'll own i am. it's the navigation down there that gave me cold shivers the first moment you mentioned it." "why, it's no worse than the red sea here, anyway." "red sea's bad, but you can get good charts of it and rely on them. south arabian coast is no better, and the charts aren't worth the paper they're printed on. there are bad tide-rips down there, sir, and there are bad reefs, and there's bad fog, and the truth of it is, there's no handier place to lose a ship in all the big, wide world." "i wouldn't like you to wreck the steamer down there. it might be awkward for me getting back." "quite so," said kettle, "you're thinking of yourself, and i don't blame you. i'm thinking of myself also. i'm a man that's met a great deal of misfortune, sir, and from one thing and another i've been eight years without a regular command. i had the luck to bring in a derelict the other day, and pocket a good salvage out of her, and my present owners heard of it, and they put me as master of this steamer, just because of that luck." "nothing like luck." "if you don't lose it. but i am not anxious to pile up this steamboat on some uncharted reef just because luck has left me, and have to wait another eight years before i find another command." "and, as i say, i'm as keen as you are not to get the steamer wrecked, and if there's any way she can be kept out of a dangerous area, and you can manage to set me ashore where i want in a boat, just you say, and i'll meet you all i can. but at the same time, skipper, if you don't mind doing a swap, you might give me a good deal of help over my matter in return." "i haven't heard your business yet, sir. all you've told me is that you want to be set down in this place, dunkhot, and be taken off again after you've stayed there four-and-twenty hours." "well, you see i didn't want it talked over beforehand. if the newspapers got hold of the yarn, and made a lot of fuss about it, they might upset a certain marriage that i've very much set my heart upon." captain kettle looked puzzled. "i don't seem to quite follow you, sir." "you shall hear the tale from the beginning. we have plenty of time ahead of us just now. you remember the wreck of the _rangoon_?" "she was coming home from east indian ports, wasn't she, and got on fire somewhere off cape guardafui? but that'll have been twenty years back, in the old overland days, before the ditch was opened. only about ten of her people saved, if i remember." "that's about right," said wenlock, "though it's twenty years ago now. she was full of anglo-indians, and their loss made a great sensation at the time. amongst others was a colonel anderson, and his wife, and their child teresa, aged nine; and what made their deaths all the more sad was the fact that anderson's elder brother died just a week before, and he would have come home to find a peerage and large estates waiting for him." "i can feel for that man," said kettle. "i can feel most for the daughter," said wenlock. "how do you mean, sir?" "well, colonel anderson's dead, and his wife's dead, but the daughter isn't, or at any rate she was very much alive twelve months ago, that's all. the whole lot of them, with others, got into one of the _rangoon's_ boats, and after frizzling about at sea till they were nearly starved, got chucked on that south arabian coast (which you say is so rocky and dangerous), and were drowned in the process. all barring teresa, that is. she was pulled out of the water by the local niggers, and was brought up by them, and i've absolutely certain information that not a year ago she was living in dunkhot as quite a big personage in her way." "and she's 'my lady' now, if she only knew?" "well, not that. the title doesn't descend in the female line, but colonel anderson made a will in her favor after she was born, and the present earl, who's got the estates, would have to shell out if she turned up again." "my owners, in their letter, mentioned that you were a solicitor. then you are employed by his lordship, sir?" mr. wenlock laughed. "not much," he said. "i'm on my own hook. why, hang it all, captain, you must see that no man of his own free will would be idiot enough to resurrect a long-forgotten niece just to make himself into a beggar." "i don't see why not, sir, if he got to know she was alive. some men have consciences, and even a lord, i suppose, is a man." "the present earl has far too good a time of it to worry about running a conscience. no, i bet he fights like a thief for the plunder, however clear a case we have to show him. and as he's the man in possession and has plenty of ready cash for law expenses, the odds are he'll turn out too big to worry at through all the courts, and we shall compromise. i'd like that best myself. cash down has a desirable feel about it." "it has, sir," said kettle with a reminiscent sigh. "even to pocket a tenth of what is rightfully yours is better than getting mixed up with that beastly law. but will the other relatives of the young lady, those that are employing you, i mean, agree to that?" "don't i tell you, captain, i'm on my own hook? there are no other relatives--or at least none that would take a ha'porth of interest in teresa's getting the estates. i've gone into the thing on sheer spec, and for what i can make out of it, and that, if all's well, will be the whole lump." "but how? the young lady may give you something in her gratitude, of course, but you can't expect it all." "i do, though, and i tell you how i'm going to get it. i shall marry the fair teresa. simple as tumbling off a house." kettle drew himself up stiffly and walked to the other end of the bridge, and began ostentatiously to look with a professional eye over his vessel. wenlock was quick to see the change. "come, what is it now, captain?" he asked with some surprise. "i don't like the idea of those sort of marriages," said the little sailor, acidly. wenlock shrugged his shoulders good-humoredly. "neither do i, and if i were a rich man, i wouldn't have dreamed of it. just think of what the girl probably is: she's been with those niggers since she was quite a kid; she'll be quite uneducated; i'm in hopes she's good-looking and has a decent figure; but at the best she'll be quite unpresentable till i've had her in hand for at least a couple of years, if then. of course you'll say there's 'romance' about the thing. but then i don't care tuppence about romance, and anyway it's beastly unconfortable to live with." "i was not looking at that point of view." "let me tell you how i was fixed," said wenlock with a burst of confidence. "i'd a small capital. so i qualified as a solicitor, and put up a door-plate, and waited for a practice. it didn't come. not a client drifted near me from month's end to month's end. and meanwhile the capital was dribbling away. i felt i was getting on my back legs; it was either a case of the colonies or the workhouse, and i'd no taste for either; and when the news of this girl teresa came, i tell you i just jumped at the chance. i don't want to marry her, of course; there are ten other girls i'd rather have as wife; but there was no other way out of the difficulty, so i just swallowed my squeamishness for good and always. see?" "it was miss teresa anderson i was pitying," said kettle pointedly. "good lord, man, why? isn't it the finest thing in the world for her?" "it might be fine to get away from where she is, and land home to find a nice property waiting. but i don't care to see a woman have a husband forced on her. it would be nobler of you, mr. wenlock, to let the young lady get to england, and look round her for a while, and make her own choice." "i'm too hard up to be noble," said wenlock drily. "i've not come here on philanthropy, and marrying that girl is part of my business. besides, hang it all, man, think of what she is, and think of what i am." he looked himself up and down with a half humorous smile--"i know nice people at home who would be civil to her, and after all, hang it, i'm not unmarriageable personally." "still," said kettle doggedly, "i don't like the idea of it." "then let me give you an inducement. i said i was not down here on philanthropy, and i don't suppose you are either. you'll have my passage money?" "two and a-half per cent of it is my commission. the rest goes to the owners, of course." "very well, then. in addition to that, if you'll help this marriage on in the way i ask, i'll give you £50." "there's no man living who could do more usefully with £50 if i saw my way of fingering it." "i think i see what you mean. no, you won't have to wait for it. i've got the money here in hard cash in my pocket ready for you to take over the minute it's earned." "i was wondering, sir, if i could earn it honorably. you must give me time to think this out. i'll try and give you an answer after tea. and for the present i shall have to leave you. i've got to go through the ship's papers: i have to be my own clerk on board here just now, though the company did certainly promise me a much better ship if i beat up plenty of cargo, and made a good voyage of it with this." the _parakeet_ worked her way along down the red sea at her steady nine knots, and mr. hugh wenlock put a couple of bunk pillows on a canvas boat-cover under the bridge deck awnings, and lay there and amused himself with cigarettes and a magazine. captain owen kettle sat before a table in the chart-house with his head on one side, and a pen in his fingers, and went through accounts. but though wenlock, when he had finished his magazine, quickly went off to sleep, captain kettle's struggles with arithmetic were violent enough to keep him very thoroughly awake, and when a due proportion of the figures had been checked, he put the papers in a drawer, and was quite ready to tackle the next subject. he had not seen necessary to mention the fact to mr. wenlock, but while that young man was talking of the miss teresa anderson, who at present was "quite a big personage in her way" at dunkhot, a memory had come to him that he had heard of the lady before in somewhat less prosaic terms. all sailormen who have done business on the great sea highway between west and east during recent years have had the yarn given to them at one time or another, and most of them have regarded it as gratuitous legend. kettle was one of these. but he was beginning to think there was something more in it than a mere sailor's yarn, and he was anxious to see if there was any new variation in the telling. so he sent for murray, his mate, a smart young sailor of the newer school, who preferred to be called "chief officer," made him sit, and commenced talk of a purely professional nature. finally he said: "and since i saw you last, the schedule's changed. we call in at dunkhot, for that passenger mr. wenlock to do some private business ashore, before we go on to our persian gulf ports." murray repeated the name thoughtfully. "dunkhot? let's see, that's on the south arabian coast, about a day's steam from aden, and a beast of a place to get at, so i've heard. oh, and of course, that's the place where the she-sultan, or queen, or whatever she calls herself, is boss." "so there is really a woman of that kind there, is there? i'd heard of her, like everybody else has, but i thought she was only a yarn." "no, she's there in the flesh, sir, right enough; lots of flesh, according to what i've gathered. a serang of one of the b. and i. boats, who'd been in dunkhot, told me about her only last year. she makes war, leads her troops, cuts off heads, and does the eastern potentate up to the mark. the serang said she was english, too, though i don't believe much in that. one-tenth english would probably be more near the truth. the odds are she'll be eurasian, and those snuff-and-butter colored ladies, when they get amongst people blacker than themselves, always try to ignore their own lick of the tar-brush." "fat, is she?" "the serang said she-was a big buffalo bull of a woman, with a terror of a temper. i don't know what's mr. wenlock's business, sir; but whether he wants to start a dry-goods agency, or merely to arrange for smuggling in some rifles, he'd better make up his mind to square her first and foremost. she will have a finger in every pie. she's as curious as a monkey, too, and there's no doing anything without letting her know. and when she says a thing, it's got to be done." "is she the head chief's favorite wife, then?" "that's the funny part of it: she isn't married. these orientals always get husbands early as a general thing, and you'd have thought that in her juvenile days, before she got power, they'd have married her to some one about the town, whether she liked it or not. but it seems they didn't, because she said she'd certainly poison any man if they sent her into his zenana. and later on, when she came to be boss, she still kept to spinsterhood. guess there wasn't any man about the place white enough to suit her taste." "h'm. what you've told me seems to let daylight on to things." "beg pardon, sir?" captain kettle put his hand kindly on murray's shoulder. "don't ask me to explain now, my lad, but when the joke comes you shall share the laugh. there's a young man on this ship (i don't mind telling you in confidence) whose ways i don't quite like, and i think he's going to get a lesson." he went out then under the awnings of the bridge deck, and told wenlock that he would probably be able to earn his fee for helping on the marriage, and wenlock confidently thought that he quite understood the situation. "skipper's a bit of a methody," thought mr. hugh wenlock, "but his principles don't go very deep when there are fifty sovereigns to be earned. well, he's a useful man, and if he gets me snugly married to that little girl, he'll be cheap at the price." the _parakeet's_ voyage to dunkhot was not swift. eight-and-a-half knots was her most economical pace for coal consumption, and at that gait she steamed. with a reputation to make with his new owners, and two and a-half per cent, commission on all profits, kettle had developed into a regular glutton for cargo; and the knowledge of men and places which he had so laboriously acquired in former days served him finely. three times he got doles of cargo at good stiff freights at points where few other men would have dreamed of looking. he was an ideal man for the master of an ocean tramp. he was exactly honest; he had a world of misfortunes behind to spur him on; he was quick of decision; and he had developed a nose for cargo, and a knack of extorting it from merchants, that were little short of miraculous. and, in fact, if things went on as they had started, he stood a very good chance of making 50 per cent, on the _parakeet's_ capital for the voyage, and so earning promotion to one of the firm's better ships. but though in the many days of his adversity captain kettle had never shunned any risks which came in his way, with this new prosperity fresh and pleasant at his feet, he was beginning to tell himself that risks were foolish things. he arrived off dunkhot and rang off his engines, and frowned angrily at the shore. the town stood on an eminence, snugly walled, and filled with cool, square houses. at one side, the high minaret of a mosque stood up like a bayonet, and at the other, standing in a ring of garden, was a larger building, which seemed to call itself palace. there was a small fringe of cultivation beside the walls of the town, and beyond was arid desert, which danced and shimmered under the violent sun. but all this lay small and far off, like a tiny picture in some huge frame, and showing only through the glass. a maze of reefs guarded the shore, and tore up the sleek indian ocean swells into spouting breakers; and though there was anchorage inside, tenanted indeed by a score of sailing craft, the way to it was openly perilous. and so for the present the _parakeet_ lay to, rolling outside the entrance, flying a pilot jack, and waiting developments. captain kettle might have his disquieting thoughts, still outwardly he was cool. but mr. hugh wenlock was on deck in the sprucest of his apparel, and was visibly anxious and fidgety, as befitted a man who shortly expected to enter into the bonds of matrimony. a double-ended boat came off presently, manned by naked arabs, and steered by a man in a white burnous. she swept up alongside, caught a rope and made fast, and the man in white introduced himself as a pilot. they are all good mohammedans down there, or nominally, and so of course there was no question of a clean bill of health. islam is not impious enough to check the spread of any disease which allah may see good to send for its chastening. the pilot wanted to take them in at once. he spoke some english, and carried an air of confidence. he could guide them through the reefs in the most complete of safety, and he could guarantee fine openings for trade, once inside. "i dare say," grunted kettle under his breath, "but you're a heap too uncertificated for my taste. why, you don't even offer a book of forged logs to try and work off your humbug with some look of truth. no, i know the kind of pilot you are. you'd pile up the steamboat on the first convenient reef, and then be one of the first to come and loot her."--he turned to murray: "now, look here, mr. mate. i'll leave you in charge, and see you keep steam up and don't leave the deck. don't let any of these niggers come on board on any pretence whatever, and if they try it on, steam out to sea. i'll get through mr. wenlock's business ashore as quick as lean, and perhaps pick up a ton or two of cargo for ourselves." below, in the dancing boat which ground against the steamer's side, the pilot clamored that a ladder might be thrown to him so that he might come on board and take the _parakeet_ forthwith into the anchorage; and to him again kettle turned, and temporized. he must go ashore himself first, he said, and see what offer there was of trade, before he took the steamer in. to which the pilot, though visibly disappointed, saw fit to agree, as no better offer was forthcoming. "now, sir," said kettle to wenlock, "into the boat with you. the less time that's wasted, the better i shall be pleased." "all right," said wenlock, pointing to a big package on the deck. "just tell some of your men to shove that case down into the boat, and i'm ready." kettle eyed the bulky box with disfavor. "what's in it?" he asked. "a present or a bribe; whichever you care to call it. if you want to know precisely, it's rifles. i thought they would be most acceptable." "rifles are liked hereabouts. is it for a sort of introductory present?" "well, if you must know, captain, it's occurred to me that teresa is probably an occupant of somebody's harem, and that i shall have to buy her off from her husband. hence the case of rifles." a queer look came over captain kettle's face. "and you'd still marry this woman if she had another husband living?" "of course. haven't i told you that i've thought the whole thing thoroughly over already, and i'm not inclined to stick at trifles? but i may tell you that divorce is easy in these mohammedan countries, and i shall take care to get the girl set legally free before we get away from here. you don't catch me getting mixed with bigamy." "but tell me. is a mohammedan marriage made here binding for an englishman?" "it's as legally binding as if the archbishop of canterbury tied the knot." "very well," said kettle. "now let me tell you, sir, for the last time, that i don't like what you're going to do. to my mind, it's not a nice thing marrying a woman that you evidently despise, just for her money." wenlock flushed. "look here," he said, "i refuse to be lectured, especially by you. aren't you under promise to get £50 from me the moment i'm safely married? and didn't you fairly jump at the chance of fingering it." captain kettle did not hit this man who cast such an unpleasant imputation on him; he did not even let him feel the lash of his tongue in return. he merely smiled grimly, and said: "get down into the boat, you and your case of rifles." for the moment wenlock started and hesitated. he seemed to detect something ominous in this order. but then he took a brace on his courage, and after a couple of deck hands had lowered the rifles into the dancing boat, he clambered gingerly down after them, and sat himself beside the white-robed man in the stern sheets. kettle followed, and the boat headed off for the opening between the reefs. the indian ocean swells swung beneath them, and presently were breaking on the grim stone barriers on either hand in a roar of sound. the triangular dorsal fins of a couple of sharks convoyed them in, in case of accidents; and overhead a crowd of sea-fowl screamed and swooped and circled. but none of these things interested them. the town ahead, which jerked nearer to every tug of the oars, held the eye. in it was teresa anderson, heiress, a personage of whom each of them had his own private conception. in it also were fanatical arabs, whom they hoped the fear of shadowy british gunboats would deter from open piracy. the boat passed between a cluster of ragged shipping which swayed at the anchorage, and wenlock might have stared with curious eyes (had he been so minded) on real dhows which had even then got real slaves ready for market in their stuffy 'tween decks. but he was gazing with a fascinated stare at the town. over the arch of the water-gate, for which they were heading, was what at first appeared to be a frieze of small rounded balls; but a nearer view resolved these into human heads, in various stages of desiccation. evidently justice in dunkhot was determined that the criminal who once passed through its hands should no more tread the paths of unrighteousness. the boat landed against a jetty of stone, and they stepped out dryshod. wenlock stared at the gate with its dressing of heads as though they fascinated him. "and teresa will have been brought up within sight of all this," he murmured to himself, "and will be accustomed to it. fancy marrying a woman who has spent twenty years of her life in the neighborhood of all this savagery." "strong place in its way," said kettle, squinting up at the brass cannon on the walls. "those guns up there are well kept, you can see. of course one of our cheapest fourpenny gunboats could knock the whole shop into bricks in half an hour at three-mile range; but it's strong enough to hold out against any niggers along the coast here, and that's all the queen here aims at. by the way, emir, not queen, is what she calls herself, so the pilot tells me. i suppose she thinks that as she's doing a man's job in a man's way, she may as well take a full man's ticket." they passed in through the gate, the sentries staring at them curiously, and once inside, in the full heat and smell of the narrow street beyond, wenlock said: "look here, skipper, you're resourceful, and you know these out-of-the-way places. how had we better start to find the girl?" kettle glanced coolly round at the grim buildings and the savage arabs who jostled them, and said, with fine sarcasm: "well, sir, as there doesn't appear to be a policeman about, i should recommend you to apply at the post office." "i don't want to be mocked." "then, if you'll take the tip from me, you'll crowd back to my steamboat as fast as you can go. you'll find it healthier." "i'm going on with it," said wenlock doggedly. "and i ask you to earn your £50, and give me help." "then, if you distinctly ask me to help you on into trouble like that, of course, the best thing to do is to go straight on to the palace." "show the way, then," said wenlock curtly. kettle gave the word to the white-robed pilot, and together they set off down the narrow winding streets, with an ever-increasing train of arabs and negroes following in their wake. wenlock said nothing as he walked, but it was evident from the working of his face that his mind was very full. but kettle looked about him with open interest, and thoughts in verse about this eastern town came to him with pleasant readiness. the royal residence was the large building encircled with gardens which they had seen from the sea, and they entered it with little formality. there was no trouble either about obtaining an audience. the lady emir had, it appeared, seen the steamer's approach with her own eyes; indeed, the whole of dunkhot was excited by such an unusual arrival; and the head of the state was as human in her curiosity as the meanest nigger among her subjects. the audience hall was imposing. it was bare enough, according to the rule of those heated eastern lands, but it had an air of comfort and coolness, and in those parts where it was not severely plain, the beauty of its architecture was delicious. armed guards to the number of some forty men were posted round the walls, and at the further end, apparently belonging to the civil population, were some dozen other men squatting on the floor. in the centre of the room was a naked wretch in chains; but sentence was hurriedly pronounced on him, and he was hustled away as the two englishmen entered, and they found themselves face to face with the only woman in the room, the supreme ruler of this savage south arabian coast town. she was seated on a raised divan, propped by cushions, and in front of her was a huge water-pipe at which she occasionally took a meditative pull. she was dressed quite in oriental fashion, in trousers, zouave jacket, sash, and all the rest of it; but she was unmistakably english in features, though strongly suggestive of the boadicea. she was a large, heavily-boned woman, enormously covered with flesh, and she dandled across her knees that very unfeminine sceptre, an english cavalryman's sword. but the eye neglected these details, and was irresistibly drawn by the strongness of her face. even kettle was almost awed by it. but captain owen kettle-was not a man who could be kept in awe for long. he took off his helmet, marched briskly up toward the divan, and bowed. "good afternoon, your ladyship," he said. "i trust i see you well. i'm captain kettle, master of that steamboat now lying in your roads, and this is mr. wenlock, a passenger of mine, who heard that you were english, and has come to put you in the way of some property at home." the lady sat more upright, and set back her great shoulders. "i am english," she said. "i was called in the giaour faith teresa anderson." "that's the name," said kettle. "mr. wenlock's come to take you away to step into a nice thing at home." "i am emir here. am i asked to be emir in your country?" "why, no," said kettle; "that job's filled already, and we aren't thinking of making a change. our present emir in england (who, by the way, is a lady like yourself) seems to suit us very well. no, you'll be an ordinary small-potato citizen, like everybody else, and you will probably find it a bit of a change." "i do not onderstand," said the woman. "i have not spoke your language since i was child. speak what you say again." "i'll leave it to mr. wenlock, your majesty, if you've no objections, as he's the party mostly interested; and if you'd ask one of your young men to bring me a long drink and a chair, i'll be obliged. it's been a hot walk up here. i see you don't mind smoke," he added, and lit a cheroot. now, it was clear from the attitude of the guards and the civilians present, that kettle was jostling heavily upon court etiquette, and at first the lady emir was very clearly inclined to resent it, and had sharp orders for repression ready upon her lips. but she changed her mind, perhaps through some memory that by blood she was related to this nonchalant race; and presently cushions were brought, on which captain kettle bestowed himself tailor-fashion (with his back cautiously up against a wall), and then a negro slave knelt before him and offered sweet sticky sherbet, which he drank with a wry face. but in the mean while mr. wenlock was stating his case with small forensic eloquence. the sight of miss teresa anderson in the flesh awed him. he had pictured to himself some slim, quiet exile, perhaps a little gauche and timid, but at any rate amenable to instruction and to his will. he had forgotten the developing power of tropical suns. the woman before him, whose actual age was twenty-nine, looked fifty, and even for a desperate man like himself was impossible as a wife in england. he felt daunted before her already. it flashed through his mind that it was she who had ordered those grisly heads to be stuck above the water-gate, and he heartily wished himself away back on the steamer, tramping for cargo. he was not wanting in pluck as a usual thing, this unsuccessful solicitor, but before a woman like this, with such a record behind her, a man may well be scared and yet not be accused of cowardice. but the lady emir looked on wenlock in a very different way to that in which she had regarded kettle. mr. wenlock possessed (as indeed he had himself pointed out on the _parakeet_) a fine outward appearance, and in fact anywhere he could have been remarked on as a personable man. and things came about as kettle shrewdly anticipated they would. the lady emir had not remained unmarried all these years through sheer distaste for matrimony. she had been celibate through an unconquerable pride of blood. none but men of colored race had been around her in all her wars, her governings, and her diplomacies; and always she had been too proud to mate with them. but here now stood before her a male of her own race, handsome, upstanding, and obviously impressed by her power and majesty. he would not rule her; he would not even attempt a mastery; she would still be emir--and a wife. the chance had never occurred to her before; might never occur again. she was quick to make her decision. ruling potentates are not as other folk with their love affairs, and the lady emir of dunkhot (forgetting that she was once teresa anderson, and a modest english maiden) unconsciously fell in with the rule of her caste. the english speech, long disused, came to her unhandily, but the purport of what she said was plain. she made proclamation that the englishman wenlock should there and then become her husband, and let slaves fetch the mullah to unite them before the sun had dropped below another bar of the windows. she did not ask her future husband's wishes or his permission. she simply stated her sovereign will and looked that it should be carried out forthwith. a couple of slaves scurried out on their missions--evidently their emir was accustomed to have her orders carried out with promptness--and for long enough wenlock stood wordless in front of the divan, far more like a criminal than a prospective bridegroom. the lady, with the tube of the water-pipe between her lips, puffed smoke and made no further speech. she had stated her will: the result would follow in due course. but at last wenlock, as though wrenching himself into wakefulness out of some horrid dream, turned wildly to kettle, and in a torrent of words implored for rescue. the little sailor heard him quite unmoved. "you asked my help," he said, "in a certain matter, and i've given it, and things have turned out just as i've guessed they would. you maundered about your dear teresa on my steamboat till i was nearly sick, and, by james! you've got her now, and no error about it." "but you said you didn't approve," cried the wretched man. "i quite know what i said," retorted kettle grimly. "i didn't approve of your way. but this is different. you're not a very fine specimen, but anyway you're english, and it does good to the old shop at home to have english people for kings and queens of foreign countries. i've got a theory about that." [illustration: "i'm a british subject"] now the lady emir was not listening to all this tirade by any means unmoved. to begin with, it was not etiquette to speak at all in her presence if unaddressed, and to go on with, although she did not understand one word in ten of what was being spoken, she gathered the gist of it, and this did not tend to compose her. she threw away the snaky stem of water-pipe, and gripped both hands on the trooper's sword, till the muscles stood out in high relief. "do you say," she demanded, "you onwilling marry me?" "yes," said wenlock, with sullen emphasis. she turned her head, and gave orders in arabic. with marvellous readiness, as though it was one of the regular appointments of the place, a couple of the guards trundled a stained-wooden block into the middle of the floor, another took his station beside it with an ominous-looking axe poised over his shoulder, and almost before wenlock knew what was happening, he was pinned by a dozen men at wrist and ankle, and thrust down to kneel "with his neck over the block. "do you say," the lady emir repeated, "you onwilling marry me?" "i'm a british subject," wenlock shouted. "i've a foreign office passport in my pocket. i'll appeal to my government over this." "my lad," said kettle, "you won't have time to appeal. the lady isn't being funny. she means square biz. if you don't be sensible, and see things in the same way she does, it'll be one _che-opp_, and what happens afterward won't interest you." "those spikes," said wenlock faintly. "above the water-gate?" said kettle. "queer, but the same thing occurred to me, too. you'd feel a bit lonely stuck up there getting sun-dried." "i'll marry her." "you'd better spread a bit more politeness about," kettle advised. "it will be all the more comfortable for you afterward if you do." and so wenlock, with desperation nerving him, poured out all the pretty speeches which he had in store, and which he had looked to use to this very woman under such very different circumstances. but he did not even suggest taking his future spouse back to england. she, too, when she graciously pardoned his previous outburst, mentioned her decision on this matter also. "i am emir here," she said, "and i could not be emir in your england without many fights. so here i shall stay, and you with me. when there is war, you shall ride at my side; in peace i will give you a governorship over a ward of this town, from which you can get your taxes. and if there are children, you shall bring them up." the mullah, who knew better than to keep his ruler waiting, had come in, and they were forthwith married, solemnly and irrevocably, according to the rites and ceremonies of the mohammedan church, as practised in the kingdom of dunkhot. and in witness thereof, captain kettle wrote his name from left to right, in contradistinction to all the other signatories, who wrote from right to left, except the bridegroom. "and now, mr. wenlock, if you please," said kettle, "as you're comfortably tied to the lady of your choice, i'll trouble you for that fee you promised." "i'll see you in somewhere hotter than arabia," said the bridegroom, mopping his pale face. "now look," said kettle, "i'm not going to scrap with you here, and i don't want to break up this happy home with domestic unpleasantness; but if you don't hand me over that £50, i shall ask your good lady to get it for me." wenlock sullenly handed out a note. "thank you. i know you feel injured, but i'm earning this money exactly according to promise, and of you don't quite like what's been done, you must remember that it's your own fault for not wording the agreement a bit more carefully. and now, as i seem to have got through my business here, if it's agreeable to all parties, i'll be going. good-by, mrs. wenlock, madam. let me call you by your name for the first time." the lady emir set back her great shoulders. "that is not my name," she said. "i am emir. my name does not change." "beg pardon," said kettle, "he takes yours, does he? didn't know that was the custom of this country. well, good-afternoon." "but do you want," said the lady, "no present?" "thank you," said kettle, with a cock of the head, "but i take presents from no one. what bit of a living i get, your ladyship, i earn." "i do not onderstand. but you are sailor. you have ship. you wish cargo?" captain kettle snapped his fingers ecstatically. "now, ma'am, there you've hit it. cargo's what i do want. i'll have to tell you that freights are up a good deal just now, and you'll have to pay for accommodation, but my ship's a good one, and my firm's reliable, and will see that you are dealt by honest at the other end." "i do not onderstand." "of course you don't, your majesty; of course you don't. ladies like you don't have to bother with the shipping trade. but just you give me a line to the principal merchants in the town saying that you'd like me to have a few tons of their stuff, and that'll do. i guess that what your ladyship likes round here is usually done." "you wish me write. i will write. now we will wash hands, and there is banquet." and so it came to pass that, some twenty-four hours later, captain kettle returned to the _parakeet_ sun-scorched, and flushed with success, and relieved the anxious murray from his watch. the mate was naturally curious to know what happened ashore. "let me get a glass of christian beer to wash all their sticky nastinesses from my neck, and i'll tell you," said kettle, and he did with fine detail and circumstance. "well, wenlock's got his heiress anyway," said murray, with a sigh, when the tale was over. "i suppose we may as well get under way now, sir." "not much," said kettle jubilantly. "why, man, i've squeezed every ton of cargo they have in the place, and stuck them for freights in a way that would surprise you. here's the tally: 270 bags of coffee, 700 packets of dates, 350 baskets of figs, and all for london. and, mark you," said kettle, hitting the table, "that or more'll be waiting for me there every time i come, and no other skipper need apply." "h'm," said the mate thoughtfully; "but will wenlock be as civil and limp next time you call, sir?" captain kettle winked pleasantly, and put a fifty-pound note in his lock-up drawer. "that's all right, my lad. no fear of master wenlock getting his tail up. if you'd seen the good lady, his wife, you'd know why. that's the man that went hunting an heiress, mr. murray; and by the holy james he's got her, and no error." chapter ix a matter of justice it was quite evident that the man wanted something; but captain kettle did not choose definitely to ask for his wishes. over-curiosity is not a thing that pays with orientals. stolid indifference, on the other hand, may earn easy admiration. but at last the man took his courage in a firmer grip, and came up from the _parakeet's_ lower deck, where the hands were working cargo, and advanced under the bridge deck awnings to captain kettle's long chair and salaamed low before him. kettle seemed to see the man for the first time. he looked up from the accounts he was laboring at. "well?" he said, curtly. it was clear the arab had no english. it was clear also that he feared being watched by his fellow countrymen in the lighter which was discharging date bags alongside. he manoeuvred till the broad of his back covered his movements, materialized somehow or other a scrap of paper from some fold of his burnous, dropped this into kettle's lap without any perceptible movement of either his arms or hands, and then gave another stately salaam and moved away to the place from which he had come. "if you are an out-of-work conjuror," said kettle to the retreating figure, "you've come to the wrong place to get employment here." the arab passed out of sight without once turning his head, and kettle glanced down at the screw of paper which lay on his knees, and saw on it a scrawl of writing. "hullo," he said, "postman, were you; not conjuror? i didn't expect any mail here. however, let's see. murray's writing, by james!" he muttered, as he flattened out the grimy scrap of paper, and then he whistled-with surprise and disgust as he read. "_dear captain_," the letter ran. "_i've got into the deuce of a mess, and if you can bear a hand to pull me out, it would be a favor i should never forget. i got caught up that side street to the left past the mosque, but they covered my head with a cloth directly after, and hustled me on for half an hour, and where i am now, the dickens only knows. it's a cellar. but perhaps bearer may know, who's got my watch. the trouble was about a woman, a pretty little piece who i was photographing. you see_--" and here the letter broke off. "that's the worst of these fancy, high-toned mates," kettle grumbled. "what does he want to go ashore for at a one-eyed hole like this? there are no saloons--and besides he isn't a drinking man. your new-fashioned mate isn't. there are no girls for him to kiss--seeing that they are all mohammedans, and wear a veil. and as for going round with that photography box of his, i wonder he hasn't more pride. i don't like to see a smart young fellow like him, that's got his master's ticket all new and ready in his chest, bringing himself down to the level of a common, dirty-haired artist. well, murray's got a lot to learn before he finds an owner fit to trust him with a ship of his own." kettle read the hurried letter through a second time, and then got up out of his long chair, and put on his spruce white drill uniform coat, and exchanged his white canvas shoes for another pair more newly pipeclayed. his steamer might merely be a common cargo tramp, the town he was going to visit ashore might be merely the usual savage settlement one meets with on the arabian shore of the persian gulf, but the little sailor did not dress for the admiration of fashionable crowds. he was smart and spruce always out of deference to his own self-respect. he went up to the second mate at the tally desk on the main deck below, and gave him some instructions. "i'm going ashore," he said, "and leave you in charge. don't let too many of these niggers come aboard at once, and tell the steward to keep all the doors to below snugly fastened. i locked the chart-house myself when i came out. have you heard about the mate?" "no, sir." "ah, i thought the news would have been spread well about the ship before it came to me. he's got in trouble ashore, and i suppose i must go, and see the kady, and get him bailed out." the second mate wiped the dust and perspiration from his face with his bare arm, and leant on the tally-desk, and grinned. here seemed to be an opportunity for the relaxation of stiff official relations. "what's tripped him?" he asked. "skirt or photographing?" "he will probably tell you himself when he comes back," said kettle coldly. "i shall send him to his room for three days when he gets on board." the second mate pulled his face into seriousness. "i don't suppose he got into trouble intentionally, sir." "probably not, but that doesn't alter the fact that he has managed it somehow. i don't engage my mates for amusements of that kind, mr. grain. i've got them here to work, and help me do my duty by the owners. if they take up low class trades like artisting, they must be prepared to stand the consequences. you'll remember the orders i've given you? if i'm wanted, you'll say i'll probably be back by tea." captain kettle went off then in a shore-boat, past a small fleet of pearling dhows, which rolled at their anchors, and after a long pull--for the sea was shallow, and the anchorage lay five miles out--stepped on to the back of a burly arab, and was carried the last mile dry-shod. parallel to him were lines of men carrying out cargo to the lighters which would tranship it to the _parakeet_, and kettle looked upon these with a fine complacency. his tramping for cargo had been phenomenally successful. he was filling his holds at astonishingly heavy freights. and not only would this bring him credit with his owners, which meant promotion in due course to a larger ship, but in the mean time, as he drew his 2-1/2 per cent, on the profits, it represented a very comfortable matter of solid cash for that much-needing person himself. he hugged himself with pleasure when he thought of this new found prosperity. it represented so many things which he would be able to do for his wife and family, which through so many years narrow circumstances had made impossible. the burly arab on whose hips he rode pick-a-back stepped out of the water at last, and kettle jumped down from his perch, and picked his way daintily among the litter of the foreshore toward the white houses of the town which lay beyond. it was the first time he had set foot there. so great was his luck at the time, that he had not been forced to go ashore in the usual way drumming up cargo. the shippers had come off begging him to become their carrier, and he had muleted them in heavy freights accordingly. so he stepped into the town with many of the feelings of a conqueror, and demanded to be led to the office of a man with whom he had done profitable business that very morning. of course, "office" in the western meaning of the term there was none. the worthy rad el moussa transacted affairs on the floor of his general sitting-room, and stored his merchandise in the bed-chambers, or wherever it would be out of reach of pilfering fingers. but he received the little sailor with fine protestations of regard, and (after some giggles and shuffling as the women withdrew) inducted him to the dark interior of his house, and set before him delicious coffee and some doubtful sweetmeats. kettle knew enough about oriental etiquette not to introduce the matter on which he had come at the outset of the conversation. he passed and received the necessary compliments first, endured a discussion of local trade prospects, and then by an easy gradation led up to the powers of the local kady. he did not speak arabic himself, and rad el moussa had no english. but they had both served a life apprenticeship to sea trading, and the curse of the tower of babel had very little power over them. in the memories of each there were garnered scraps from a score of spoken languages, and when these failed, they could always draw on the unlimited vocabulary of the gestures and the eyes. and for points that were really abstruse, or which required definite understanding, there always remained the charcoal stick and the explanatory drawing on the face of a whitewashed wall. when the conversation had lasted some half an hour by the clock, and a slave brought in a second relay of sweetmeats and thick coffee, the sailor mentioned, as it were incidentally, that one of his officers had got into trouble in the town. "it's quite a small thing," he said lightly, "but i want him back as soon as possible, because there's work for him to do on the steamer. see what i mean?" rad el moussa nodded gravely. "savvy plenty," said he. now kettle knew that the machinery of the law in these small arabian coast towns was concentrated in the person of the kady, who, for practical purposes, must be made to move by that lubricant known as palm oil; and so he produced some coins from his pocket and lifted his eyebrows inquiringly. rad el moussa nodded again, and made careful inspection of the coins, turning them one by one with his long brown fingers, and biting those he fancied most as a test of their quality. finally, he selected a gold twenty-franc piece and two sovereigns, balanced and chinked them carefully in his hand, and then slipped them into some private receptacle in his wearing apparel. "i say," remarked kettle, "that's not for you personally, old tintacks. that's for the kady." rad pointed majestically to his own breast. "el kady," he said. "oh, you are his worship, are you?" said kettle. "why didn't you say so before? i don't think it was quite straight of you, tintacks, but perhaps that's your gentle arab way. but i say, whiskers, don't you try being too foxy with me, or you'll get hurt. i'm not the most patient man in the world with inferior nations. come, now, where's the mate?" rad spread his hands helplessly. "see, here, it's no use your trying that game. you know that i want murray, my mate." "savvy plenty." "then hand him out, and let me get away back on board." "no got," said rad el moussa; "no can." "now look here, mister," said captain kettle, "i've paid you honestly for justice, and if i don't have it, i'll start in pulling down your old town straight away. give up the mate, rad, and let me get back peacefully to my steamboat, or, by james! i'll let loose a wild earthquake here. if you want battle, murder, and sudden death, mr. rad el moussa, just you play monkey tricks with me, and you'll get 'em cheap. kady, are you? then, by james! you start in without further talk, and give me the justice that i've bought and paid for." though this tirade was in an alien tongue, rad el moussa caught the drift from captain kettle's accompanying gesticulations, which supplied a running translation as he went on. rad saw that his visitor meant business, and signed that he would go out and fetch the imprisoned mate forthwith. "no, you don't," said kettle promptly. "if your worship once left here, i might have trouble in finding you again. i know how easy it is to hide in a-warren like this town of yours. send one of your hands with a message." now, to convey this sentence more clearly, kettle had put his fingers on the arab's clothing, when out fell a bag of pearls, which came unfastened. the pearls rolled like peas about the floor, and the arab, with gritting teeth, whipped out a knife. promptly kettle drew also, and covered him with a revolver. "see here," he said, "i'm not a thief, though perhaps you think i pulled out that jewelry purse on purpose. it was an accident, rad, so i'll forgive your hastiness. but your worship mustn't pull out cutlery on me. i'll not stand that from any man living. that's right, put it up. back goes the pistol into its pocket, and now we're friends again. pick up the pearls yourself, and then you'll be certain i haven't grabbed any, and then send one of your men to fetch my mate and do as i want. you're wasting a great deal of my time, rad el moussa, over a very simple job." the arab gathered the pearls again into the pouch and put it back to its place among his clothes. his face had grown savage and lowering, but it was clear that this little spitfire of a sailor, with his handy pistol, daunted him. kettle, who read these signs, was not insensible to the compliment they implied, but at the same time he grew, if anything, additionally cautious. he watched his man with a cat-like caution, and when rad called a slave and gave him orders in fluent arabic, he made him translate his commands forthwith. rad el moussa protested that he had ordered nothing more than the carrying out of his visitor's wishes. but it seemed to kettle that he protested just a trifle too vehemently, and his suspicions deepened. he tapped his pistol in its resting-place, and nodded his head meaningly. "you've friends in this town," he said, "and i dare say you'll have a goodish bit of power in your small way. i've neither, and i don't deny that if you bring up all your local army to interfere, i may have a toughish fight of it; but whatever happens to me in the long run, you may take it as straight from yours truly that you'll go to your own funeral if trouble starts. so put that in your hookah and smoke it, tintacks, and give me the other tube." captain kettle was used to the dilatory ways of the east, and he was prepared to wait, though never doubting that murray would be surrendered to him in due time, and he would get his own way in the end. so he picked up one of the snaky tubes of the great pipe, and put the amber mouthpiece between his lips; and there for an hour the pair of them squatted on the divan, with the hookah gurgling and reeking between them. from time to time a slave-girl came and replenished the pipe with tobacco or fire as was required. but these were the only interruptions, and between whiles they smoked on in massive silence. at the end of that hour, the man-slave who had been sent out with the message re-entered the room and delivered his tidings. rad el moussa in his turn passed it on. murray was even then waiting in the justice chamber, so he said, at the further side of the house, and could be taken away at once. kettle rose to his feet, and the arab stood before him with bowed head and folded arms. captain kettle began to feel shame for having pressed this man too hardly. it seemed that he had intended to act honestly all along, and the suspiciousness of his behavior doubtless arose from some difficulty of custom or language. so the sailor took the rad's limp hand in his own and shook it cordially, and at the same time made a handsome apology for his own share of the misunderstanding. "your worship must excuse me," he said, "but i'm always apt to be a bit suspicious about lawyers. what dealings i've had with them have nearly always turned out for me unfortunately. and now, if you don't mind, we'll go into your court-house, and you can hand me over my mate, and i'll take him back to the ship. enough time's been wasted already by both of us." the arab, still bowed and submissive, signed toward the doorway, and kettle marched briskly out along the narrow dark passage beyond, with rad's sandals shuffling in escort close at his rear. the house seemed a large one, and rambling. three times rad's respectful fingers on his visitor's sleeve signed to him a change of route. the corridors, too, as is the custom in arabia, where coolness is the first consideration, were dimly lit; and with the caution which had grown to be his second nature, kettle instinctively kept all his senses on the alert for inconvenient surprises. he had no desire that rad el moussa should forget his submissiveness and stab him suddenly from behind, neither did he especially wish to be noosed or knifed from round any of the dusky sudden corners. in fact he was as much on the _qui vive_ as he ever had been in all his long, wild, adventurous life, and yet rad el moussa, who meant treachery all along, took him captive by the most vulgar of timeworn stratagems. of a sudden the boarding of the floor sank beneath kettle's feet. he turned, and with a desperate effort tried to throw himself backward whence he had come. but the boarding behind reared up and hit him a violent blow on the hands and head, and he fell into a pit below. for an instant he saw through the gloom the face of rad el moussa turned suddenly virulent, spitting at him in hate, and then the swing-floor slammed up into place again, and all view of anything but inky blackness was completely shut away. now the fall, besides being disconcerting, was tolerably deep; and but for the fact that the final blow from the flooring had shot him against the opposite side of the pit, and so broken his descent at the expense of his elbows and heels, he might very well have landed awkwardly, and broken a limb or his back in the process. but captain owen kettle was not the man to waste time over useless lamentation or rubbing of bruises. he was on fire with fury at the way he had been tricked, and thirsting to get loose and be revenged. he had his pistol still in its proper pocket, and undamaged, and if the wily rad had shown himself anywhere within range just then, it is a certain thing that he would have been shot dead to square the account. but kettle was, as i have said, wedged in with darkness, and for the present, revenge must wait until he could see the man he wanted to shoot at. he scrambled to his feet, and fumbled in his pocket for a match. he found one, struck it on the sole of his trim white shoe, and reconnoitred quickly. the place he was in was round and bottle shaped, measuring some ten feet across its floor, and tapering to a small square, where the trap gave it entrance above. it was a prison clearly, and there was evidence that it had been recently used. it was clear also that the only official way of releasing a prisoner was to get him up by a ladder or rope through the small opening to which the sides converged overhead. moreover, to all common seeming, the place was simply unbreakable, at least to any creature who had not either wings or the power of crawling up the under-side of a slant like a fly. but all these things flashed through kettle's brain in far less time than it takes to read them here. he had only two matches in his possession, and he wished to make all possible use of the first, so as to keep the second for emergencies; and so he made his survey with the best of his intelligence and speed. the walls of this bottle-shaped prison were of bricks built without visible mortar, and held together (it seemed probable) by the weight of earth pressing outside them; but just before the match burned his fingers and dropped to the floor, where it promptly expired, his eye fell upon an opening in the masonry. it was a mere slit, barely three inches wide, running vertically up and down for some six courses of the brick, and it was about chin-high above the ground. he marked this when the light went out, and promptly went to it and explored it with his arm. the slit widened at the other side, and there was evidently a chamber beyond. he clapped his hands against the lip of the slit, and set his feet against the wall, and pulled with the utmost of his strength. if once he could widen the opening sufficiently to clamber through, possibilities lay beyond. but from the weight of wall pressing down above, he could not budge a single brick by so much as a hairs-breadth, and so he had to give up this idea, and, stewing with rage, set about further reconnoitring. the darkness put his eyes out of action, but he had still left his hands and feet, and he went round with these, exploring carefully. presently his search was rewarded. opposite the opening he had discovered before, was another slit in the overhanging wall of this bottle-shaped prison, and this also he attacked in the hope of wrenching free some of the bricks. he strained and panted, till it seemed as though the tendons of his body must break, but the wall remained whole and the slit unpassable; and then he gave way, almost childishly, to his passion of rage, and shouted insults and threats at rad el moussa in the vain hope that some one would hear and carry them. and some one did hear, though not the persons he expected. a voice, muffled and foggy, as though it came from a long distance, said in surprise: "why, captain, have they got you here, too?" under cover of the darkness, kettle blushed for shame at his outcry. "that you, murray? i didn't know you were here. how did you guess it was me?" the distant voice chuckled foggily. "i've heard you giving your blessing to the hands on board, sir, once or twice, and i recognized some of the words. what have they collared you for? you don't photograph. have you been messing round with some girl?" "curse your impudence; just you remember your position and mine. i'll have respect from my officers, even if i am in a bit of a fix." "beg pardon, sir. sorry i forgot myself. it sha'n't occur again." "you'll go to your room for three days when we get back on board." "ay, ay, sir." "i decided that before i left the ship. i can't have my officers staying away from duty without leave on any excuse. and if they have such low tastes as to bring themselves on the level of common mop-headed portrait painters and photographers, they must pay for it." "ay, ay, sir." "what were you run in for?" "oh, photographing." "there you are, then! and did they bring you straight along here?" "yes, sir. and lowered me in a bowline to this cellar." "ah," said kettle, "then you don't want so much change out of them. they dropped me, and some one will have a heavy bill to square up for, over that. do you know whose house this is?" "haven't a notion. after i'd been here an hour or so, some heathen sneaked round to a peep-hole in the wall and offered to take off a message to the ship, on payment. i hadn't any money, so i had to give up my watch, and before i'd written half the letter he got interrupted and had to clear off with what there was. did he bring off the message, sir?" "he did. and i came ashore at once. you remember rad el moussa?" "the man that consigned all that parcel of figs for london?" "that man. i considered that as he'd been doing business with the steamer, he was the best person to make inquiries of ashore. so i came to him, and asked where i could find the kady to bail you out. he shuffled a bit, and after some talk he admitted he was the kady, and took palm-oil from me in the usual way, and then i'll not deny that we had a trifle of a disagreement. but he seemed to simmer down all right, said he'd send along for you, and after a bit of time said you'd come, and wouldn't i walk through the house and see you myself. the crafty old fox had got his booby trap rigged in the mean time, and then i walked straight into it like the softest specimen of blame' fool you can imagine." "rad el moussa," came the foggy comment. "by jove! captain, i believe we're in an awkward place. he's the biggest man in this town far and away, and about the biggest blackguard also from what i've heard. he's a merchant in every line that comes handy, from slaves and palm fibre to horses and dates; he runs most of those pearling dhows that we saw sweltering about at the anchorage; and he's got a little army of his own with which he raids the other coast towns and the caravans up-country when he hears they've got any truck worth looting. i say, this is scaring. i've been taking the thing pretty easily up to now, thinking it would come all right in time. but if i'd known it was old rad who had grabbed me, i tell you i should have sat sweating." "it takes a lot more than a mere nigger, with his head in clouts, to scare me," said kettle truculently, "and i don't care tuppence what he may be by trade. he's got a down on me at present, i'll grant, but i'm going to give mr. rad el moussa fits a little later on, and you may stand by and look on, if you aren't frightened to be near him." "i'm not a funk in the open," grumbled murray, "and you know it. you've seen me handle a crew. but i'm in a kind of cellar here, and can't get out, and if anybody chooses they can drop bricks on me, and i can't stop them. have they been at you about those rifles, sir?" "what rifles? no, nobody's said 'rifles' to me ashore here." "it seems we've got some cases of rifles on board for one of those little ports up the coast. i didn't know it." "nor did i," said kettle, "and you can take it from me that we haven't. smuggling rifles ashore is a big offence here in the persian gulf, and i'm not going to put myself in the way of the law, if i know it." "well, i think you're wrong, sir," said the mate. "i believe they're in some cases that are down on the manifest as 'machinery.' i saw them stowed down no. 3 hold, and i remember one of the stevedores in london joking about them when they were struck below." "supposing they were rifles, what than?" "rad wants them. he says they're consigned to some of his neighbors up coast, who'll raid him as soon as they're properly armed; and he doesn't like the idea. what raiding's done, he likes to do himself, and at the same time he much prefers good brummagen rifles to the local ironmonger's blunderbusses." "well," said kettle, "i'm waiting to hear what he thought you could do with the rifles supposing they were on board." "oh, he expected me to broach cargo and bring them here ashore to him. he's a simple-minded savage." "by james!" said kettle, "the man's mad. what did he think i should be doing whilst one of my mates was scoffing cargo under my blessed nose?" "ah, you see," said the foggy voice, with sly malice, "he did not know you so well then, sir. that was before he persuaded you to come into his house to stay with him." it is probable that captain kettle would have found occasion to make acid comment on this repartee from his inferior officer, but at that moment another voice addressed him from the slit at the other side of his prison, and he turned sharply round. to his surprise this new person spoke in very tolerable english. "capt'n, i want t'make contrack wid you." "the deuce you do. and who might you be, anyway?" "i cullud gen'lem'n, sar. born _zanzibar_. used to be fireman on p. and o. i want arsk you--" "is this the arabian nights? how the mischief did you get here, anyway?" "went on burst in aden, sar. th'ole chief fired me out. went yemen. caught for slave. taken caravan. brought here. but i'm very clever gen'lem'n, sar, an' soon bought myself free. got slave of my own now. an' three wives. bought 'nother wife yesterday." "you nasty beast!" said kettle. "sar, you insult me. not bally christian any longer. hard-shell mohammedan now, sar, and can marry as many wives as i can buy." "i'm sure the prophet's welcome to you. look here, my man. pass down a rope's end from aloft there, and let me get on deck, and i'll give you a sovereign cash down, and a berth in my steamboat's stoke-hold if you want one. i'm not asking you to help me more. i guess i'm quite competent to find my way on board, and to wipe this house tolerably clean before it's quit of me." "nothing of the kind, sar," said the man behind the slit. "you insult me, sar. i very big gen'lem'n here, sar, an' a sovereign's no use to me. besides, i partner to ole man rad, an' he say he want dem rifles you got on your ole tramp." "does he, indeed? then you can tell him, mr. nigger runaway-drunken-fireman, that i'll see you and him in somewhere a big sight hotter than arabia before he gets them. i didn't know they were rifles; if i had known before this, i'd not have put them ashore; but as things are now, i'll land them into the hands of those that ordered them, and i hope they come round to this town of yours and give you fits. and see here, you talk more respectful about my steamboat, or you'll get your shins kicked, daddy." "an ole tramp," said the man relishingly. "i served on p. an' o., sar, an' on p. an' o. we don't care 'sociate wid tramps' sailors." "you impudent black cannibal. you'll be one of the animals those passenger lines carry along to eat the dead babies, to save the trouble of heaving them overboard." the ex-fireman spluttered. but he did not continue the contest. he recognized that he had to deal with a master in the cheerful art of insult, and so he came back sulkily to business. "will you give rad dem rifles, you low white fellow?" "no, i won't." "very well. den we shall spiflicate you till you do," said the man, and after that kettle heard his slippers shuffling away. "i wonder what spiflicating is?" mused kettle, but he did not remain cudgelling his brain over this for long. it occurred to him that if this negro could come and go so handily to the outside of this underground prison, there must be a stairway somewhere near, and though he could not enlarge the slit to get at it that way, it might be possible to burrow a passage under the wall itself. for a tool, he had spied a broken crock lying on the floor, and with the idea once in his head, he was not long in putting it to practical effect. he squatted just underneath the slit, and began to quarry the earth at the foot of the wall with skill and determination. but if kettle was prompt, his captors were by no means dilatory. between kettle's prison and the mate's was another of those bottle-shaped _oubliettes_, and in that there was presently a bustle of movement. there came the noises of some one lighting a fire, and coughing as he fanned smouldering embers into a glow with his breath, and then more coughing and some curses as the fire-lighter took his departure. the door above clapped down into place, and then there was the sound of someone dragging over that and over the doors of the other two prisons what seemed to be carpets, or heavy rugs. there was something mysterious in this manoeuvre at first, but the secret of it was not kept for long. an acrid smell stole out into the air, which thickened every minute in intensity. kettle seemed dimly to recognize it, but could not put a name to it definitely. besides, he was working with all his might at scraping away the earth from the foot of the wall, and had little leisure to think of other things. the heat was stifling, and the sweat dripped from him, but he toiled on with a savage glee at his success. the foundations had not been dug out; they were "floating" upon the earth surface; and the labor of undermining would, it appeared, be small. but murray in the other prison had smelt the reek before, and was able to put a name to it promptly. "by jove! captain," he shouted mistily from the distance, "they're going to smoke us to death; that's the game." "looks like trying it," panted the little sailor, from his work. "that's dried camel's dung they're burning. there's no wood in arabia here, and that's their only fuel. when the smoke gets into your lungs, it just tears you all to bits. i say, skipper, can't you come to some agreement with rad over those blessed rifles? it's a beastly death to die, this." "you aren't dead--by a long chalk--yet. more'm i. i'd hate to be--smoke-dried like a ham--as bad as any jew. but i don't start in--to scoff the cargo--on my own ship--at any bally price." there was a sound of distant coughing, and then the misty question: "what are you working at?" "taking--exercise," kettle gasped, and after that, communication between the two was limited to incessant staccato coughs. more and more acrid grew the air as the burning camel's dung saturated it further and further with smoke, and more and more frenzied grew kettle's efforts. once he got up and stuffed his coat in the embrasure from which the smoke principally came. but that did little enough good. the wall was all chinks, and the bitter reek came in unchecked. he felt that the hacking coughs were gnawing away his strength, and just now the utmost output of his thews was needed. he had given up his original idea of mining a passage under the wall. indeed, this would have been a labor of weeks with the poor broken crock which was his only tool, for the weight of the building above had turned the earth to something very near akin to the hardness of stone. but he had managed to scrape out a space underneath one brick, and found that it was loosened, and with trouble could be dislodged; and so he was burrowing away the earth from beneath others, to drop more bricks down from their places, and so make a gangway through the solid wall itself. but simple though this may be in theory, it was tediously difficult work in practice. the bricks jammed even when they were undermined, and the wall was four bricks thick to its further side. moreover, every alternate course was cross-pinned, and the workman was rapidly becoming asphyxiated by the terrible reek which came billowing in from the chamber beyond. still, with aching chest, and bleeding fingers, and smarting eyes, kettle worked doggedly on, and at last got a hole made completely through. what lay in the blackness beyond he did not know; either rad el moussa or the fireman might be waiting to give him a _coup de grace_ the moment his head appeared; but he was ready to accept every risk. he felt that if he stayed in the smoke of that burning camel's dung any longer he would be strangled. the hole in the brickwork was scarcely bigger than a fox-earth, but he was a slightly built man, and with a hard struggle he managed to push his way through. no one opposed him. he found and scraped his only remaining match, and saw that he was in another bottle-shaped chamber similar to the one he had left; but in this there was a doorway. there was pungent smoke reek here also, and, though its slenderness came to him as a blessed relief after what he had been enduring, he lusted desperately for a taste of the pure air outside. the door gave to his touch, and he found a stair. he ran up this and stepped out into the corridor, where rad had lured him to capture, and then, walking cautiously by the wall so as not to step into any more booby-traps, he came to the place where he calculated murray would be jailed. a large thick carpet had been spread over the door so as to prevent any egress of the stinging smoke, or any ingress of air, and this he pulled away, and lifted the trap. there was no sound from below. "great heavens," he thought, "was the mate dead?" he hailed sharply, and a husky voice answered. seeing nothing else at hand that would serve, he lowered an end of the carpet, keeping a grip on the other, and presently murray got a hold and clambered up beside him. in a dozen whispered words kettle told his plans, and they were on the point of starting off to carry them out, when the _slop-slop_ of slippers made itself heard advancing down the corridors. promptly the pair of them sank into the shadows, and presently the ex-fireman came up whistling cheerfully an air from some english music-hall. he did not see them till they were almost within hand-grips, and then the tune froze upon his lips in a manner that was ludicrous. but neither kettle nor his mate had any eye for the humors of the situation just then. murray plucked the man's legs artistically from beneath him, and kettle gripped his hands and throat. he thrust his savage little face close down to the black man's. "now," he said, "where's rad? tell me truly, or i'll make you into dog's meat. and speak quietly. if you make a row, i'll gouge your eyes out." "rad, he in divan," the fellow stuttered in a scared whisper. "sort o' front shop you savvy, sar. don' kill me." "i can recommend my late state-room," said murray. "just the ticket," said kettle. so into the _oubliette_ they toppled him, clapping down the door in its place above. "there you may stay, you black beast," said his judge, "to stew in the smoke you raised yourself. if any of your numerous wives are sufficiently interested to get you out, they may do so. if not, you pig, you may stay and cure into bacon. i'm sure i sha'n't miss you. come along, mr. mate." they fell upon rad el moussa placidly resting among the cushions of the divan, with the stem of the water-pipe between his teeth, and his mind probably figuring out plans of campaign in which the captured rifles would do astonishing work. kettle had no revolver in open view, but rad had already learned how handily that instrument could be produced on occasion, and had the wit to make no show of resistance. the sailor went up to him, delicately extracted the poignard from his sash, and broke the blade beneath his feet. then he said to him, "stand there," pointing to the middle of the floor, and seated himself on the divan in the attitude of a judge. "now, mr. rad el moussa, i advise you to understand what's going to be said to you now, so that it'll be a lesson to you in the future. "i came to you, not very long ago, asking for your card to the kady. i told you my business was about the mate here, and you said you were kady yourself. whether you are or not i don't know, and i don't vastly care, but anyway, i paid for justice in hard money, and you said you'd give up the mate. you didn't do that. you played a trick on me, which i'll own up i was a fool to get caught by; and i make no doubt that you've been laughing at me behind my back with that nasty nigger partner of yours. "well, prisoner at the bar, let alone i'm a blooming englishman--and englishmen aren't sent into this world to be laughed at by any foreigners--i'm myself as well, and let me tell you i don't stand either being swindled out of justice when i've paid for it, or being played tricks on afterward. so you are hereby sentenced to the fine of one bag of pearls, to be paid on the spot, and furthermore to be incarcerated in one of those smoke boxes down the alleyway yonder till you can find your own way out. now, prisoner, don't move during the next operation, or i'll shoot you. mr. mate, you'll find a small bag inside the top part of his nightgown, on the left-hand side. got 'em?" "here they are, sir," said murray. "thanks," said kettle, and put the bag in his pocket. "and now, if you please, mr. mate, we'll just put his whiskers into that cellar with the nigger, and leave him there to get smoked into a better and, we'll hope, a more penitent frame of mind." they completed this pious act to their entire satisfaction, and left the house without further interruption. the townspeople were just beginning to move about again after the violence of the midday heat, but except for curious stares, they passed through the narrow streets between the whitewashed houses quite without interruption. and in due time they came to the beach, and hired a shore boat, which took them off to the steamer. but here kettle was not inclined to linger unnecessarily. he saw grain, the second mate, and asked mm how much more cargo there was to come off. "the last lighter load is alongside this minute, sir." "then hustle it on deck as quick as you can, and then call the carpenter, and go forward and heave up." grain looked meaningly at murray. "am i to take the fore deck, sir." "yes, i appoint you acting mate for three days; and mr. murray goes to his room for that time for getting into trouble ashore. now put some hurry into things, mr. grain; i don't want to stay here longer than's needful." grain went forward about his business, but murray, who looked somewhat disconsolate, kettle beckoned into the chart-house. he pulled out the pearl bag, and emptied its contents on to the chart table. "now, look here, my lad," said he, "i have to send you to your room because i said i would, and because that's discipline; but you can pocket a thimblefull of these seed pearls just to patch up your wounded feelings, as your share of old rad el moussa's fine. they are only seed pearls, as i say, and aren't worth much. we were due to have more as a sheer matter of justice, but it wasn't to be got. so we must make the best of what there is. you'll bag £20 out of your lot if you sell them in the right place ashore. i reckoned my damages at £500, and i guess i've got here about £200." "thank you, sir," said murray. "but it's rather hard being sent to my room for a thing i could no more help than you could." "discipline, my lad. this will probably teach you to leave photographing to your inferiors in the future. there's no persuading me that it isn't that photograph box that's at the bottom of the whole mischief. hullo, there's the windlass going already. i'll just lock up these pearls in the drawer, and then i must go on the bridge. er, and about going to your room, my lad: as long as i don't see you for three days you can do much as you like. i don't want to be too hard. but as i said to old rad el moussa, justice is justice, and discipline's got to be kept." "and what about the rifles, sir?" captain kettle winked pleasantly. "i don't know that they are rifles. you see the cases are down on the manifest as 'machinery,' and i'm going to put them ashore as such; but i don't mind owning to you, mr. mate, that i hope old rad finds out he was right in his information. i suppose his neighbors will let him know within the next week or so whether they are rifles really, or whether they aren't." chapter x dago divers "i'm real glad to be able to call you 'captain,' my lad," said kettle, and murray, in delight at his new promotion, wrung his old commander's hand again. "you've slaved hard enough as mate," kettle went on, "though that's only what a man's got to do at sea nowadays if he wants promotion, and it'll probably amuse you to see grain, who steps into your shoes, doing the work of four deck hands and an extra boatswain as well as his own. grain was inclined to stoutness--he'll soon be thin again. as for you, you've sweated and slaved so much that your clothes hang on like you a slop-chest shirt on a stanchion just now. but you'll fill 'em out nicely by the time you get back to england again. shouldn't wonder but what you turn out to be a regular fat man one of these days, my lad." murray stood back and looked humorously over captain kettle. the pair of them liked one another well, but the ties of discipline had kept them icily apart up to now. murray's promotion put them on equal footing of grade now, and they were inclined to make the most of it for the short time they had together. "running the _parakeet_ doesn't seem to have made you very plump, skipper." "constitutional, i guess," said kettle. "i don't believe the food's grown that'd make me carry flesh. i'm one of those men that was sent into the world with a whole shipload of bad luck to work through before i came across any of the soft things." "if you ask me," said murray, cheerfully, "you haven't much to grumble at now. here am i kicking you out of the command of the _parakeet_, to be sure. and why? because whilst you've been her old man you've made her pay about half what she originally cost per annum, and as out of that the firm's saved enough to build a new and bigger ship, they're naturally going to give her to you to scare up more fat dividends. lord," said murray, hitting his knee, "the chaps on board here will be calling me the 'old man' behind my back now." "you'll get used to hearing the title," said kettle grimly, "before you make your pile. you'll get married, i suppose, on the strength of the promotion? i saw a girl's photo nailed up in your room." the new captain nodded. "got engaged when i passed for my master's ticket. arranged to be hitched so soon as i found a ship." kettle sighed drearily. "i was that way, my lad. i was married, and a kid had come before i was thirty. not that i ever regretted it; by james! no. but for long enough i was never able to provide for the missus in the way i'd like, and i can tell you it was terrible gall to me to know that our set at the chapel looked down on her because she could only keep a poor home. yes, my lad, you'll have a lot to go through." "well," said murray, "i've got this promotion, and i'm not going to worry about dismals. i suppose you go straight home by mail from aden here?" "hullo, haven't they told you?" "my letter was only the dry, formal announcement that you were promoted to the new ship, and i was to take over the _parakeet_." "they don't waste their typewriter in the office. i suppose they thought i'd hand on my letter if i saw fit. read through that," said kettle, and handed across his news. this is how it ran:- bird, bird & co., ship and insurance brokers, agents to the bird transport company. managers of the bird steam company. [illustration] 759, euston street, liverpool, 21st march, 1896. _swan_, 375 tons. captain r. evans. _sparrow_, 461 tons. captain james evans. s.s. _starling_, 880 tons. captain enoch shaw. s.s. _parakeet_, 2,100 tons. captain murray. s.s. building, 3,500 tons. captain o. kettle. s.s. building, 3,500 tons. captain ... s.s. building, 4,000 tons. captain ... "the superb vessels of the bird line!" _dear captain kettle,- having noted from your cables and reports you are making a good thing for us out of tramping the "parakeet," we have pleasure in transferring you to our new boat, which is now building on the clyde. she will be 3,500 tons, and we may take out passenger certificate, she being constructed on that specification. your pay will be £21 (twenty-one pound) per month, with 2-1/2 per cent. commission as before. but for the present, till this new boat is finished, we want you to give over command of the "parakeet" to murray, and take on a new job. our mr. alexander bird has recently bought the wreck of the s.s. "grecian," and we are sending out a steamer with divers and full equipment to get the salvage. we wish you to go on board this vessel to watch over our interests. we give you full control, and have notified captain tazzuchi, at present in command, to this effect_. _yours truly, p.p. bird, bird and co. (isaac bird.)_ _to captain o. kettle, s.s. "parakeet," bird line, aden._ "i see they have clapped me down on the bill heading for the _parakeet_ already," said murray, "and you're shifted along in print for the new ship. birds are getting on. but i've big doubts about three new boats all at one bite. one they might manage on a mortgage. but three? i don't think it. old ikey's too cautious." "messrs. bird are your owners and mine," said kettle significantly. "oh!" said the newly-made captain, "i'm not one of your old-fashioned sort that thinks an owner a little tin god." "my view is," said kettle, "that your owner pays you, and so is entitled to your respect so long as he is your owner. besides that, whilst you are drawing pay, you're expected to carry out orders, whatever they may be, without question. but i don't think we'll talk any more about this, my lad. you're one of the newer school, i know, and you've got such a big notion of your own rights that we're not likely to agree. besides, you've got to check my accounts and see i've left it all for you ship-shape, and i've to pull my bits of things together into a portmanteau. see you again before i go away, and we'll have a drop of whisky together to wish the _parakeet's_ new 'old man' a pile of luck." at the edge of the harbor, aden baked under the sun, but kettle was not the man to filch his employer's time for unnecessary strolls ashore. the salvage steamer rolled at her anchor at the opposite side of the harbor, and kettle and two portmanteaux were transhipped direct in one of the _parakeet's_ boats. he was received on board by an affable italian, who introduced himself as captain tazzuchi. the man spoke perfect english, and was hospitality personified. the little salvage steamer was barely 300 tons burden, and her accommodation was limited, but tazzuchi put the best room in the ship at his guest's disposal, and said that anything that could act for his comfort should be done forthwith. "y'know, captain," said tazzuchi, "this is what you call a 'dago' ship, and we serve out country wine as a regular ration. but i thought perhaps you'd like your own home ways best, and so i've ordered the ship's chandler ashore to send off a case of scotch, and another of chicago beef. oh yes, and i sent also for some london pickles. i know how you english like your pickles." in fact, all that a man could do in the way of outward attention tazzuchi did, but somehow or other captain kettle got a suspicion of him from the very first moment of their meeting. perhaps it was to some extent because the british mariner has always an instinctive and special distrust for the latin nations; perhaps it was because the civility was a little unexpected and over-effusive. putting himself in the italian's place, kettle certainly would not have gone out of his way to be pleasant to a foreigner who was sent practically to supersede him in a command. but perhaps a second letter which he had received, giving him a more intimate list of the duties required, had something to do with this hostile feeling. it was from the same hand which had written the firm's formal letter, but it was couched in quite a different vein. isaac bird was evidently scared for his very commercial existence, and he thrust out his arms to kettle on paper as his only savior. it seemed that alexander bird, the younger brother, had been running a little wild of late. the wreck of the _grecian_ had been put up for auction; alexander strolled into the room by accident, and bought at an exorbitant figure. he came and announced his purchase to isaac, declaring it as an instance of his fine business instincts. isaac set it down to whisky, and recriminations followed. alexander in a huff said he would go out and overlook the salvage operations in person. isaac opined that the firm might scrape to windward of bankruptcy by that means, and advised alexander to take remarkable pains about keeping sober. but forthwith alexander, still in his cups, "and at a music hall, too, a place he knows 'isaac's' religious connection holds in profound horror," gets to brawling, and is next discovered in hospital with a broken thigh. "_i have found alexander's department of the business very tangled_," wrote isaac, "_when i began to go into his books the first day he was laid up, and the thought of this new complication drove me near crazy. salvage is out of our line; alexander should never have touched it. but there it is; money paid, and i've had to borrow; and engaging that italian firm for the job was the best thing i could manage. what english firms wanted was out of all reason. i don't wonder at lloyds selling wrecks for anything they will fetch. a pittance in cash is better than getting into the hands of these sharks_" (sharks was heavily underscored). "_and what guarantee have i that the firm will pocket even that pittance? how do i know that i shall see even the money outpaid again, let alone reasonable interest? none_." there were several words erased here, and the writer went on with what was evidently considered a dramatic finish. "'_but stay,' i say to myself, 'you have kettle. he is down in the red sea now, doing well. you had all along intended to promote him. do it now, and set him to overlook this italian salvage firm whilst the new boat is building. he is the one to see that isaac bird's foot doth not fall, for captain o. kettle is a godly man also_.'" the letter was shut off conventionally enough with the statement that the writer was captain kettle's truly, and ended in a post-scriptum tag to the effect that the envoy should still draw his two and a-half per cent. on net results. the actual figures had evidently not been conceded without a mental wrench, as the erasion beneath them showed, but there they stood in definite ink, and kettle was not inclined to cavil at the process which deduced them. however, although in his recent prosperity kettle had assumed a hatred for risks, and bred a strong dislike for all those commercial adventures which lay beyond the ordinary rut and routine of trade, he took up his duties on the salvage steamer with a stout heart and cheerful estimate for the future. ahead of him he had pleasant dreams of the big boat that was "building," and the increased monthly pay in store; and for the present, well, here was an owner's command, and of course that settled him firmly in the berth. he had been too long an obedient slave to shipowners of every grade to have the least fancy for disputing the imperial will of bird, bird and co. murray tooted his cheerful farewells on the _parakeet's_ siren as the little italian salvage boat steamed out of the baking airs of aden harbor, and ensigns were dipped with due formality. tazzuchi was all hospitality. he invited kettle to damage his palate with a black italian "virginia" cigar with a straw up the middle; he uncorked a bottle of the scotch whisky with his own hand, splashed away the first wineglassful to get rid of the fusel oil, and put it ready for reference when his guest should feel athirst; and he produced a couple of american pirated editions of english novels to give even intellect its dainty feast. kettle accepted it all with a dry civility. he had every expectation of upsetting this man's plans of robbery later on, and very possibly of coming into personal contact with him. but the ties of bread and salt did not disturb him. though it was tazzuchi who presented the virginias and the novels, he took it for granted that messrs. bird, bird and co. had paid for them, and he was not averse to accepting a little luxury from the firm. the economical isaac had cut down the commissariat on the _parakeet_ till a man had to be half-starved before he could stomach a meal. the salvage steamer had a south of europe leisureliness in her movements. her utmost pace was nine knots, but, as eight was more economical for coal consumption, it was at that speed she moved. the wreck of the _grecian_ was out of the usual steam lane. she had, it appeared, got off her course in a fog, had run foul of a half-ebb reef which holed her in two compartments, and then been steered for the shore in the wild attempt to beach her before she sank. she had ceased floating, however, with some suddenness, and when the critical moment came not all of her people managed to scrape off with their lives in the boats. those that stayed behind were incontinently drowned; those that got away found themselves in a gale (to which the fog gave place), and had so much trouble to keep afloat that they had no time left to make accurate determination of where their vessel sank; and when they were picked up could only give her whereabouts vaguely. however, they stated that the _grecian's_ mast-trucks remained above the water surface, and by these she could be found; and this fact was brought out strongly by the auctioneer who sold the wreck, and had due influence on the enterprising alexander. "masts!" said alexander, who daily saw them bristling from a dock, "don't tell me you can miss masts anywhere." but, as it chanced, it was only by a fluke that the salvage steamer stumbled across the wreck at all. she wandered for several days among an intensely dangerous archipelago, and many times over had narrow escapes from piling up her bones on one or other of those reefs with which the red sea in that quarter abounds. tazzuchi navigated her in an ecstasy of nervousness, and kettle (who regarded himself as a passenger for the time being) kept a private store of food and water-bottles handy, and saw that one of the quarter-boats was ready for hurried lowering. but nowhere did they see those mast-trucks. they did not sight so much as a scrap of floating wreckage. there seemed, however, a good many dhow coasters dodging about in and among the reefs, and from these kettle presently drew a deduction. "look here," he said to tazzuchi one morning, "what price those gentry ashore having found the wreck already? i guess they aren't out here taking week-end trippers for sixpenny yachting cruises." "no," said tazzuchi, "and they aren't fishing; you can see that." "well, i give you the tip for what it's worth," said kettle; and that afternoon the steamer was run up alongside a dhow, which tried desperately to escape. her captain was dragged on board, and at that juncture captain kettle took upon himself to go below. he knew what would probably take place, and, though he disapproved of such methods strongly, he felt he could not interfere. he was in bird, bird and co.'s employ, and what was being done would forward the firm's interest. but presently came a noise of bellowing from the deck above, and then that was followed by shrill screams as the upper gamut of agony was reached. kettle was prepared for rough handling, but at information gained by absolute torture he drew the line. it was clear that these cruel beggars of italians were going too far. "by james!" he muttered to himself, "owners or no owners, i can't stand this," and started hurriedly to go back to the deck. but before he reached the head of the companion-way the cries of pain ceased, and so he stood where he was on the stair, and waited. the engines rumbled, and the steamer once more gathered way. a clamor of barbaric voices reached him, which gradually died into quietude. it was clear they were leaving the dhow behind. captain kettle drew a long breath. they would stick at little, these dagos, in getting the salvage of the _grecian_, and it seemed preposterous to suppose that once they gripped the specie in their own ringers they would ever give it up for the paltry pay which had been offered by bird, bird and co. their own poverty was aching. he saw it whenever he looked about the patched little steamer. he felt it whenever he sat down to one of their painfully frugal meals. still, though no man knew more bitterly than kettle himself from past experience what poverty meant, and how it cut, the poverty of these italians was no concern of his just then. they were paid servants of the owners exactly as he was, and it was his duty to see that they earned their hire. he took it that he was one against the whole ship's company, but the odds did not daunt him. on the contrary, something of his old fighting spirit, which had been of late hustled into the background by snug commercial prosperity, came back to him. and besides, he had always at his call that exquisite pride of race which has so many times given victory to the anglo-saxon over the latin, when all reasonable balances should have made it go the other way. by a sort of instinct he buttoned up his trim white drill coat, and stepped out on deck. there would be no scuffle yet awhile. with the specie that would make the temptation still snugly stored on the sea-floor, the dirty, untidy italians were still all affability. indeed, as soon as he appeared, tazzuchi himself stepped down off the upper bridge to give him the news. "how do you think those crafty imps have managed it?" he cried, with a gesture. "why they dived down and cut off her masts below water level. the funnel was out of sight already. they just thought they were going to have the skimming of that wreck themselves. no wonder we couldn't pick her up." "cute beggars," said kettle. "i've bagged a pilot. if he takes us there straight, he gets backsheesh. if he doesn't, he eats more stick. i think," said captain tazzuchi, with a wide smile, "that he'll take us there the quickest road." "shouldn't wonder," said kettle. "but don't be surprised if his friends come round and make things ugly. when those red sea niggers get their fingers in a wreck, they think's it's their wreck." "let them come. we were ready for this sort of entertainment when we sailed, and there are plenty of rifles and cartridges in the cabin. if there is any trouble, we shall shoot; and if we begin that game, we shall just imagine they are abyssinians, and shoot to kill. the italians have a big bill to pay with those jokers, anyway." he tapped kettle on the shoulder. "and look at those two brass signal guns, captain. if we break up some firebars for shot, they'll smash the side of any dhow in the red sea." under the black captive's guidance, the salvage steamer soon put a term to her search. for two more hours she threaded her way among surf which broke over unseen reefs, and swung round the capes of a rocky archipelago, and then the pilot gave his word and the engines were stopped and a rusty cable roared out till an anchor got its hold of the ground. a boat was lowered with air-pump already stepped amidships, and the boat's crew with eager hands assisted the diver to make his toilet. "you chaps seem keen enough," said kettle, as he watched the trail of air bubbles which showed the man's progress on the sea floor below. "they have each got a stake in the venture." "i bet they have," was kettle's grim comment to himself. the kidnapped skipper of the dhow, it seemed, had done his pilotage with a fine accuracy. the salvage steamer had been anchored in a good position, and between them two divers in two boats found the _grecian's_ wreck in half an hour. indeed, they had made their first descent practically within hand-touch of her, but the water was full of a milky clay and very opaque, and sight below the surface was consequently limited. they came up to the air for a quarter of an hour's spell and made their announcement, and then the copper helmets were clapped into place again, and once more like a pair of uncouth sea monsters they slowly and clumsily faded away into the depths. a gabble of excited italian kept pace to the turning of the air-pumps, and of that language kettle knew barely a score of words. practically these people might have weaved any kind of plot noisily and under his very nose without his being any the wiser, and this possibility did little to quell his suspicions. but still tazzuchi was all outward frankness. "it's as well we brought out this little steamboat just to skim the wreck and survey her," he said. "if they'd waited to fit out a big salvage expedition, to raise her straight off, i reckon there wouldn't have been much left but iron plates and coal bunkers. these red sea niggers are pretty useful at looting, once they start. the beggars can dive pretty nearly as well and as long in their naked skins as their betters can in a proper diving suit." each time the divers came up from the opaque white water they brought more reports. binnacles, whistle, wheels, and all movable deck fittings were gone already. the chart-house had been looted down to the bare boards. hatches were off, both forward and aft, and already the cargo had begun to diminish. the black men of the district had been making good use of their time; and as the probabilities were that they would return in force to glean from this store which they considered legally theirs, it was advisable to collect as much as possible into the salvage steamer before any disturbances began. news came from the cool mysterious water to the baking region of air above, almost at the second hour of the search, that the _grecian_ could never be refloated. in addition to the holes already made in two of her compartments, she had settled on a sharp jag of rock, which had pierced her in a third place aft. but at the same time this one piece of rock was the only solid spot in the neighborhood. all the rest of the sea floor was paved with pulpy white clay, and in this the unfortunate wreck had settled till already it was flush with her lower decks. there were evidences, too, that the ooze was creeping higher every day, so that all that remained was to strip her as quickly as might be before she was swallowed up for always. tazzuchi asked captain kettle for his opinion that night in the chart-house. "i'm to be guided by you, of course," he said, "but my idea is that we should go for the specie first thing, and let everything slide till that's snugly on board here. birds gave £5,400 for the wreck, and there's £8,000 in cash down there in a room they built specially for it over the shaft-tunnel. if we can grab that, it will pay our expenses and commission and all the other actual outlay, and birds will be out of the wood. afterward, if we can weigh any more of the cargo, well, that will be all clear profit." "yes," thought kettle, "you want those gold boxes in your hands, you blessed dago, and then you'll begin to play your monkey tricks. i wonder if you think you're going to jam a knife into me by way of making things snug and safe?" but aloud he expressed agreement to captain tazzuchi's plan. he felt that this was diplomacy, and though the diplomatic art was new and strange to him, he told himself that it was the correct weapon to use under the circumstances. he had risen out of his old grade of hole-and-corner shipmaster, where it had been his province to carry things through by rough blows and violent words. he was a captain in a regular line--the bird line--now, and (with a trifle of a sigh) he remembered that wild fights and scrimmages were beneath the dignity of his position. accordingly, as soon as dawn gave a waking light, the boats were put out again, and the divers were given orders to let the further survey of the vessel rest, and put all their efforts into getting the specie boxes on to the end of the salvage steamer's winch chain. they were quickly helmed and sent below, and presently an increased cloudiness in the water told him that they were actively at work. a lot of dhows were showing here and there amongst the reefs, obviously watching them, and tazzuchi was beginning to get nervous. "we're in for trouble, i'm afraid," he said to kettle. "that rock on which she's settled astern has made a hole in her you could drive a cart through. i suppose it was a tight-fitting hole at first, but as she settled more and moved about, it's got enlarged same as the hole in a tin of beef does when you begin to waggle it with the can-opener." "well?" "didn't you hear the report they've just sung off from the boats? oh, i forgot, you don't understand italian. well, the news is that the rock's acted as a can-opener to such fine effect that it's split a hole in the bottom of the strong room, and those gold boxes have toppled through." "and buried themselves in the slime?" "that's it. and lord knows how many feet they've sunk. it's dreadful stuff to dig amongst--slides in on you as soon as you start to dig, and levels up. they'll have to brattice as they work. it'll be a big job." all that day kettle watched the sea with an anxious eye. in the two boats men ground at the air-pumps under the aching sunlight. from below the mud came up in white billows, which danced, and swirled, and eddied as the air bubbles from the divers' exhaust valves stirred it. and out beyond, in and among the reefs, and along the distant shore, which swung and shimmered in the heat haze, hungry dhows prowled like carrion birds temporarily driven away from a prey. tazzuchi and the chief engineer busied themselves in binding together fragments of fire-bars with iron wire. the italian shipmaster had a great notion of the damage his signal-guns could do against a dhow, if they were provided with orthodox solid shot. as a point of fact they never came into action. as soon as the second night came down, and the darkness became fairly fixed in hue, there began to crackle out of the distance a desultory rifle fire from every quarter of the compass. it was not very heavy--at the outside there were not a score of weapons firing, and it could not be called accurate since not one bullet in twenty so much as hit the steamer; but it was annoying for all that, and as the marksmen and their vessels were completely swallowed up by the blackness of the night, it was impossible to repay their compliments in kind. morning showed the damage of one port window smashed, two panes gone from the engine-room skylight, and the air-pump in one of the boats alongside with a plunger neatly cut into two pieces. but there was a spare air-pump in store, and after dawn came, work went on as usual. the dhows came no nearer, neither did they go much further away. they pottered about just beyond rifle shot, and their numbers were slightly increased. tazzuchi, full of enthusiasm for his artillery, tried a carefully aimed shot at one of the largest. but the explosion was quite outdone in noise by the cackle of laughter which followed it. so slow was the flight of the missile that the eye could trace it. so short was its journey, and so curved its trajectory, that it came very near to hitting one of the boats of the divers, and the men working there cried out in derision that they would catch cold by being wetted by the spray. "well," thought kettle, "these are pretty cool hands for dagos, anyway. i'm going to have a fine tough time of it when my part of the scuffle comes." that night he had a still further taste of their quality. so soon as darkness fell, the dhows closed in again and recommenced their sniping. they kept under weigh, and so it did little enough good to aim back at the flashes. but tazzuchi, with half a dozen keen spirits, got down into one of the boats with their rifles and knives, and a drum of paraffin, and pulled away silently into the blackness. there was silence for quite half an hour, and the suspense on the anchored steamer was vivid enough to have shaken trained men. yet these italian artificers and merchant seamen seemed to take it as coolly as though such sorties were an everyday occurrence. but at the end of that time there was a splutter of shots, a few faint squeals, and then a bonfire lighted up away in the darkness. the blaze grew rapidly, and showed in its heart the outline of a dhow with human figures on it. with promptness every man on the steamer emptied his rifle at the mark, and continued the fusillade till the dhow was deserted. they had all done their spell of military service, and they chose to decide that these snipers were abyssinians, and did their best toward squaring the national accounts. tazzuchi and his friends returned in the boat, safe and jubilant, and for the rest of that night the little salvage steamer was left in quietude. with the next daybreak the divers and their attendants once more applied themselves to labor. kettle, as he watched, was amazed to see the energy they put into it. certainly they seemed keen enough to get the specie weighed, and on board. whatever piratical plans they had got made up were evidently for afterward. but when day after day passed, and still none of the treasure was brought to the surface, he began to modify this original opinion. tazzuchi--translating the divers' reports--said that the cause of the delay was the softness of the sea-floor. the heavy chests had sunk deep into the ooze, and directly a spadeful of the horrible slime was dug away, more slid in to fill the gap. of course this might be true; but there was only tazzuchi's word for it. the sea was too consistently opaque to give one a chance of seeing down from above the surface. now as suspicion had got so deep a hold on captain kettle's mind, he began to cudgel his brain for some new method by which the italians could serve their purpose. he put himself supposititiously in tazzuchi's place, and made piratical theories by the score. most of them he had to dismiss after examination as impracticable, others he eliminated by natural selection; and finally one stood out as practicable beyond all the rest. for one thing it did not want many participants; only the actual divers and tazzuchi himself. for another, it would not brand the whole gang of them as criminals and pirates, but (properly managed) would make them rich without any advertised stigma or stain. in simple words, the method was this: the gold boxes must be removed from their original site, and hidden elsewhere under the water close at hand. the friendly slime would bury them snugly out of sight. the old report of "un-get-at-able" would be adhered to, and finally the steamer would give up further salvage operations as hopeless (after fishing up some useless cargo out of the holds as a conscience salve) and steam away to port. there tazzuchi and his friends would either desert or get themselves dismissed, charter a small vessel of their own, and go back for the plunder; and with £8,000 in clear hard cash to divide, live prosperously (from an italian standpoint) ever afterward. kettle felt an unimaginative man's complacency in ferreting out such a dramatic scheme, and began to think next upon the somewhat important detail of how to get proofs before he commenced to frustrate it. chance seemed to make tazzuchi play into his hand. the air-pump which had been damaged by the rifle bullet had been mended by the steamer's engineers, and as there were two or three spare diving dresses on the ship, captain tazzuchi expressed his intention of making a descent in person to inspect progress. "i didn't do it before, because i didn't want to make the men break time, but i can go down now without interrupting their work. will you come off in the boat with me, captain, and hand my lifeline?" "i'll borrow one of those spare dresses and share the pump with you," said kettle. tazzuchi was visibly startled. "what do you mean?" "i mean that the pump will give air for two, and i'm coming down with you." "but you know nothing about diving, and you might have an accident, and i should be responsible." "oh, i'll risk that! you must nursery-maid me a bit." tazzuchi lowered his voice. "to tell the truth, i'm going to pay a surprise visit. i want to make sure those chaps below are doing the square thing. if they aren't, and i catch them, there'll be a row, and they'll use their knives." "h'm!" said kettle, "i've got no use for your local weapon as a general thing. i find a gun handiest. but at a pinch like this i'll borrow a knife of you, and if it comes to any one cutting my air-tube you'll find i can use it pretty mischievously." "i wish you wouldn't insist upon this," said tazzuchi persuasively. "i'm going to, anyway." "i'm going down merely because it's my duty." "that's the very same reason that's taking me, captain. i must ask you not to make any more objections. i'm a man that never changes his mind, once it's made up." whereupon tazzuchi shrugged his shoulders, and gave way. "now," thought kettle to himself, "that man's made up his mind to kill me if he gets the glimmer of a chance, and, as i'm not going to get wiped out this journey, he'll do with a lot of watching." it has been the present writer's business at one time and another to point out that captain owen kettle is a man of iron nerve; but i cannot call to mind any instance where his indomitable courage was more severely tried than in this voluntary descent in the diving dress. the world beneath the waters was strange and dangerous to him; his companion was a man against whom he held the blackest suspicion; the men at the pump (whose language he did not understand) might any moment cut off his supply, and leave him to drown like a puppy under a bucket. the circumstances combined were enough to daunt a bayard. but kettle felt that the men in the boat, who helped to adjust his stiff rubber dress, were regarding him with more than ordinary curiosity, and, for his own pride's sake, he preserved an unruffled face. he even tried a rude jest in their own tongue before they made fast the helmet on his head, and the cackle of their laughter was the last sound he heard before the metal dome closed the audible world away from him. they hung the weights over his chest and back, and tazzuchi signed to him to descend. kettle hitched round the sheath-knife to the front of his belt, and signed with politeness, "after you." tazzuchi did not argue the matter. he lifted his clumsy lead-soled feet over the side of the boat, got on the ladder, and climbed down out of sight. kettle followed. the chill of the water crept up and closed over his head; the steady throb-throb of the air-pump beat against his skull; and a little shiver took him in one small spot between the shoulder blades, because he knew that it was there that an italian, if he can manage it, always plants a knife in his enemy. he reached the end of the ladder and slid down a rope. he felt curiously corky and insecure, but still when he reached the bottom he sank up to his knees in impalpable mud. he could foggily see tazzuchi a few paces away waiting for him, and he went up to him at once. if the men in the boat, acting on orders, cut his air-tube, he wanted to be in a position to cut captain tazzuchi's also with promptness. however, everything went peacefully just then. the italian set off down a track in the slime, and kettle waded laboriously after him. it was terrible work making a passage through that white glutinous ooze, but they came to the wreck directly, and, working round her rusty flank, stood beside a great shallow pit, where two weird-looking gray sea-monsters showed in dim outline through the dense fog of the water. sound does not carry down there in that quiet world, and the two new-comers stood for long enough before the two workers observed them. but one chanced to look up and see them watching and jogged the other with his spade, and then both frantically beckoned the visitors to come down into the pit. tazzuchi led, and kettle followed, wallowing down the slopes of slime, and there at the bottom, in the dim, milky light, one of the professional divers slipped a shovel into his hand and thrust it downward, till it jarred against something solid underfoot. it was clear they had come upon the gold boxes, and they wished to impress upon the visitors, in underwater dumb show, that the find had only been made that very minute. it was a strange enough performance. half-seen hands snapped red fingers in triumph. ponderously booted feet did a dance of ecstasy in three feet of gluey mud. and meanwhile, kettle, with a hand on the haft of his knife, edged away from this uncanny demonstration, lest some one should slit his air-tube before he could prevent it. he had seen what he wanted; he had no reason to wait longer; and besides, being a novice at diving, his lungs were half burst already in the effort to get breath, and his head was singing like a tea-urn. the gold boxes were there, and if they were not brought to the surface, and carried honestly to suez, the matter would have to be fought out above in god's open air, and not in that horrible choking quagmire of slime and cruel water. and so, still guarding himself cannily, he got back again to the boat, and almost had it in him to shake hands with the men who eased him of that intolerable helmet. now far be it from me to raise even a suspicion that captain owen kettle resented the fact that he had been robbed of a scuffle when the little salvage steamer actually did bring up in suez harbor with the specie honestly locked in one of her staterooms. but that he was violently angry he admits himself without qualification. he says he kicked himself for being such a bad judge of men. the _parakeet_ was in when they arrived, rebunkering for the run home, and murray came off as fast as a crew could drive his boat to inquire the news. he saw tazzuchi on the deck and accosted him with a vigorous handshake, and a "hullo, fizz-hookey, old man, how goes it? who'd have thought of seeing you here? howdy, captain kettle. had good fishing?" "do you know captain tazzuchi?" "somewhat. why, we were both boys on the _conway_ together." "you're making some mistake. captain tazzuchi is an italian." "oh, am i?" said tazzuchi. "not much of the dago about me except the name." "well, you never told me that before." "you never asked me, that i know of. i speak about enough of the lingo to carry on duty with, and i serve on an italian ship because i couldn't get a skipper's billet on anything else. but i'm as english as either of you, and as english as birds--or more english than birds, seeing that they come from somewhere near jerusalem. great scot, captain kettle, can't you tell a dago yet for sure? where have you been all your days?" murray laughed. "well, come across and discuss it in the _parakeet_. i've got a case of champagne on board to wet my new ticket." "stay half a minute," said tazzuchi, "we'll just get those boxes of gold down into your boat, murray, and ferry them across. i sha'n't be sorry to have them out of my responsibility. they're too big a temptation to leave handy for the crew there is on board here." "phew!" said kettle, "it's hot here in suez. great james! to think of the way i've been sweating about this blame' ship without a scrap of need of it. here, hurry up with the lucre-boxes. i want to get across to the old _parakeet_ and wash the taste of a lot of things out of my mouth." chapter xi the dear insured "he isn't the 'dear deceased' yet by a very long chalk," said captain kettle. "if he was," retorted lupton with a dry smile, "my immediate interest in him would cease, and the company would shrug its shoulders, and pay, and look pleasant. in the mean while he's, shall we say, 'the dear insured,' and a premium paying asset that the company's told me off to keep an eye on." "do much business in your particular line?" "why yes, recently a good deal. it's got to be quite a fashionable industry of late to pick up some foolish young gentleman with expectations, insure his life for a big pile, knock him quietly on the head, and then come back home in a neat black suit to pocket the proceeds." "does this mr.--" kettle referred to the passenger list--"hamilton's the rogue's name, isn't it?" "no, he's the flat. cranze is the--er--his friend who stands to draw the stamps." "does mr. hamilton know you?" "never seen me in his life." "does this thief cranze?" "same." "then, sir, i'll tell you what's your ticket," said kettle, who had got an eye to business. "take a passage with me out to the gulf and back, and keep an eye on the young gentleman yourself. you'll find it a bit cold in the western ocean at first, but once we get well in the gulf stream, and down toward new orleans, i tell you you'll just enjoy life. it'll be a nice trip for you, and i'm sure i'll do my best to make things comfortable for you." "i'm sure you would, captain, but it can't be done at the price." kettle looked thoughtfully at the passenger list. "i could promise you a room to yourself. we're not very full up this run. in fact, mr. hamilton and mr. cranze are the only two names i've got down so far, and i may as well tell you we're not likely to have others. you see birds are a very good line, but they lay themselves out more for cargo than passengers." "so our local agent in liverpool found out for us already, and that's mostly why i'm here. don't you see, captain, if the pair of them had started off to go tripping round the mexican gulf in one of the regular passenger boats, there would have been nothing suspicious about that. but when they book berths by you, why then it begins to look fishy at once." kettle turned on his companion with a sudden viciousness. "by james!" he snapped, "you better take care of your-words, or there'll be a man in this smoke-room with a broken jaw. i allow no one to sling slights at either me or my ship. no, nor at the firm either that owns both of us. you needn't look round at the young lady behind the bar. she can't hear what we're saying across in this corner, and if even she could she's quite welcome to know how i think about the matter. by james, do you think you can speak to me as if i was a common railway director? i can tell you that, as captain of a passenger boat, i've a very different social position." "my dear sir," said lupton soothingly, "to insult you was the last thing in my mind. i quite know you've got a fine ship, and a new ship, and a ship to be congratulated on. i've seen her. in fact i was on board and all over her only this morning. but what i meant to point out was (although i seem to have put it clumsily) that messrs. bird have chosen to schedule you for the lesser frequented gulf ports, finding, as you hint, that cargo pays them better than passengers." "well?" "and naturally therefore anything that was done on the _flamingo_ would not have the same fierce light of publicity on it that would get on--say--one of the royal mail boats. you see they bustle about between busy ports crammed with passengers who are just at their wits' end for something to do. you know what a pack of passengers are. give them a topic like this: young man with expectations suddenly knocked overboard, nobody knows by whom; 'nother young man on boat drawing a heavy insurance from him; and they aren't long in putting two and two together." "you seem to think it requires a pretty poor brain to run a steam-packet," said kettle contemptuously. "how long would i be before i had that joker in irons?" "if he did it as openly as i have said, you'd arrest him at once. but you must remember cranze will have been thinking out his game for perhaps a year beforehand, till he can see absolutely no flaw in it, till he thinks, in fact, there's not the vaguest chance of being dropped on. if anything happens to hamilton, his dear friend cranze will be the last man to be suspected of it. and mark you, he's a clever chap. it isn't your clumsy, ignorant knave who turns insurance robber--and incidentally murderer." "still, i don't see how he'd be better off on my ship than he would be on the bigger passenger packets." "just because you won't have a crowd of passengers. captain, a ship's like a woman; any breath of scandal damages her reputation,-whether it's true and deserved or not. and a ship-captain's like a woman's husband; he'll put up with a lot to keep any trace of scandal away from her." "that's the holy truth." "a skipper on one of the bigger passenger lines would be just as keen as you could be not to have his ship mixed up with anything discreditable. but passengers are an impious lot. they are just bursting for want of a job, most of them; they revel in anything like an accident to break the monotony; and if they can spot a bit of foul play--or say they helped to spot it--why, there they are, supplied with one good solid never-stale yarn for all the rest of their natural lives. so you see they've every inducement to do a lot of ferreting that a ship's officers (with other work on hand) would not dream about." captain kettle pulled thoughtfully at his neat red pointed beard. "you're putting the thing in a new light, sir, and i thank you for what you've said. i see my course plain before me. so soon as we have dropped the pilot, i shall go straight to this mr. cranze, and tell him that from information received i hear he's going to put mr. hamilton over the side. and then i shall say: 'into irons you go, my man, so soon as ever hamilton's missing.'" lupton laughed rather angrily. "and what would be the result of that, do you think?" "cranze will get mad. he'll probably talk a good deal, and that i shall allow within limits. but he'll not hit me. i'm not the kind of a man that other people see fit to raise their hands to." "you don't look it. but, my good sir, don't you see that if you speak out like that, you'll probably scare the beggar off his game altogether?" "and why not? do you think my ship's a blessed detective novel that's to be run just for your amusement?" lupton tapped the table slowly with his fingers. "now look here, captain," he said, "there's a chance here of our putting a stop to a murderous game that's been going on too long, by catching a rogue red-handed. it's to our interest to get a conviction and make an example. it's to your interest to keep your ship free from a fuss." "all the way." "quite so. my company's prepared to buy your interest up." "you must put it plainer than that." "i'll put it as definitely as you like. i'll give you £20 to keep your eye on these men, and say nothing about what i've told you, but just watch. if you catch cranze so clearly trying it on that the courts give a conviction, the company will pay you £200." "it's a lot of money." "my company will find it a lot cheaper than paying out £20,000, and that's what hamilton's insured for." "phew! i didn't know we were dealing with such big figures. well, mr. cranze has got his inducements to murder the man, anyway." "i told you that from the first. now, captain, are you going to take my check for that preliminary £20?" "hand it over," said kettle. "i see no objections. and you may as well give me a bit of a letter about the balance." "i'll do both," said lupton, and took out his stylograph, and called a waiter to bring him hotel writing paper. now captain owen kettle, once he had taken up this piece of employment, entered into it with a kind of chastened joy. the life insurance company's agent had rather sneered at ship-captains as a class (so he considered), and though the man did his best to be outwardly civil, it was plain that he considered a mob of passengers the intellectual superiors of any master mariner. so kettle intended to prove himself the "complete detective" out of sheer _esprit de corps_. as he had surmised, messrs. hamilton and cranze remained the _flamingo's_ only two passengers, and so he considered he might devote full attention to them without being remarkable. if he had been a steward making sure of his tips he could not have been more solicitous for their welfare; and to say he watched them like a cat is putting the thing feebly. any man with an uneasy conscience must have grasped from the very first that the plot had been guessed at, and that this awkward little skipper, with his oppressive civilities, was merely waiting his chance to act as nemesis. but either mr. cranze had an easy mind, and lupton had unjustly maligned him, or he was a fellow of the most brazen assurance. he refused to take the least vestige of a warning. he came on board with a dozen cases of champagne and four of liqueur brandy as a part of his personal luggage, and his first question to every official he came across was how much he would have to pay per bottle for corkage. as he made these inquiries from a donkey-man, two deck hands, three mates, a trimmer, the third engineer, two stewards, and captain kettle himself, the answers he received were various, and some of them were profane. he seemed to take a delight in advertising his chronic drunkenness, and between-whiles he made a silly show of the fact that he carried a loaded revolver in his hip pocket. "lots fellows do't now," he explained. "never know who-you-may-meet. s' a mos' useful habit." now captain kettle, in his inmost heart, considered that cranze was nerving himself up with drink to the committal of his horrid deed, and so he took a very natural precaution. before they had dropped the irish coast he had managed to borrow the revolver, unbeknown to its owner, and carefully extracted the powder from the cartridges, replacing the bullets for the sake of appearances. and as it happened, the chief engineer, who was a married man as well as a humorist, though working independently of his skipper, carried the matter still further. he, too, got hold of the weapon, and brazed up the breech-block immovably, so that it could not be surreptitiously reloaded. he said that his wife had instructed him to take no chances, and that meanwhile, as a fool's pendant, the revolver was as good as ever it had been. the revolver became the joke of the ship. cranze kept up a steady soak on king's peg--putting in a good three fingers of the liqueur brandy before filling up the tumbler with champagne--and was naturally inclined to be argumentative. any one of the ship's company who happened to be near him with a little time to spare would get up a discussion on any matter that came to his mind, work things gently to a climax, and then contradict cranze flatly. upon which, out would come the revolver, and down would go the humorist on his knees, pitifully begging for pardon and life, to the vast amusement of the onlookers. pratt, the chief engineer, was the inventor of this game, but he openly renounced all patent rights. he said that everybody on board ought to take the stage in turn--he himself was quite content to retire on his early laurels. so all hands took pains to contradict cranze and to cower with a fine show of dramatic fright before his spiked revolver. all the _flamingo's_ company except one man, that is. frivolity of this sort in no way suited the appetite of captain owen kettle. he talked with cranze with a certain dry cordiality. and at times he contradicted him. in fact the little sailor contradicted most passengers if he talked to them for long. he was a man with strong opinions, and he regarded tolerance as mere weakness. moreover, cranze's chronic soaking nauseated him. but at the same time, if his civility was scant, cranze never lugged out the foolish weapon in his presence. there was a something in the shipmaster's eye which daunted him. the utmost height to which his resentment could reach with captain kettle was a folding of the arms and a scowl which was intended to be majestic, but which was frequently spoiled by a hiccough. in pleasant contrast to this weak, contemptible knave was the man hamilton, his dupe and prospective victim. for him kettle formed a liking at once, though for the first days of the voyage it was little enough he saw of his actual presence. hamilton was a bad sailor and a lover of warmth, and as the western ocean was just then in one of its cold and noisy moods, this passenger went shudderingly out of the cabin when meals came on, and returned shudderingly from the cold on deck as soon they were over. but when the _flamingo_ began to make her southing, and the yellow tangles of weed floating in emerald waves bore evidence that they were steaming against the warm current of the gulf stream, then hamilton came into view. he found a spot on the top of the fiddley under the lee of a tank where a chair could stand, and sat there in the glow of sun and boilers, and basked complacently. he was a shy, nervous little man, and though kettle had usually a fine contempt for all weakness, somehow his heart went out to this retiring passenger almost at first sight. myself, i am inclined to think it was because he knew him to be hunted, knew him to be the object of a murderous conspiracy, and loathed most thoroughly the vulgar rogue who was his treacherous enemy. but captain kettle scouts the idea that he was stirred by any such feeble, womanish motives. kettle was a poet himself, and with the kinship of species he felt the poetic fire glowing out from the person of this mr. hamilton. at least, so he says; and if he has deceived himself on the matter, which, from an outsider's point of view, seems likely, i am sure the error is quite unconscious. the little sailor may have his faults, as the index of these pages has shown; but untruthfulness has never been set down to his tally, and i am not going to accuse him of it now. still, it is a sure thing that talk on the subject of verse making did not come at once. kettle was immensely sensitive about his accomplishment, and had writhed under brutal scoffs and polished ridicule at his poetry more times than he cared to count. with passengers especially he kept it scrupulously in the background, even as he did his talent for making sweet music on the accordion. but somehow he and hamilton, after a few days' acquaintance, seemed to glide into the subject imperceptibly. mutual confidences followed in the course of nature. it seemed that hamilton too, like kettle, was a devotee of the stiller forms of verse. "you see, skipper," he said, "i've been a pretty bad lot, and i've made things hum most of my time, and so i suppose i get my hankerings after restfulness as the natural result of contrast." "same here, sir. ashore i can respect myself, and in our chapel circle, though i say it myself, you'll find few more respected men. but at sea i shouldn't like to tell you what i've done; i shouldn't like to tell any one. if a saint has to come down and skipper the brutes we have to ship as sailormen nowadays, he'd wear out his halo flinging it at them. and when matters have been worst, and i've been bashing the hands about, or doing things to carry out an owner's order that i'd blush even to think of ashore, why then, sir, gentle verse, to tunes i know, seems to bubble up inside me like springs in a barren land." "well, i don't know about that," said hamilton doubtfully, "but when i get thoroughly sick of myself, and wish i was dead, i sometimes stave off putting a shot through my silly head by getting a pencil and paper, and shifting my thoughts out of the beastly world i know, into--well, it's hard to explain. but i get sort of notions, don't you see, and they seem to run best in verse. i write 'em when the fit's on me, and i burn 'em when the fit's through; and you'll hardly think it, but i never told a living soul i ever did such a thing till i told you this minute. my set--i mean, i couldn't bear to be laughed at. but you seem to be a fellow that's been in much the same sort of box yourself." "i don't know quite that. at any rate, i've never thought of shooting myself." "oh, i didn't mean to suggest we were alike at all in detail. i was only thinking we had both seen rough times. lord forbid that any man should ever be half the fool that i have been." he sighed heavily.--"however, sufficient for the day. look out over yonder; there's a bit of color for you." a shoal of flying-fish got up out of the warm, shining water and ran away over the ripples like so many silver rats; yellow tangles of gulf-weed swam in close squadron on the emerald sea; and on the western horizon screw-pile lighthouses stood up out of the water, marking the nearness of the low-lying floridan beaches, and reminding one of mysterious everglades beyond. "a man, they tell me," said hamilton, "can go into that country at the back there, and be a hermit, and live honestly on his own fish and fruit. i believe i'd like that life. i could go there, and be decent, and perhaps in time i should forget things." "don't you try it. the mosquitoes are shocking." "there are worse devils than mosquitoes. now i should have thought there was something about those everglades that would have appealed to you, skipper?" "there isn't, and i've been there. you want a shot-gun in florida to shoot callers with, not eatables. i've written verse there, and good verse, but it was the same old tale, sir, that brought it up to my fingers' ends. i'd been having trouble just then--yes, bad trouble. no, mr. hamilton, you go home, sir, to england and find a country place, and get on a farm, and watch the corn growing, and hear the birds sing, and get hold of the smells of the fields, and the colors of the trees, and then you'll enjoy life and turn out poetry you can be proud of." "doesn't appeal to me. you see you look upon the country with a countryman's eye." "me," said kettle. "i'm seaport and sea bred and brought up, and all i know of fields and a farm is what i've seen from a railway-carriage window. no, i've had to work too hard for my living, and for a living for mrs. kettle and the youngsters, to have any time for that sort of enjoyment; but a man can't help knowing what he wants, sir, can he? and that's what i'm aiming at, and it's for that i'm scratching together every sixpence of money i can lay hands on." but here a sudden outcry below broke in upon their talk. "that's mr. cranze," said kettle. "he'll be going too far in one of his tantrums one of these days." "i'm piously hoping the drunken brute will tumble overboard," hamilton muttered; "it would save a lot of trouble for everybody. eh, well," he said, "i suppose i'd better go and look after him," and got up and went below. captain kettle sat where he was, musing. he had no fear that cranze, the ship's butt and drunkard, would murder his man in broad, staring daylight, especially as, judging from the sounds, others of the ship's company were at present baiting him. but he did not see his way to earning that extra £200, which he would very much like to have fingered. to let this vulgar, drunken ruffian commit some overt act against hamilton's life, without doing him actual damage, seemed an impossibility. he had taken far to great a fancy for hamilton to allow him to be hurt. he was beginning to be mystified by the whole thing. the case was by no means so simple and straightforward as it had looked when lupton put it to him in the hotel smoking-room ashore. had cranze been any other passenger, he would have stopped his drunken riotings by taking away the drink, and by giving strict orders that the man was to be supplied with no further intoxicants. but cranze sober might be dangerous, while cranze tipsy was merely a figure of ridicule; so he submitted, very much against his grain, to having his ship made into a bear-garden, and anxiously awaited developments. the _flamingo_ cleared the south of florida, sighted the high land of cuba, and stood across through the yucatan channel to commence her peddling business in honduras, and at some twenty ports she came to an anchor six miles off shore, and hooted with her siren till lighters came off through the surf and the shallows. machinery they sent ashore at these little-known stations, coal, powder, dress-goods, and pianos, receiving in return a varied assortment of hides, mahogany, dyewoods, and some parcels of ore. there was a small ferrying business done also between neighboring ports in unclean native passengers, who harbored on the foredeck, and complained of want of deference from the crew. hamilton appeared to extract some melancholy pleasure from it all, and cranze remained unvaryingly drunk. cranze passed insults to casual strangers who came on board and did not know his little ways, and the casual strangers (after the custom of their happy country) tried to knife him, but were always knocked over in the nick of time, by some member of the _flamingo's_ crew. hamilton said there was a special providence which looks after drunkards of cranze's type, and declined to interfere; and cranze said he refused to be chided by a qualified teetotaller, and mixed himself further king's pegs. messrs. bird, bird and co., being of an economical turn of mind, did not fall into the error of overmanning their ships, and so as one of the mates chose to be knocked over by six months' old malarial fever, captain kettle had practically to do a mate's duty as well as his own. a mate in the mercantile marine is officially an officer and some fraction of a gentleman, but on tramp steamers and liners where cargo is of more account than passengers--even when they dine at half-past six, instead of at midday--a mate has to perform manual labors rather harder than that accomplished by any three regular deck hands. i do not intend to imply that kettle actually drove a winch, or acted as stevedore below, or sweated over bales as they swung up through a hatch, but he did work as gangway man, and serve at the tally desk, and oversee generally while the crew worked cargo; and his watch over the passengers was at this period of necessity relaxed. he tried hard to interest hamilton in the mysteries of hold stowage, in order to keep him under his immediate eye. but hamilton bluntly confessed to loathing anything that was at all useful, and so he perforce had to be left to pick his own position under the awnings, there to doze, and smoke cigarettes, and scribble on paper as the moods so seized him. it was off one of the ports in the peninsula of yucatan, toward the bay of campeachy, that cranze chose to fall overboard. the name of the place was announced by some one when they brought up, and cranze asked where it was. kettle marked it off with a leg of the dividers on the chart. "yucatan," said cranze, "that's the ruined cities shop, isn't it?"--he shaded his unsteady eyes, and looked out at a clump of squalid huts just showing on the beach beyond some three miles of tumbling surf. "gum! here's a ruined city all hot and waiting. home of the ancient aztecs, and colony of the atlanteans, and all that. skipper, i shall go ashore, and enlarge my mind." "you can go if you like," said kettle, "but remember, i steam away from here as soon as ever i get the cargo out of her, and i wait for no man. and mind not to get us upset in the surf going there. the water round here swarms with sharks, and i shouldn't like any of them to get indigestion." "seem trying to make yourself jolly ob--bub--jectiable's morning," grumbled cranze, and invited hamilton to accompany him on shore forthwith. "let's go and see the girls. ruined cities should have ruined girls and ruined pubs to give us some ruined amusement. we been on this steamer too long, an' we want variety. v'riety's charming. come along and see ruined v'riety." hamilton shrugged his shoulders. "drunk as usual, are you? you silly owl, whatever ruined cities there may be, are a good fifty miles in the bush." "'s all you know about it. i can see handsome majestic ruin over there on the beach, an' i'm going to see it 'out further delay. 's a duty i owe to myself to enlarge the mind by studying the great monuments of the past." "if you go ashore, you'll be marooned as safe as houses, and lord knows when the next steamer will call. the place reeks of fever, and as your present state of health is distinctly rocky, you'll catch it, and be dead and out of the way inside a week easily. look here, don't be an ass." "look here yourself. are you a competent medicated practitioner?" "oh, go and get sober." "answer me. are you competent medicated practitioner?" "no, i'm not." "very well then. don't you presume t'lecture me on state of my health. no reply, please. i don' wan' to be encumbered with your further acquaintance. i wish you a go' morning." hamilton looked at captain kettle under his brows. "will you advise me," he said, "what i ought to do." "i should say it would be healthier for you to let him have his own way." "thanks," said hamilton, and turned away. "i'll act on that advice." now the next few movements of mr. cranze are wrapped in a certain degree of mystery. he worried a very busy third mate, and got tripped on the hard deck for his pains; he was ejected forcibly from the engineers' mess-room, where it was supposed he had designs on the whisky; and he was rescued by the carpenter from an irate half-breed mosquito indian, who seemed to have reasons for desiring his blood there and then on the spot. but how else he passed the time, and as to how he got over the side and into the water, there is no evidence to show. there were theories that he had been put there by violence as a just act of retribution; there was an idea that he was trying to get into a lighter which lay alongside for a cast ashore, but saw two lighters, and got into the one which didn't exist; and there were other theories also, but they were mostly frivolous. but the very undoubted fact remained that he was there in the water, that there was an ugly sea running, that he couldn't swim, and that the place bristled with sharks. a couple of lifebuoys, one after the other, hit him accurately on the head, and the lighter cast off, and backed down to try and pick him up. he did not bring his head on to the surface again, but stuck up an occasional hand, and grasped with it frantically. and, meanwhile, there was great industry among the black triangular dorsal fins that advertised the movements of the sharks which owned them underneath the surface. nobody on board the _flamingo_ had any particular love for cranze, but all hands crowded to the rail and shivered and felt sick at the thought of seeing him gobbled up. then out of the middle of these spectators jumped the mild, delicate hamilton, with a volley of bad language at his own foolishness, and lit on a nice sleek wave-crest, feet first in an explosion of spray. away scurried the converging sharks' fins, and down shot hamilton out of sight. what followed came quickly. kettle, with a tremendous flying leap, landed somehow on the deck of the lighter, with bones unbroken. he cast a bowline on to the end of the main sheet, and, watching his chance, hove the bight of it cleverly into hamilton's grasp, and as hamilton had come up with cranze frenziedly clutching him round the neck, kettle was able to draw his catch toward the lighter's side without further delay. by this time the men who had gone below for that purpose had returned with a good supply of coal, and a heavy fusillade of the black lumps kept the sharks at a distance, at any rate for the moment. kettle heaved in smartly, and eager hands gripped the pair as they swirled up alongside, and there they were on the lighter's deck, spitting, dripping, and gasping. but here came an unexpected developement. as soon as he had got back his wind, the mild hamilton turned on his fellow passenger like a very fury, hitting, kicking, swearing, and almost gnashing with his teeth; and cranze, stricken to a sudden soberness by his ducking, collected himself after the first surprise, and returned the blows with a murderous interest. [illustration: out of the middle of these spectators jumped the mild, delicate hamilton.] but one of the mates, who had followed his captain down on to the lighter to bear a hand, took a quick method of stopping the scuffle. he picked up a cargo-sling, slipped it round cranze's waist, hooked on the winch chain, and passed the word to the deck above. somebody alive to the jest turned on steam, and of a sudden cranze was plucked aloft, and hung there under the derrick-sheave, struggling impotently, like some insane jumping-jack. amid the yells of laughter which followed, hamilton laughed also, but rather hysterically. kettle put a hand kindly on his wet shoulder. "come on board again," he said. "if you lie down in your room for an hour or so, you'll be all right again then. you're a bit over-done. i shouldn't like you to make a fool of yourself." "make a fool of myself," was the bitter reply. "i've made a bigger fool of myself in the last three minutes than any other man could manage in a lifetime." "i'll get you the royal humane society's medal for that bit of a job, anyway." "give me a nice rope to hang myself with," said hamilton ungraciously, "that would be more to the point. here, for the lord's sake let me be, or i shall go mad." he brushed aside all help, clambered up the steamer's high black side again, and went down to his room. "that's the worst of these poetic natures," kettle mused as he, too, got out of the lighter; "they're so highly strung." cranze, on being lowered down to deck again, and finding his tormentors too many to be retaliated upon, went below and changed, and then came up again and found solace in more king's pegs. he was not specially thankful to hamilton for saving his life; said, in fact, that it was his plain duty to render such trifling assistance; and further stated that if hamilton found his way over the side, he, cranze, would not stir a finger to pull him back again. he was very much annoyed at what he termed hamilton's "unwarrantable attack," and still further annoyed at his journey up to the derrick's sheave in the cargo-sling, which he also laid to hamilton's door. when any of the ship's company had a minute or so to spare, they came and gave cranze good advice and spoke to him of his own unlovableness, and cranze hurled brimstone back at them unceasingly, for king's peg in quantity always helped his vocabulary of swear-words. meanwhile the _flamingo_ steamed up and dropped cargo wherever it was consigned, and she abased herself to gather fresh cargo wherever any cargo offered. it was captain kettle who did the abasing, and he did not like the job at all; but he remembered that birds paid him specifically for this among other things; and also that if he did not secure the cargo, some one else would steam along, and eat dirt, and snap it up; and so he pocketed his pride (and his commission) and did his duty. he called to mind that he was not the only man in the world who earned a living out of uncongenial employment. the creed of the south shields chapel made a point of this: it preached that to every man, according to his strength, is the cross dealt out which he has to bear. and captain owen kettle could not help being conscious of his own vast lustiness. but one morning, before the _flamingo_ had finished with her calls on the ports of the texan rivers, a matter happened on board of her which stirred the pulse of her being to a very different gait. the steward who brought captain kettle's early coffee coughed, and evidently wanted an invitation to speak. "well?' said kettle. "it's about mr. hamilton, sir. i can't find 'im anywheres." "have you searched the ship?" "hunofficially, sir." "well, get the other two stewards, and do it thoroughly." the steward went out, and captain kettle lifted the coffee cup and drank a salutation to the dead. from that very moment he had a certain foreboding that the worst had happened. "here's luck, my lad, wherever you now may be. that brute cranze has got to windward of the pair of us, and your insurance money's due this minute. i only sent that steward to search the ship for form's sake. there was the link of poetry between you and me, lad; and that's closer than most people could guess at; and i know, as sure as if your ghost stood here to tell me, that you've gone. how, i've got to find out." he put down the cup, and went to the bathroom for his morning's tub. "i'm to blame, i know," he mused on, "for not taking better care of you, and i'm not trying to excuse myself. you were so brimful of poetry that you hadn't room left for any thought of your own skin, like a chap such as i am is bound to have. besides, you've been well-off all your time and you haven't learned to be suspicious. well, what's done's done, and it can't be helped. but, my lad, i want you to look on while i hand in the bill. it'll do you good to see cranze pay up the account." kettle went through his careful toilet, and then in his spruce white drill went out and walked briskly up and down the hurricane deck till the steward came with the report. his forebodings had not led him astray. hamilton was not on board: the certain alternative was that he lay somewhere in the warm gulf water astern, as a helpless dead body. "tell the chief officer," he said, "to get a pair of irons out of store and bring them down to mr. cranze's room. i'm going there now." he found cranze doctoring a very painful head with the early application of stimulant, and cranze asked him what the devil he meant by not knocking at the door before opening it. captain kettle whipped the tumbler out of the passenger's shaking fingers, and emptied its contents into the wash-basin. "i'm going to see you hanged shortly, you drunken beast," he said, "but in the mean while you may as well get sober for a change, and explain things up a bit." cranze swung his legs out of the bunk and sat up. he was feeling very tottery, and the painfulness of his head did not improve his temper. "look here," he said, "i've had enough of your airs and graces. i've paid for my passage on this rubbishy old water-pusher of yours, and i'll trouble you to keep a civil tongue in your head, or i'll report you to your owners. you are like a railway guard, my man. after you have seen that your passengers have got their proper tickets, it's your duty to--" mr. cranze's connective remarks broke off here for the time being. he found himself suddenly plucked away from the bunk by a pair of iron hands, and hustled out through the state-room door. he was a tall man, and the hands thrust him from below, upward, and, though he struggled wildly and madly, all his efforts to have his own way were futile. captain owen kettle had handled far too many really strong men in this fashion to even lose breath over a dram-drinking passenger. so cranze found himself hurtled out on to the lower fore-deck, where somebody handcuffed him neatly to an iron stanchion, and presently a mariner, by captain kettle's orders, rigged a hose, and mounted on the iron bulwark above him, and let a three-inch stream of chilly brine slop steadily on to his head. the situation, from an onlooker's point of view, was probably ludicrous enough, but what daunted the patient was that nobody seemed to take it as a joke. there were a dozen men of the crew who had drawn near to watch, and yesterday all these would have laughed contemptuously at each of his contortions. but now they are all stricken to a sudden solemnity. "spell-o," ordered kettle. "let's see if he's sober yet." the man on the bulwarks let the stream from the hose flop overboard, where it ran out into a stream of bubbles which joined the wake. cranze gasped back his breath, and used it in a torrent of curses. "play on him again," said kettle, and selected a good black before-breakfast cigar from his pocket. he lit it with care. the man on the bulwark shifted his shoulder for a better hold against the derrick-guy, and swung the limp hose in-board again. the water splashed down heavily on cranze's head and shoulders, and the onlookers took stock of him without a trace of emotion. they had most of them seen the remedy applied to inebriates before, and so they watched cranze make his gradual recovery with the eyes of experts. "spell-o," ordered kettle some five minutes later, and once more the hose vomited sea water ungracefully into the sea. this time cranze had the sense to hold his tongue till he was spoken to. he was very white about the face, except for his nose, which was red, and his eye had brightened up considerably. he was quite sober, and quite able to weigh any words that were dealt out to him. "now," said kettle judicially, "what have you done with mr. hamilton?" "nothing." "you deny all knowledge of how he got overboard?" cranze was visibly startled. "of course i do. is he overboard?" "he can't be found on this ship. therefore he is over the side. therefore you put him there." cranze was still more startled. but he kept himself in hand. "look here," he said, "what rot! what should i know about the fellow? i haven't seen him since last night." "so you say. but i don't see why i should believe you. in fact, i don't." "well, you can suit yourself about that, but it's true enough. why in the name of mischief should i want to meddle with the poor beggar? if you're thinking of the bit of a scrap we had yesterday, i'll own i was full at the time. and so must he have been. at least i don't know why else he should have set upon me like he did. at any rate that's not a thing a man would want to murder him for." "no, i should say £20,000 is more in your line." "what are you driving at?" "you know quite well. you got that poor fellow insured just before this trip, you got him to make a will in your favor, and now you've committed a dirty, clumsy murder just to finger the dollars." cranze broke into uncanny hysterical laughter. "that chap insured; that chap make a will in my favor? why, he hadn't a penny. it was me that paid for his passage. i'd been on the tear a bit, and the jew fellow i went to about raising the wind did say something about insuring, i know, and made me sign a lot of law papers. they made out i was in such a chippy state of health that they'd not let me have any more money unless i came on some beastly dull sea voyage to recruit a bit, and one of the conditions was that one of the boys was to come along too and look after me." "you'll look pretty foolish when you tell that thin tale to a jury." "then let me put something else on to the back of it. i'm not cranze at all. i'm hamilton. i've been in the papers a good deal just recently, because i'd been flinging my money around, and i didn't want to get stared at on board here. so cranze and i swapped names, just to confuse people. it seems to have worked very well." "yes," said kettle, "it's worked so well that i don't think you'll get a jury to believe that either. as you don't seem inclined to make a clean breast of it, you can now retire to your room, and be restored to your personal comforts. i can't hand you over to the police without inconvenience to myself till we get to new orleans, so i shall keep you in irons till we reach there. steward--where's a steward? ah, here you are. see this man is kept in his room, and see he has no more liquor. i make you responsible for him." "yes, sir," said the steward. continuously the dividends of bird, bird and co. outweighed every other consideration, and the _flamingo_ dodged on with her halting voyage. at the first place he put in at, kettle sent off an extravagant cablegram of recent happenings to the representative of the insurance company in england. it was not the cotton season, and the texan ports yielded the steamer little, but she had a ton or so of cargo for almost every one of them, and she delivered it with neatness, and clamored for cargo in return. she was "working up a connection." she swung round the gulf till she came to where logs borne by the mississippi stick out from the white sand, and she wasted a little time, and steamed past the nearest outlet of the delta, because captain kettle did not personally know its pilotage. he was getting a very safe and cautious navigator in these latter days of his prosperity. so she made for the port eads pass, picked up a pilot from the station by the lighthouse, and steamed cautiously up to the quarantine station, dodging the sandbars. her one remaining passenger had passed from an active nuisance to a close and unheard prisoner, and his presence was almost forgotten by every one on board, except kettle and the steward who looked after him. the merchant seaman of these latter days has to pay such a strict attention to business, that he has no time whatever for extraneous musings. the _flamingo_ got a clean bill from the doctor at the quarantine station, and emerged triumphantly from the cluster of craft doing penance, and, with a fresh pilot, steamed on up the yellow river, past the white sugar-mills, and the heavy cypresses behind the banks. and in due time the pilot brought her up to new orleans, and, with his glasses on the bridge, kettle saw his acquaintance, mr. lupton, waiting for him on the levee. he got his steamer berthed in the crowded tier, and mr. lupton pushed on board over the first gang-plank. but kettle waved the man aside till he saw his vessel finally moored. and then he took him into the chart-house and shut the door. "you seem to have got my cable," he said. "it was a very expensive one, but i thought the occasion needed it." his visitor tapped kettle confidentially on the knee. "you'll find my office will deal most liberally with you, captain. but i can tell you i'm pretty excited to hear your full yarn." "i'm afraid you won't like it," said kettle. "the man's obviously dead, and, fancy it or not, i don't see how your office can avoid paying the full amount. however, here's the way i've logged it down"--and he went off into detailed narration. the new orleans heat smote upon the chart-house roof, and the air outside clattered with the talk of negroes. already hatches were off, and the winch chains sang as they struck out cargo, and from the levee alongside, and from new orleans below and beyond, came tangles of smells which are peculiarly their own. a steward brought in tea, and it stood on the chart-table untasted, and at last kettle finished, and lupton put a question. "it's easy to tell," he said, "if they did swap names. what was the man that went overboard like?" "little dark fellow, short sighted. he was a poet, too." "that's not hamilton, anyway, but it might be cranze. is your prisoner tall?" "tall and puffy. red-haired and a spotty face." "that's hamilton, all the way. by jove! skipper, we've saved our bacon. his yarn's quite true. they did change names. hamilton's a rich young ass that's been painting england red these last three years." "but, tell me, what did the little chap go overboard for?" "got there himself. uneasy conscience, i suppose. he seems to have been a poor sort of assassin anyway. why, when that drunken fool tumbled overboard amongst the sharks, he didn't leave him to be eaten or drowned, is more than i can understand. he'd have got his money as easy as picking it up off the floor, if he'd only had the sense to keep quiet." "if you ask me," said kettle, "it was sheer nobility of character. i had a good deal of talk with that young gentleman, sir. he was a splendid fellow. he had a true poetical soul." mr. lupton winked sceptically. "he managed to play the part of a thorough-paced young blackguard at home pretty successfully. he was warned off the turf. he was kicked out of his club for card-sharping. he was--well, he's dead now, anyway, and we won't say any more about him, except that he's been stone-broke these last three years, and has been living on his wits and helping to fleece other flats. but he was only the tool, anyway. there is a bigger and more capable scoundrel at the back of it all, and, thanks to the scare you seem to have rubbed into that spotty-faced young mug you've got locked up down below, i think we can get the principal by the heels very nicely this journey. if you don't mind, i'll go and see this latest victim now, before he's had time to get rid of his fright." captain kettle showed his visitor courteously down to the temporary jail, and then returned to the chart-house and sipped his tea. "his name may really have been cranze, but he was a poet, poor lad," he mused, thinking of the dead. "that's why he couldn't do the dirty work. but i sha'n't tell lupton that reason. he'd only laugh--and--that poetry ought to be a bit of a secret between the lad and me. poor, poor fellow! i think i'll be able to write a few lines about him myself after i've been ashore to see the agent, just as a bit of an epitaph. as to this spotty-faced waster who swapped names with him, i almost have it in me to wish we'd left him to be chopped by those sharks. he'd his money to his credit anyway--and what's money compared with poetry?" chapter xii the fire and the farm the quartermaster knocked smartly, and came into the chart-house, and captain kettle's eyes snapped open from deep sleep to complete wakefulness. "there's some sort of vessel on fire, sir, to loo'ard, about five miles off." the shipmaster glanced up at the tell-tale compass above his head. "officer of the watch has changed the course, i see. we're heading for it, eh?" "yes, sir. the second mate told me to say so." "quite right. pass the word for the carpenter, and tell him to get port and starboard lifeboats ready for lowering in case they're wanted. i'll be on the bridge in a minute." "aye, aye, sir," said the quartermaster, and withdrew into the darkness outside. captain owen kettle's toilet was not of long duration. like most master mariners who do business along those crowded steam lanes of the western ocean, he slept in most of his clothes when at sea as a regular habit, and in fact only stripped completely for the few moments which were occupied by his morning's tub. if needful, he could always go out on deck at a second's notice, and be ready to remain there for twenty-four hours. but in this instance there was no immediate hurry, and so he spent a full minute and a half over his toilet, and emerged with washed hands and face, sprucely brushed hair and beard, and his person attired in high rubber thigh-boots and leather-bound black oilskins. the night was black and thick with a drizzle of rain, and a heavy breeze snored through the _flamingo's_ scanty rigging. the second mate on the bridge was beating his fingerless woollen gloves against his ribs as a cure for cold fingers. the first mate and the third had already turned out, and were on the boatskids helping the carpenter with the housings, and overhauling davit falls. on that part of the horizon against which the _flamingo's_ bows sawed with great sweeping dives was a streaky, flickering yellow glow. kettle went on to an end of the bridge and peered ahead through the bridge binoculars. "a steamer," he commented, "and a big one too; and she's finely ablaze. not much help we shall be able to give. it will be a case of taking off the crew, if they aren't already cooked before we get there." he looked over the side at the eddy of water that clung to the ship's flank. "i see you're shoving her along," he said to the second mate. "i sent word down to the engine-room to give her all they knew the moment we raised the glow. i thought you wouldn't grudge the coal, sir." "no, quite right. hope there aren't too many of them to be picked off, or we shall make a tight fit on board here." "funny we should be carrying the biggest cargo the old boat's ever had packed into her. but we shall find room to house a few poor old sailormen. they won't mind much where they stow, as long as they're picked up out of the wet. b-r-r-rh!" shivered the second mate, "i shouldn't much fancy open-boat cruising in the western ocean this weather." captain kettle stared on through the shiny brass binoculars. "call all hands," he said quietly. "that's a big ship ahead of us, and she'll carry a lot of people. god send she's only an old tramp. at those lifeboats there!" he shouted. "swing the davits outboard, and pass your painters forward. hump yourselves, now." "there's a lot of ice here, sir," came a grumbling voice out of the darkness, "and the boats are frozen on to the chocks. we've got to hammer it away before they'll hoist. the falls are that froze, too, that they'll not render--" "you call yourself a mate and hold a master's ticket, and want to get a ship of your own!"--kettle vaulted over the rail on to the top of the fiddley, and made for his second in command. "here, my man, if your delicate fingers can't do this bit of a job, give me that marlinspike. by james! do you hear me? give up the marlinspike. did you never see a boat iced up before? now then, carpenter. are you worth your salt? or am i to clear both ends in this boat by myself?" so, by example and tongue, captain kettle got his boats swung outboard, and the _flamingo_, with her engines working at an unusual strain, surged rapidly nearer and nearer to the blaze. on shore a house on fire at any hour draws a crowd. at sea, in the bleak cold wastes of the water desert, even one other shipload of sympathizers is too often wished for vainly. wind, cold, and breakdowns of machinery the sailor accepts with dull indifference; shipwrecks, strandings, and disease he looks forward to as part of an inevitable fate; but fire goes nearer to cowing him than all other disasters put together; and the sight of his fellow-seamen attacked by these same desolating flames arouses in him the warmest of his sympathy, and the full of his resourcefulness. moreover, in kettle's case, he had known the feel of a ship afire under his own feet, and so he could appreciate all the better the agony of these others. but meanwhile, as the _flamingo_ made her way up wind against the charging seas, a fear was beginning to grip the little shipmaster by the heart that was deep enough to cause him a physical nausea. the burning steamer ahead grew every minute more clear as they raced toward her. she was on fire forward, and she lay almost head-on toward them, keeping her stern to the seas, so that the wind would have no help in driving the flames aft, and making her more uninhabitable. from a distance it had been hard to make out anything beyond great stacks of yellow flame, topped by inky, oily smoke, which drove in thick columns down the wind. as they drew nearer, and her size became more apparent, some one guessed her as a big cargo tramp from new orleans with cotton that had overheated and fired, and kettle took comfort from the suggestion and tried to believe that it might come true. but as they closed with her, and came within earshot of her syren, which was sending frightened useless blares across the churning waters, there was no being blind to the true facts any longer. this was no cargo boat, but a passenger liner; outward bound, too, and populous. and as they came still nearer, they saw her after-decks black and wriggling with people, and kettle got a glimpse of her structure and recognized the vessel herself. "the _grosser carl_," he muttered, "out of hamburg for new york. next to no first-class, and she cuts rates for third and gets the bulk of the german emigrant traffic. she'll have six hundred on her this minute, and a hundred of a crew. call it seven hundred all told, and there's hell waiting for them over yonder, and getting worse every minute. oh, great james! i wonder what's going to be done. i couldn't pack seventy of them on the old _flam_ here, if i filled her to bursting." he clapped the binoculars to his eyes again, and stared diligently round the rim of the night. if only he could catch a glimpse of some other liner hurrying along her route, then these people could be saved easily. he could drop his boats to take them till the other passenger ship came up. but the wide sea was empty of lights; the _flamingo_ and the _grusser carl_ had the stage severely to themselves; and between them they had the making of an intolerable weight of destiny. the second mate broke in upon his commander's brooding. "we shall have a nice bill for lloyds this journey." kettle made no answer. he continued staring moodily at the spouting flames ahead. the second mate coughed. "shall i be getting derricks rigged and the hatch covers off?" kettle turned on him with a sudden fierceness. "do you know you're asking me to ruin myself?" "but if we jettison cargo to make room for these poor beggars, sir, the insurance will pay." "pay your grandmother. you've got a lot to learn, my lad, before you're fit to take charge of a ship, if you don't know any more than that about the responsibility of the cargo." "by jove! that's awkward. birds would look pretty blue if the bill was handed in to them." "birds!" said kettle with contempt. "they aren't liable for sixpence. supposing you were travelling by train, and there was some one else's portmanteau in the carriage, and you flung it out of the window into a river, who do you suppose would have to stand the racket?" "why, me. but then, sir, this is different." "not a bit. if we start in to jettison cargo, it means i'm a ruined man. every ton that goes over the side i'll have to pay for." "we can't leave those poor devils to frizzle," said the second mate awkwardly. "oh, no, of course we can't. they're a pack of unclean dutchmen we never saw before, and should think ourselves too good to brush against if we met them in the street, but sentiment demands that we stay and pull them out of their mess, and cold necessity leaves me to foot the bill. you're young, and you're not married, my lad. i'm neither. i've worked like a horse all my life, mostly with bad luck. lately luck's turned a bit. i've been able to make a trifle more, and save a few pounds out of my billets. and here and there, what with salvage and other things, i've come in the way of a plum. one way and another i've got nearly enough put by at home this minute to keep the missis and me and the girls to windward of the workhouse, even if i lost this present job with birds, and didn't find another." "perhaps somebody else will pay for the cargo we have to put over the side, sir." "it's pretty thin comfort when you've got a 'perhaps' of that size, and no other mortal stop between you and the workhouse. it's all very well doing these things in hot blood; but the reckoning's paid when you're cold, and they're cold, and with the board of trade standing-by like the devil in the background all ready to give you a kick when there's a spare place for a fresh foot." he slammed down the handle of the bridge-telegraph, and rang off the _flamingo's_ engines. he had been measuring distances all this time with his eye. "but, of course, there's no other choice about the matter. there's the blessed cause of humanity to be looked after--humanity to these blessed dutch emigrants that their own country doesn't want, and every other country would rather be without. humanity to my poor old missis and the kids doesn't count. i shall get a sludgy paragraph in the papers for the _grosser carl_, headed 'gallant rescue,' with all the facts put upside down, and twelve months later there'll be another paragraph about a 'case of pitiful destitution.'" "oh, i say, sir, it won't be as bad as all that. birds will see you through." "birds will do a fat lot. birds sent me to work up a connection in the mexican gulf, and i've done it, and they've raised my screw two pound a month after four years' service. i jettison the customers' cargo, and probably sha'n't be able to pay for half of it. customers will get mad, and give their business to other lines which don't run foul of blazing emigrant packets." "birds would never dare to fire you out for that." "oh, lord, no! they'd say: 'we don't like the way you've taken to wear your back hair, captain. and, besides, we want younger blood amongst our skippers. you'll find your check ready for you in the outer office. mind the step!'" "i'm awfully sorry, skipper. if there's anything i can do, sir--" captain kettle sighed, and looked drearily out at the blazing ship and the tumbled waste of sea on which she floated. but he felt that he had been showing weakness, and pulled himself together again smartly. "yes, there is, my lad. i'm a disappointed man, and i've been talking a lot more than's dignified. you'll do me a real kindness if you'll forget all that's been said. away with you on to the main deck, and get hatches off, and whip the top tier of that cargo over the side as fast as you can make the winches travel. if the old _flamingo_ is going to serve out free hospitality, by james! she shall do it full weight. by james! i'd give the beggars champagne and spring mattresses if i'd got 'em." meanwhile, those on the german emigrant steamer had seen the coming of the shabby little english trader with bumping hearts. till then the crew, with (so to speak) their backs up against a wall, had fought the fire with diligence; but when the nearness of a potential rescuer was reported, they discovered for themselves at once that the fire was beyond control. they were joined by the stokehold gangs, and they made at once for the boats, overpowering any officer who happened to come between them and their desires. the limp, tottery, half-fed, wholly seasick emigrants they easily shoved aside, and these in their turn by sheer mass thrust back the small handful of first-class passengers, and away screamed out the davit tackles, as the boats were lowered full of madly frightened deck hands and grimy handlers of coal. panic had sapped every trace of their manhood. they had concern only for their own skins; for the miserables remaining on the _grosser carl_ they had none. and if for a minute any of them permitted himself to think, he decided that in the herr gott's good time the english would send boats and fetch them off. the english had always a special gusto for this meddling rescue work. however, it is easy to decide on lowering boats, but not always so easy to carry it into safe fact if you are mad with scare, and there is no one whom you will listen to to give the necessary simple orders. and, as a consequence, one boat, chiefly manned by the coal interest, swamped alongside before it could be shoved clear; the forward davit fall of another jammed, and let it dangle vertically up and down when the after fall overhauled; and only one boat got away clear. the reception which this small cargo of worthies met with surprised them. they pulled with terrified haste to the _flamingo_, got under her lee, and clung desperately to the line which was thrown to them. but to the rail above them came the man who expected to be ruined by this night's work, and the pearls of speech which fell from his lips went home through even their thick hides. captain kettle, being human, had greatly needed some one during the last half-hour to ease his feelings on--though he was not the man to own up to such a weakness, even to himself--and the boat came neatly to supply his want. it was long enough since he had found occasion for such an outburst, but the perfection of his early training stood him in good stead then. every biting insult in his vocabulary, every lashing word that is used upon the seas, every gibe, national, personal, or professional, that a lifetime of hard language could teach, he poured out on that shivering boat's crew then. they were germans certainly, but being an english shipmaster, he had, of course, many a time sailed with a forecastle filled with their nationality, and had acquired the special art of adapting his abuse to the "dutchman's" sensibilities, even as he had other harangues suited for coolie or dago mariners, or even for that rare sea-bird, the english sailorman. and as a final wind-up, after having made them writhe sufficiently, he ordered them to go back whence they came, and take a share in rescuing their fellows. "bud we shall trown," shouted back one speaker from the wildly jumping boat. "then drown, and be hanged to you," shouted kettle. "i'm sure i don't care if you do. but i'm not going to have cowards like you dirtying my deck-planks." he cast off the line to which their boat rode under the steamer's heaving side. "you go and do your whack at getting the people off that packet, or, so help me james! none of you shall ever see your happy dutchland again." meanwhile, so the irony of the fates ordered it, the two mates, each in charge of one of the _flamingo's_ lifeboats, were commanding crews made up entirely of germans and scandinavians, and pluckier and more careful sailormen could not have been wished for. the work was dangerous, and required more than ordinary nerve and endurance and skill. a heavy sea ran, and from its crests a spindrift blew which cut the face like whips, and numbed all parts of the body with its chill. the boats were tossed about like playthings, and required constant bailing to keep them from being waterlogged. but kettle had brought the _flamingo_ to windward of the _grosser carl_, and each boat carried a line, so that the steam winches could help her with the return trips. getting a cargo was, however, the chief difficulty. all attempt at killing the fire was given up by this time. all vestige of order was swamped in unutterable panic. the people on board had given themselves up to wild, uncontrollable anarchy. if a boat had been brought alongside, they would have tumbled into her like sheep, till their numbers swamped her. they cursed the flames, cursed the sea, cursed their own brothers and sisters who jostled them. they were the sweepings from half-fed middle europe, born with raw nerves; and under the sudden stress of danger, and the absence of some strong man to thrust discipline on them, they became practically maniacs. they were beyond speech, many of them. they yammered at the boats which came to their relief, with noises like those of scared beasts. now the _flamingo's_ boats were officered by two cool, profane mates, who had no nerves themselves, and did not see the use of nerves in other people. neither of them spoke german, but (after the style of their island) presuming that some of those who listened would understand english, they made proclamation in their own tongue to the effect that the women were to be taken off first. "kids with them," added the second mate. "and if any of you rats of men shove your way down here," said the chief mate, "before all the skirt is ferried across, you'll get knocked on the head, that's all. savvy that belaying-pin i got in my fist? now then, get some bowlines, and sway out the ladies." as well might the order have been addressed to a flock of sheep. they heard what was said in an agonized silence. then each poor soul there stretched out his arms or hers, and clamored to be saved--and--never mind the rest. and meanwhile the flames bit deeper and deeper into the fabric of the steamer, and the breath of them grew more searching, as the roaring gale blew them into strength. "you ruddy dutchmen," shouted the second mate. "it would serve you blooming well right if you were left to be frizzled up into one big sausage stew together. however, we'll see if kindness can't tame you a bit yet." he waited till the swirl of a sea swung his boat under one of the dangling davit falls, and caught hold of it, and climbed nimbly on board. then he proceeded to clear a space by the primitive method of crashing his fist into every face within reach. "now then," he shouted, "if there are any sailormen here worth their salt, let them come and help. am i to break up the whole of this ship's company by myself?" gradually, by ones and twos, the _grosser carl's_ remaining officers and deck hands came shamefacedly toward this new nucleus of authority and order, and then the real work began. the emigrants, with sea sights and sea usage new to them, were still full of the unreasoning panic of cattle, and like cattle they were herded and handled, and their women and young cut out from the general mob. these last were got into the swaying, dancing boats as tenderly as might be, and the men were bidden to watch, and wait their turn. when they grew restive, as the scorching fire drew more near, they were beaten savagely; the _grosser carl's_ crew, with the shame of their own panic still raw on them, knew no mercy; and the second mate of the _flamingo_, who stood against a davit, insulted them all with impartial cheerfulness. he was a very apt pupil, this young man, of that master of ruling men at the expense of their feelings, captain owen kettle. meanwhile the two lifeboats took one risky journey after another, being drawn up to their own ship by a chattering winch, discharging their draggled freight with dexterity and little ceremony, and then laboring back under oars for another. the light of the burning steamer turned a great sphere of night into day, and the heat from her made the sweat pour down the faces of the toiling men, though the gale still roared, and the icy spindrift still whipped and stung. on the _flamingo_, captain kettle cast into the sea with a free hand what represented the savings of a lifetime, provision for his wife and children, and an old-age pension for himself. the _grosser carl_ had carried thirty first-class passengers, and these were crammed into the _flamingo's_ slender cabin accommodation, filling it to overflowing. the emigrants--austrians, bohemians, wild poles, filthy, crawling russian jews, bestial armenians, human _debris_ which even soldier-coveting middle europe rejected--these were herded down into the holds, as rich cargo was dug out by the straining winches, and given to the thankless sea to make space for them. "kindly walk up," said kettle, with bitter hospitality, as fresh flocks of them were heaved up over the bulwarks. "don't hesitate to grumble if the accommodation isn't exactly to your liking. we're most pleased to strike out cargo to provide you with an elegant parlor, and what's left i'm sure you'll be able to sit on and spoil. oh, you filthy, long-haired cattle! did none of you ever wash?" fiercely the _grosser carl_ burned to the fanning of the gale, and like furies worked the men in the boats. the _grosser carl's_ own boat joined the other two, once the ferrying was well under way. she had hung alongside after kettle cast off her line, with her people madly clamoring to be taken on board; but as all they received for their pains was abuse and coal-lumps--mostly, by the way, from their own fellow-countrymen, who made up the majority of the _flamingo's_ crew--they were presently driven to help in the salving work through sheer scare at being left behind to drown unless they carried out the fierce little english captain's orders. the _flamingo's_ chief mate oversaw the dangerous ferrying, and though every soul that was transshipped might be said to have had ten narrow escapes in transit over that piece of tossing water, luck and good seamanship carried the day, and none was lost. and on the _grosser carl_ the second mate, a stronger man, brazenly took entire command, and commended to the nether gods all who suggested ousting him from that position. "i don't care a red what your official post was on this ship before i came," said the second mate to several indignant officers. "you should have held on to it when you had it. i've never been a skipper before, but i'm skipper here now by sheer right of conquest, and i'm going to stay on at that till the blooming old ship's burnt out. if you bother me, i'll knock your silly nose into your watch-pocket. turn-to there and pass down another batch of those squalling passengers into the boats. don't you spill any of them overboard either, or, by the big mischief, i'll just step down and teach you handiness." the second mate was almost fainting with the heat before he left the _grosser carl_, but he insisted on being the last man on board, and then guyed the whole performance with caustic gayety when he was dragged out of the water, into which he had been forced to jump, and was set to drain on the floor gratings of a boat. the _grosser carl_ had fallen away before the wind, and was spouting flame from stem-head to poop-staff by the time the last of the rescuers and the rescued were put on the _flamingo's_ deck, and on that travel-worn steamboat were some six hundred and fifty visitors that somehow or other had to be provided for. the detail of famine now became of next importance. they were still five days' steam away from port, and their official provision supply was only calculated to last the _flamingos_ themselves for a little over that time. things are cut pretty fine in these days of steam voyages to scheduled time. so there was no sentimental waiting to see the _grosser carl_ finally burn out and sink. the boats were cast adrift, as the crews were too exhausted to hoist them in, and the _flamingo's_ nose was turned toward liverpool. pratt, the chief engineer, figured out to half a ton what coal he had remaining, and set the pace so as to run in with empty bunkers. they were cool now, all hands, from the excitement of the burning ship, and the objectionable prospect of semi-starvation made them regard their visitors less than ever in the light of men and brothers. but, as it chanced, toward the evening of next day, a hurrying ocean greyhound overtook them in her race from new york toward the east, and the bunting talked out long sentences in the commercial code from the wire span between the _flamingo's_ masts. fresh quartettes of flags flicked up on both steamers, were acknowledged, and were replaced by others; and when the liner drew up alongside, and stopped with reversed propellers, she had a loaded boat ready swung out in davits, which dropped in the water the moment she had lost her way. the bunting had told the pith of the tale. when the two steamers' bridges were level, the liner's captain touched his cap, and a crowd of well-dressed passengers below him listened wonderingly. "afternoon, captain. got 'em all?" "afternoon, captain. oh, we didn't lose any. but a few drowned their silly selves before we started to shepherd them." "what ship was it? the french boat would be hardly due yet." "no, the old _grosser carl_. she was astern of her time. much obliged to you for the grub, captain. we'd have been pretty hard pushed if we hadn't met you. i'm sending you a payment order. sorry for spoiling your passage." the liner captain looked at his watch. "can't be helped. it's in a good cause, i suppose, though the mischief of it is we were trying to pull down the record by an hour or so. the boat, there! are you going to be all night with that bit of stuff?" the cases of food were transshipped with frantic haste, and the boat returned. the greyhound leaped out into her stride again the moment she had hooked on, and shot ahead, dipping a smart blue ensign in salute. the _flamingo_ dipped a dirty red ensign and followed, and, before dark fell, once more had the ocean to herself. the voyage home was not one of oppressive gayety. the first-class passengers, who were crammed into the narrow cabin found the quarters uncomfortable, and the little shipmaster's manner repellent. urged by the precedent in such matters, they "made a purse" for him, and a presentation address. but as they merely collected some thirty-one pounds in paper promises, which, so far, have never been paid, their gratitude may be said to have had its economical side. to the riffraff in the hold, for whose accommodation a poor man's fortune had been jettisoned, the thing "gratitude" was an unknown emotion. they plotted mischief amongst themselves, stole when the opportunity came to them, were unspeakably foul in their habits, and, when they gave the matter any consideration at all, decided that this fierce little captain with the red torpedo beard had taken them on board merely to fulfil some selfish purpose of his own. to the theorist who has sampled them only from a distance, these off-scourings of middle europe are downtrodden people with souls; to those who happen to know them personally, all their qualities seem to be conspicuously negative. the _flamingo_ picked up the landmarks of the southern irish coast, and made her number to lloyd's station on brow head, stood across for the tuskar, and so on up st. george's channel for holyhead. she flew a pilot jack there, and off point lynus picked up a pilot, who, after the custom of his class, stepped up over the side with a hard felt hat on his head, and a complete wardrobe, and a selection of daily papers in his pocket. "well, pilot, what's the news?" said kettle, as the man of narrow waters swung himself up on to the bridge, and his boat swirled away astern. "you are," said the pilot. "the papers are just full of you, captain, all of them, from the _shipping telegraph_ to the london _times_. the cunard boat brought in the yarn. a pilot out of my schooner took her up." "how do they spell the name? cuttle?" "well, i think it's 'kattle' mostly, though one paper has it 'kelly.'" "curse their cheek," said the little sailor, flushing. "i'd like to get hold of some of those blowsy editors that come smelling round the dock after yarns and drink, and wring their necks." "starboard a point," said the pilot, and when the quartermaster at the wheel had duly repeated the course, he turned to kettle with some amusement. "blowsy or not, they don't seem to have done you much harm this journey, captain. why, they're getting up subscriptions for you all round. shouldn't wonder but what the board of trade even stands you a pair of binoculars." "i'm not a blessed mendicant," said kettle stiffly, "and as for the board of trade, they can stick their binoculars up their trousers." he walked to the other end of the bridge, and stood there chewing savagely at the butt end of his cigar. "rum bloke," commented the pilot to himself, though aloud he offered no comment, being a man whose business it was to keep on good terms with everybody. so he dropped his newspapers to one of the mates, and applied himself to the details of the pilotage. still, the pilot was right in saying that england was ringing with the news of kettle's feat. the passengers of the cunarder, with nothing much else to interest them, had come home thrilled and ringing with it. a smart new yorker had got a "scoop" by slipping ashore at queenstown and cabling a lavish account to the american press association, so that the first news reached london from the states. followed reuter's man and the liverpool reporters on prince's landing-stage, who came to glean copy as in the ordinary course of events, and they being spurred on by wires from london for full details, got down all the facts available, and imagined others. parliament was not sitting, and there had been no newspaper sensation for a week, and, as a natural consequence, the papers came out next morning with accounts of the rescue varying from two columns to a page in length. it is one of the most wonderful attributes of the modern press that it can, at any time between midnight and publishing hours, collate and elaborate the biography of a man who hitherto has been entirely obscure, and considering the speed of the work, and the difficulties which hedge it in, these lightning life sketches are often surprisingly full of accuracies. but let the frillings in this case be fact or fiction, there was no doubt that kettle and his crew had saved a shipload of panic-stricken foreign emigrants, and (to help point the moral) within the year, in an almost similar case, another shipload had been drowned through that same blind, helpless, hopeless panic. the pride of race bubbled through the british daily press in prosaic long primer and double-leaded bourgeois. there was no saying aloud, "we rejoice that an englishman has done this thing, after having it proved to us that it was above the foreigner's strength." the newspaper man does not rhapsodize. but the sentiment was there all the same, and it was that which actuated the sudden wave of enthusiasm which thrilled the country. [illustration: strangers came up and wrung kettle's unwilling hand.] the _flamingo_ was worked into dock, and a cheering crowd surged aboard of her in unrestrainable thousands. strangers came up and wrung kettle's unwilling hand, and dropped tears on his coat-sleeve; and when he swore at them, they only wept the more and smiled through the drops. it was magnificent, splendid, gorgeous. here was a man! who said that england would ever lose her proud place among the nations when she could still find men like oliver kelly--or kattle--or cuttle, or whatever this man was called, amongst her obscure merchant captains? even mr. isaac bird, managing owner, caught some of the general enthusiasm, and withheld, for the present, the unpleasant remarks which occurred to him as suitable, touching kettle's neglect of the firm's interest in favor of a parcel of bankrupt foreigners. but kettle himself had the subject well in mind. when all this absurd fuss was over, then would come the reckoning; and whilst the crowd was cheering him, he was figuring out the value of the jettisoned cargo, and whilst pompous mr. isaac was shaking him by the hand and making a neat speech for the ear of casual reporters, poor kettle was conjuring up visions of the workhouse and pauper's corduroy. but the fates were moving now in a manner which was beyond his experience. the public, which had ignored his bare existence before for all of a lifetime, suddenly discovered that he was a hero, and that, too, without knowing half the facts. the press, with its finger on the public's pulse, published kettle literature in lavish columns. it gave twenty different "eye-witnesses' accounts" of the rescue. it gave long lists of "previous similar disasters." it drew long morals in leading articles. and finally, it took all the little man's affairs under its consideration, and settled them with a lordly hand. "who pays for the cargo captain kuttle threw overboard?" one paper headed an article; whilst another wrote perfervidly about "cattle ruined for his bravery." here was a new and striking side issue. lloyds' were not responsible. should the week's hero pay the bill himself out of his miserable savings? certainly not. the owners of the _grosser carl_ were the benefiting parties, and it was only just that they should take up the expense. so the entire press wired off to the german firm, and next morning were able to publish a positive assurance that of course these grateful foreigners would reimburse all possible outlay. the subject of finance once broached, it was naturally discovered that the hero toiled for a very meagre pittance, that he was getting on in years, and had a wife and family depending on him--and--promptly, there opened out the subscription lists. people were stirred, and they gave nicely, on the lower scale certainly, with shillings and guineas predominating; but the lists totalled up to £2,400, which to some people, of course, is gilded affluence. now captain kettle had endured all this publicity with a good deal of restiveness, and had used language to one or two interviewers who managed to ferret him out, which fairly startled them; but this last move for a public subscription made him furious. he spoke in the captain's room of the hostelry he used, of the degradation which was put on him, and various other master mariners who were present entirely agreed with him. "i might be a blessed missionary, or india-with-a-famine, the way they're treating me," he complained bitterly. "if they call a meeting to give me anything, i'll chuck the money in their faces, and let them know straight what i think. by james! do they suppose i've got no pride? why can't they let me alone? if the _grosser carl_ people pay up for that cargo, that's all i want." but the eternal healer, time, soothed matters down wonderfully. captain owen kettle's week's outing in the daily papers ran its course with due thrills and headlines, and then the press forgot him, and rushed on to the next sensation. by the time the subscription list had closed and been brought together, the _flamingo_ had sailed for her next slow round trip in the mexican gulf, and when her captain returned to find a curt, formal letter from a firm of bankers, stating that £2,400 had been placed to his credit in their establishment, he would have been more than human if he had refused it. and, as a point of fact, after consulting with madam, his wife, he transformed it into houses in that terrace of narrow dwellings in birkenhead which represented the rest of his savings. now on paper this house property was alleged by a sanguine agent to produce at the rate of £15 per annum apiece, and as there were thirty-six houses, this made an income--on paper--of well over £500 a year, the which is a very nice possession. a thing, moreover, which captain kettle had prophesied had come to pass. the "trade connection" in the mexican gulf had been very seriously damaged. as was somewhat natural, the commercial gentry there did not relish having their valuable cargo pitched unceremoniously to neptune, and preferred to send what they had by boats which did not contrive to meet burning emigrant liners. this, of course, was quite unreasonable of them, but one can only relate what happened. and then the second part of the prophecy evolved itself naturally. messrs. bird discovered from the last indent handed them that more paint had been used over the _flamingo's_ fabric than they thought consistent with economy, and so they relieved captain kettle from the command, handed him their check for wages due--there was no commission to be added for such an unsatisfactory voyage as this last--and presented him gratis with their best wishes for his future welfare. kettle had thought of telling the truth in print, but the mysterious law of libel, which it is written that all mariners shall dread and never understand, scared him; and besides, he was still raw from his recent week's outing in the british press. so he just went and gave his views to mr. isaac bird personally and privately, threw the ink-bottle through the office window, pitched the box of business cigars into the fire, and generally pointed his remarks in a way that went straight to mr. bird's heart, and then prepared peacefully to take his departure. "i shall not prosecute you for this--" said mr. isaac. "i wish you dare. it would suit me finely to get into a police-court and be able to talk. i'd willingly pay my 'forty shillings and' for the chance. they'd give me the option fast enough." "i say i shall not prosecute you because i have no time to bother with law. but i shall send your name round amongst the shipowners, and with my word against you, you'll never get another command so long as the world stands." "you knock-kneed little jew," said kettle truculently, "do you think i'm giving myself the luxury of letting out at a shipowner, after knuckling down to the breed through all of a weary life, unless i knew my ground? i've done with ships and the sea for always, and if you give me any more of your lip, i'll burn your office down and you in it." "you seem pleased enough with yourself about something," said mr. isaac. "i am," said kettle exultantly. "i've chucked the sea for good. i've taken a farm in wharfedale, and i'm going to it this very week." "then," said mr. isaac sardonically, "if you've taken a farm, don't let me wish you any further ill. good-morning." but kettle was not to be damped out of conceit with his life's desire by a few ill-natured words. he gave mr. isaac bird his final blessing, commenting on his ancestors, his personal appearance, his prospects of final salvation, and then pleasantly took his leave. he was too much occupied in the preliminaries of his new life to have much leisure just then for further cultivation of the gentle art of insult. the farm he had rented lay in the wharfe valley above skipton, and, though its acreage was large, a good deal was made up of mere moorland sheep pasture. luckily he recognized that a poetical taste for a rural life might not necessarily imply the whole mystery of stock rearing and agriculture, and so he hired a capable foreman as philosopher and guide. and here i may say that his hobby by no means ruined him, as might reasonably be expected; for in the worst years he never dropped more than fifty or sixty pounds, and frequently he ran the place without loss, or even at a profit. but though it is hard to confess that a man's ideal comes short of his expectations when put to the trial, i am free to confess that although he enjoyed it all, kettle was not at his happiest when he was attending his crops or his sheep, or haggling with his fellow farmers on mondays over fat beasts in skipton market. he had gone back to one of his more practiced tastes--if one calls it a taste--the cultivation of religion. the farm stood bleak and lonely on the slope of a hillside, and on both flanks of the dale were other lonely farms as far as the eye could see. there was no village. the nearest place of worship was four miles away, and that was merely a church. but in the valley beside the wharfe was a small gray stone chapel, reared during some bygone day for the devotions of some forgotten sect. kettle got this into his control. he was by no means a rich man. the row of houses in birkenhead were for the most part tenanted by the wives of mercantile marine engineers and officers, who were chronically laggard with their rent, and whom _esprit de corps_ forbade him to press; and so, what with this deficit, and repairs and taxes, and one thing and another, it was rarely that half the projected £500 a year found its way into his banking account. but a tithe of whatever accrued to him was scrupulously set aside for the maintenance of the chapel. he imported there the grim, narrow creed he had learned in south shields, and threw open the door for congregations. he was entirely in earnest over it all, and vastly serious. failing another minister, he himself took the services, and though, on occasion, some other brother was induced to preach, it was he himself who usually mounted the pulpit beneath the sounding-board. he purchased an american organ, and sent his eldest daughter weekly to take lessons in skipton till she could play it. and mrs. kettle herself led the singing. still further, the chapel has its own collection of hymns, specially written, printed and dedicated to its service. the book is captain kettle's first published effort. heaven and its author alone know under what wild circumstances most of those hymns were written. the chapel started its new span of life with a congregation meagre enough, but sunday by sunday the number grew. they are mostly nonconformists in the dales, and when once a man acquires a taste for dissent, he takes a sad delight in sampling his neighbors' variations of creed. some came once and were not seen again. others came and returned. they felt that this was the loneliest of all modern creeds; indeed, kettle preached as much, and one can take a melancholy pride in splendid isolation. i am not sure that captain kettle does not find the restfulness of his present life a trifle too accentuated at times, though this is only inevitable for one who has been so much a man of action. but at any rate he never makes complaint. he is a strong man, and he governs himself even as he governs his family and the chapel circle, with a strong, just hand. the farm is a model of neatness and order; paint is lavished in a way that makes dalesmen lift their eyebrows; and the routine of the household is as strict as that of a ship. the house is unique, too, in wharfedale for the variety of its contents. desperately poor though kettle might be on many of his returns from his unsuccessful ventures, he never came back to his wife without some present from a foreign clime as a tangible proof of his remembrance, and because these were usually mere curiosities, without intrinsic value, they often evaded the pawn-shop in those years of dire distress, when more negotiable articles passed irretrievably away from the family possession. and with them too, in stiff, decorous frames, are those certificates and testimonials which a master mariner always collects, together with photographs of gratuitously small general interest. but one might turn the house upside down without finding so carnal an instrument as a revolver, and when i suggested to kettle once that we might go outside and have a little pistol practice, he glared at me, and i thought he would have sworn. however, he let me know stiffly enough that whatever circumstances might have made him at sea, he had always been a very different man ashore in england, and there the matter dropped. but speaking of mementoes, there is one link with the past that mrs. kettle, poor woman, never ceases to regret the loss of. "such a beautiful gold watch," she says it was too, "with the emperor's and the captain's names engraved together on the back, and just a nice mention of the _gross of carl_." as it happened, i saw the letter with which it was returned. it ran like this:- _to his majesty the german emperor, berlin, germany s.s. "flamingo," liverpool, sir, i am in receipt of watch sent by your agent, the german ambassador in london, which i return herewith. it is not my custom to accept presents from people i don't know, especially if i have talked about them. i have talked about you, not liking several thing's you've done, especially telegraphing about dr. jameson. sir, you should remember that man was down when you sent your wire and couldn't hit back. some of the things i have said about german deck hands you needn't take too much notice about. they aren't so bad as they might be if properly handled. but they want handling. likewise learning english. my wife wants to keep your photo, so i send you one of hers in return, so there shall be no robbery. she has written her name over it, same as yours. yours truly, o. kettle (master)._ [illustration: cover art] [frontispiece: samba and the crocodile] samba a story of the rubber slaves of the congo by herbert strang _author of "one of clive's heroes," "kobo," "brown of moukden," "tom burnaby," etc., etc_ illustrated by william rainey, r.i. "botofé bo le iwa!--rubber is death!"--_congo proverb_. _second edition_ london henry frowde -----hodder & stoughton oxford university press -----warwick square, e.c. 1908 copyright, 1906, by the bobbs-merrill company, in the united states of america. _butler and tanner, the selwood printing works, frome, and london_ preface nearly a generation has passed since king leopold was entrusted by the great powers with the sovereignty of the congo free state. the conscience of christendom had been shocked by the stories, brought back by stanley and other travellers, of arab slave raids on the upper congo; king leopold, coming forward with the strongest assurances of philanthropic motive, was welcomed as the champion of the negro, who should bring peace and the highest blessings of civilization to the vast territory thus placed under his sway. for many succeeding years it was supposed that this work of deliverance, of regeneration, was being prosecuted with all diligence; the power of the slave traders was broken, towns were built, roads made, railways opened--none of the outward signs of material progress were wanting. but of late the civilized world has been horrified to find that this imposing structure has been cemented with the life blood of the congo races; that the material improvements to which the administrators of congoland can point, have been purchased by an appalling amount of suffering inflicted upon the hapless negroes. the collection of rubber, on which the whole fabric of congo finance rests, involves a disregard of liberty, an indifference to suffering, a destruction of human life, almost inconceivable. those who best know the country estimate that the population is annually reduced, under king leopold's rule, by at least a hundred thousand. no great war, no famine, no pestilence in the world's history has been so merciless a scourge as civilization in congoland. yet owing to mutual jealousies, the powers are slow to take action, and while they hesitate to intervene, the population of this great region, nearly as large as europe, is fast disappearing. it has been my aim in this book to show, within necessary limitations, what the effect of the white man's rule has been. if any reader should be tempted to imagine that the picture here drawn is overcoloured, i would commend him to the publications issued by mr. e. d. morel and his co-workers of the congo reform association, with every confidence that the cause of the congo native will thereby gain a new adherent. i must express my very great thanks to the rev. j. h. harris and mrs. harris, who have spent several years on the upper congo, for their kindness in reading the manuscript and revising the proofs of this book, and for many most helpful suggestions and criticisms. herbert strang. contents chapter i the coming of the white man chapter ii "rubber is death" chapter iii monsieur elbel chapter iv night alarms chapter v the order of merit chapter vi samba is missing chapter vii blood brothers chapter viii jack in command chapter ix samba meets the little men chapter x a trip with a crocodile chapter xi bula matadi comes to ilola chapter xii samba comes back chapter xiii "honour thy father and thy mother" chapter xiv lokolobolo's first fight chapter xv a revolt at ilola chapter xvi the house by the water chapter xvii a buffalo hunt chapter xviii elbel's barrels chapter xix breaking the blockade chapter xx david and goliath chapter xxi a dash and all together chapter xxii a message and a meeting chapter xxiii elbel squares accounts chapter xxiv a solemn charge chapter xxv a break for liberty chapter xxvi turning the tables chapter xxvii the return of lokolobolo chapter xxviii the chicotte chapter xxix reaping the whirlwind chapter xxx sinews of war chapter xxxi summons and surrender chapter xxxii the dawn of freedom chapter xxxiii conclusion illustrations plate i samba and the crocodile . . . . . . _frontispiece_ ii the finding of samba iii a midnight encounter iv jack turns the tables v jack rushes elbel's camp vi samba rescued from the burning hut ilombekabasi and surrounding country, showing elbel's first camp in foreground ilombekabasi and surrounding country, showing the diverted stream and elbel's third camp "every boy and youth is, in his mind and sentiments, a knight, and essentially a son of chivalry. nature is fine in him.... as long as there have been, or shall be, young men to grow up to maturity; and until all youthful life shall be dead, and its source withered for ever; so long must there have been, and must there continue to be, the spirit of noble chivalry. to understand therefore this first and, as it were, natural chivalry, we have only to observe the features of the youthful age, of which examples surround us." edward fitzgerald. chapter i the coming of the white man samba lay face downwards upon the yellow sand, amid which his body shone in the sunlight like polished ebony. behind, the rising bank was thick with trees and shrubs ablaze with colour, overspread with the delicate tracery of lianas and, creeping plants. here was a spot of red, there a dash of orange; at intervals the pale yellow flowers of climbing gourds and the mauve blossoms of convolvuli peeped from the wall of vivid green. tiny rills made music as they trickled through the foliage; and near at hand was a path trodden by herds of antelopes as they came to drink. before, rolled the brown waters of a broad river, rippling over whitened rocks in the bed, or over the gnarled limbs of fallen trees. here, on a sandy islet, flashed the scarlet and blue of little kingfishers, contrasting with the sober grey of the bittern, or the black and white of the vulture. a giant heron perched on a low overhanging branch, gazing solemnly at the ibis standing solitary by a distant bush. on a smooth spot at samba's right sported innumerable butterflies, blue and green and crimson, amid bees and dragon-flies lazily basking in the heat. samba had but to stretch out his hand to make prisoners of what he chose. but samba's attention was already occupied. looking over the brink into the placid water, his eye was caught by a small round soft object lying motionless on the surface. a tiny crocodile, only a few inches long, darted from beneath the leaf of a water-lily, in pursuit of a tinier fish. the round object suddenly contracted: there was a ripple on the water, and the baby crocodile found itself in the grasp of a droll little proboscis that shot out, gripped its hapless prey, and drew it beneath the surface. samba smiled: he knew that just below lay a trionyx, the owner of that little nostrilled proboscis; he wasted no sympathy on the baby crocodile, which would never grow big to snap up little negro boys at the waterside. all around was silence, save for the hum of insects and the gentle lapping of the water on the sand. then a slight sound caught samba's ear, and turning, he saw a handsome young lizard, pied with yellow and greenish black, flashing along in chase of a fat frog which it had marked for its own. a swish of its flexible tail, a snap of its savage teeth, and ranunculus disappeared--a choice morsel for breakfast. such scenes as these gave samba constant entertainment. he would often wander alone from his village, as he had done to-day, carrying his little broad-bladed dagger in case a snake should cross his path, and spend hours in the forest or by the river bank, listening to the chatter of the monkeys and the screams of the parrots, watching the little stingless bees at their work, mocking the hollow note of the drumbird or the wild pigeon's doleful call, studying the busy doings of the multitudinous ants. there was not a bird or beast or insect within range of his village with whose ways samba was not familiar. the trionyx steered himself down stream; the lizard, swishing his pliant tail, went off in search of other prey; and samba's bright eyes followed the mazy movements of the myriad flies sporting on the surface of the sunlit water, and the shining fish darting this way and that in the clear depths. suddenly a scream of the fishing eagle caused him to glance up. then a shout made him spring to his feet and look wonderingly in the direction of the sound. he knew no fear. his lithe dusky body, bare save for a scrap of cloth about his loins and a string of cowries round his neck, stood erect and alert; his keen intelligent eyes expressed nothing but surprise and curiosity. again came the hail. "w'onkoe!"[1] "em'one!"[2] called samba in reply. a boat was being slowly paddled up the stream. ten stalwart baenga stood at the paddles, bending forward as they made their strokes. two other negroes squatted in the forepart of the boat. amidships sat another figure, the sight of which gave samba a delightful thrill of expectation. it was a white man, with fair hair and beard, clad all in white. could this be bula matadi, samba wondered, the white man whom his grandfather, the chief mirambo, had seen long ago at wanganga? he waited, standing still as a rock. the boat drew nearer, a few more strokes of the paddle and it came under the bank. the white man leapt ashore, followed by the two men who had been seated. they were big fierce-looking fellows. each carried a long strangely-shaped stick with a hollow tube; about his waist dangled a bag of skin. the white man stepped up to samba, smiled upon him, patted his woolly head. then one of the negroes began to question him. where was his village? what was it called? who was its chief? how many huts did it contain? was there much forest about it? to these questions samba replied frankly; surely it was a great honour to his grandfather that the white man should take such interest in him! then came a question that somewhat amused him. did the forest contain _botofé_?[3] he smiled. of course it did. were not the drumsticks in his village made of _botofé_? what a strange question to ask of a forest boy! the white man smiled in return, and said something in a strange tongue to the negro who had spoken. "take us to your village," said the man; and, nothing loth, samba set off like a young deer, the three men following him. samba was eleven years old. his home was the village of banonga, a street of bamboo huts thatched with palm leaves and shadowed by the broad foliage of bananas and plantains and tall forest trees. his grandfather mirambo was the village chief, a tall, strong, wise old man, a great fighter in his day, his body scarred with wounds, his memory stored with the things he had seen and done. samba's father, mboyo (or isekasamba, "father of samba," as he was called after his boy was born), was the old chief's favourite son, a daring hunter, a skilful fisher, and the most silent man of his tribe. he had several wives, but samba's mother was the best loved of them all, and wore about her ankles the brass rings that betokened her supreme place in her husband's affections. grandfather, father, mother, all doted on samba, and for eleven years he had lived a happy merry life, the pet of the village. nothing had troubled the peace of the little community. banonga was a secluded village, on the outskirts of a dense forest, not far from one of the innumerable tributaries of the great river congo. life passed easily and pleasantly for these children of nature. in the morning, ere the sun was up, the men would spring from their simple bamboo beds, fling their hunting-nets or fishing-baskets on their shoulders, hang about their necks the charms that would preserve them from accident and ensure success in the work of the day, and repair to the old chief, who, sitting on his forked chair in the middle of the street, gave them the _bokaku_--the blessing without which they never left the village. "may you be preserved from accident," he would say; "from wild beasts, from snags in the path and snakes in the grass, and return with great plenty." then they would shout their farewells, and hasten with light-hearted laughter into the forest or down to the river. meanwhile the women had been long astir. some, babe on one arm, calabash in the other, went singing to a forest stream, to bathe their children and fill their vessels with water for the day's cooking. others, with baskets slung upon their backs and rude implements upon their shoulders, sped to the gardens and cultivated fields, to perform their simple operations of husbandry, and to return by and by with manioc, plantains, ground-nuts, which they would prepare against their husbands' return. the morning's work done, they would dress their hair, carefully, even fastidiously; kindle the fires of three converging logs, and set upon them well-heaped pots of manioc, covered with leaves of plantain or nongoti to prevent the escape of steam. some would prattle or sing lullabies to their babes, others form little knots and gossip, laughing and jesting without a thought of care. all day the village was cheered by the merry antics and joyous shouts of the children at play. like children all over the world, the boys and girls of the congo delight in mimicking their elders. the boys made little hunting-nets and ran hither and thither in mock chase, or spread their fishing-nets in the stream and gleefully boasted of their tiny catches. the girls wove little baskets and played with beads and shells. one and all, the children of banonga were deft with their fingers, and none so deft as samba. he was always busy, shaping now a mortar for his mother, now a chair for his grandfather, now a wicker basket so close in texture that he could bring in it water from the stream without spilling a drop. most of all samba loved to squat by his grandfather's chair in the late afternoon, when the old chief sat alone, chin on hand, waiting for the return of the men. then, and on dark nights, mirambo would recite, in his deep musical voice, interminable stories and legends, of the spirits that haunted the woods, of the animals he had hunted and slain, of narrow escapes from the greedy jaws of crocodiles, of fierce fights with cannibals, of adventurous journeys by field and flood. samba never tired of one story: how, years before, mirambo had made a long journey to wanganga, far, very far away, and had there seen a white man, who wore cloth all over his body, and had come up the river on a wonderful smoke-boat, driven by a fiery snorting devil that devoured insatiably great logs of wood. bula matadi, "breaker of rocks," this wonderful white man was called; but mirambo had heard that in his own country he was called tanalay.[4] samba would listen with all his ears to his grandfather's long narratives, inwardly resolving that he too, when he became a man, would take long journeys and see marvellous things--white men, and smoke-boats, and all. then, as the sun draws towards its setting, out of the forest there come faint strains of song. mirambo's monotone ceases: he sits erect, expectant; the women run out of the huts above which the wreathing smoke proclaims preparations for the evening meal; the children gather in a laughing chattering flock at the end of the street. the sound of singing draws nearer: at length it stops abruptly, but instantly is followed by a loud prolonged shout; only lianza's brazen throat can utter that sonorous cry:-"i-yo-li-o! i-yo-li-o-o!" and the long-drawn hail of lianza is broken in upon by the roar of his companions. "yo!" shout eighty men as one. and out of the forest spring the dusky band, laden with their spoils, which with an exultant shout they set down before the chief, amid cries and hand-clapping and slapping of the thighs by the women and children welcoming their return. the flesh is cut up, the fish divided: the women return to their huts to cook the supper; the children cling about their fathers' legs and recount the little adventures of the day. the meal is eaten: the whole population form a wide circle in the street, and, squatting on their hams, give themselves up to the joy of watching the gyrations of the dancing women, who, in their aprons of long grass, decorated with tinkling bells, whirl around to the barbaric music of drums and castanets, as the day darkens and the moon throws her silvery beams upon the scene. such were the daily scenes amid which samba passed his happy boyhood, in the village of banonga, whither he was now leading the white stranger. the village came in sight, nestling in a glade. the laughing children ceased their play, and stood finger in mouth shyly contemplating the new comers. the women, busily grinding manioc with pestle and mortar in the open, looked up with startled glance and fled into their huts, where they stood peeping from behind the posts of palm. mirambo, the chief, rose from his seat and awaited with dignity the approach of the white man. ceremonious greetings were exchanged. then ensued a long conversation, the white man speaking, his negroes translating to the chief. he listened intently, and replied in brief phrases, most often contenting himself with exclamations of assent--"inde!" "ng'oko!" or of dissent--"lako!" "o nye!" _botofé_! yes, he knew where _botofé_ could be found. and the white man, the son of heaven, wanted _botofé_; it had some value for him? well, he should have it. who so hospitable as the men of banonga? they were not as the men of kinshassa, who met the white man with cries of anger, and spears, and knives. had not he, mirambo, seen bula matadi, the friend of the black man? "when my sons return from their hunting," said mirambo, "they shall provide the stranger with all that he needs. they shall give him plantains, and fowls, and cakes of _kwanga_;[5] they shall make ready a hut for him; and _botofé_--yes, if he needs _botofé_, my young men shall go into the forest and fill their baskets with _botofé_ for him. no one shall say but that the white man is welcome in banonga." [1] are you there? [2] i am here. [3] rubber. [4] h. m. stanley. [5] a preparation of manioc. chapter ii "rubber is death" "whew! this is a warm country, jack. there'll soon be nothing left of us." "there's plenty at present, uncle," replied jack challoner with a smile. "barney can spare less, after all." "sure an' that's the truth's truth, sorr. 'twas the sorrow uv me mother's heart that i ran to length instid uv breadth. whin i was a bhoy she had to buy breeches always a size too long for me, and me bones grew so fast they almost made holes in me skin--they did." "confound it, man, that's where you score. the mosquitoes leave you alone: can't find enough juice in you to make it worth their while to worry you. whereas they suck at me till i'm all ulcers. hi! nando, when shall we get to this banonga we've heard so much about?" "berrah soon, sah. paddle small small, sah, den banonga." mr. martindale mopped his brow and drew his white umbrella closer down upon his head. he was lying under a grass shelter amidships a dug-out, with his nephew jack at his side and his man barney o'dowd at his feet. the clumsy native craft rocked to and fro under the paddles of twelve stalwart baenga, who stood, their bodies bent slightly forward, singing in time with their strokes. they were paddling against the current of a stream that forced its brown waters into one of the tributaries of the congo. it was a broiling day. a rainstorm in the night had cleared the sky of the haze that commonly covered it, and the sun beat down out of a dome of fleckless blue, irradiating the crimsons and purples, the golds and whites, of the rich vegetation on the banks. "i tell you, jack," continued mr. martindale, "i shall grumble if this talk of banonga turns out to be wind. i don't see what the congo state has to gain by exterminating the natives; and we know what liars these blacks can be." "suppose the talk of gold turns out to be wind, uncle?" "eh? what's that? wind! rubbish! the difference is that we hear of banonga from the blacks; but 'twas barnard told me of the gold, and barnard hasn't got enough imagination to say more than he knows. no, the gold is there safe enough; and i tell you i shall be glad when we get through this banonga and can proceed to business." john martindale was a florid well-preserved man of fifty-five years. born in new york, he had early gone west, rapidly made his pile in california, and retired from the direction of his mines. but meeting one day in san francisco an old friend of his, a queer stick of a fellow named barnard, who spent his life in roaming over the world and making discoveries that laid the foundation of other men's fortunes, not his own, he learnt from him that clear signs of gold had been observed in the maranga district on the upper congo. mr. martindale was very rich; but, like many another man, he found after his retirement that time hung somewhat heavy on his hands. he was still full of energy, and barnard's story of gold in a new country stirred the imagination of the old miner. he decided to take a trip to africa and test his friend's information. as a matter of course he invited barnard to accompany him. "no, no, john," replied his friend. "i scratched the soil; i know gold is there; i've no further interest in the stuff. i'm off to the philippines next week. go and dig, old fellow, and take plenty of quinine with you." it happened that mr. martindale's only nephew, jack challoner, a lad of seventeen, was just home from school. he was an orphan. his mother, mr. martindale's sister, had married an english barrister of great ability, who had already made a name at the parliamentary bar. but he died when his boy was only six years old; two years later his wife followed him to the grave, and the guardianship of jack fell to his uncle, who, being a bachelor without other ties, readily assumed the charge. he surprised his friends by the course he took with the boy. instead of bringing him to america, he entered him at bilton and afterwards at rugby, declaring that as the boy was english it was only fair he should receive an english education. "i read _tom brown_ years ago," he would say, "and if they turn 'em out now as they did then--well, we can't do better this side of the herring pond." jack spent his holidays either in america, or in travelling about europe with his uncle, and the two became great chums. but when jack reached his seventeenth birthday mr. martindale again surprised his friends. "send him to oxford?" he said. "not much! he has had nearly four years at rugby, he's in the fifth form, and i guess he's enough book learning to serve his turn. he's tip-top at sports: he's a notion of holding his own and helping lame dogs; and i don't want his nose to turn up, as i believe noses have a trick of doing at oxford. no: the boy'll come home. i don't know what he's to be; but i'll soon find out what he's fit for, and then he'll have to work at it. the least i could do for his father's sake was to give him an english education; he'll come back to america for a smartening up." it was not long after jack's return that mr. martindale met his friend barnard. since barnard would not be his companion, jack should. "it will do you no harm to see a little travel off the beaten track," he said, "and i'm not going to work the gold myself: my mining days are done. you may tumble to it; in that case you'll stay in africa and take care not to waste my capital. you may not: that'll be one thing settled, anyway." accordingly, when mr. martindale sailed for europe he took jack with him. with characteristic energy he very quickly settled the preliminaries. he obtained for a comparatively small sum from a belgian trading company, the holders of a large concession on the upper congo, the mining rights in the maranga district, on condition of the company receiving a percentage of the profits. the first practical step having been taken, mr. martindale's interest in his project became keen. he had never travelled out of america or europe; there was a certain glamour about an adventure in the heart of africa; and he was rich enough to indulge his humour, even if the results of barnard's discovery should prove disappointing. uncle and nephew sailed for africa, spent a few days at boma, travelled over the cataract railway from matadi to leopoldville, and thence went in a steamer for nearly three weeks up the congo. then, leaving the main river, they embarked on a smaller steamer, plying on a tributary stream. in about a week they arrived at a "head post," whence they continued their journey, up a tributary of a tributary, by canoe. this last stream was quite a considerable river as the term would be understood in europe, though neither so broad nor so deep as the one they had just left. but this again was insignificant by comparison with the mighty congo itself, fed by a thousand tributaries in its course of fifteen hundred miles from the heart of africa to the sea. mr. martindale became more and more impressed as the journey lengthened, and at last burst out: "well, now, this licks even the mississippi!" but not the shannon! barney o'dowd was a true irishman. mr. martindale had engaged him in london as handy-man to the expedition. he had been in the army; he had been a gentleman's servant, wardroom attendant at a hospital, drill-sergeant at a boys' school, 'bus conductor, cabman, and chauffeur; but in none of these numerous vocations, he said with a sigh, had he ever grown fat. he was long, lean, strong as a horse; with honest merry blue eyes, and curly lips that seemed made for smiling. he drove the travellers in a hansom during the week they stayed in london, and looked so sorrowful when mr. martindale announced his departure that the american, on the spur of the moment, with bluff impulsiveness, invited him to join the expedition. "sure an' 'tis me last chance, sorr," cried barney, cheerfully consenting. "a sea voyage does wonders for some. there was terence o'bally, now, as thin as a lath in the ould counthry; he went to australia, and by the powers! when he came back to say 'god bless you' to his ould mother, she did not know him at all at all, he was so full in the flesh, sorr. sure an' i'll come wid ye wid the greatest pleasure in the world, and plase the pigs i'll fatten like terence. only wan thing, sorr; ye would not have any inshuperable objection to pat, sorr?" "who on earth's pat?" "just a dog, sorr; a little darlint uv a terrier no fatter than me, sorr; as kind an' gentle as wan uv the blessed angels. he has as poor appetite, sorr, an' sleeps on my coat, so he will not cost ye much for board and lodging. and i would thank ye kindly, sorr, if i might but go home to 'm an' say, 'pat, me darlint, times is changed. we are in luck, pat. there's a nice, kind, fat, jolly american gentleman that takes very kindly to dogs an' irishmen, an'----'" "there then, that'll do," said mr. martindale, laughing. "bring pat, if you like. but he'll have to go if he proves a nuisance." and so pat became a member of the party. and he lay curled up now in the bottom of the canoe, and cocked an eye as barney declared with emphasis that the congo was a "mighty foine river, sure an' 'tis only fair to say so; but by all the holy powers 'tis not to be compared wid the shannon, blessed be its name!" it was pat that sprang first ashore when the paddlers with a resounding "yo!" drove the canoe alongside a turfy platform by the bank, worn level by the treading of innumerable feet. the dog uttered one sharp bark, faced round to the river, and stood with ears pricked and stumpy tail wagging, to watch his master step to land. "now, nando," said mr. martindale, when all were ashore, "lead the way. not too fast: and not too near skeeters or jiggers." "berrah well, sah; me go fust; frighten skeeters all away." leaving ten of the crew in the canoe, the rest of the party set off under nando's guidance. he led them through the mass of tall grass that lined the river bank, across a swampy stretch of heath, where a narrow path wound in and out among trees large and small, beset by dense undergrowth and climbing plants. insects innumerable flitted and buzzed around the travellers, provoking lively exclamations from mr. martindale and jack, and many a vicious snap from the terrier, but leaving barney almost untouched. once a wild pig dashed across the path and plunged into the thicket, with pat barking frantically at its heels. here and there mr. martindale caught sight of red-legged partridge and quail, and sighed for his rifle. parrots squawked overhead; once, from the far distance, muffled by the foliage, came the trumpet of an elephant; but signs of humanity there were none, save the meandering track. at length, however, they came to a clear open space amid the trees, where, on a low hill, stood a crude open hut, consisting of upright supports surmounted by a roof of bamboos and leaves, and partly walled by cloth. "berrah nice place, sah," said nando cheerfully. "chief him missis buried dah." the travellers approached with curiosity. inside the shed they saw a small image, roughly carved in semblance of a human figure, set upright in the ground. at one side lay two or three wicker baskets, at the other a bottle; in front a big iron spoon stuck out of the soil, and all around were strewed hundreds of small beads. nando explained that these had been the property of the deceased lady. "and is she buried under them?" asked mr. martindale, stepping back a pace. "bit of her, sah." "what do you mean--a bit of her?" "all dey find, sah. bula matadi come, make big bobbery; bang! chief him missis lib for[1] dead, sah. bad man cut up, put in pot, only little bit left, sah." mr. martindale shivered, then waxed indignant. "i don't believe it," he declared stoutly. "such things aren't done in these days. there are no cannibals in these days--eh, jack?" "i hope not, uncle. but are we near banonga, nando?" "small small, sah, den banonga." "lead on, then," cried mr. martindale; "i want to see with my own eyes whether those fellows were telling the truth." some distance down the river, just after camping for the night, mr. martindale's rest had been disturbed by a loud and excited conversation between his own party and a group of newcomers who had halted to exchange greetings. inquiring the cause of the commotion, he learnt that the men had brought news of a terrible massacre that had taken place at banonga, a village in the forest many miles up stream. the villagers had been remiss in their collection of rubber; the agents of bula matadi (which, originally the native name for sir h. m. stanley, had become the name for the congo free state) had appeared at the village with a force of native soldiers, and, according to the informant, who had received the news from an up-country man, the whole population had been annihilated. mr. martindale had heard, in america and england as well as in africa, strange stories of the administration of the congo state; but, like many others, he had been inclined to pooh-pooh the rumours of cruelty and atrocity as the vapourings of sentimentalists. but the stories imperfectly interpreted by nando on that pleasant evening by the river made a new impression on him. he was a hard-headed man of business, as little inclined to sentimentality as any man could be; he hated any appeal to the emotions, and unasked gave large subscriptions to hospitals and philanthropic societies so as to avoid the harrowing of his feelings by collectors and other importunate folk; but beneath his rough husk lay a very warm heart, as none knew better than his nephew jack; and the stories of cruelty told by the lips of these natives made him feel very uncomfortable. at a distance he could shut his eyes to things--open his purse to deserving objects and believe that his duty was done; but here, on the spot, this easy course was not possible. he did not like discomfort, bodily or mental; it annoyed him when any external cause ruffled the serenity of his life; and he made up his mind to pay a visit to banonga on his way up the river, test the negroes' story, and prove to his own satisfaction, as he believed he would do, that it was exaggerated if not untrue. that done, he would dismiss the matter from his thoughts, and proceed to the proper business of his journey without anything to disturb his peace of mind. the party left the grave on the hill and followed the same path through another stretch of forest until they came, almost unawares, upon a large clearing. "banonga, massa," said nando, stretching out his hand, and looking into mr. martindale's eyes with a glance as of some frightened animal. "banonga! but where are the huts?" said mr. martindale. no one answered him. the party of five stood at the edge of the clearing, looking straight before them. pat the terrier trotted around, wagging his stump, and blinking up into their faces as if to ask a question. what did they see? a long broad track, leading between palms and plantains away into the impenetrable forest. these leafy walls were vivid green, but the road itself was black. a smell of charred wood and burnt vegetation filled the air. there was not a complete hut to be seen. the space once thronged with a joyous chattering crowd was now empty, save for ashes, half-burnt logs, shattered utensils. here and there a bird hopped and pecked, flying up into the trees with shrill scream as pat sprang barking towards it. but for these sounds, the silence was as of death. "come," said mr. martindale, stepping forward. it was he who led the way now as the party left the ring of forest and walked into the clearing. barney, coming behind with nando, groaned aloud. "stop that noise!" cried mr. martindale, swinging round irritably. "what's the matter with you, man?" "sorrow a bit the matter wid me, sorr; but it just brought into me mimory a sight i saw in the ould counthry whin i was a bhoy; sure there was nothing to see there either, and that's the pity uv it." mr. martindale walked on without speaking, poking with his stick into the black dust of the road. nando went to his side, and pointed out such traces of former habitations as remained: here a cooking pot, there a half-consumed wicker basket, a broken knife, a blackened bead-necklace. and among the other scattered evidences of rapine there were the remains of human beings--skeletons, separate bones. "whoever did this did it thoroughly," remarked mr. martindale with darkening brow. "but who did it? i won't believe it was europeans till 'tis proved. there are cannibals here; nando said so: a cannibal tribe may have raided the place. eh? but where are the people?" in the thick undergrowth, beyond the desolated village, crouched a negro boy. his cheeks were sunken, his eyes unnaturally bright. his left arm hung limp and nerveless; in his right hand he clutched a broad-pointed dagger. he had been lying in a stupor until roused by a sharp sound, the cry of some animal strange to him. then he raised himself slowly and with difficulty to his knees, and peered cautiously, apprehensively, through the foliage amid which he was ensconced. he glared and shrank back when he saw that among the strangers moving about were two white men. but what was this animal they had brought with them? he wondered. goats he knew, and pigs, and the wild animals of the forest; he knew the native dog, with its foxy head, smooth yellowish coat, and bushy tail; but this creature was new to him. true, it was like a dog, though its brown coat was rough and its tail stumpy; but he had never seen the dogs of his village trot round their masters as this was doing, never heard them speaking, as it seemed, to the men with this quick sharp cry. the dogs he had known never barked; their only utterance was a long howl, when they were hungry or in pain. he hated white men, but loved animals; and, weak as he was, he raised himself once more, and bent forward, to look at this active dog-like creature that came and went in apparent joyousness. a bird flew down from a tree, and alighted hardily within a couple of yards of the terrier. this was too much for pat. he darted at the audacious bird, pursued it into the thicket, then came to a sudden surprised stop when he descried a black form among the leaves. he stood contemplating the boy with his honest brown eyes, and his tail was very active. then with one short bark he trotted back to his master, and looked up at him as if to say: "i have made a discovery; come and see." but man's intelligence is very limited. barney did not understand. "and did the cratur' give ye the slip, then?" he said, patting the dog's head. "that's not the point," said pat's barks; "i want you to come and see what i have found," and he ran off again towards the thicket, turning once or twice to see if his master was following. but barney paid little attention to him, and pat, giving him up as hopeless, went on alone to scrape acquaintance. he stood before the boy at a distance of a yard, blinking at him between the tendrils of a creeper. then he advanced slowly, wagging his stump, poked his nose through the leaves, and after a moment's sniffing deliberation put out his tongue and licked the black knee he found there. the boy made with his closed lips the humming sound with which the negro of the congo expresses pleasure, and next moment the dog's paws were in his hands, and the two, dog and boy, were friends. but whoever was a friend of pat's must also be a friend of barney o'dowd. it was not long before pat awoke to a sense of his duty. he tried with the negro the plan that had just failed with his master. he retreated a little way, cocked his head round and barked, and waited for the boy to follow. the latter understood at once; but he shook his head, and said, "o nye! o nye!" under his breath, and lay still. pat began to see that there was something keeping the white man and the black boy apart. it was very foolish, he thought; they were both such good fellows: it was quite clear that they ought to be friends; but what was a dog to do? he trotted slowly back to barney, and began to speak to him seriously, with a bark of very different intonation from that he had previously employed. "well, and what is it wid ye thin?" said barney. "he has caught the bird, i expect," said jack, amused at the dog's manner, "and wants you to go and see it." "sure thin i will," said barney, "and mutton being scarce, we will have a new kind uv irish stew, pat me bhoy. but why did ye not bring it, me darlint?" he made to follow the dog, whose tail was now beating the air with frantic delight. but he had no sooner reached the edge of the plantation than there was a rustle among the leaves: the boy was leaving his hiding-place and trying to crawl away into the forest. "begorra!" quoth barney, "'tis a living cratur', and a bhoy, black as the peat on me father's bog, and not knowing a word uv irish, to be sure." pat was rubbing his nose on the boy's flank, wondering why he had taken to going on all fours. but the negro did not crawl far. faint with weakness, moaning with pain, he sank to the ground. pat gave one bark of sympathy and stood watching him. meanwhile jack had come up. "a boy, did you say, barney? what is he doing here?" "sure i would like to know that same, sorr, but niver a word uv his spache did i learn. perhaps he has niver seen a white man, not to say an irishman, before, and thinks 'tis a ghost." "nando, come here!" called jack. the paddler hurried up, followed quickly by mr. martindale. "what's this? what's this? a boy! they're not all killed then." "i think he's hurt, uncle, and scared. he tried to crawl away from us, but seemed too weak." "well, lift him up, barney; we'll see." barney approached, but the instant he stretched forth his hands the boy uttered a piercing shriek, and made to thrust at him with his dagger. "come, this will never do," said mr. martindale. "speak to him, nando; tell him we are friends, and will do him no harm." nando went up to the boy, and pat stood by, wagging his tail and looking inquiringly from one to the other as the negro talked in his rapid staccato. a few minutes passed; then nando turned round and with a beaming smile said: "he understan' all same now, sah. i say massa inglesa ginleman, blood brudder tanalay, oh yes. he know 'bout tanalay: he no 'fraid dis time; he come along along. he samba, sah." [1] i.e. _live for_, an expression commonly used in all kinds of circumstances by the natives, practically an intensive for various forms of the verb _to be_. chapter iii monsieur elbel samba made no resistance when nando lifted him and carried him to the centre of the clearing. he moaned once or twice as the baenga pressed his wounded arm, and almost fainted when he was laid on the ground before mr. martindale. but a sip from the traveller's flask revived him, and he smiled. "that's better," said mr. martindale. "poor boy! he looks half starved. have you any food about you, nando?" "no, sah: get some one time."[1] he went off into the thicket, and soon returned with a couple of scorched bananas. these samba devoured ravenously. "now i wonder if he could tell us all about it?" said mr. martindale. "ask him, nando." samba told his story. his dialect was different from nando's, but there is a freemasonry of speech among the tribes of the congo, and nando understood. it was not so easy for the others to get at the meaning of nando's strange jargon as he interpreted, but they listened patiently, and missed little of the narrative. mr. martindale sat on an upturned pot, jack and barney on charred logs. nando squatted beside samba on the ground, and pat thrust his muzzle contentedly between the boy's knees and seemed to sleep. [illustration: the finding of samba] one night, when the moon was at the full, a messenger had come into banonga village. the time was at hand when the agent of bula matadi would attend to collect the tax--the weight of rubber exacted by the congo state from every able-bodied man. the messenger reminded the chief that banonga had several times been in default. only a few men had hitherto been punished, only a few women carried away as hostages for the diligence of their husbands. but the patience of bula matadi was exhausted. if on this occasion the due measure of rubber was not forthcoming, the anger of bula matadi would blaze, the soldiers would come, and the men of banonga would have cause to rue their idleness. the chief listened in silence. he was old; his body was bowed, his spirit broken. life in banonga was no longer the same since the white man came. all the joy of life was gone; the people spent their days in unremitting toil, endeavouring to satisfy the cry of their rulers for rubber, always rubber, more rubber. when the messenger arrived the men were away hunting for rubber, but mirambo knew that, were they doubled in number, they could not gather the quantity required. the vines in their district were exhausted; the men had not been taught how to tap them; they destroyed as they went, and now the whole district around banonga would not yield half of what was demanded of them. the poor old chief trembled when he thought of the woe that was coming to banonga, for he now knew from the fate of other villages on the river what the messenger of bula matadi foreshadowed. unless his men could achieve the impossible, find rubber where there was none, the blow would fall. and when it fell banonga would be no more. the village a little while ago so happy and prosperous would be destroyed, its people killed or scattered. so it had happened to other villages: how could he hope that banonga would be spared? the messenger indeed had spoken of the leniency of bula matadi, but the chief might have reminded him of the outrages the people had suffered; of the rapacity, the ruthless brutalities, of the forest guards. but he said no word of provocation; only, when the man had gone, samba heard him mutter the terrible sentence now too often on his lips: "botofé bo le iwa: rubber is death!" the day came: the agent of bula matadi appeared, with an armed escort. the men of banonga had not returned. they came dropping in by ones and twos and threes, worn out with their long quest. the rubber was weighed: in many cases it was short; excuses were rejected, entreaties scoffed at. the hapless victims suffered taunts, abuse, the terrible whip. one, less enduring than the rest, resisted. this was the signal. a dozen rifles were raised--a dozen shots rang out, strong forms lay writhing in the agony of death. a brief, sharp struggle; another fusillade; and the terrified survivors, men, women and children, fled helter-skelter to the forest, pursued by the shots of the soldiery, ruthless of age or sex. a raid was made upon their deserted huts: everything that had value for the native levies was seized; then the match was applied, and soon what had once been a prosperous happy village was a heap of smouldering ruins. samba saw it all. he remained dauntless by his grandfather's side until a bullet put an end to the old chief's life; then he too fled into the forest, to find his father and mother, his brothers and sisters. but he had delayed too long; one of the sentinels fired at him as he ran: his left arm was struck. he struggled on, but his friends were now out of reach: he could not find them. for several days he wandered about, supporting his life on roots and herbs in the vain search for his people. then, growing hourly weaker, he crept back to his village, hoping that by and by the survivors would return to their desolated homes, to rebuild their huts, and sow new crops. but none came. he was alone! and he had lain down among the trees--as he thought, to die. "poor little fellow!" said mr. martindale. "how old is he, nando?" "he say ten three years, sah," replied nando after consulting the boy. "thirteen. he looks older. this is a pretty kettle of fish. what can we do with him?" "we must take him with us, uncle!" said jack. "take him with us, indeed! what can we do with him? we can't hunt for his father and mother: he'd be of no use to us in our job. he wants doctoring: he might die on our hands." "i learnt a little doctoring in the hospital, sorr," said barney. "sure i think i could mend his arm." "well, well, nando and the other man had better bring him along to the canoe--gently, you know. don't make him squeal." the two negroes lifted the boy, and the party set off to return to the river. "a fine responsibility you have let me in for, jack," said mr. martindale as they went along. "i've no notion of a crusoe and friday relationship." "why not say don quixote and sancho panza, uncle?" "a man of my girth!" said mr. martindale, chuckling. "but joking apart, jack, this is a serious business. what am i to do with the boy, supposing he gets better? i am not a philanthropist; i can't start a boys' home; and the little chap will be of no use to us in our proper work. for the life of me i don't see daylight through this." "we may find him useful in other ways, uncle. besides, we may come across his people." "and we may not--we may not, jack. still, have your way; only remember he's your protégé; i wash my hands of him. and mind you, i'm not going to start a crusade. there's been terrible work in this village: no mistake about it; but i'm not convinced it's the doing of white men: in fact, i refuse to believe it." "but they're responsible. they shouldn't employ natives who are so blackguardly." "that's where it is, you see. you britishers employed red indians in our war of independence, didn't you?" "yes, and lord chatham thundered against it, and it was put a stop to." "they taught you history at rugby, did they? glad to hear it. well, i dare say leopold will put a stop to it if representations are made to him. it's none of my business, but i'll mention the matter when i get back to boma. now, sambo----" "samba, uncle." "bo or ba, it's all the same. you'll have to be a good boy, samba. but what's the good of talking! he can't understand what i say. doesn't know good from bad, i warrant. well, well!" they reached the canoe and laid samba gently down upon rugs. the rude craft was soon under way. for a time samba lay asleep, with his arm about pat's neck; but by and by, when the paddlers paused in the song with which they accompanied their strokes, the boy awoke, and began to sing himself, in a low musical voice that struck pleasantly upon the ear after the rougher tones of the men. "bauro lofundo! (he sang); bauro lofundo! bompasu la liwanga bao lindela ud' okunda ilaka nkos'i koka." this he repeated again and again until he was tired and slept once more. "very pretty," said mr. martindale. "the boy'd make a fortune in new york, jack. but what does it all mean, anyway?" "berrah nice song, sah," said nando. "me tell all 'bout it. people of bauro, sah, plenty bad lot. bompasu and liwanga been and gone after 'long 'long into de forest, not come back till parrots one two free twenty all dah." "well, i can't make much of that. doesn't seem to have any more sense than the songs that our gals sing at home." but further inquiry brought out the story. it appeared that a rubber collector, not satisfied with exacting from the people of bauro the usual quantity of rubber, had required them to furnish him by a certain day with twenty young parrots which he wished to take with him to europe. being unable to obtain so large a number by the given date, the people were declared to be surpassingly obstinate and wicked, and the sentries bompasu and liwanga were let loose upon them until the twenty parrots were delivered. "humph!" grunted mr. martindale. "say, wasn't it macaulay who said he'd write a nation's history from its ballads? rubber and parrots; what next, i wonder? these congo people have original ideas in taxation." "begorra, sorr," said barney, "and don't i wish the taxes in the ould counthry were uv the same kind. sure and ivery man in the counthry would be glad to supply the collectors wid scores uv sparrows or peewits or any other fowl, and murphies and blackthorns--ivery mortal thing but money, sorr." in the course of a few hours the stream they had hitherto been navigating ran into a larger tributary of the congo some hundred and fifty miles above the point where it joined the main river. the canoe had scarcely entered the broader river when the crew suddenly stopped paddling, and nando, turning round with some excitement, said-"smoke-boat, sah." "what?" "smoke-boat nebber dis way before, sah." "a steamer, eh?" "a launch flying the congo state flag, uncle--blue with a golden star," said jack, standing up in the canoe and taking a long look ahead. nando explained that the rapids, a day's paddling down stream, had prevented the state officers hitherto from bringing steam launches into this part of the river. evidently the vessel now approaching must have been carried, as a whole or in sections, overland past these rapids--a work of great difficulty and labour, for the rapids were at least three miles in length, and the shores were at some parts rocky, at others covered with dense scrub. almost before nando had finished his explanation the canoe had been put about, and the men began to paddle hard up stream towards the mouth of the little river, into which the launch could not follow them. "hi, now, nando, what are you about?" cried mr. martindale. nando replied that it was always best to avoid the state officials. he would lie in a creek until the launch was past. "i don't see why we should run away," said mr. martindale. "however, after what we've just seen, i've no wish to meet them. i might say something that would lead to a row with the company." he lit a cigar and lay back in the canoe. jack turned flat on his face and watched the launch. it was soon clear that nando's plan was impossible. the launch was a swift one: it came on with increased speed, and when within hailing distance a voice in french called peremptorily upon the canoe to stop. "nando, stop paddling," said mr. martindale, leisurely turning round on his seat. "answer their hail, jack." "who are you?" shouted jack in english. the foreigner in the bow of the launch was somewhat taken aback. he had thought to do the questioning, not to be questioned. but he replied stiffly-"i am monsieur elbel, of de société cosmopolite du commerce du congo." the launch was now within a few yards of the canoe. monsieur elbel was a short thick-set man with reddish hair, and a thick red moustache that stuck out rigidly a couple of inches on each side of his nose. he wore a white topee and white trousers, but his coat was blue, with brass buttons, and gold lace at the shoulders. all but himself on deck were negroes. mr. martindale ordered the paddlers to bring the canoe round, so that he might face the belgian. then, still seated, he blew out a cloud of smoke and said-"well, i don't know you, mr. elbel, and if the work in banonga yonder is due to you i don't wish to. paddle ahead, nando." the crew looked somewhat awestruck, but obediently dropped their paddles into the stream. monsieur elbel's cheeks had turned a fiery red several shades deeper than his hair, and the veins upon his forehead swelled. the canoe sped past him while he was still endeavouring to collect himself. suddenly a tall negro at his side threw out his hand, exclaiming: "ok'ok'ok'oka!"[2] the belgian looked in the direction pointed out, and the negro followed up his exclamation with a rapid excited sentence. monsieur elbel at once sent the launch in pursuit of the canoe, ran her alongside, and cried: "halt! i bid you halt. you are rude. i vill run you down if you have not care. dat boy i see in your canoe i know him; he belong to my société: i demand him to be given up." "not so fast, mr. elbel. i treat men as they treat me. you have no right to stop me. i am an american, a citizen of the united states, travelling in the free state, which i believe, is open to all the world. besides, i have a patent from your company. i propose to continue my journey." "but--but--i tell you, dat boy is not american: he is subject of congo state, in concession of my société; still vunce, i demand him." "sorry i can't oblige you. the boy is in my service: he has been wounded--perhaps you know how; nothing but an order from the free state courts will compel me to give him up. and even then i won't, knowing what i know. that's flat, mr. elbel. you stop me at your risk. go ahead, nando." the negroes dug their paddles into the water, and the canoe darted past the side of the launch. monsieur elbel bit his moustache and savagely tugged its ends; then, completely losing control of his temper, he shouted-"you hear; i varn you. you act illegal; you come to seek for gold; dat is your business: it is not your business to meddle yourself viz de natif. i report you!" the launch snorted away up stream, the canoe continued its journey at a moderate pace, and each was soon out of sight of the other. for some minutes mr. martindale seemed preoccupied. "what is it, uncle?" asked jack after a time. "i was thinking over what that fellow elbel said. he knows more about our business here than i quite like. of course they all know we're after minerals, but barnard's find is not the dead secret he thought it was. or say, jack, d'you think we are being watched?" "perhaps he was fishing?" "i don't think so, for he didn't wait for an answer. however, we needn't meet our difficulties half-way. anyhow, 'twill do mr. elbel no harm to know that we don't care a red cent for him or any other congo man. i suppose he's in charge of this section. but what on earth did the fellow want with the boy?" nando, without ceasing to ply his paddle, turned his head and spoke over his shoulder to samba, now wide awake. "samba say him uncle dah, sah: uncle boloko, plenty bad man." "a wicked uncle, eh?" "he berrah angry, sah, 'cos samba him fader hab got plenty more wives, sah; must be chief some day. boloko he want to be chief: berrah well: banonga men all say 'lako! lako!'[3] plenty loud. boloko berrah much angry: go to white men: tell berrah bad fings 'bout banonga men. samba say banonga men lib for cut off boloko his head if catch him." "wigs on the green, jack. then i guess this boloko fellow wanted to get in first. well, it doesn't raise my opinion of mr. elbel; you know a man by the company he keeps, eh?" "and the company by him, uncle." [1] immediately. [2] exclamation of surprise. [3] exclamation of refusal. chapter iv night alarms in the course of an hour or two mr. martindale's canoe reached the camp, on a piece of rising ground immediately above the river. here he found the rest of his party--some fifty strong west african natives--the three canoes in which they had come up stream lying nose to stern along the low bank, only the first being moored, the others roped to it. the party had reached the spot three days before, and were resting after the fatigues of their journey. these had been by no means slight, for the men had had to haul the canoes through the rapids, and sometimes to make portages for a considerable distance. fortunately the canoes were not heavily laden. they contained merely a good stock of food, and a few simple mining tools. this was only a prospecting trip, as mr. martindale was careful to explain before leaving boma. his friend barnard's instructions had been clear enough. the discovery had been accidental. coming one day, in the course of his wanderings, to the village of ilola, he happened to learn that the chief's son was down with fever. the villagers had been somewhat unfriendly, and barnard was not loth to purchase their goodwill by doing what he could for the boy. he cured the fever. the chief, like most of the negroes of central africa, had strong family affections, and was eager to give some practical token of his gratitude for his son's recovery. when taking the boy's pulse, barnard had timed the beats by means of his gold repeater. the chief looked on in wonderment, believing that the mysterious sounds he heard from the watch were part of the stranger's magic. when the cure was complete, he asked barnard to present him with the magic box; but the american made him understand by signs that he could not give it away; besides, it was useful only to the white man. whereupon the chief had a happy thought. if the yellow metal was valuable, his friend and benefactor would like to obtain more of it. there was plenty to be found within a short distance of the village. the chief would tell him where it was, but him alone, conditionally. he must promise that if he came for it, or sent any one for it, the people of ilola should not be injured; for every month brought news from afar of the terrible things that were done by the white men in their hunt for rubber. perhaps the same might happen if white men came to look for gold. barnard gave the chief the desired assurance, undertaking that no harm should come to him or his people if he showed where the gold was to be found. the american was then led across a vast stretch of swampy ground to a rugged hill some three or four miles from ilola. through a deep fissure in the hillside brawled a rapid stream, and in its sandy bed the traveller discerned clear traces of the precious metal. barnard explained to mr. martindale that ilola was several days' journey above the rapids on the lemba, a sub-tributary of the congo, and provided him with a rough map on which he had traced the course of the streams he would have to navigate to reach it. but even without the map it might be found without much difficulty: its name was well known among the natives along the upper reaches of the river, the chief being lord of several villages. so far mr. martindale's journey had been without a hitch, and he was now within three or four days of his destination. it was the custom of the party to stay at night in or near a native village. there a hut could usually be got for the white men, and barnard had told them that a hut was for many reasons preferable to a tent. sudden storms were not infrequent in these latitudes, especially at night--a tent might be blown or washed away almost without warning, while a well-built native hut would stand fast. moreover, a tent is at the best uncomfortably hot and close; a hut is more roomy, and the chinks in the matting of which its sides commonly consist allow a freer passage of air. the floor too is dry and hard, often raised above the ground outside; and the roof, made of bamboo and thatched with palm leaves and coarse grasses, is rain-tight. up to the present mr. martindale had met with nothing but friendliness from the natives, and a hut had always been at his disposal. but he had now reached a part of the river where the people knew white men only by hearsay, and could not distinguish between inoffensive travellers and the grasping agents whose cruelty rumour was spreading through the land. the people of the village where he wished to put up for this night were surly and suspicious, and he decided for once to sleep in his tent on the river bank instead of in a hut. the party had barely finished their evening meal when the sun sank, and in a few minutes all was dark. samba had been handed over to barney, whose hospital experience enabled him to tend the boy's wound with no little dexterity, and the boy went happily to sleep in barney's tent, his arm round pat's neck. jack shared his uncle's tent. he had been somewhat excited by the scenes and events of the day, and did not fall asleep the moment he lay down, as he usually did. the tent was very warm and stuffy; the mosquitoes found weak spots in his curtains and sought diligently for unexplored regions of his skin, until he found the conditions intolerable. he got up, envying his uncle, who was sound asleep, his snores vying with the distant roars of hippopotami in the river. taking care not to disturb him, jack stepped out of the hut, and understood at once why the air was so oppressive. a storm was brewing. everything was still, as if weighed down by some monstrous incubus. ever and anon the indigo sky was cut across by steel-blue flashes of forked lightning, and thunder rumbled far away. jack sauntered on, past barney's tent, towards the river bank, listening to noises rarely heard by day--the grunt of hippopotami, the constant rasping croak of frogs, the lesser noises of birds and insects among the reeds. the boatmen and other natives of the party were a hundred yards away, beyond the tents he had just left. sometimes they would chatter till the small hours, but to-night they were silent, sleeping heavily after their toil. he came to a little eminence, from which he could look down towards the stream. everything was black and indistinguishable. but suddenly, as a jagged flash of lightning momentarily lit the scene, he fancied he caught a glimpse of a figure moving below, about the spot where the nearest of the canoes was moored. was it a wild beast, he wondered, prowling for food? or perhaps his eyes had deceived him? he moved a little forward; carefully, for the blackness of night seemed deeper than ever. another flash! he had not been mistaken; it was a figure, moving on one of the canoes--a human form, a man, stooping, with a knife in his hand! what was he doing? once more for an instant the lightning lit up the river, and as by a flash jack guessed the man's purpose: he was about to cut the mooring rope! jack's first impulse was to shout; but in a moment he saw that a sudden alarm might cause the natives of his party to stampede. the intruder was alone, and a negro; why not try to capture him? jack was ready with his hands: his muscles were in good order; he could wrestle and box, and, as became a boy of tom brown's school, fight. true, the man had a knife; but with the advantage of surprise on his side jack felt that the odds were fairly equal. he stole down the slope to the waterside, hoping that the darkness would remain unbroken until he had stalked his man. a solitary bush at the very brink gave him cover; standing behind it, almost touching the sleeping sentry who should have been guarding the canoes, jack could just see the dark form moving from the first canoe to the second. he waited until the man bent over to cut the connecting rope; then with three long silent leaps he gained the side of the foremost canoe, which was almost resting on the bank in just sufficient water to float her. the man had already made two or three slashes at the rope when he heard jack's splash in the shallow water. with a dexterous twist of his body he eluded jack's clutch, and swinging round aimed with his knife a savage blow at his assailant. jack felt a stinging pain in the fleshy part of the thigh, and, hot with rage, turned to grapple with the negro. his fingers touched a greasy skin; the man drew back, wriggled round, and prepared to leap overboard. at the moment when he made his spring jack flung out his hands to catch him. he was just an instant too late; the negro had splashed into the shallow water on the far side of the canoe, and disappeared into the inky blackness beyond, leaving in jack's hands a broken string, with a small round object dangling from the end. at the same moment there was a heavy thwack against the side of the canoe; and jack, mindful of crocodiles, bolted up the bank. he turned after a few yards, shuddering to think that the man had perhaps escaped him only to fall a victim to this most dreaded scourge of african rivers. but if he was indeed in the jaws of a crocodile he was beyond human help. he listened for a time, but could detect no sound betraying the man's presence. pursuit, he knew, was useless. except when the lightning flashed he could scarcely see a yard beyond him. [illustration: a midnight encounter] jack did not care to disturb his uncle. he went round the camp, found nando with some difficulty in the darkness, and ordered him to send ten of the crew to occupy the canoes for the rest of the night. then he went back to his tent, bound up his wound, and stretched himself on his mattress. he lay awake for a time, wondering what motive the intruder could have for damaging the expedition. at last, from sheer weariness, he dropped off into a troubled sleep in which he was conscious of a deluge of rain that descended upon the camp. the morning however broke clear. jack told his uncle what had occurred. "humph!" grunted mr. martindale. "what's the meaning of it, i wonder?" "do you think it was a move of that belgian fellow, uncle?" "mr. elbel? no, i don't. he has no reason for interfering with us. i've bought the rights from his company, and as they'll get royalties on all the gold i find, he's not such a fool as to hinder us." "but samba, uncle?" "bah! he was egged on to demand the boy by that villainous-looking nigger, and his dignity being a trifle upset, he thought he'd try it on with us. no, i don't think he was at the bottom of it. i've always heard that these niggers are arrant thieves; the villagers were unfriendly, you remember, and most likely 'twas one of them who took a fancy to our canoes. glad you frightened him off, anyway. what about your wound?" "it's nothing to speak of--a slight flesh wound. i washed it with alum solution, and don't think it will give me any bother." "lucky it's no worse. we'll set a careful watch every night after this. and take my advice: if you can't sleep, don't go prowling about; it isn't safe in these parts. try my dodge; shut your eyes and imagine you see forty thousand sheep jumping a patent boundary fence in single file; or if that don't work, say to yourself: 'how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck would chuck wood?'--and keep on saying it. i've never known it fail." "perhaps it's a good job i didn't know it last night," replied jack, laughing. "we should have been minus four canoes." "and all our stores. but don't do it again, there's a good fellow. i've paid double passage, and i don't want to go home alone." the camp was by this time astir. the natives, chattering like monkeys, were busily preparing their breakfast. barney was engaged in a like service for the white men, and samba proved himself to be an adept at cleaning the fish which some of the men had caught in the early morning. "sure an' he'll be a treasure, sorr," said barney, as he handed mr. martindale his cup of tea and plate of broiled fish. "is the boy getting better?" "as fast as he can, sorr. 'twas want uv food more than wounds that was wrong wid him. all he really needs is a dish uv good honest murphies twice a day, and sorry i am they do not grow in this haythen counthry." it was one of barney's crosses that the only potatoes obtainable _en route_ were the sweet variety. mr. martindale rather liked them--a weakness which barney regarded with sorrow as an injustice to ireland. breakfast finished, the canoes were manned and the expedition resumed its journey. samba kept the negroes amused with his songs and chatter and clever imitations of the cries of birds and beasts. his restless eyes seemed to miss nothing of the scenes along the river. he would point to what appeared to be a log cast up on the sand and exclaim "nkoli!" and utter shrill screams: and the log would perhaps disappear, leaving no trace, or move and open a sleepy eye, and barney ejaculate, "a crocodile, by all the holy powers!" once he drew jack's attention to a greenish lizard, some eight inches long, creeping down an ant-hill towards a tiny shrew mouse. spying the enemy, the little creature darted down the slope, and took a header into the water; but the lizard came close upon its heels, sprang after it, and dragged it down into the deep. "and what do you make of this?" said jack suddenly, showing samba the amulet he had torn from the neck of the midnight marauder. the boy started, stared at the piece of bone, looked up in jack's face and exclaimed-"bokun'oka fafa!"[1] "him say belong him uncle," nando interpreted. samba spoke rapidly to nando. "him say belong berrah bad uncle on smoke-boat, sah. him say how massa get him?" jack related the incident of the night, nando translating to the boy, who listened gravely, but smiled at the end. "why does he smile?" asked jack. "he say him uncle no lib for good any more: lost medicine ring; he no fit for do bad fings any more: get cotched ebery time." "begorra, sorr, 'tis like me very own uncle tim, who niver had a day's luck after he lost the lucky sixpence given to 'm by a ginerous kind gentleman for holding a horse in sackville street whin he was a bhoy. he had always been unlucky before that, sorr, and sure the lucky sixpence would have made a rich man uv him in time; but he lost it the very same day, sorr, and had no luck at all at all." "well," said mr. martindale, laughing, "if the loss of this amulet means that the owner will never succeed in any tricks against us, i congratulate you, jack. will you wear it yourself?" "no, uncle; i'll give it to samba." but samba, when the charm was given to him, looked at it seriously for a moment, then his face broke into a beaming smile as he slipped the string about pat's neck. "mbua end' ólótsi!"[2] he cried, clapping his hands. pat barked with pleasure and licked the boy's face. "they're great chums already," remarked mr. martindale pleasantly, as he bit the end off a cigar. that evening, when the time for camping came, there was no village in sight from the river, and nando reported that the nearest lay too far from the stream to suit his employer. the banks were thickly wooded, and it appeared as if there would be some difficulty in finding a space sufficiently clear for a camp. but at last the travellers came to a spot where a stretch of level grassland ran wedge-like into the vegetation. at one end the ground rose gradually until it formed a bluff overhanging the river at a considerable height. this seemed as favourable a place as was likely to be discovered, and here the camp was pitched, the evening meal was eaten, and the travellers sought repose. the night was very dark, and deep silence brooded over the encampment--such silence as the dweller in towns can never know. not even the shriek of a nocturnal monkey or the splash of a fish pursued by a crocodile broke the stillness. every member of the party was asleep. but all at once, samba, lying just within the flap-door of barney o'dowd's tent, one arm pillowing his head, the other clasping the terrier, was disturbed by a low whine. he was awake in an instant. he had never heard pat whine; the dog barked at everything; why had he changed his manner of speech? samba got up: pat had left him and stood in the entrance to the tent; the whine had become a growl. the boy followed him, stooped and felt in the dark for his head, then lifted him in his arms and went out, laying a hand on the dog's muzzle to silence him. like other terriers, pat objected to be carried. the whine had wakened barney also; pat and he had passed many a night together. he heard the slight sound made by samba's departure, and rising, went out in his stockings to follow him. he walked a few yards in the direction he supposed samba to have taken; but it was too dark to see him, and neither boy nor dog made any further sound. barney retraced his steps, and, wandering a little from the way he had come, stumbled over the sleeping body of one of the men placed as sentinels. he gave him a kick. "get up, you varmint!" he cried. "is that the fashion uv keeping gyard?" but as soon as he had passed on the man rolled over, gave a grunt, and was fast asleep again. meanwhile samba had walked on towards the river bank, stopping at intervals to listen. he heard nothing; not even the usual nightly sounds came to him; the surrounding forest seemed asleep. but suddenly, pat became restless and uttered a rumbling growl. samba held him close and whispered to him, and the dog apparently understood, for the growl ceased. then samba caught the faint sound of paddles up-stream--a sound so familiar to him that he could not be mistaken. he crept cautiously along, up the gradual ascent, until he came near the summit of the overhanging cliff. moving stealthily to the edge he peered over; but in the blackness he could see nothing. the sound had ceased. feeling his way carefully with his bare feet, samba slowly made his way down the grassy cliff until he came near the water's edge, then crept along the bank up stream. again pat uttered his low growl, but was instantly silent in response to the boy's whispered warning. samba seemed to find his way by instinct over the uneven ground. now and again he heard a beast scurry away at his approach and rustle through the bushes or plunge into the river; but he was not afraid: there was little risk of encountering a dangerous animal, and he was too far above the sandy level to stumble upon a crocodile lying in wait. he went on steadily. it was not a native custom to move about in the dark hours, and, remembering what had happened the night before, he was intent upon discovering the business of the mysterious paddlers. after pat's last smothered growl he proceeded more cautiously than ever. at last the sound of low voices ahead made him halt. whispering again to pat, who licked his hand as if to reassure him, he set the dog down and crept forward again, bending low, and taking care, dark as it was, to avail himself of every bush for cover. to judge by the voices, a large number of men must have gathered at some point not far ahead. he drew still nearer. all at once he halted again, and laid a hand on pat's neck. among the voices he had distinguished one that he knew only too well: it was that of his uncle boloko. he stood rooted to the spot with dismay. a few minutes later his quick ears caught the sound of men moving off at right angles to the river in a direction that would enable them to skirt the cliff and come upon the sleeping camp through the forest in its rear. in a flash he saw through their scheme. bidding pat in a whisper to follow him, he turned and hurried back, climbing the face of the cliffs with a panther's surefootedness, and racing along at his top speed as soon as he came to the downward slope. with pat at his heels he dashed into barney's tent. "etumba! etumba!"[3] he exclaimed breathlessly. "ba-lofúndú bao ya!"[4] and pat chimed in with three rapid barks. [1] my father's younger brother. [2] good dog! [3] fight! (the natives' alarm signal). [4] the villains are upon us! chapter v the order of merit "bad cess to you, you young varmint!" exclaimed barney, waking with a start. "what do you say at all?" "ba-lofúndú bao ya! boloko!" "be jabers if i know what you'd be meaning. off! run! nando! and it's pitch dark it is." the boy scampered, pat still at his heels. the dog had evidently been impressed by samba's warnings, for he ran silently, without growl or bark. they came to the spot where nando lay, beneath a spreading acacia. samba shook him without ceremony. "ba-lofúndú bao ya!" he cried. "betsua! betsua!"[1] nando growled and bade him be off; but when the boy poured his story with eager excitement into the big negro's sleepy ears, nando at last bestirred himself, and hurried to mr. martindale's tent, bidding samba remain at hand. "samba him uncle, berrah bad man, come to fight," said nando breathlessly when jack came to the door of the tent. "bad man go round round, hide in trees, come like leopard. massa gone 'sleep: massa him men all lib for big sleep; boloko shoot; one, two, massa dead all same." "what, what!" said mr. martindale, flinging off his rug. "another alarm, eh?" he pressed the button of an electric torch and threw a bright light on the scene. "an attack in force this time, uncle," said jack. "some black fellows are coming to surprise us in the rear." "how many are the villains?" said mr. martindale, pulling on his trousers. "two, free, hundred, fousand." "a dozen all told, i suppose! well, we'll fight 'em." "rather risky that, uncle," said jack. "there may be more than a dozen, after all, and our men are not armed: we two couldn't do much against a hundred, say." "true. why was i such a fool? that britisher at matadi said i'd better arm my men, and i wish i'd taken his tip. we're in a tight corner, jack, if the nigger is correct. here, nando, are you sure of this?" "sartin sure, sah. me see fousand fifty black men creep, creep 'long ribber, sah: big lot guns, 'bini guns, massa, go crack, crack. come all round, sah; run like antelope: no time for massa run away." nando's face expressed mortal terror; there was no doubt he believed in the reality of the danger. "how did they come?" asked mr. martindale. "in boat, sah." "where are they?" "small small up ribber, sah." "and i suppose you've alarmed the camp?" "no, sah, no. me no tell one boy at all." "well, it looks as if we're going to be wiped out, jack. we can't fight a hundred armed men. if our fellows were armed, we might lay a trap for 'em; but we aren't strong enough for that. but perhaps if we show we're ready for 'em, and they're not going to surprise us, they may sheer off." "then why not take the offensive, uncle?" "what d'you mean?" "attack the canoes while the most of them are marching round. they'd hear our shots and bolt back, as sure as a gun." "that's slim. we'll try it. go and wake barney, jack." barney, however, was already on his way to the tent, jack explained the situation to him. "here's a revolver, barney," said mr. martindale, as the irishman came up. "you must do the best you can if there's a rush. jack and i are going right away to the river: you're in charge." barney handled the revolver gingerly. "sure i'd feel more at home wid me shillelagh!" he muttered as he went away. mr. martindale turned to the negro. "now you, nando, lead the way." the man's eyes opened wide with fear. "me plenty sick in eyes, sah," he stammered. "me only see small small. boy samba him eyes berrah fine and good, see plenty quick, massa; he show way." "i don't care who shows the way," said mr. martindale, too much preoccupied with his hunting rifle and ammunition to notice the inconsistency between nando's statement and the story he had already told. nando called to samba and told him what was required, and the party set off, the boy going ahead with pat, mr. martindale and jack following with their rifles, and nando in great trepidation bringing up the rear. mr. martindale puffed and panted as he scaled the bluff, and breathed very hard as he followed samba down the rough descent to the brink of the river. when they came to comparatively level ground they halted. "how far now?" asked mr. martindale, in a whisper. "small small, massa," replied nando. "well, jack, when we come near these precious canoes we'll fire both barrels one slick after the other, then reload." "and go at them with a rush, uncle?" "rush! how can i rush? i'm pretty well blown already. but i could fetch wind enough to shout. we'll shout, jack. nando, you'll bawl your loudest, and the boy too. if i know these niggers they'll bolt. and look here, jack, fire in the air: we don't want to hit 'em. if they stand their ground and resist, we can fire in good earnest; but they won't." they took a few cautious steps forward, then samba ran back, clutched nando by the arm and whispered-"boat dah, sah," said the negro, under his breath. "oh! me feel plenty sick inside!" "hush! howl, then, when we fire. now, jack, ready? i'll let off my two barrels first." next moment there was a flash and a crack, followed immediately by a second. nando and samba had begun to yell at the top of their voices. mr. martindale bellowed in one continuous roll, and pat added to the din by a furious barking. the noise, even to those who made it, was sufficiently startling in the deep silence of the night. jack fired his two shots, but before his uncle had reloaded there was a yell from the direction of the canoes, then the sound of men leaping on shore and crashing through the bushes. immediately afterwards faint shouts came from the forest at the rear of the bluff. "we've done the trick," said mr. martindale with a chuckle. "now we'll get back. they've had a scare. let's hope we shall have no more trouble to-night." he flashed his electric torch on the river bank below, and revealed five large canoes drawn up side by side. "there must be more than a hundred of them," he added. "each of those canoes can carry thirty men." on the way back to the camp, they heard renewed shouts as the men who had marched into the forest broke out again in a wild dash for the threatened canoes. the camp was in commotion. barney was volubly adjuring the startled natives to be aisy; but they were yelling, running this way and that, tumbling over one another in the darkness. the sight of mr. martindale's round red face behind his electric torch reassured them; and when nando, who had now quite recovered his spirits, told them that he, with the white men's assistance, had put to flight twenty thousand bad men and boloko, they laughed and slapped their thighs, and settled down in groups to discuss the event and make much of nando during the rest of the night. there was no more sleep for any of the party except samba. he, satisfied that his new friends were safe, curled himself up on his mat with the inseparable terrier, and slept until the dawn. but mr. martindale sat smoking in his tent, discussing the events of the night with his nephew. "i don't like it, jack. we're on top this time, thanks to a little bluff. but there must have been a large number of them to judge by the canoes and the yells; and but for that fellow nando we might easily have been wiped out. and from what nando says they are those villainous forest guards of the concession. what's the meaning of it? it may be that the concession have repented of their bargain and want to keep me out, or perhaps elbel is terrified lest i shall expose him when i get back to boma. either way, it seems as if we're going to have a bad time of it." "i don't think it can be elbel's doing, uncle. it's such a risky game to play, your expedition being authorized by his own people." "i don't imagine elbel is such a fool as to attack us officially. he can always disavow the actions of those natives. at any rate, i shall make a point of getting rifles for the men as soon as i can." "they can't use them." "of course they can't; but you'll have to turn yourself into a musketry instructor. meanwhile i must give that fellow nando some sort of reward. it will encourage him and the others too." when daylight broke mr. martindale went down to the river while barney was preparing breakfast. there was no trace of the enemy. presumably they had set their canoes afloat and drifted down stream in the darkness. they had no doubt reckoned on surprising the camp, and their calculations had been upset by the certainty of meeting with resistance, the fact that the travellers were poorly armed being forgotten in the panic bred of the sudden uproar in the night. after breakfast mr. martindale had the men paraded in a semicircle around the tent, and, sitting on a stool in front of it, with jack on one side and barney on the other, he called nando forward. "we are very much pleased with your watchfulness, nando." the negro grinned, and with a ludicrous air of importance translated the sentence to his comrades. "it is due to you that we were not surprised in the dark: you did very well, and set an excellent example to the men." "me plenty clebber, sah, oh yes!" "i shall take care in future to have our camp more closely guarded, and punish any carelessness. but now, to show how pleased i am with you, i am going to give you a little present." nando's mouth spread from ear to ear. he translated the announcement to the negroes, looking round upon them with an expression of triumphant satisfaction that tickled jack's sense of humour. barney had shut one eye; his lips were twitching. "but before i do that," went on mr. martindale, "i want you to tell us how you came to discover the enemy in the darkness." nando for a moment looked a little nonplussed, scratching his head and shifting from foot to foot. then inspiration seized him; he elaborately cleared his throat, snapped his fingers, crossed his arms on his brawny chest, and began-"me no get sleep, me get up and go round about, fink see if massa's fings all right. me stop, go sick inside; one, two eyes like twinkle twinkle look down out of tree." he waved his arm towards the acacia under which he had been sleeping. "me fink dis plenty bad; what for man lib for hide in tree and look at nando? me no 'fraid, no, no; me walk all same, like me no see nuffin. yah! me see all same, wait long time, man no fit for see nando. bimeby man come down like snake, creep, creep, 'long, 'long; me go too, what for? 'cos man plenty bad man, him go 'bini gun, him go into wood. what for? muss see; s'pose he go fetch bad man and shoot massa? he no come dis way 'less he lib for do bad fings. him got 'bini gun, me got spear; no good! me no 'fraid. plenty debbils in forest! me no 'fraid. massa say nando look after fings; all same: nando look after, no 'fraid, 'bini gun, debbils and all. what for? massa him nando him fader and mudder. s'pose bad men shoot; s'pose debbil come; all same: muss do what massa say, look after fings, look after massa. me no 'fraid!" again nando paused and scratched his head, looking troubled. then his face cleared; he took a deep breath and continued-"me go 'long 'long after bad man. he come to place no trees, grass all same: one, two, twenty, fousand bad men dah. bad man say 'kwa te! kwa te!'[2] dey talk, oh yes! whish! whish! same as trees when wind make talk. me get behind tree; me hab got two, four, twenty ears. me listen! dey say come, creep, creep, bring 'bini gun; white man all 'sleep; black man come, no nise, shoot: oh my gracious! white man all lib for dead! me no 'fraid!" "who was the chief of these bad men?" interrupted mr. martindale. "boloko, sah!--samba him uncle." "but how could you tell that in the dark?" "dey hab got light: one, two, twenty tiny small fire on stick." "torches, he means, i suppose," said mr. martindale. "how did you find your way back in the dark?" "yah! me know all 'bout dat. me lib long time in forest, oh yes! me fight little tiny men; dey plenty small, plenty good fighter all same; shoot one, two, free arrow; one, two, free fings gone dead. me fight dem; so me find way like leopard." "well, you're a clever fellow, and you did very well. here is a present for you." he took from his pocket a huge bone-handled penknife, and displayed its various parts one by one: four blades, a corkscrew, a file, a hook, and an awl. nando's eyes opened wide with delight; he chuckled gloatingly as one after another these treasures came to view. mr. martindale was shutting them up before handing over the knife when barney stepped quietly forward, touched his cap and said-"if you plase, sorr, before you part wid this handsome presentation, will i have yer leave to ax mr. nando wan question?" "why, you can if you like," said mr. martindale in surprise. "thank you, your honour. now mr. nando, would you plase tell us if you ate a big supper uv maniac last night?" "manioc, barney," corrected jack with a smile. "sure that's what i said, sorr! would you plase tell his honour, mr. nando?" the man looked in amazement from one to another. he seemed to suspect a pitfall, but was puzzled to make out the bearing of the question. "sure i speak plain. did ye, or did ye not, eat a big supper uv anything at all last night?" "me eat plenty little manioc," said nando, thinking he was expected to defend himself against a charge of gluttony. "me no pig like common black man." "and you did not get a pain?"--here barney helped out his meaning with pantomime--"nor dream all that terrible wild stuff you have just been telling us?" "me no can dream!" cried nando, indignantly. "me say true fings all same." "sure, thin, if your supper didn't give ye the nightmare, mine did. begorra! 'twas a mighty terrible dream i dreamt, indeed, mr. nando. i dreamt you was snoring like a pig--like a common black pig, to be sure; and there came a little spalpeen uv a black bhoy, a common black bhoy, and shook ye by the shoulder, and called 'baa! baa! bloko!' and some more i disremimber now; and thin----" nando, who had been looking more and more uneasy, here interrupted, hurriedly addressing mr. martindale-"me plenty sick inside, sah," he said, pressing his hands to the pit of his stomach. "me eat plenty too much manioc all same." crestfallen and abashed the big fellow slunk away, jack roaring with laughter, mr. martindale looking on in speechless amazement. "begorra, sorr," said barney, "'tis a born liar he is. he was fast in the arms uv murphies, or maniac, speaking by the card, till the bhoy samba woke him up. 'twas samba, sorr, that spied the enemy, and 'twas me little darlint uv a dog that gave the first alarm. give a dog his due, sorr, and if you plase, give samba the knife." mr. martindale first looked annoyed, then broke into hearty laughter. he called for samba, who came up smiling, with pat at his heels. "where's that villain nando?" cried mr. martindale. "he shall come and interpret." in response to a summons nando came from behind the crowd of natives. he had recovered his composure, and translated with glib and smiling unconcern the story which samba told. only when mr. martindale handed samba the knife did the negro look sorry. "me no lib for eat too big lot manioc nudder time," he said glumly, as he went away. [1] wake up! [2] hush! chapter vi samba is missing nando was like a child in his humours. his broad face could not long be overclouded. when the party once more embarked he performed his work as chief paddler with his usual cheerfulness. all that day the river washed the edge of a continuous forest tract--a spur, as jack understood from nando's not too lucid explanations, of the vast upper congo forest that stretched for many hundreds of miles across the heart of africa. jack gazed with great curiosity, merged sometimes in a sense of awe and mystery, at the dark impenetrable woodland. it was only a year or two since he had read stanley's account of his wonderful march through the forest, and his vivid recollection was quickened and intensified by the sight of the actual scene. "and are there pigmies in that forest--little men, you know?" he asked nando. "sartin sure, sah. me fight fousand hundred little tiny men: me no 'fraid. dey shoot plenty good, sah: one arrow shoot two free birds. dey hab berrah fine eye, sah; see what big man no can see. massa see dem some day: make massa laugh plenty much." here and there, in places where the river widened out, the travellers came upon herds of hippopotami disporting themselves in the shallows. their presence was often indicated first by strange squeals and grunts: then a huge head would be seen on the surface of the water as the beast heard the regular splash of the paddles and was provoked to investigate its cause; his jaws would open, disclosing a vast pink chasm; and having completed his long yawn, and satisfied himself that the strangers intended no harm, he would plunge his head again beneath the water, or turn clumsily to wallow in uncouth gambols with his mates. the negroes always plied their paddles more rapidly at such spots. nando told stories of hippopotami which had upset canoes out of sheer mischief, and of others which, pricked and teased by native spears, had lain in wait among the rushes and wrecked the craft of fishers returning to their homes at dusk. "me no 'fraid of little man," said nando; "me plenty much 'fraid of hippo." now and again a crocodile, disturbed in his slumbers by the splashing of the paddles or the songs of the men, would dart out of a creek and set off in furious chase; but finding the canoe a tougher morsel than he expected, would sink after a disappointed sniffing and disappear. occasionally mr. martindale or jack would take a shot at the reptiles, but they were so numerous that by and by the travellers desisted from their "potting," mr. martindale regarding it as a waste of good ammunition. the natives whom they saw at riverside villages were now sometimes suspicious, and disinclined to have any communication with the strangers. returning from interviews with them, nando reported that they had heard of the massacre at banonga, and though he assured them that his employer was no friend of the tyrants, he failed to convince them: he was a white man; that was enough. it was with some difficulty, and only after the exercise of much tact, patience, and good humour on nando's part, that he managed to secure enough food to supply the needs of the men. two days passed amid similar scenes. the journey never became monotonous, for in that wonderful land there is always something fresh to claim the traveller's attention. jack began to give samba lessons in english, and found him an apt enough pupil, though, in practising his newly-acquired words afterwards, the boy, to jack's amusement, adopted a pronounced irish accent from barney. on the morning of the third day, when the camp became active, barney was somewhat surprised to find that samba and pat did not join him as usual at breakfast. boy and dog had gone to sleep together in his tent, and he had not seen or heard their departure. breakfast was cleared away, everything was packed up in readiness for starting, and yet the missing members of the party had not appeared. both were very popular; samba's unfailing cheerfulness had made him a general favourite, and pat's sagacity, his keen sporting instincts, and the vigour of his barking when hippopotami or crocodiles came too near the canoe, won for him a good deal of admiration from the natives. "what! samba gone!" exclaimed mr. martindale, when barney told him of the disappearance. "have you called him?" "sure me throat is sore wid it, sorr," said barney, "and me lips are cracked wid whistling for pat, bad cess to 'm." "the dog has gone too, eh? i reckon samba's a thief like the rest of 'em." "begging yer pardon, sorr, it takes two to make a thief, one to steal, the other to be stolen. pat would never agree to be stolen, sorr; besides, he would never be such an ungrateful spalpeen uv a dog, not to speak uv the bad taste of it, as to desert his ould master for a nigger bhoy." "well, what's become of them, then? nando, where's samba?" "me no can tell, sah. me fink crocodile eat him, sah. little tiny black boy go walk all alone alone night time. yah! crocodile come 'long, fink black boy make plenty good chop. soosh! little black boy in ribber, crocodile eat him all up, sah. what for black boy go walk alone? one time all right, nando eat manioc[1]; nudder time all wrong, crocodile eat samba." nando shook his head sententiously; samba's exploit on the night of the alarm was evidently still rankling. "that's not it at all," said barney. "pat would niver permit any crocodile, wid all his blarney, to eat him; and if a crocodile ate samba, sure pat would have been the first to come and tell us." "no, it's your irish that has frightened the boy," said jack gravely. "i've been trying to teach him a few words of english; but i've noticed once or twice, after i've done with him, that he pronounces the words as if he'd learnt them in ireland. no decent black boy could stand that, you know, barney." "faith, 'tis irishmen that speak the best english," returned barney; "did i not hear them wid me very own ears in the house uv parlimint?" "well, jack, we must go on," said mr. martindale. "i was afraid the boy would be a botheration." "he has done us a good turn, uncle. couldn't we wait an hour or two and see if he appears?" "it's not business, jack." "my dear uncle, it's no use your posing as a hard-hearted man of business. you know you're quite fond of the boy." "eh! well, i own he's a likely little fellow, and i sort of felt he's a part of the concern; in short, jack, we'll put in an hour or two and give him a chance." an hour passed, and pat made his appearance. he trotted soberly into the camp, not frisking or barking joyously as was his wont. "arrah thin, ye spalpeen, where's samba?" cried barney as the dog came to him. pat hung his head, and put his tail between his legs and whined. "go and fetch him, then," cried barney. the terrier looked at his master, turned as if to do his bidding, then moved slowly round and whined again. "sure 'tis not devoured by a crocodile he is, or pat would be in a terrible rage. the bhoy has deserted, sorr, and pat's heart is after being broken." "well, we'll wait a little longer, barney," said mr. martindale; "he may turn up yet." the day wore itself out, and samba had not returned. mr. martindale and jack spent part of the time in shooting, adding a goodly number of wild ducks, a river hog and an antelope to the larder. part of the time they watched the men fishing, or rather harpooning, for they caught the fish by dexterous casts of their light spears. towards evening mr. martindale became seriously anxious, and a little testy. "i'm afraid a crocodile has made a meal of him, after all," he said. "i don't reckon he'd any reason for leaving us; he got good victuals." "and a good knife, uncle. perhaps he has gone to find his father." "no, i don't bank on that. too far for a young boy to go alone, through the forest, too, on foot. anyway, he's an ungrateful young wretch to go without saying a word; i've always heard these blacks don't measure up to white people in their feelings." mr. martindale delayed his departure until the middle of the next day in the hope that samba would return. then, however, he declared he could wait no longer, and the party set off. late in the afternoon of the next day they came to a spot where a gap occurred in the thick vegetation that lined the bank. here, said nando, they must land. ilola, the principal village of the chief to whom they were bound, stood a short distance from the river, and the way to it lay through the clear space between two forest belts. a quarter of an hour's walking brought them to the village, a cluster of tent-shaped grass huts almost hidden in the bush. the settlement was surrounded by a stockade, and the plantations of banana, maize, and ground-nuts showed signs of careful cultivation. nando went alone to interview the chief, bearing a present of cloth and a small copper token which mr. martindale had received from his friend barnard. the chief would recognize it as the replica of one given to him. nando returned in an hour's time, troubled in countenance. imbono the chief, he said, had refused to meet the white man, or to have any dealings with him. he well remembered the white man who had cured his son and given him the token two years before; had they not become blood brothers! but since then many things had happened. dark stories had reached his ears of the terrible consequences that followed the coming of the white man. one of his young men--his name was faraji--who had joined a party of traders carrying copper down the congo, had just come back with dreadful tales of what he himself had seen. when imbono was a boy his people had lived in terror of the white-robed men from the east.[2] there had been a great white-robed chief named tippu tib, who sent his fighting men far and wide to collect ivory and slaves. these men knew no pity; they carried destruction wherever they went, tearing children from parents, husbands from wives, chaining them together, beating them with cruel whips, strewing the land with the corpses of slaves exhausted by long marching or slain because they were ill or weak. but terrible as were the warriors of tippu tib, surely the servants of the great white chief[3] were more terrible still; for it often happened that the slave hunters, having come once, came not again; like a fierce tempest they passed; but as, when a storm has devastated a forest, new trees grow and flourish in the room of the old, so when a village had been robbed of its youth, their places were in course of time filled by other boys and girls. and even when the slave hunters came some villagers would escape, and hide in dens or among the forest trees until the danger had passed. but the servants of the great white chief were like a blight settling for ever on the land. they came, and stayed; none could escape them, none were spared, young or old. imbono feared the white man; he prayed him to go in peace; the men of ilola were peaceable, and sought not to make enemies, but they had bows and arrows, and long shields, and heavy-shafted spears, and if need be they would defend themselves against the stranger. "i guess this is kind of awkward," said mr. martindale when nando had finished his report. "you can't trade with a man who won't see you. did you explain that we don't belong to the great white chief, nando?" "me say all dat, sah; chief shake him head." "i suppose you told him our men are not armed?" "no, sah; me forgot dat, dat am de troof." "well, go back; tell the chief that i'm a friend and want to see him. say that i'll come into the village alone, or with mr. jack, and we'll leave our guns behind us. tell him the white man he saw two years ago said he was a very fine fellow, and i'll trust myself unarmed among his people, bows and arrows and spears and all." nando went away, and after another hour returned and said that imbono, after much persuasion, had agreed to receive the white man because he was a friend of his blood brother. leaving their rifles and revolvers in barney's charge, mr. martindale and jack accompanied nando to the village. the single entrance to the stockade was guarded by a throng of tall warriors with curiously painted skins, and armed with the weapons nando had described, carrying in addition knives with long leaf-shaped blades. "they ain't the daisiest of beauties," said mr. martindale as he passed them. "ugly fellows in a scrimmage," said jack. they went on, past the first huts, stared at by knots of the villagers, until they came to the chief's dwelling in the centre of the settlement. imbono was a tall, well set up, handsome negro, standing half a head taller than the men about him. he received the strangers with grave courtesy, offered them a cup of palm wine, and motioned them to two low carved stools, seating himself on a third. through nando mr. martindale explained his business, dwelling on the friendly relations which had existed between the chief and the white man, and assuring him of his peaceable intentions and of his absolute independence of the servants of the great white chief. imbono listened in silence, and made a long reply, repeating what he had already said through nando. suddenly he turned to the young man at his side, whom he called faraji, and bade him tell the white man what he had seen. "ongoko! ongoko!"[4] exclaimed the other men. faraji stepped forward and told his story, with a volubility that outran nando's powers as an interpreter, and at the same time with a seriousness that impressed his hearers. "i come from mpatu," he said. "it is not my village: my village is ilola. i passed through mpatu on my way home. it is no longer a village. why? the servants of the great white chief had come up the river. they told the people that the lords of the world, the sons of heaven, had given all the land to the great white chief. mpatu belonged no more to the chief lualu: it belonged to the great white chief. but the great white chief was a good chief; he would be a father to his people. would he take their huts, their gardens, their fowls, their children? no, he was a good chief. everything that was theirs should be left to them; and the great white chief would keep peace in the land, and men should live together as brothers. only one thing the great white chief required of them. in the forest grew a vine that yielded a milky sap. this stuff when hardened with acid from another plant would be of use to the great white chief, and he wished them to collect it for him, and bring to his servants every fourteenth day so many baskets full. every man of mpatu must bring his share. and they said too that the great white chief was just: for all this rubber they collected he would pay, in brass rods, or cloth, or salt; and seeing the great white chief was so kind and good, only a bad man would fail in the task set him, and such bad men must be punished. and two servants of the great white chief would be left in mpatu to instruct the people as to the furnishing of the rubber; and these kind teachers the men of mpatu would surely provide with food and shelter. "the men of mpatu laughed at first. well they knew the vine! was there not enough of it and to spare in the forest? how easily they could collect what was demanded! how soon would they become rich! and they set the women and children to weave new baskets for the rubber, and made ready new and well-built huts for the men who were to teach them their duty to the great white chief. "but as time went on, woe came to mpatu. the two servants of the great white chief were bad men, selfish, cruel. they stalked about the village, treating the people as their slaves; they seized the plumpest fowls and the choicest fruits; if any man resisted, they whipped him with a long whip of hippopotamus hide. "but the servants of the great white chief demanded still more. it was not only rubber the men of mpatu were bade to bring them, but so many goats, so many fowls, so many fish and cassava and bananas. how could they do it? the rubber vines near by were soon exhausted. every week the men must go farther into the forest. they had not enough time now to hunt and fish for their own families. how supply the strangers too? "grief came to mpatu! for long days there was no man in the village save the chief lualu and the forest guards. the women cowered and crouched in their huts. no longer did they take pride in tidy homes and well-tended hair; no longer sing merrily at the stream, or croon lullabies to their babes; all joy was gone from them. "some of the men fled, and with their wives and children lived in the forest, eating roots and leaves. but even flight was vain, for the forest guards tracked them, hunted them down. some they killed as soon as they found them; others they flogged, chained by the neck, and hauled to prison. there they are given heavy tasks, carrying logs and firewood, clearing the bush, cutting up rubber; and there is a guard over them with a whip which at a single blow can cut a strip from the body. many have died; they are glad to die. "and now mpatu is a waste. one day the rubber was again short; the soldiers came--they burned the huts; they killed men, women, and children; yea, among the soldiers were man-eaters, and many of mpatu's children were devoured. only a few escaped--they wander in the forest, who knows where? i tell what i have seen and heard." when faraji had finished his story, there was silence for a time. the chief seemed disposed to let the facts sink into the minds of the white men, and mr. martindale was at a loss for words. faraji's story, so significantly similar to what he had himself discovered at banonga, had deeply impressed him. were these atrocities going on throughout the congo free state? were they indeed a part of the system of government? it seemed only too probable--the rubber tax was indeed a tax of blood. and what could he say to convince imbono that he was no friend of the white men who authorized or permitted such things? how could the negro distinguish? "'pon my soul," said the american in an aside to jack, "i am ashamed of the colour of my skin." then the chief began to speak. "the white man understands why i will have nothing to do with him--why i will not allow my people to trade with him. it may be true that you, o white man, are not as these others; you may be a friend to the black man, and believe that the black man can feel pain and grief; but did not the servants of the great white chief say that they were friends of the black man? did they not say the great white chief loved us and wished to do us good? we have seen the love of the great white chief; it is the love of the crocodile for the antelope: we would have none of it. therefore i say, o white man, though i bear you no ill-will, you must go." courteously as the chief spoke, there was no mistaking his firmness. "we must go and take stock of this," said mr. martindale. "it licks me at present, jack, and that's a hard thing for an american to say. come right away." they took ceremonious leave of the chief, and were escorted to their camp at the edge of the stream. "what's to be done, my boy?" said mr. martindale. "we can't find the gold without the chief's help, unless we go prospecting at large: we might do that for months without success, and make imbono an open enemy into the bargain. we can't fight him, and i don't want to fight him. after what we've seen and heard i won't be responsible for shedding blood; seems to me the white man has done enough of that already on the congo. this is a facer, jack." "never say die, uncle. it's getting late: i vote we sleep on it. we may see a way out of the difficulty in the morning." [1] the native word for any food or meal. [2] arab slave raiders. [3] leopold ii, sovereign of the congo free state and king of the belgians. [4] yes, do so. chapter vii blood brothers but in the morning the situation appeared only more grave. provisions were threatening to run short. hitherto there had been no difficulty in procuring food from the natives met _en route_, and mr. martindale's party had carried with them only a few days' provisions, and the "extras" necessary for the white men's comfort. but now they were come to a less populous part of the country: imbono's villages were the only settlements for many miles around; and unless imbono relaxed the rigour of his boycott mr. martindale's party would soon be in want. mr. martindale was talking over matters with jack when, from the slight eminence on which the camp was pitched, they saw a canoe, manned by six paddlers, pass up stream. jack took a look at the craft through his field glass. "it's imbono, uncle," he said; "i wonder what he is up to." he followed the progress of the canoe for some distance through the glass; then, looking ahead, his eye was caught by a herd of eight or nine hippopotami disporting themselves on a reedy flat by the river bank. "what do you say, uncle? shall we go and get some hippo meat? it will relieve the drain on our stores, and nando told me the men are rather fond of it." "we'll go right away, jack. we must keep the larder full at any rate. i suppose we shall have to stalk the beasts." "i don't think so, uncle. those we saw as we came up seemed pretty bold; they've such tough hides that they've no reason to be much afraid of the native weapons." "well, we'll paddle up to them and see how we get on." a canoe was launched, and mr. martindale set off with jack, barney, and the terrier, nando and six of the men paddling. by the time they arrived opposite the feeding ground several hippos had come out from the reeds for a bath in the shallows of the river, only their heads and backs showing above the water. the rest had moved off into the thicker reeds and were hidden from sight. "one will be enough for the present," said mr. martindale. "our fellows are great gluttons, but there's enough meat in one of those beasts to last even them a couple of days; and we don't want it to go high!" "let us both aim at the nearest," suggested jack. "fire together, uncle: bet you i bag him." "i guess i won't take you, and betting's a fool's trick anyway. we'll aim at the nearest, as you say; are you ready?" two shots rang out as one. but apparently there had been a difference of opinion as to which of the animals was the nearest. one of them disappeared; another, with a wild roar of pain and rage, plunged into the reeds; the rest sank below the surface. nando, knowing the ways of hippopotami, began to paddle with frantic vigour, and set the canoe going at a rapid pace down stream, much to the indignation of pat, who stood with his forefeet on the side of the canoe, barking fiercely. half a minute later a head appeared above the surface some fifty yards behind; then another and another: but the beasts seemed to have recovered from the alarm, for after a long cow-like stare at the receding canoe, they turned and swam ashore, to rejoin their companions in the reeds. "easy all!" said mr. martindale. "we'll give 'em a quarter of an hour to settle down, then we'll go back. what about your bet, eh, jack?" "it's your hippo, uncle, no doubt of that," said jack with a rueful smile. "an awful fluke, though; you didn't hit once to my twice coming up stream." "a fluke, was it? i kind o' notice that when you young fellows make a good shot or pull off a good stroke at billiards or anything else, it's real good play; whereas an old boy like me can only do anything decent by a fluke." "well, you've lost him, anyway. the hippo hasn't come up." "too cocksure, my boy; he's only just below the surface." the beast mortally wounded by mr. martindale's rifle was lying in shallow water. pat could no longer restrain himself. he leapt overboard and swam towards the hippo, barking with excitement, and becoming frantic when he found that it was just out of his reach. in his eagerness to attack the animal he even made an attempt to dive, so comical that all on board the canoe were convulsed with laughter. being paddled to the spot, mr. martindale found that the beast was quite dead. "now what are we to do with him?" said mr. martindale. "shall we go back and send a party to cut him up?" "no, no, sah," said nando instantly. "tie rope; pull, pull; hippo he come 'long all behind." "tow him, eh? very well. i allow that'll save time." a rope was fastened firmly about the beast's neck and jaws; the other end was fixed to the canoe; and the men began to paddle down stream, towing the hippo. the tendency of the animal being to sink, the canoe seemed to jack to be dangerously low in the water at the stern. but they had only a part of the usual complement of men on board, and the paddlers were among the most skilful on the congo. they had gone but a few strokes when jack, glancing back, caught sight of imbono's canoe returning. like mr. martindale's it was keeping fairly close to the bank. all at once a great shout of alarm broke from the chief's paddlers; their easy swing was quickened to desperate exertion, and they pulled out violently towards the middle of the stream. "by jove! uncle, a hippo's after them," cried jack. just astern of the chief's canoe, between it and the shore, a huge hippopotamus, with jaws distended, showing his gleaming tusks, was swimming along in pursuit. for a little he gained, and jack's pulse beat more quickly with excitement as he saw that the enraged beast was not more than half a dozen yards from the canoe. but the gap widened as soon as the six strong paddlers had settled down to their quickened stroke. imbono, sitting in the stern, had caught sight of the white men as his canoe cut for a few moments across the current, and with the natural vanity of the negro he began to show off. at a word from him one of the crew dropped his paddle, and, catching up a spear, hurled it at the pursuing hippo. there was a hoarse bellow from the animal, and a wild cheer from the men; the shaft of the spear was seen standing almost perpendicularly above the hippo's shoulder. with fierce exertion the beast increased his pace, and the gap momentarily diminished; but the negro resumed his paddle, and again the canoe drew away. as the canoe came almost level with the towed hippo at a considerable distance towards mid-stream, imbono ordered the same manoeuvre to be repeated. but fortune doubly befriended the pursuing animal. just as the negro was poising his spear, a submerged tree stopped the canoe with a sudden jerk; the man lost his balance and fell overboard; half of the crew followed him into the water, the rest tumbled over one another into the bottom of the canoe. imbono had been thrown backward as the vessel struck the snag. he had barely time to rise and plunge into the water when there was a hideous crackling sound; the stern of the canoe was caught between the hippo's gaping jaws and crunched to splinters. the consequences of the chief's temerity would have been amusing but for his manifest danger. the negroes were swimming in all directions, keeping as much as possible under water to escape the eyes of the hippo; but imbono, an older man than the rest, was not so expert a swimmer, and jack saw with concern that the hippo, leaving the sinking canoe, was making straight for the chief. a hippopotamus may be distanced by a canoe, but not by a man swimming. imbono did not look behind, but seemed to know instinctively that death was within a few yards of him, and he struck out more and more desperately for the bank. at the moment when the canoe struck the snag, jack had seized his rifle; but after the catastrophe, canoe, hippo, and swimming natives were so intermingled that he could not venture a shot at the beast without the risk of hitting a man. the hippo's huge body provided a target sufficiently broad, indeed; but jack knew that to strike it anywhere save at a vital spot would merely add to the beast's rage and make it doubly formidable to the men in the water. when he saw the plight of the chief, however, the great head now only a couple of yards behind him, the jaws already opening, disclosing the vast red chasm flanked by gleaming tusks and molars--when jack saw imbono thus in the very article of peril, he could no longer hesitate. the canoe was already at rest. bidding nando keep it steady, jack raised his rifle to his shoulder and took careful aim. the chief was gasping for breath after a vain attempt to dodge the beast by diving; the horrid jaws were just about to snap, when a shot rang out. a squealing grunt came from the closing gullet; the uncouth actions of the beast ceased; and he began to sink slowly and silently beneath the surface. "a1!" ejaculated mr. martindale. "that makes up for your miss, jack." "oka mö!"[1] shouted the negroes. imbono's men had gained the bank, but the chief himself, overcome more by his fright than his exertions, seemed unable to swim any farther. "quick, haul him in, jack," said mr. martindale. "there may be a crocodile after him next!" a few strokes of the paddles brought the canoe within reach of the chief. laughing heartily--the negro's laugh is always very near the surface--nando and a comrade hoisted imbono into the canoe. "me tell imbono he oughter die of shame," said nando gravely. "what on earth for?" asked mr. martindale. "what for, sah! has he not made big puddle in massa's canoe? he plenty much wet, sah." "well, he couldn't help that. tell him we're glad he came off so well. you need not say anything about the puddle." but nando had his own views as to the proper thing to do. as he spoke the chief glanced at the pool of water that had flowed from his body, and replied in a tone that was clearly apologetic. "he say he die with shame him so wet, sah," said nando. "him no do it no more. say he praise de young inglesa for shooting de hippo; say he gib massa de hippo and manioc and bananas and anyfing whatever dat massa like. say he want massa and young massa to be blood brudder. me say berrah good; tell him oughter had sense before." "that's all right. we'll accept supplies with pleasure, and pay for them. the hippo is mr. jack's already, of course. as for becoming his blood brothers, i don't just know right off what that means; but if it'll please him, and doesn't mean any nastiness, we'll think it over." the canoe, towing mr. martindale's hippo, was rapidly paddled down stream to the encampment, the second beast being left to drift slowly down the river until, in the course of some hours, it should finally rise to the surface. on landing the chief renewed his protestations of gratitude, then went off to the village, to polish himself up, said nando, and replace his ruined headdress, a curious structure of cloth and feathers stuck on to the chignon into which his hair was gathered. mr. martindale sent back another canoe to find and tow down the dead hippo. when it was hauled up on the low sandy bank, jack and his uncle went down to examine it. "you said i missed, uncle," cried jack. "what do you make of this?" he pointed to a furrow ploughed across the full breadth of the beast's forehead. "nothing but a bullet did that, i know. my shot must have hit him, but didn't enter the skull. i suppose he hid in the reeds, and vented his fury on the chief. he happened to have a harder skull than your hippo, uncle; you see it was a fluke after all." mr. martindale slowly cut and lighted a cigar. not until he had watched a big cloud of smoke float across the river did he speak. then he said quietly-"just so!" somehow jack felt that he had not the better of the argument. before the sun went down, a group of men came from ilola staggering under loads of grain and fruit, a quantity large enough to supply the camp for several days. that night the men had a royal feast, consuming so many hippo steaks that barney professed himself indignant. "bedad! 'tis greedy scoundhrels they are," he said, "wheniver me mother gave us bhoys a stew--and 'twas not often, ye may be sure, meat being the price it was--'twas wan tiny morsel uv mutton, and a powerful lot uv murphies: she said too much meat would spoil our complexion and ruin our tempers. and begorra! isn't it meself that proves it!" mr. martindale laughed at barney's logic. "i'm not afraid of the niggers' complexions or their tempers," he said; "i only hope they won't keep up that hullabaloo all night and spoil our sleep." the men were indeed very uproarious, and remained around their fires for the greater part of the night, recounting for the hundredth time the exciting events of the day, and composing on the spot songs in praise of the young white man whose fire-stick had slain the terror of the river. one of these songs seemed especially to strike their fancy, and it remained a favourite for many days:- happy imbono! oh! oh! imbono! who saved imbono? the good stranger! the young stranger! the brave stranger! good jacko! young jacko! brave jacko! he came to ilola! happy ilola! lucky ilola! he saved imbono from five hippos, from ten hippos! lucky imbono! happy imbono! oh! oh! imbono! next morning, as soon as it was light, imbono came to pay a visit of ceremony. he had got himself up most elaborately for the occasion. a strip of yellow cotton was wound about his waist. his arms were covered with polished brass rings, and copper rings weighing at least ten pounds each encircled his wrists and ankles. a new headdress decked his hair; and he must have kept his barber busy half the night in arranging his top-knot and painting his face with red camwood and white clay. pat by no means approved of the change, and barked at him furiously. "whisht, ye spalpeen!" said barney, calling off the excited dog. "sure 'tis only his sunday clothes!" surrounded by a group of his young men, who were again loaded with offerings of food, the chief began a long speech, which was by no means abridged in nando's translation. he related the incident of the previous day, omitting none of the most insignificant details, accounting, as it appeared, for every tooth in the jaws of the huge animal from which he had been saved. he went on to say that in gratitude to the white man he had changed his mind. no longer would he withhold food; his young men even now had their hands full of the best products of ilola. no longer would he refuse his friendship; he would even show the white man the place where the yellow metal was to be found--on one condition, that the white man would become his blood brother. imbono and the white men would then be friends for ever. "well, i'll be very glad to be friends with the chief," said mr. martindale, "and i'm right down obliged to him for agreeing to show me the location of the gold. and what's this blood brother business anyway? i don't size up to that without knowing something about it, you bet." "me tell all 'bout it, sah. imbono hab got knife; he come scratch, scratch massa his arm; den blood come, just little tiny drop, oh yes! den imbono he lick massa him blood. massa he hab got knife too: he scratch imbono him arm all same, lick imbono him blood. me fink massa not like black man him blood--not berrah berrah much. den massa gib imbono little tiny present--knife, like knife samba stole from nando; imbono gib massa fowl, or brass ring, or anyfing massa like. den massa and imbono dey be blood brudder, be friends for eber and eber amen." "well, i guess the blood business sounds rather disgusting. what do you think, jack?" jack made a grimace. "couldn't we leave all the licking to him, uncle?" here nando broke in. "me fink massa not like black blood. all same, i show de way. massa hold imbono him arm tight, berrah tight, pretend to lick, get little drop of blood on hand; dat nuff; imbono pleased." "if he's satisfied with that i'm willing, so fire away." the chief beamed when he learnt that the white man had given his consent. the ceremony was quickly performed. then imbono handed them each a copper ring, and received in return a pinch of salt from mr. martindale and a lucifer match from jack, nando assuring them that no more acceptable presents could have been thought of. imbono recited a sort of chant, which was explained to mean that he, his sons, his friends, the men of ilola, from that time forth and for evermore would be the true friends of the white men; everything he had was theirs. with a suitable reply from mr. martindale and jack the ceremony ended. jack noticed when the chief had gone that nando's face wore a somewhat woebegone look. "what's the matter, nando?" he asked. "nando berrah sick, sah. imbono hab got present, massa hab got present, little massa hab got present all same; nando hab got no present, no nuffin. dat make nando sick. samba hab got nando him knife: what for nando no hab nuffin at all?" "seems to me he wants a commission on the transaction," said mr. martindale with a smile. "give him something, jack; he's not a bad sort." "i've got a lucky sixpence, uncle; he can string that round his neck. here you are, nando." the negro took the coin with delight. "bolotsi o!" he exclaimed. "nando no sick no more. him plenty comfy inside. all jolly nice now sah: oh yes!" [1] bully for you! chapter viii jack in command "we've come out of that better than i expected," said mr. martindale, when the chief had gone. "i only hope our new brother won't carry his affection too far. if he keeps piling in food in this way, our fellows will wax fat and kick." "you'll have to give him a hint, uncle. proverbs are mostly old-fashioned rubbish, but there's one that would suit him: 'enough is as good as a feast.'" "which no nigger would believe. now i wonder when he will take us to find this ore. the sooner the better, although i calculate he doesn't know the value of time." imbono returned in the course of the afternoon, and said that he would be ready to conduct the white men to the gold region next day. but he stipulated that only his new brothers should accompany him. to this condition no one objected but nando, who appeared to regard it as a personal slight. "berrah well, berrah well," he said, his tone suggesting that he washed his hands of the business. "nando no go, massa no can say nuffin to imbono. berrah well; all same." immediately after breakfast next morning the two set off in imbono's company, jack carried a prospector's pan for washing the soil, mr. martindale having declared that he didn't expect to find nuggets lying around. they also carried enough food for the day. imbono struck off due west from the village; then, when well out of sight, he made a detour, and passing through a couple of miles of dense forest, entered a broken hilly country, which to mr. martindale's experienced eye showed many traces of volcanic disturbance. at last, forcing their way through a belt of tangled copse, with many scratches from prickly sprays, they came upon a deep gully, at the bottom of which ran a stream of brownish water, now some twenty feet in breadth. that it was much broader at certain seasons was shown by the wide edging of sand and pebbles at each side. the chief came to a halt at the edge of the gully, and pointing up and down the stream, said something in his own language. mr. martindale nodded his head, but said to jack-"i suppose he means we're right there. why on earth could not he let nando come and do the translating?" "show him your watch, uncle!" at the sight of the watch imbono nodded his head rapidly and ejaculated what was clearly an affirmative. then he led the way down the rocky side of the gully, the others scrambling after him. on reaching the sandy strand mr. martindale bent down and eagerly examined it. taking some of the sand and pebbles in his hand, he stuck a magnifying glass in his eye and picked them over carefully. "looks promising, jack," he said, with the enthusiasm of an old miner. "there are little granules of quartz mixed up with the sand, and a particle or two of iron. but that don't prove there's gold. we'll just try a little experiment." he emptied a few handfuls of the soil into the pan, filled this with water from the stream, and moved the pan to and fro so as to give the water a concentric motion, jack and the chief watching him with equal interest. every now and then mr. martindale would cant off a little of the water, which carried off some of the lighter sand with it. "what you may call a process of elimination or reduction," he said. "_reductio ad absurdum_, uncle?" "i hope not. guess you're smartening up, jack." "call it survival of the fittest, then." "of the thickest, i'd say. this washing carries off the useless light sand, and leaves the heavy stuff behind, and it's in that we'll find gold if at all." after nearly half an hour's patient manipulation of the pan, there was left in the bottom a blackish powder and some coarse grains of quartz, with just enough water to cover them. "look at that, my boy," said mr. martindale. "first time you've seen anything of that sort, i guess." "but where's the gold, uncle?" "that's what remains to be seen--perhaps. keep your eye on that groove as i tilt the pan round. the black stuff is iron-stone; you needn't trouble about that. see if it leaves anything else." he gently tilted the pan so that the water slowly flowed round the groove, carrying with it the quartz grains and the powder. jack watched narrowly. after the contents of the pan had made the circuit two or three times he suddenly exclaimed-"there's a sort of glitter left behind the powder, uncle." "i reckon that's enough," said mr. martindale, setting down the pan. "we've hit it, jack." jack could not refrain from giving a cheer. the chief, who had but half approved the proceedings at the beginning, caught the infection of the lad's enthusiasm, and snapped his fingers and slapped his thighs vigorously. "we'll have another look higher up," said mr. martindale. "one swallow don't make a summer--another piece of what you call antiquated rubbish, jack. there's gold here, that's certain; but i don't know whether it's rich enough to be worth working." they walked for half a mile up the stream, and mr. martindale went through the same process with the soil there. he was again rewarded. this time, however, the trace of gold was more distinct. "jack, my boy," he said, "there's a small fortune in the bed of the stream alone. but i'm not satisfied yet. it's up to us now to discover the mother lode. to judge by the size of the stream it can't be far off. the botheration is we can't talk to the chief, and i say it's most unbrotherly to refuse us the advantage of an interpreter." "well, we've plenty of time, uncle. i vote we have our lunch and then go on again." they sat down on boulders at the edge of the river and ate the manioc cakes and bananas with which barney had provided them. imbono seemed pleased when he was invited to share their lunch. going into the forest, he returned with a large leaf which he shaped like a cup, and in this he brought water from the stream for the white men. after lunch they followed up the stream. at intervals mr. martindale stopped to test the gravel, and found always some trace of gold, now slight, now plentiful. some three miles up they came to a confluence. the stream was joined by a smaller swifter one, which evidently took its rise in the steep hilly country now becoming visible through the trees. "we'll try this, jack." "why?" "because the bed's more gravelly than the other. i guess the big stream comes out of the forest somewhere; the other will suit our book best." they found their progress becoming more and more difficult. the ground was more rocky, the sides of the gully were steeper, and the edging of dry gravel diminished until by and by it disappeared altogether, and the prospectors had to take off their boots and socks and wade. there were trees and bushes here and there on the sides and at the top of the gully, but the vegetation became more and more scanty as they ascended. presently the sound of falling water struck upon their ears, and a sudden turn of the stream brought them into full view of a cataract. at this point the gully had widened out, and the water fell over a broad smooth ledge of rock, dashing on the stones after a descent of some fifty or sixty feet. "that's fine!" exclaimed jack, halting to watch the cascade sparkling in the sunlight, and the brownish white foam eddying at the foot. "grand!" assented mr. martindale. "there's enough water power there to save many a thousand dollars' worth of machinery." "i was thinking of the scenery, not machinery, uncle," said jack, with a laugh. "scenery! why, i've got a lot finer waterfall than that on my dining-room wall. it isn't niagara one way or t'other, but it'll do a lot of mill grinding all the same. now, jack, you're younger than i am. i want to see what there is by those rocks ten feet away from the bottom of the fall. strip, my boy; a bath will do you a power of good, a hot day like this; and there are no crocodiles here to make you feel jumpy." jack stripped and was soon waist deep in the water. reaching the spot his uncle had indicated, he stooped, and found that he could just touch the bottom without immersing himself. the water was too frothy for the bottom to be seen; he groped along it with his hands, bringing up every now and then a small fragment of quartz or a handful of gravel, which mr. martindale, after inspecting it from a distance, told him to throw in again. at last, when he was getting somewhat tired of this apparently useless performance, he brought up a handful of stones, not to as eyes differing from what he had seen for the past half hour. he spread them out for his uncle, now only two or three yards away, to examine. "i guess you can put on your clothes now," said mr. martindale. "why, hang it, man! you've thrown it away!" jack had pitched the stones back into the water. "i thought you'd done, uncle," he said. "so i have, and you're done too--done brown. d'you know you've thrown away a nugget worth i don't know how many dollars?" "you didn't tell me what you were after," said jack, somewhat nettled. "i couldn't be expected to know you were hunting for nuggets." "no, you couldn't be expected: and that's just exactly what i brought you over to america for. when you've had the kind of smartening up i mean you to have, you won't talk about what's expected or not expected; you'll just figure it out that there's some reason in everything, and you'll use your own share of reason accordingly." "all right, uncle," replied jack good-humouredly. "i might have put two and two together, perhaps. at school, you see, they liked us to do as we were told without arguing. 'theirs not to reason why'--you know. shall i fish for that nugget?" "not worth while. a few dollars more or less are neither here nor there. i know what i want to know, and now i think we'd better be getting. put your clothes on. our brother imbono has several times anxiously pointed to the sun. he evidently isn't comfortable at the idea of being benighted in these regions." screwing some of the sifted gravel into a bag of leaves, mr. martindale signed to the chief that he was ready to return. they reached the camp just as the sun was setting. in honour of the recent discovery, mr. martindale invited the chief to supper, and gave him a regale which astonished him. to see the white man bring peaches out of a closed pot made imbono open his eyes; but the sensation of the evening was furnished by a bottle of soda water. when the stopper was loosed and the liquid spurted over, the chief shrank back in amazement, uttering a startled cry. nando, not skilled in european politeness, guffawed uproariously. "him say debbil water, sah. yah! yah!" nothing would induce imbono to drink the stuff. but he took kindly to tea, and being prevailed on to try a pinch of snuff, he laughed heartily when the paroxysm of sneezing was over, and asked for more. "him say like laugh-cry dust plenty much," said nando. when the chief had eaten his fill, mr. martindale, with considerable diplomacy, explained that the discovery of gold was of little use to him unless he could take men to the spot, and desired the withdrawal of the prohibition. nando took a long time to convey this to imbono, and jack suspected that he was making somewhat lavish promises in the nature of _quid pro quo_. imbono at length agreed to the white man's request, provided none of the workers he wished to take with him were servants of the great white chief. he consented also to lead him back to the cataract next day, so that he might complete his search for the gold-bearing rocks. on this second journey mr. martindale and jack were accompanied by two of their negroes with picks. on arriving at the spot the men were set to break away portions of the rocky wall on the left of the cataract. "you see, jack," said mr. martindale, "the fact that we found gold in the stream shows that it is still being washed down by the water; otherwise it would have been swept away or buried long ago. the rock must be of a soft kind that offers comparatively little resistance to the water, and i'm rather inclined to think that not so very many years ago the cataract was a good deal farther forward than it is now. well, the gold-bearing stratum must run right through the cataract, horizontally i suspect. it may not be a broad one, but it will probably extend some distance on each side of the fall, and a few hours' work ought to prove it." as the rock fell away under the negroes' picks, mr. martindale and jack carefully washed samples of it. in less than an hour the glittering trail shone out clear in the wake of the granules of rock as they slid round the groove. "so much for the first part of our job," said mr. martindale, with a quiet sigh of satisfaction. "the next thing is to see if the gold extends above the cataract." under imbono's guidance the party made their way by a detour to the river banks above the falls. after a search of some hours mr. martindale declared himself satisfied that the lode was confined to the rocks over which the water poured. "we can't do much more for the present," he said. "the next thing is to get machinery for working the ore. we'll have to go back to boma. we can probably get simple materials for working the alluvial deposits there, but the machinery for crushing the ore must be got from europe, and that'll take time. we'll pack up and start to-morrow." but after breakfast next morning, when mr. martindale had lighted his morning cigar, he startled jack by saying suddenly-"say, jack, how would you like to be left here with barney and some of the men while i go back to boma?" "what a jolly lark!" said jack, flushing with pleasure. "humph! that's a fool's speech, or a schoolboy's, which often comes to the same thing. i'm not thinking of larks, or gulls, or geese, but of serious business." "sorry, uncle. that's only my way of saying i should like it immensely." "i've been turning it over in the night. i want to make a man of you, jack; i want to see if there's any grit in you. there ought to be, if you're your mother's boy. anyway this will give you a chance. things are this way. we've struck a fortune here. well, i'm an old miner, and i don't allow anybody to jump my claim. i don't reckon any one is likely to jump it; still, you never know. that fellow elbel, now; he's an official of the belgian company, and he knows what i'm here for. he might take it into his head to steal a march on me, and though i've got the mining monopoly for all this district, you bet that won't be much of a protection of my claim all these miles from civilization. so it's advisable to have a man on the spot, and it's either you or me. you don't know anything about mining machinery, so i guess it's no good sending you to boma. consequently, you must stay here." "i'm jolly glad of the chance, uncle. i'll look after your claim." "spoiling for a fight, eh? but we mustn't have any fighting. mind you, all this is only speculation--foresight, prudence, call it what you like. i don't calculate on any one trying to do me out of my rights. and if any one tries to jump my claim, it won't do for you to make a fool of yourself by trying to oppose 'em by force. all you can do is to sit tight and keep an eye on things till i get back. i don't know i'm doing right to leave you: you're the only nephew i've got, and you can't raise nephews as you raise pumpkins. but i thought it all out while you were snoring, and i've made up my mind to give it a trial. patience and tact, that's what you want. you've got 'em, or you haven't. if you have, i reckon it's all right: if you haven't----" "your cigar has gone out, dear old man," said jack, laying his hand on his uncle's. "so it has. i'll try another. well, that's settled, eh? i'll be as quick as i can, jack: no doubt i'll find a launch when i reach the congo, or even before if elbel's boss at makua likes to make himself pleasant. but i've no doubt elbel has coloured up our little meeting in his report to headquarters. anyhow, i should be right back in two or three months--not so very long after all. i'll forward some rifles and ammunition from the first station where i can get 'em: the sale of arms is prohibited in this state, of course; but that isn't the only law, by all accounts, that's a dead letter here, and i don't doubt a little palm-oil will help me to fix up all i want. you'll have to teach the men how to use 'em, and remember, they're only for self-defence in the last extremity. see?" "i'll be careful, uncle. it's lucky we've a friend in imbono. i think we'll get along first-rate. nando can do the interpreting till i learn something of the language." "jingo! i'd forgotten nando. that's a poser, jack. i shall want him to pilot me down to boma. i can't get along without an interpreter. that's a nailer on our little scheme, my boy; for of course you can't stay here without some one to pass your orders to the men." jack looked very crestfallen. the prospect of being left in charge was very delightful to him, and he had already been resolving to show himself worthy of his uncle's trust. the thing he had regretted most in leaving rugby was that he would never be in the sixth and a "power." he did not shrink from responsibility; and it was hard to have his hopes of an independent command dashed at the moment of opportunity. suddenly an idea occurred to him. "are you sure none of the other men know enough english to serve my turn?" he said. "nando said not a man jack of 'em knows it but himself. i'll call him up and ask him again." nando came up all smiles in answer to the call. "you told me that none of the men speak english but yourself," said mr. martindale; "is that true?" "too plenty much true, sah. me speak troof all same, sah." "that's unfortunate. we're going back to boma. i wanted to leave mr. jack here, but i can't do that unless he has some one to do the talking for him. go and get the things packed up, nando." the negro departed with alacrity. but not five minutes later he returned, accompanied by a negro a little shorter than himself, but otherwise showing a strong resemblance. both were grinning broadly. "my brudder, sah," said nando, patting the younger man on the shoulder. "he berrah fine chap. him lepoko. speak inglesa; berrah clebber. nando go with big massa, lepoko stay with little massa; oh yes! all too fine and jolly." "lepoko speaks english, does he?" said mr. martindale. "then you're a liar, nando!" "no, sah, me no tell lies, not at all. lepoko no speak inglesa all de time, sah. what for two speak inglesa one time? too much nise, massa no can hear what nando say. nando go, all same; massa muss hab some one can talk. berrah well; den lepoko hab go; can talk all right. he show massa what can do." "one, two, free, forty, hundred fousand," began lepoko glibly. "ten little nigger boys. what de good of anyfink? way down de swannee ribber----" "that'll do, that'll do!" cried mr. martindale, laughing. "you've got your interpreter, jack. nando, get ready to start. bring nine men with you, the rest will stay with mr. jack. the fellow was hankering after the flesh-pots of boma, i suppose," he added, when nando had gone, "and that accounts for his sudden discovery of his brother's eloquence--too jealous of his own importance to give it away before. now there's barney, jack. i don't know how he'll take being left here." barney took it very well. when mr. martindale mentioned that he would be absent for at least two months, he remarked-"bedad, sorr, i'll be getting fat at last. imbono sent another heap of maniac this morning, and seeing that i'll have nothing whativer to do for two months, sure i'll be a different man entirely by the time you come back." an hour later the shore was crowded with natives come to bid the white man farewell. imbono was there with all the men of his village. at his final interview with mr. martindale he had promised to watch carefully over the welfare of his young blood brother; he would supply him and his men with food, and defend him from wild beasts and aggressive black men, and his villagers should at once set about building new huts for the party. "remember, jack, patience--and tact. god bless you, my boy." "good-bye, uncle. hope you'll have a pleasant journey. and on the way down keep an eye lifting for samba." then the ten natives struck the water with their paddles, the canoe glided down the stream, and as it disappeared round a bend of the river jack heard the men's voices uplifted in a new song composed for the occasion. "what are they singing, lepoko?" he asked of his new interpreter. "me tell massa. "down brown ribber, broad brown ribber, white man go in canoe. good-bye, ilola, good-bye, imbono, good-bye, jacko, brave jacko, young jacko. he save imbono, lucky imbono; down brown ribber white man go." chapter ix samba meets the little men samba had cheerfully accompanied mr. martindale's expedition, in the confidence that one of its principal objects, if not indeed its main one, was the discovery of his parents. nando had told him, on the ruins of banonga, that the white man would help him in his search, and the white man had treated him so kindly that he believed what nando said. but as the days passed and the canoes went farther and farther up stream, miles away from banonga, the boy began to be uneasy. more than once he reminded nando of his promise, only to be put off with excuses: the white man was a very big chief, and such a trifling matter as the whereabouts of a black boy's father and mother could not be expected to engage him until his own business was completed. samba became more and more restless. he wished he could open the matter himself to the white men; but the few words of english he had picked up from jack and barney were as useless to him as any schoolboy's french. jack often wondered why there was so wistful a look upon the boy's face as he followed him about, much as pat followed samba. he spoke to nando about it, but nando only laughed. samba began to distrust nando. what if the man's assurances were false, and there had never been any intention of seeking his father? the white men had been kind to him; they gave him good food; he was pleased with the knife presented to him as a reward for his watchfulness; but all these were small things beside the fact that his parents were lost to him. had the white men no fathers? he wondered. at length he came to a great resolution. if they would not help him, he must help himself. he would slip away one night and set off in search. he well knew that in cutting himself adrift from the expedition many days' journey from his old home he was exchanging ease and plenty for certain hardship and many dangers known and unknown. the forest in the neighbourhood of banonga was as a playground to him; but he could not know what awaited him in a country so remote as this. he had never been more than half a day's journey from home, but he had heard of unfriendly tribes who might kill him, or at best keep him enslaved. and the white men of bula matadi--did not they sometimes seize black boys, and make them soldiers or serfs? yet all these perils must be faced: samba loved his parents, and in his case love cast out fear. one morning, very early, when every one in the camp was occupied with the first duties of the day, samba stole away. his own treasured knife was slung by a cord about his neck; he carried on his hip, negro-fashion, a discarded biscuit tin which he had filled with food saved from his meals of the previous day; and mr. martindale's knife dangled from his waist cord. it was easy to slip away unseen; the camp was surrounded by trees, and within a minute he was out of sight. he guessed that an hour or two would pass before his absence was discovered, and then pursuit would be vain. but he had not gone far when he heard a joyous bark behind him, and pat came bounding along, leaping up at him, looking up in his face, as if to say: "you are going a-hunting: i will come too, and we will enjoy ourselves." samba stopped, and knelt down and put his arms about the dog's neck. should he take him? the temptation was great: pat and he were staunch friends; they understood each other, and the dog would be excellent company in the forest. but samba reflected. pat did not belong to him, and he had never stolen anything in his life. the dog's master had been good to him: it would be unkind to rob him. and pat was a fighter: he was as brave as samba himself, but a great deal more noisy and much less discreet. samba knew the ways of the forest; it was wise to avoid the dangerous beasts, to match their stealth with stealth; pat would attack them, and certainly come off worst. no, pat must go back. so samba patted him, rubbed his head on the dog's rough coat, let pat lick his face, and talked to him seriously. then he got up and pointed towards the camp and clapped his hands, and when pat showed a disposition still to follow him, he waved his arms and spoke to him again. pat understood; he halted and watched the boy till he disappeared among the trees; then, giving one low whine, he trotted back with his tail sorrowfully lowered. samba went on. he had come to the river, but he meant to avoid it now. the river wound this way and that: the journey overland would be shorter. he might be sought for along the bank; but in the forest wilds he would at least be safe from pursuit, whatever other dangers he might encounter. at intervals along the bank, too, lay many villages: and samba was less afraid of beasts than of men. so, choosing by the instinct which every forest man seems to possess a direction that would lead towards his distant village, he went on with lithe and springy gait, humming an old song his grandfather mirambo had taught him. his path at first led through a grassy country, with trees and bush in plenty, yet not so thick but that the sunlight came freely through the foliage, making many shining circles on the ground. but after about two hours the forest thickened; the sunlit spaces became fewer, the undergrowth more and more tangled. at midday he sat down by the edge of a trickling stream to eat his dinner of manioc, then set off again. the forest was now denser than anything to which he had been accustomed near banonga, and he went more warily, his eyes keen to mark the tracks of animals, his ears alive to catch every sound. he noticed here the scratches of a leopard on a tree trunk, there the trampled undergrowth where an elephant had passed; but he saw no living creature save a few snakes and lizards, and once a hare that scurried across his path as he approached. he knew that in the forest it is night that brings danger. the forest became ever thicker, and as evening drew on it grew dark and chill. the ground was soft with layers of rotted foliage, the air heavy with the musty smell of vegetation in decay. samba's teeth chattered with the cold, and he could not help longing for barney's cosy hut and the warm companionship of the terrier. it was time to sleep. could he venture to build a fire? the smoke might attract men, but he had seen no signs of human habitation. it would at any rate repel insects and beasts. yes--he would build a fire. first he sought for a tree with a broad overhanging branch on which he could perch himself for the night. then he made a wide circuit to assure himself that there were no enemies near at hand. in the course of his round he came to a narrow clearing where an outcrop of rock had prevented vegetation, and on the edges of this he found sufficient dry brushwood to make his fire. collecting an armful, he carried it unerringly to his chosen tree, heaped it below the hospitable branch, and with his knife whittled a hard dry stick to a sharp point. he selected then a square lump of wood, cut a little hollow in it, and, holding his pointed stick upright in the hollow, whirled it about rapidly between his hands until first smoke then a spark appeared. having kindled his fire he banked it down with damp moss he found hard by, so as to prevent it from blazing too high and endangering his tree or attracting attention. then he climbed up into the branch; there he would be safest from prowling beasts. the acrid smoke rose from the fire beneath and enveloped him, but it gave him no discomfort, rather a feeling of "homeness" and well-being; such had been the accompaniment of sleep all his life long in his father's hut at banonga. curled up on that low bough he slept through the long hours--a dreamless sleep, undisturbed by the bark of hyenas, the squeal of monkeys, or the wail of tiger-cats. when he awoke he was stiff and cold. it was still dark, but even at midday the sun can but feebly light the thickest parts of the congo forest. the fire had gone out; but samba did not venture to leave his perch until the glimmer of dawn, pale though it was, gave him light enough to see by. he was ravenously hungry, and did not spare the food left in his tin; many a time he had found food in the forest near his home, and now that he felt well and strong, no fear of starvation troubled him. having finished his simple breakfast, he slung the empty can over his hip and set off on his journey. for two days he tramped on and on, plucking here the red berries of the phrynia, there the long crimson fruit of the amoma, with mushrooms in plenty. nothing untoward had happened. in this part of the forest beasts appeared to be few. now and again he heard the rapping noise made by the soko, the gibber of monkeys, the squawk of parrots: once he stood behind a broad trunk and watched breathlessly as a tiger-cat stalked a heedless rabbit; each night he lighted his fire and found a serviceable branch on which to rest. but on the third day he was less happy. the farther he walked, the denser became the forest, the more difficult his path. edible berries were rarer; fewer trees had fungi growing about their roots; he had to content himself with forest beans in their brown tough rind. when the evening was drawing on he could find no dry fuel for a fire, and now, instead of seeking a branch for a sleeping place, he looked for a hollow tree which would give him some shelter from the cold damp air of night. having found his tree he gathered a handful of moss, set fire to it from his stick and block, which he had carefully preserved, and threw the smouldering heap into the hollow to smoke out noxious insects, or a snake, if perchance one had made his home there. the fourth day was a repetition of the third, with more discomforts. sometimes the tangled vines and creepers were so thick that he had to go round about to find a path. the vegetation provided still less food, only a few jack fruit and the wild fruit of the motanga rewarding his search. he was so hungry at midday that he was reduced to collecting slugs from the trees, a fare he would fain have avoided. fearless as he was, he was beginning to be anxious; for to make a certain course in this dense forest was well-nigh impossible. at dusk, when again he sought a hollow tree and dropped a heap of smouldering herbage into the hole, he started back with a low cry, for he heard an ominous hiss in the depths, and was only just in time to avoid a python which had been roused from sleep by the burning mass. in a twinkling the huge coils spread themselves like a released watch-spring beyond the mouth of the hole and along the lowermost branch of the tree. with all his forest lore, samba was surprised to find that a python could move so quickly. the instant he heard the angry hiss he crouched low against the trunk, thankful that the reptile had chosen a branch on the other side. armed only with a knife, he knew himself no match for a twenty-foot python; had he not seen a young hippopotamus strangled by a python no larger than this? like brer rabbit, samba lay low and said nothing: until the python, swinging itself on to the branch of an adjacent tree a few feet away, disappeared in the foliage. then, allowing time for the reptile to settle elsewhere, samba sought safer quarters. the python's house was comfortable, even commodious; but samba would scarcely have slept as soundly as he was wont in uncertainty whether the disturbed owner might not after all return home. he felt very cramped and miserable when he rose next day to resume his journey. this morning he had to start without breakfast, for neither fruits nor berries were to be had: a search among fallen trees failed even to discover ants of which to make a scanty meal. constant walking and privation were telling on his frame; his eyes were less bright, his step was less elastic. but there was a great heart within him; he plodded on; he had set out to find his father and mother; he would not turn back. the dangers ahead could be no worse than those he had already met, and no experienced general of army could have known better than samba that to retreat is often more perilous than to advance. in the afternoon, when, having found a few berries, he had eaten the only meal of the day and was about to seek, earlier than usual, his quarters for the night, he heard, from a short distance to the left of his track, a great noise of growling and snarling. the sounds were not like those of any animals he knew. with cautious steps he made his way through the matted undergrowth towards the noise. almost unawares he came upon an extraordinary sight. in the centre of an open space, scarcely twenty feet across, a small man, lighter in hue than the majority of congolese natives, was struggling to free himself from the grip of a serval which had buried its claws deep in his body and thigh. two other small men, less even than samba in height, were leaping and yelling around their comrade, apparently instructing him how to act, though neither made use of the light spears they carried to attack the furious beast. the serval, its greenish eyes brilliant with rage, was an unusually powerful specimen of its kind, resembling indeed a leopard rather than a tiger-cat. it was bent, as it seemed, upon working its way upward to the man's throat, and its reddish spotted coat was so like his skin in hue that, as they writhed and twisted this way and that, an onlooker might well have hesitated to launch a spear at the beast for fear of hitting the man. one of the little man's hands had a grip of the serval's throat; but he was not strong enough to strangle it, and the lightning quickness of the animal's movements prevented him from gripping it with the other hand. even a sturdily-built european might well have failed to gain the mastery in a fight with such a foe, and the little man had neither the strength nor the staying power to hold out much longer. yet his companions continued to yell and dance round, keeping well out of reach of the terrible claws; while blood was streaming from a dozen deep gashes in the little man's body. samba stood but a few moments gazing at the scene. the instinct of the born hunter was awake in him, and that higher instinct which moves a man to help his kind. clutching his broad knife he bounded into the open, reached the fainting man in two leaps, and plunged the blade deep into the creature's side behind the shoulder. with a convulsive wriggle the serval made a last attempt to bury its fangs in its victim's neck. then its muscles suddenly relaxed, and it fell dead to the ground. samba's intervention had come too late. the man had been so terribly mauled that his life was ebbing fast. his comrades looked at him and began to make strange little moaning cries; then they laid him on a bed of leaves and turned their attention to samba. he knew that he was in the presence of bambute, the dreaded pigmies of the forest. never before had he seen them; but he had heard of them as fearless hunters and daring fighters, who moved about from place to place in the forest, and levied toll upon the plantations of larger men. the two little men came to him and patted his arms and jabbered together; but he understood nothing of what they said. by signs he explained to them that he was hungry. then, leaving their wounded comrade to his fate, they took samba by the hands and led him rapidly into the forest, following a path which could scarcely have been detected by any except themselves. in some twenty minutes they arrived at a clearing where stood a group of two score small huts, like beehives, no more than four feet high, with an opening eighteen inches square, just large enough to allow a pigmy to creep through. pigmies, men and women, were squatting around--ugly little people, but well-made and muscular, with leaves and grass aprons for all clothing, and devoid of such ornaments as an ordinary negro loves. they sprang up as samba approached between his guides, and a great babel of question and answer arose, like the chattering of monkeys. the story was told; none showed any concern for the man left to die; the bambute acknowledge no ties, and seem to have little family affection. a plentiful dinner of antelope flesh and bananas was soon placed before samba, and it was clear that the pigmies were ready to make much of the stranger who had so boldly attacked the serval. one of them knew a little of a congolese dialect, and he succeeded in making samba understand that the chief was pleased with him, and wished to adopt him as his son. samba shook his head and smiled: his own parents were alive, he said; he wished for no others. this made the chief angry. the chiefs of some of the big men had often adopted pigmy boys and made slaves of them; it was now his turn. the whole community scowled and snarled so fiercely that samba thought the safest course was to feign acquiescence for the moment, and seize the first opportunity afterwards of slipping away. but nearly three weeks passed before a chance presented itself. the pigmies kept him with them, never letting him go out of their sight. they fed him well--almost too well, expecting his powers of consumption to be equal to their own. never before had he seen such extraordinary eaters. one little man would squat before a stalk bearing fifty or sixty bananas, and eat them all. true, he lay moaning and groaning all night, but next morning would be quite ready to gorge an equal meal. since they did not cultivate the ground themselves, samba wondered where they obtained their plentiful supply of bananas and manioc. he learnt by and by that they appropriated what they pleased from the plantations of a neighbouring tribe of big men, who had too great a respect for the pigmies' poisoned arrows and spears to protest. samba hoped that he might one day escape to this tribe, but a shifting of the village rendered this impossible, though it afforded the boy the opportunity for which he had so long been waiting. on the night when the pigmy tribe settled down in its new home, four days' journey from the old, samba took advantage of the fatigue of his captors to steal away. he had chosen the darkest hour before the dawn, and knowing that he would very soon be missed and followed up, he struck off through the forest as rapidly as he could. with plentiful food he had recovered his old strength and vigour, and he strode along fleetly, finding his way chiefly by the nature of the ground beneath his feet; for there was no true path, and the forest was almost completely dark, even when dawn had broken elsewhere. as the morning drew on the leafy arcades became faintly illuminated, and he could then see sufficiently well to choose the easiest way through the obstacles that beset his course. despite all his exertions his progress was very slow. well he knew that, expert though he was in forest travel, he could not move through these tangled mazes with anything like the speed of the active little men who by this time were almost certainly on his track. at the best he could hardly have got more than two miles' start. as he threaded his way through the brushwood, hacking with his knife at obstructive creepers, and receiving many a scratch from briar and thorn, he tried to think of some way of throwing the pursuers off the scent; but every yard of progress demanded so much exertion that he was unequal to the effort of devising any likely ruse. suddenly coming upon a shallow stream about two yards wide that ran across his line of march, he saw in a flash a chance of covering his trail. he stepped into the stream, pausing for a moment to drink, then waded a few paces against the current, narrowly scanning the bordering trees. they showed a close network of interlacing branches, one tree encroaching on another. choosing a bough overhanging the brook, just above his head, samba drew himself up into the tree, taking care that no spots of water were left on the branch to betray him. then, clambering nimbly like a monkey from bough to bough, he made a path for himself through the trees at an angle half-way between the directions of the stream and of his march through the forest. he hoped that, losing his track in the stream, the bambute would jump to the conclusion that he was making his way up or down its bed, and would continue their chase accordingly. among the trees his progress was even slower than on the ground. every now and again he had to return on his tracks, encountering a branch that, serviceable as it might look, proved either too high or too low, or not strong enough to bear his weight. and he was making more noise than he liked. there was not only the rustle and creak of parting leaves and bending twigs, and the crack of small branches that snapped under his hand; but his intrusion scared the natural denizens of the forest, and they clattered away with loud cries of alarm--grey parrots in hundreds, green pigeons, occasionally a hawk or the great blue plantain-eater. the screeches of the birds smothered, indeed, any sound that he himself might make; but such long-continued evidence of disturbance might awaken the suspicion of the little men and guide them to his whereabouts. by and by he came to a gap in the forest. the clear sunlight was welcome as a guide to his course; but he saw that to follow the direction which he believed would bring him towards banonga he must now leave the trees. he stopped for a few minutes to recover breath, and to consider what he had best do. as he lay stretched along a bough, his eye travelled back over the path he had come. the vagaries of lightning that had struck down two forest giants in close proximity disclosed to his view a stretch of some twenty yards of the stream which he had just crossed on his primeval suspension bridge. what caused him to start and draw himself together, shrinking behind a leafy screen thick enough to hide him even from the practised eyes of the little forest men? there, in the bed of the stream, glancing this way and that, at the water, the banks, the trees on every side, were a file of bambute, carrying their little bows and arrows and their short light spears. they moved swiftly, silently, some bending towards the ground, others peering to right and left with a keenness that nothing could escape. samba's heart thumped against his ribs as he watched them. he counted them as they passed one after another across the gap; they numbered twenty, and he was not sure that he had seen the first. the last disappeared. samba waited. had his ruse succeeded? there was absolute silence; he heard neither footstep nor voice. but the little men must soon find out their mistake. they would then cast back to the point where they had lost the scent. could they pick it up again--trace him to the tree and follow him up? he could not tell. they must have been close upon him when he climbed into the tree; evidently he had left the path only in the nick of time. this much he had gained. but he dared not wait longer; there was no safety for him while they were so near; he must on. chapter x a trip with a crocodile samba looked warily round, then began to descend from his perch in the tree, moving as slowly and with as many pauses as a timid bather stepping into the water. once more he was on the ground. pausing only to throw a rapid glance on all sides, he struck off in a direction at right angles to the course of the stream, and resumed his laborious march through the forest maze. hour after hour he pushed on without meeting a living creature. but he had heard too much of the cunning and determination of the congo dwarfs to delude himself with the idea that he had finally shaken them off. tired as he was, sweating in the moist oppressive heat, he dared not rest, even to eat in comfort the food he had brought in his tin. he nibbled morsels as he went, hoping that by good speed during the whole day he might get far enough from the pigmies to make his ultimate escape secure. towards evening he heard in front of him the long monotonous rustle of a stream foaming over a rocky bed. he was careful in approaching it: to meet a crocodile ambushed near the bank would be as dangerous as to meet a man. pushing his way cautiously through the shrubs, he came to the edge of a broad river, flowing in swift eddies from white rapids above. it seemed to samba that this must be a tributary of the lemba, the river on whose bank he had left the white men, and to which, lower down, he must ultimately make his way. pursuit by the white men might now be safely disregarded; samba thought he could hardly do better than keep to the stream, taking his chance of meeting negroes at isolated villages on the banks. these, if he met them, would at any rate be easier to elude than the bambute. but the sun was going down, the air becoming chill. he must find a shelter for the night and pursue his riverside journey next day. a little search revealed, on a bluff above the river, a boulder having a deep cavity on one side. here samba sat down to eat the little food left in his tin; then he curled himself up for the night. nothing disturbed his sleep. in the morning he felt more than usually hungry. his tin was empty; he did not care to leave the river and go hunting in the forest, perhaps vainly, for berries or roots. a little way down stream he noticed a spot where the dark surface of the water was scarcely disturbed by a ripple; was that a deep pool, he wondered, where fish might be? he went down to the edge and, leaning flat upon a rock peeped over. yes; in the depths he caught the scaly gleam of darting fish. springing up, he went to a swampy patch hard by and cut a long, straight, stiff reed. then he took the hard stick with which he made fire, and, sharpening the point until it pricked like a needle, he fitted the wood to the reed so as to make a spear. with this in his hand he once more leant over the pool. he lay still for a few moments, intently watching; then, with a movement of extraordinary swiftness, he plunged his spear into the depths, and brought it out with a silvery trout impaled. the fish had stopped to nibble at a root in the bank. when samba had thus caught three he was satisfied. he did not pause to cook the fish. he split them open, dexterously boned and cleaned them, and ate them raw. he had scarcely finished his breakfast when he saw, hurtling down the rapids above him, a huge forest tree--a mass of green, for most of its branches in full leaf were still upon it. clearly it had not long lost its grip of earth. it came swirling towards samba, every now and then stopping as its submerged part was caught by some rock, only to be whirled round and driven past the obstacle by the weight of water behind. it made a zigzag course through the rapids, and then floated peacefully down the still reach of water beneath. as he watched the tree sailing gently towards him, samba had an idea. why not use it as a raft to carry him on his way? it was strong enough to bear his weight; he could hide in the foliage with at least as good a chance of escaping observation as if he were moving along the banks. by the time he had grasped the notion the tree was past him. he sprang up, raced along until he was level with it, then took a neat header into the water. a minute's rapid swimming brought him to the end of the trunk, which, he saw, had been snapped clean off and was not encumbered by the roots. he clambered up, and the trunk was so long that his trifling weight scarcely depressed its end. smiling with pleasure, he crawled along it until he was in the centre of the leafy screen. this, however, now that he was there, did not seem so dense as when he had viewed it from the bank; he was not concealed so well as he had hoped. every now and again, too, his novel raft gave an ominous lurch and roll, suggesting that the portion above water might at any moment change places with that below. if that happened, samba wondered, would he be able to disengage himself from the tangle of branches and swim clear? but these momentary fears were banished by the novelty and excitement of his position. how delightful it was, after his toilsome and fatiguing journey through the forest, to float down the river without effort of his own in a leafy arbour that defended him from the fierce rays of the sun! and his voyage had the pleasures of variety. sometimes the foliaged top went first; then, when the branches swept the bottom of the stream in shallow reaches, the trunk swung round and went broadside to the current. sometimes the branches stuck fast, the current carried the trunk round in a circle, and when an eddy set it again in motion, the trunk end became the bow of this uneasy ship. bump! that was some rock or sandbank; the tree shook, and samba was nearly toppled from his perch. nk'oketo![1] it was all right; the friendly water had washed the tree clear, and samba was off again, his black eyes gleaming with fun as he peered between the branches. it was early in the afternoon, and very hot even for those latitudes. everything seemed asleep. no breeze ruffled the leaves in the trees along the banks. the air quivered. samba was dozing, lulled by the gentle motion of the tree, whose progress had not for some time been checked. all at once there was a shock. samba instinctively clutched a branch as he felt himself jerked from his seat. his lumbering vessel was twirling round; and looking through the leaves, he saw that it was caught by the head on a sandbank in midstream. but next moment he felt a shiver run down his spine, and an eery creeping about the roots of his hair. below him, not four feet away, a gigantic crocodile was staring at him with his cunning baleful eyes. the swish of the projecting branches upon the sandbank had aroused the reptile from his siesta on this vantage ground, whence, at the lazy opening of an eye, he could survey a long stretch of the river. and he had awoke to see a plump and tempting black boy at the inconsiderable altitude of four feet above his snout. those who have seen the crocodile only in his hours of ease, lazily sunning himself on a river bank, or floating with scarcely more than his eyes and forehead visible on the surface of the stream, may have come to the comfortable conclusion that he is a slow-moving and lethargic beast. but see him rushing at the bank to seize in his terrible jaws the unwary antelope or zebra that has come to drink, or to sweep it into the river with a single blow of his mighty tail. watch him when, roused from his doze on a sandbank, by the sting of a rifle bullet on his armour, he vanishes with lightning rapidity beneath the water. at one moment to all seeming as lifeless as a log, the next he is a raging monster, ready to tear and rend any hapless creature which his inertness has beguiled. of the two, samba and the crocodile, it was the saurian that first recovered his wits. his instinct when disturbed at close quarters is to rush forthwith upon his enemy or victim. thus did the crocodile now. considering that he is a beast not built for jumping, the leap he attempted, with a spasmodic wriggle of his formidable tail, was quite a creditable feat. with his teeth he grazed the lower part of the branch on which samba sat; and the boy, gazing down into the beast's eyes, shuddered and shrank away. fortunate it was for him that his legs had not been dangling. nothing could then have saved him. the reptile, slipping back after its failure, maintained its hold on the lower branches with its forefeet. before it could make a second attempt, samba had swung himself into the branch above. the tree toppled slightly, and for one moment of terror samba feared he would be thrown into the very jaws of the monster. but the sandbank held the tree firmly, and that peril was past. with thick foliage between it and the boy, the crocodile saw no chance of securing its victim from its present position. but it was determined not to be balked, and, cunning beast! could afford to wait. it seemed to know that the boy was only safe so long as he clung to his perch. on the sandbank, or in the water, his end would alike be speedy. so the reptile slid off the bank into the water, and swam to the trunk end of the tree, which had been swung round by the current and was now pointing down stream. if it could not leap, it could crawl, and up the trunk the approach to its prey was easy. samba's eyes were now wide with fright, as he saw the beast's intention. up a tree on the river bank he could have laughed any crocodile to scorn; but this sandbank in midstream was ground peculiarly the creature's own, even though the prey was on a branch ten feet above it. with its experience of sandbanks the crocodile knew there was no permanency in this arrangement. the attempts of the huge reptile to gain a footing on the trunk had a result which caused samba mingled hope and fear. the tree floated clear of the bank, and the voyage began again. but how different were the circumstances! in the stern, no longer a cheerful smiling boy, carelessly watching the slow banks glide by, but a boy whose hands and feet gripped his perch with anxious tenacity, and whose scared eyes were quick to mark every movement of the unwelcome, the abhorred, passenger amidships. with many a splash of its tail, and many a grunt of impatient fury, the monster at last made good its footing on the broad trunk, which under its weight was for more than a quarter of its length invisible beneath the surface of the water. for some minutes it lay still, staring at samba with unwinking eyes, displaying all its teeth as if to grin sardonically at its victim. samba regretted for the moment that he had not swarmed down from his perch and attacked the crocodile with his knife while he was still struggling to mount the trunk. but then he reflected that he had after all done wisely, for the reptile would have slid back into the water, and before samba could gain his retreat, he might have been swept off by one swish of the terrible tail. samba, as he had shown more than once, and notably in the recent incident of the serval, had no lack of courage; but he had never before been at such close quarters with a crocodile, the most terrible of all the natural enemies of man in the regions of the congo. and as he sat and watched the glassy stare of the hideous reptile now wriggling inch by inch towards him, he felt a strange helplessness, a kind of fascination that seemed to chill and paralyse his power of movement as of thought. he had retreated as far as he dared. his weight had caused some of the slenderer and more elastic branches to bend towards the water; he had even imagined that, as he tested them, the pressure threatened to make the tree revolve. what his fate would be if the whirling of the trunk on its axis brought him into the river he well knew. the crocodile would slip as nimbly as an eel after him; and, entangled in the foliage, which to his armoured enemy would offer no obstacle, he would fall an easy prey. the crocodile wriggled on, till it came to the place where the first branch forked from the trunk. scarcely more than its own length now separated it from samba. apparently it had come as near as it cared to venture; not being a climber, the feat of crawling up the tapering branch on which samba was perched was not one to its taste. it lay still, with jaws agape, its eyes half-closed in a kind of wicked leer. samba tried to look away from the hideous beast, but in vain; he found his gaze drawn back uncontrollably. he felt even more subject to the fascination now that the crocodile's movements had ceased. the conviction was growing upon him that sooner or later he would slide down the branch and fall dreamily into the open jaws. he was fast becoming hypnotized. but he was roused from this dangerous trancelike state by a sudden roll of the tree. perched high as he was, the motion caused him to swing through an arc of several yards and brought him perilously near the water. the danger quickened his faculties: he clung on with a tighter grip, bethinking himself to look whether his fishing spear, which he had stuck into the bark, was still safe. he was relieved to find that it was undisturbed. the tree righted itself, and a gleam of hope lightened samba's mind when he saw that the crocodile was in the water. though, stretched on the trunk, the beast had felt the roll less than samba above, it had a less tenacious grip and less ability to adapt itself; and first the tail, then the rest of its body had slid off. it was violently struggling to regain its position, its jaw resting on the trunk, its forepaws furiously beating the water. the memory of the reptile's former difficulties in mounting inspired samba with an idea, which, impelled equally by terror and hate, he was prompt to act upon. the tree was still rocking slightly before regaining its steadiness, and the crocodile, despite its efforts, was unable to gain a firm grip on the moving trunk. all its attention was engaged upon the accomplishment of its immediate purpose: it would lose the dainty morsel if it did not once more mount the tree. samba was quick to seize the critical moment. spear in hand he crept downwards along the branch on which he had been perched, careful that his movements should not divert the crocodile's attention. reaching the junction of the branch with the parent stem, only five or six feet from the reptile, he let himself down noiselessly into the river on the far side of the tree, and swam for a second or two until he came opposite the crocodile. during these few seconds he had been hidden from the creature's view by the mass of the trunk, which rose out of the water to some height above his head. the crocodile had now managed to get its forepaws on the tree, and in struggling to hoist itself its snout was raised almost upright, exposing the soft underside, the sole part in which it is vulnerable to anything except a very heavy bullet. samba caught sight of the tip of the snout above the tree; here was the opportunity he had hoped for in making this hazardous experiment. taking with his left hand a firm grip of a wart on the trunk, he raised himself in the water, and with the right hand drove his spear twice into the monster's throat. the crocodile made no sound; a lash of the powerful tail drove up a wave that caused the tree to rock violently: then the huge body slipped backwards into the water. the moment he had driven his spear home samba let go his hold on the tree, and trod water until the current brought the foliage to him. then he drew himself nimbly up into the branch he had formerly occupied. he was breathless, and scarcely yet recovered from his scare; but there was no sign of the crocodile, and knowing that the reptile when mortally wounded sinks into deep water, he felt that his enemy had gone for ever. he heaved a deep sigh of relief, but chancing to look back, he noticed with a start of renewed dread that the water in the wake of the tree was faintly tinged with red. was it possible that the crocodile, though wounded, was still following? he felt a shiver thrill through him, and, bending down from his perch, kept his eyes fixed in a stare on that ominous sanguine thread. the minutes passed. still the water showed that faint persistent tidge. samba was becoming more and more nervous. like the reptile's eyes but a little while ago, that line of red held his gaze in a strange fascination. he was still watching it when the tree suddenly gave a violent lurch, and turned half over. samba, whose hold had relaxed in his nervousness, was flung off the branch into a clump of bushes at the side of the river, which here began to race rapidly through a deep gorge. scratched and dazed by the fall he picked himself up slowly. he rubbed his eyes. what was this? he was in the midst of a group of pigmies, who were pointing excitedly, uttering their strange coughing cry, to the branches of the tree. in its lurch it had been turned almost completely round, so that the foliage formerly beneath the water was now uppermost. and there, firmly wedged in a fork of two boughs, lay the lifeless body of the crocodile. the bambute jabbered to samba, stroked his arms, patted his back, examined the spear which, though it was broken in his fall, he had not let go. from the bank they had witnessed the boy's bold fight, and they had followed the course of the floating tree until it ran ashore on a jutting bed of rock. samba made signs that he wished to pursue his journey on foot; but the bambute shook their heads and grunted and carried him away with them. once more he was a prisoner. [1] nothing wrong! chapter xi bula matadi comes to ilola "well, barney," said jack, when mr. martindale's canoe had disappeared, "i don't know how a first mate would feel if he lost his captain in mid-ocean, but i should fancy he'd feel pretty much as i do now." "and what sort of feeling is now consuming ye, sorr?" "mixed, barney, very mixed! i like the idea of being left in charge, trusted, you know; there's something jolly pleasant about that. but that's the point, you see; i am left in charge." "sure i see your maning widout your telling me, sorr. 'tis just the very same feeling i used to have whin a bhoy, and me mither put the baby in me arms and tould me to sit wid her on the doorstep. 'twas a sweet pretty colleen, an' i thought a powerful deal uv having such a heap uv loveliness in me arms; but thin, just as you say, sorr, she was in me arms, an' they being thin an' she being fat--begorra! i was soon mighty tired uv it, an' i wished she was ugly so that i might hate her widout sin." "i hope i shan't feel quite so bad as that, barney," said jack with a laugh. "but i own i'm a little anxious with so many people in my charge." "and not wan uv them to be trusted, saving pat and meself." "and this mining claim of my uncle's to keep an eye on and defend without using force." "and wild beasts prowling around----" "and that villainous uncle of samba's somewhere in the neighbourhood, i suppose, waiting a chance to molest us." "and bedad! if he does, he'll find an irishman, an englishman, and a terrier, irish by breed and irish by nature, and them three are a match for any fifty blokos, widout a doubt." "you're an optimist, barney. but you're right. it's silly to meet troubles half-way. we had better set about doing something. i used to think our house-master kept our noses rather too close to the grindstone, but i begin to see he was right when he said work was the best cure for the dumps." "and for what the advertisements call a tindency to corpilence. but what will you be after doing at all, sorr?" "well, don't you think that, now our numbers are reduced, it would be as well to move our camp nearer to imbono's village? we shall be here for a couple of months or so, and if boloko is still on our tracks we should be less open to surprise near ilola. besides, it will give the men something to do. they'd better build grass huts for the whole party, and i don't see why we shouldn't try our hands at architectural improvements." "indeed, 'tis a good notion, sorr. but are ye sure imbono would be willing to have us for close neighbours?" "we can try. he's my blood brother, you know. and i dare say we can put him up to a thing or two." the chief made no objection to the suggested change of site; indeed, he offered the assistance of his men in the construction of the new huts. this, however, jack declined in the politest terms, thinking it better to provide plenty of work for his own men until he had had time to take his bearings. the new huts were built within a short distance of ilola, near a stream. they were the ordinary grass huts of the natives, but jack, seeing a number of wooden slabs taken from the bottoms of old canoes, had purchased them from imbono, and when shaped a little they made a very fair substitute for flooring boards. the new settlement was surrounded with a stockade in the native manner, space enough being left within to accommodate mr. martindale and his party when they should return. this work occupied a fortnight. everything had gone smoothly, save for trifling squabbles among the natives. these jack managed to settle with little difficulty, in great part through the excellent qualities of lepoko, who turned out to be a much better man all round than his brother nando. when the new village was completed, jack set the men to make indian clubs from the trees near at hand, and spent part of the cool hours in instructing his followers in their use. they took readily to the new pastime, and very quickly became proficient in executing a great variety of intricate figures. jack was elated at the success of his experiment: it not only provided an admirable drill for the men, but accustomed them to take commands from him and thus consolidated his authority. imbono's men caught the infection: indian clubs were soon the order of the day in ilola; and it gave jack and barney no little amusement to see men, women, and children at all times of the day whirling clubs around their heads. imbono saw that his men's performances were greatly lacking in rhythm and grace, and he begged his blood brother (whom he had named lokolobolo, "strong leg") to allow some of his men to join in the daily practising. jack was nothing loth; the more influence he could obtain in this way the better his chances of success in the task his uncle had set him. he was casting about for some new employment to occupy and interest his men, when a couple of canoes came up the river bearing a letter from mr. martindale, and a small consignment of mauser rifles and ammunition. the letter was dated from baraka. dear jack,-i've got here safely, no interference, no upsets. i've managed to get hold of some rifles--i won't tell you how--and send them to you in charge of some canoe "boys." hope they'll reach you safely. i've paid the boys well, and promised them as much more if they return and meet me with an acknowledgment from you. i'm off to boma; will write you again from there if i can find a means of sending the letter. let me know by the bearer how you are getting on. on the way down i made more particular inquiries than were possible in coming up as to the methods of the congo government. at stanleyville i met a frenchman who told me a good deal, and here got rather chummy with an english missionary on his way home to tell the british public some of the effects of king leopold's rule. one need only look at the man to see that he is the right sort, with the stuff in him for martyrdom if the call came. the things he told me made my skin creep. leopold seems to be doing his best to depopulate the country. he'll soon make vanderbilt sing small as a multi-millionaire; but when his pile's made this state of his will be a wilderness. i find that the natives are required to bring in four kilos of rubber every fortnight. they're supposed to be paid for it, and they do get brass rods or something of the sort; but the pay works out at the rate of three cents a pound--when rubber to my knowledge fetches about eighty cents a pound in the european market! i hear of cases where they don't even get that; a spoonful of salt is supposed to be sufficient. if the rubber don't measure up to the standard, the least punishment the poor wretches get is twenty-five lashes with a whip of hippo hide--the _chicotte_, an outrageous thing that would cut through a pine log. but they don't stop at twenty-five; a hundred ain't uncommon; no wonder some of the poor creatures peg out after it. but that's not the worst. these precious "forest guards," as they call them, seem to be little less than fiends. i saw with my own eyes, at one of the villages on the way down, a basket filled with hands, cut from the people these savages have killed for not bringing in enough rubber. the frenchman told me they have to produce these hands before the commissary to prove they haven't wasted their cartridges. according to state law they oughtn't to be armed with rifles, but they've got a belgian thing called the albini, and that's how they use it. i wouldn't believe that this hand-chopping was done with the knowledge of the officials, though even then it don't relieve them of responsibility; but i heard of a state officer at one of the outposts who actually paid in brass rods for the hands brought him. law doesn't count here, and justice is only a name. what do you think of this? a belgian official quartered himself with twenty native soldiers on a small village, and because they couldn't fix up at once the food required for the visitors, he carried the chief and some of his men to his camp up river, and kept 'em there tied up for a month till a fine of 5,000 brass rods had been paid--ruination for such a small place. the missionary told me that "fights" are constantly taking place, and "fight" simply means massacre. districts that once held a thousand people are now reduced to a hundred; what natives are not killed get so worn out and dispirited that they are bowled over by sleeping sickness. if this sort of thing goes on much longer, the whole population will be wiped out. you'll be surprised to get such a long letter; but fact is, i can't think of anything else just now. it makes me fairly sick to think that america had a hand in putting this huge territory under the control of a man whose philanthropic high-falutin comes to this. the whole system is organized murder and pillage under the form of law, and for this king leopold, who pockets a thumping profit, is responsible before god and man. now i've told you this you'll know how to deal with that fellow elbel if he tries any tricks. but remember, no fighting except in self-defence. patience, my boy--_toujours la patience_, as the frenchman said to me when i was boiling with rage and wanted to go right away and speak my mind to the governor. your affectionate uncle, john martindale. p.s.--i saw and heard nothing of samba. there was plenty of food for thought here, especially when jack learnt from the head paddler who had brought the letter that the officials of the trust in which ilola was situated were coming up the river to establish new dépôts for the rubber. he wrote a brief account of what he had been doing, and despatched it by the same men. then, to be prepared for eventualities, he picked out the most intelligent of his followers and began to teach them the use of the rifle. only a few of them showed any promise as marksmen. but jack was very patient with them; and having a good stock of ammunition and the promise of more, he did not spare practice, and in a short time had about fifteen fairly trustworthy shots. one man, named makoko, took to the rifle from the first and ran jack close as a marksman. jack was very proud of his pupil. he himself had been the crack shot of his school company; and though there was all the difference in the world between shooting at the butts from a position of rest and shooting at alligators or hippos from a canoe, he had tested his marksmanship with success as he came up the congo. now that some of his men had rifles it occurred to jack to teach them what he remembered of his company drill. it was a welcome change after their long practice with the indian clubs, and they entered into it with the pleasure and zest of children. lepoko was gratified with the rank of sergeant, and makoko made corporal in recognition of his diligence and skill in musketry. when the company was formed barney reminded jack that he had been a corporal in the irish fusiliers. "and sure i'd be in the army now, sorr, only they didn't invent the irish guards till i was a time-expired man. but having been a corporal, it's meself that is cut out to be your liftinant here, sorr. we've got pat for the pet uv the reg'mint," he added, "and the only thing that's wanting is the uniform." "well, barney, perhaps for the sake of uniformity we'd better strip and take to the loincloth." "ah! you must always be having your bit uv fun, sorr. we'd be far too conspicuous, for my skin at any rate would turn red wid modesty, and the generals say that red coats make the best targets for the inemy." the drilling of jack's company was followed with great interest and admiration by imbono and his men. they never failed to attend the daily parade, and soon desired to join it. jack delighted the chief by putting the villagers through the same exercises as his own men, excepting, of course, the musketry practice, for which they had no rifles. before long jack found himself captain of a company a hundred and fifty strong, all but his fifteen riflemen being spearmen. nearly two months had now passed. jack had not heard again from his uncle, whose return he daily expected. he was anxious to see him again, for lately news had been brought in by excited natives that the servants of the great white chief were drawing nearer, their progress being attended by wanton cruelties which boded ill for the men of ilola. so distressed was imbono at the tales he heard from these messengers that he thought of dismantling his village and migrating into the depths of the forest. there for a time he and his people might hide from the destroyer. but to a people accustomed to the open the prospect of making a new home in the forest was gloomy indeed. most of them would probably die of disease before they became acclimatised, and there was great risk of starving while clearings were being made and brought under cultivation. imbono resolved to wait a little longer, hoping that bula matadi might turn back, sated with the spoils from lower reaches of the lemba. one day, the visitors so long expected and so little desired arrived at the village. jack's settlement being on the further side of ilola from the river, he did not know of their approach until informed of it by a messenger from imbono. thirty forest guards of the great white chief had come, and with them twenty nondescripts, hangers-on of the licensed pillagers. their leader was not a white man, as imbono had expected, but a black man like themselves. this surprised jack. it was of rather ill omen that the first representatives of king leopold in imbono's village should be negroes free from white men's control. but the strangers reported that a white man--his name, they said, was elobela--was coming up the river behind them. meanwhile they, in his name, called upon the chief to supply rubber. imbono desired that his brother lokolobolo would come into the village and give him advice. "faith, i'd do nothing of the sort, sorr," said barney. "what would ye have any truck wid elbel's scoundhrels for?" "but it would be a poor return for imbono's kindness to refuse. i shall certainly go; the question is, shall i go armed?" "the blessed angels help ye if ye don't, sorr. take your revolver; i'll come wid ye, and so will pat; 'tis right to make a good show for the honour of the reg'mint." accordingly captain, lieutenant, and regimental pet, with lepoko as interpreter, left the stockaded camp and crossed to ilola. they found the thirty forest guards already swaggering about the village as if it belonged to them. they were big muscular ngombe, armed with rifle, cutlass, and whip. their leader was engaged in conversation with the chief. no sooner did pat perceive him than he darted forward with a growl, and coming to the negro, began to bark furiously at his heels. the man turned round quickly and aimed a blow with his whip at the dog, which made pat bark and jump more vigorously than ever. at the same moment the man caught sight of jack, and his face expressed surprise, guilt, and bravado in turn. "begorra!" said barney under his breath, "'tis bloko himself!" the chief's countenance cleared; he was unmistakably pleased at jack's ready response to his request. then he anxiously asked what he should do. "i don't think you can do anything but obey," replied jack. "undoubtedly the great white chief is lord of the land. by the laws he has made you are bound to supply these people with rubber. it is your tax. if you resist it will mean ruin to yourself and your villages. how is the rubber to be paid for?" "in brass rods." "well, let your men do their best. we will see if you get your due pay. my uncle will soon be back; he is a determined man, and if you are not properly treated he will take care that somebody hears of it." boloko scowled, then laughed, when lepoko translated this answer to the chief. he swaggered away to his men, and the whole crowd were soon laughing heartily, every now and then making derisive gestures at the white men. with some difficulty barney had got hold of pat, whose barking had subsided into a rumbling growl. but for his restraining hand barney knew well that the dog would have thrown prudence to the winds and set upon the strange negroes. from that day imbono's villagers began the collection of rubber. boloko and his men seized as many huts as they required, and demanded regular and copious supplies of food for themselves and their hangers-on. before twenty-four hours had passed boloko, with half a dozen of his guards, strolled over to jack's village, and looked in at the gateway of the stockade. jack had already decided to adopt military precautions. two of his best men were doing sentry-go at the gate. when boloko saw them and their rifles he thought better of entering as he had purposed. he stood for some time taking stock of the tidy compound and the neat new huts around, and discussing with his men this unexpected discovery. then with a malignant scowl he returned to ilola. for some days jack saw no more of boloko. he remained within his own stockade, thinking it would do the chief no good if he too openly showed friendship. every day he put the men through their usual drill, never giving the least sign that he was aware of being closely observed by the forest guards. the drilling of imbono's men had ceased; the adult villagers were now engaged in the collection of rubber. from what jack heard from his men, it soon became clear to him that boloko was anxious to pick a quarrel with the chief. his motive, jack guessed, was partly to show his authority, partly to flaunt his contempt of the friendship between imbono and the white men. his design was to some extent kept in check by the knowledge that jack had fifteen men well armed and trained, and the presence of the two white men, inglesa too--he had a wholesome respect for the inglesa--was in itself a considerable deterrent. but he began to find fault with the quality of the rubber brought in; declared that the villagers kept the best fish for themselves and gave him the worst; complained that his men were made ill by rotten manioc. imbono took care that the details of these grievances were carried to jack, who, however, held aloof, still feeling that interference on his part would do no good, while it would certainly aggravate the situation. when the congo free state entrusted the collection of its revenue to such subordinates as boloko, commanding ruthless savages like the forest guards, there was nothing to be done. one evening, after sunset, lepoko came into jack's hut to say that the chief desired to see him. jack hurried out, and found imbono in company with one of his villagers. he invited them into his hut, lighted a candle, and setting food and palm wine before them, inquired the object of their visit. "look, my brother!" said the chief, pointing to his companion. the man turned, and showed three terrible gashes in his back. he lifted his right foot and removed a bandage; jack saw that two of the toes were missing. "you see, brother!" said imbono. "ifumi was eating caterpillars in his hut. the guard bomolo saw him and came to him and said, 'your rubber is short. you eat caterpillars instead of collecting rubber.' ifumi said: 'no, my rubber is not short. there is my basket; you see it is full.' but bomolo cut three gashes in his back, and struck off two of his toes with his knife." "that is the truth, ifumi?" asked jack. "it is true," replied the man. "you did not provoke bomolo?" "no, i said to him only what the chief has told." "you did right to come, imbono," said jack quietly. "go back now: you had better not be seen here. i will send you a message in the morning." the two men thanked him and went away, ifumi limping as he walked, supported by the chief's arm. jack called barney and told him what had happened. "it makes my blood boil, barney. i hoped it would not come to this. poor wretches--to be at the mercy of such savages! i can't stand by and see such things done. i'm sure my uncle would not wish me to. yet what can i do? we could fight boloko and his men, and beat them i hope; but goodness knows what that would lead to. whatever little right they have to maim these poor people, we have none whatever to interfere, and we should have the regular forces of the state down on us for treason or rebellion or what not. but something must be done. i wish my uncle were here!" "well, sorr, i'm ready for anything. the quickest and easiest way would be to fight, for wid all this drill wan uv our men is worth two uv those blagyards." "no, my uncle said we were to fight only in self-defence. i can't go against that. couldn't we persuade boloko to keep his men in order--bribe him, perhaps?" "i'd sooner try to persuade the divil, sorr." "well, i shall try it. i'll invite him to a palaver. we'll give him a feast--open our last bottle of soda water; a good dinner improves a man's temper sometimes, you know, barney." "true, sorr; but it sometimes makes a man very impident. will i send lepoko over wid the invitation the morn's morn, sorr?" "yes, directly after breakfast. say that i shall be pleased if boloko will come to see me in my camp. he may bring his rifle and half a dozen of his men." chapter xii samba comes back as jack had expected, boloko was flattered by the invitation, with its implied recognition of his importance. there is nothing a negro likes better than an opportunity for talk, and boloko declared himself quite ready to meet the inglesa. but he would not venture into the camp; the meeting must take place outside. the objection, considering the thinly-veiled hostility of the two parties, was not unreasonable. jack gave up the idea of a banquet, and, about eight o'clock in the morning, went with barney and lepoko to the site of his original camp, where he found boloko and half a dozen of his men already assembled. it is of the essence of a palaver to be deliberate, not to say long-winded, and jack followed the advice of lepoko in passing many compliments and talking about a great variety of matters before he came to the point. then, however, he made the point perfectly clear. he spoke of what he had learnt of the forest guards' behaviour in the village, and of bomolo's outrage in particular. "you must know," he concluded, "that it is against the law of the land to injure or assault the people. your duty is to see that they do not destroy the vines by improper cutting, and that they go regularly into the forest. you have no right to ill-use them." "the white man speaks very wisely; he knows much more than boloko. boloko knows nothing of law or right; he does what is the custom." "but you know, my friend, it is a wrong custom." "it may be as the white man says, but the inglesa is not my master. my master is elobela. let the inglesa complain to elobela. as for right, what right has the inglesa to interfere? he is a stranger; he is not a servant of the great white chief." "i am indeed a stranger; i am not a servant of the great white chief. but the great spirit who made the world and all men bids me speak if i see wrong done." boloko broke out in insolent laughter, and said something to his men which lepoko refused to translate. "him say berrah nasty fing 'bout massa; me no can tell massa." jack saw that it was time to bring the interview to a close. there was no coping with insolence. "very well," he said sternly. "it will be my duty to report at boma what i have seen and heard in the village. and more, boloko; i shall lay a complaint against you for attempting to cut loose our canoes, and for conducting an attack by night upon our camp." boloko looked startled and began to bluster when this was translated to him. but it was evident that this manner was assumed as a cloak to a real uneasiness. the moment lepoko had concluded, jack walked away from the meeting, and as he returned to his own quarters he heard the guards discussing in excited and vehement tones what he had said. for all his bluster, boloko had been impressed. for a few days jack heard of no overt acts of violence. imbono's gratitude for the intervention was almost overwhelming. he heaped praise and compliments upon his brother lokolobolo, and, not content with words, made him a valuable present. half a dozen of his men staggered to jack's hut one night under the weight of a huge tusk of ivory, which imbono had kept since the time when elephant-hunting was a profitable occupation. two days after the palaver a canoe arrived with another dozen mauser rifles and ammunition from mr. martindale. the head paddler was cautious enough to send one of his men in advance to the camp to announce his arrival, and jack managed to get the rifles brought secretly within his stockade under cover of night. it was just as well, he thought, to keep boloko in ignorance of this new acquisition of strength. the man reported that he had been despatched from irebo by an inglesa who had entrusted him with a bonkanda[1] for the young inglesa. jack opened the note eagerly. this time it was very short:-dear jack,-all going well. have been delayed by little investigating trips i have made in the concessions of the abir trust and the domaine de la couronne. atrocities even worse than i thought. hope all well with you. patience--and tact. j.m. p.s.--i am sending a dozen rifles and some ammunition; can't get any more. the paddler said that he had had great difficulty in eluding the white men and their agents. only a few days before, he and his companions had almost run into a white man who was coming up the river in a smoke-boat, establishing new outposts for the collection of rubber. no doubt an outpost would be established at ilola; for imbono was the chief of several villages and had many young men. this news gave jack no little uneasiness. instinctively he felt that the difficulties arising from boloko's presence would be increased by the arrival of his belgian superior. for after what he had learnt from his uncle he could not doubt that the tyranny of the forest guards was practised at least with the connivance, if not by the actual authority, of the officials. as a precaution he took care to have men constantly on the look-out at the river bank for the approach of strange boats, and when one day elbel's launch was sighted, he withdrew all his men within the stockade and posted double sentries. he felt pretty sure that the white man in command was monsieur elbel, the man with whom mr. martindale had already had a brush; and of elbel he had a profound mistrust, formed at first sight and accentuated by all that he had subsequently heard. boloko and his satellites went in a crowd to the bank of the river to greet the new arrivals. from behind his stockade jack watched them through his field-glass as they landed from the launch and set off for the village. the white man was certainly elbel. he was accompanied by a number of forest guards armed like boloko's, and by a crowd of hangers-on--negroes of many varieties. on the way up to the village boloko walked by elbel's side, talking very earnestly, and jack saw the belgian throw a keen and inquisitive glance in the direction of his camp. not an hour afterwards elbel left the village and walked over to jack's settlement, which the natives had named ilombikambua, "house of the dog," in reference to pat the terrier. jack had given orders that the white man was to be admitted if he came, but no black man in his company. the belgian had come alone, and looked a little surprised when the sentries at the gate received him with a correct military salute. jack rose from his stool in front of his hut and doffed his hat courteously. outwardly he was calm enough; but he felt by no means easy in mind, realizing that his responsibility was far from being the "jolly lark" he had light-heartedly called it when mr. martindale announced his intention of leaving him in charge. "good morning, sir," said the belgian in his foreign accent. "good morning. i think i have the pleasure of addressing monsieur elbel?" "dat is my name. i do not know your name." "john challoner." "yes, i believe i see you before in a canoe." "when i was coming up the river with my uncle." "who is now returned to boma. yes, i heard of dat. mr. martindale--i zink dat is de name--have found de gold he sought?" "i am not at liberty to discuss mr. martindale's business." "exactly. i see. ve must not be indiscreet, hein? now as for your mr. martindale, i am not pleased, i say at vunce. i am not pleased viz mr. martindale. he refuse to give me up de black boy dat vas in your canoe. dat vas against de law: it is not permitted in de congo state for de natives to leave deir village." "but if the village no longer exists, mr. elbel?" the belgian shrugged. "dat make no difference! but i have more to say. i have learn dat your men have rifles; i see dem myself; dey even hold deir rifles at de salute, dey have military training, hein? now it is not permitted to have rifles in de congo state: dey are vat you call contraband. i muss ask you to be so kind and give de rifles to me." "i am afraid i can't oblige you, mr. elbel. the rifles belong to my uncle." "dat make no difference! i find de rifles here: i muss ask you in de name of de free state to give dem up." "i don't know that you have any right to speak in the name of the congo state. i believe, sir, you are an official of the société cosmopolite du commerce du congo--a private trust. i can't recognize your authority, mr. elbel." "but it is de law." "if you talk of law! ... are your practices legal, mr. elbel? is it legal to shoot and maim the natives as you have been doing for a hundred miles and more along the river? is it legal to incite a night attack on peaceable travellers?" (here elbel could not suppress a start, and looked far from comfortable.) "but whether i am acting legally or not, i cannot recognize your authority. if you want the rifles, i must ask you to wait until mr. martindale's return and demand them from him. until then they are in my charge, and i cannot give them up." jack thought afterwards that he might have spoken a little less bluntly; but he wished to put an end to a disagreeable interview. his firmness made the belgian angry. "ver' vell, ver' vell!" he said, flushing with annoyance. "you vill suffer for dis. you not recognize my right: vell, capitaine van vorst, an officer of de state, comes up de river; he have right; and i say, mr. chon shalloner, you shall be arrest and made to pay heavy amende--if not put in prison." jack's bow was a courteous intimation that the interview was ended. but the belgian caught the flicker of a smile on his face, and flung away in a rage which he made no attempt to disguise. jack's sentries, who again brought their rifles to the salute, shrank back before elbel's scowl as he passed out of the gate. jack was not ill-pleased with the result of the interview. you have always scored a point when the enemy loses his temper. apparently elbel did not intend to take strong measures himself. he knew the weakness of his position. the situation would be changed if a state officer was indeed on his way up the river: but jack did not allow himself to be disturbed by elbel's threat; his uncle would doubtless be back in a few days, and he had unbounded faith in mr. martindale's judgment and discretion. from that time he took care that either barney or himself should be always in the stockaded camp. his men had become a well-disciplined force, but he could not answer for their being able to act discreetly towards a white man whom they had reason to dread. for a day or two there was no sign of hostility from elbel. he did not repeat his visit, which jack did not feel called upon to return. but news came from ilola that, while the belgian's arrival had checked the ghastly ferocities of the forest guards, the chicotte had been still more freely in play than before. every man whose basket did not contain the requisite five kilos of rubber, or the quality of whose rubber did not approve itself to elbel, was unmercifully flogged. those with whom no fault could on any pretext be found were paid with perhaps a piece of cloth or some trumpery article which was useless to them, and which in many cases they threw away. imbono sent word one day that the most distant of his villages had been burnt. it contained a hundred adult male inhabitants, but only fifty had brought rubber to ilola, the remainder having been engaged in hunting down a herd of elephants which had been ravaging their crops. elbel had refused to accept the explanation. he had retained the fifty men as hostages, and sent a detachment of his forest guards to bring in the unruly fifty and burn their village down. jack could only express his sympathy: he felt that there was nothing to be done. one morning barney, who acted as storekeeper to the camp, reported that food was running short. "well, imbono will supply us," replied jack. "beggin' your pardon, sorr, imbono has little enough for himself since elbel and his blagyards came to the place. the thieving villains will have the best, and divil a ha'penny do they pay for it." "we must have food. when i was at akumbi the other day i saw a good crop of ground-nuts. i'll go over myself and see if i can arrange for a supply." akumbi was the smallest of the chief's villages, situated about five miles up the river. jack set off early with lepoko, taking the well-worn path through the fringe of forest. as he approached the village he heard cries of pain. instinctively he quickened his steps and hurried through the gateway in the stockade; then he came upon a scene that made his blood boil. tied to a tree was a youth, who, lepoko told him, was the son of lofundo, the sub-chief of the village. elbel was thrashing the captive with the chicotte, every lash cutting into the quivering flesh and provoking shrieks of agony. not another villager was to be seen; all had fled either into their huts or into the forest. infuriated at the sight, jack forgot all counsels of prudence. he rushed towards the spot, peremptorily calling on elbel to desist. the belgian swung round savagely, gave one disdainful look at the interrupter, and raised his arm with the intention of putting all his force into another stroke. but jack sprang at the uplifted arm, caught elbel by the wrist and arrested the blow. wrenching himself free, the belgian, livid with rage, made a fierce cut at jack. he was too near for the long lash to have the full effect intended; but jack felt the sting as the flexible thong curled round him. then his attitude changed. before, he had merely been conscious of a desire to protect the negro; now, he was afire with a personal grievance. elbel had not time to raise the whip for a second stroke. flinging out his left fist jack caught him a smashing blow on the cheek, and followed it up with a right-hander which hurled him half senseless to the ground. elbel staggered to his feet, presenting a piteous spectacle, blood streaming from his nose, his left eye half closed. he groped for his revolver, but the sight of jack standing over him, pale but determined, revolver in hand ready for the next move, cowed him. he fumbled for a few seconds at his belt, then slunk away without a word. [illustration: jack turns the tables] the village compound was immediately filled with a crowd of natives, who poured out of the huts: whence they had secretly watched the scene. jack was overwhelmed with protestations of gratitude. he cut the boy loose and restored him, bleeding from the lash, to his father. then he extricated himself from the excited throng, took lofundo aside, waived his demonstrations, and, completing the business on which he had come, left the village as soon as he could. now that the heat of the moment was passed, he feared he had not done the villagers or himself any good. a personal affray with elbel was the last thing he would have desired; and though he felt that he could hardly have acted otherwise than he had done, he was in anything but an elated mood when he returned to his camp. he at once told barney of what had occurred, and spoke of his misgivings. "arrah thin, sorr," said the irishman, "i do not see any cause for disthress at all at all. the villain got his deserts, and 'twill tache him a lesson. sure i'd like to have seen his face, the spalpeen!" "but i'd no right to interfere, barney; you can't get over that." "begging your pardon, sorr, i do not agree wid that at all. ye may say a father has the right to thrash his children; 'twas the holy solomon himself said so! but if he lays it on too heavy, the law steps in and says 'hands off!' a farmer has a right to get work out uv his horse; but if he overtaxes the poor baste, the law steps in again and says 'no more uv that.' these poor niggers seem to have to work widout fair pay, and pay rent into the bargain. that's more than an irishman would stand; and when the nigger-driver begins to maul 'em as well, worse than poor dumb beasts widout souls uv their own--be jabers! sorr, what would i do, if i saw a man ill-treating my pat? i would knock him down, sorr, if he was the lord-liftinant himself!" the fact that several days passed without any sign of resentment or vengeance on elbel's part did not make jack less uneasy. so far from his trouncing having a deterrent effect, the treatment of the natives became steadily worse. things were following the inevitable course. the vines in the neighbourhood of the village had yielded all the rubber of which they were at present capable, and the men had to go continually further afield. this necessitated their remaining for days at a time away from their homes, in improvised shelters which afforded poor protection against the weather and the wild beasts. they had to put up with indifferent food that gave scanty nourishment. when, having collected the rubber, they returned at last to their homes, they could only remain there a couple of days, for the next demand was upon them. meanwhile their families had been at the mercy of the forest guards. day by day complaints came to jack from imbono of the brutalities of these ruffians, some of them so horrible that his whole being quivered with passionate indignation. why did not his uncle return? how long must he remain helpless here, unable to lift a hand in defence of the oppressed? one evening, just as he had retired to rest, he was woke by barney and told that a strange negro had come to the gate and asked admittance. he had specially desired to see the inglesa. jack sent word that the man was to be brought to him, and awaited his coming outside the hut. the negro came up in charge of lepoko. by the light of his electric torch jack saw a tall man, so much emaciated that he appeared almost a skeleton. his cheeks were sunken in, his arms and legs were no thicker than a child's, and--what was this! the man held up one arm; the hand was gone! "who is he?" asked jack, shuddering at the sight of the half-healed stump. "him call batukuno, sah. come from nsongo. him carry baumba[2] to brudder, sah: ekila, him forest guard, meet batukuno, say, 'gib me baumba.' batukuno say, 'no can do: me carry to brudder.' rubber day come. batukuno bring basket; ekila say, 'rubber too much bad, batukuno.' batukuno say, 'no bad at all; good rubber all same.' ekila laugh, sah; cut off batukuno him hand." "just in revenge for not getting the baumba?" "rebenge, sah, rebenge, all same." "but how came he here?" "boy samba, sah. him tell batukuno inglesa massa good white man, brudder tanalay, oh yes! inglesa no 'fraid boloko, no 'fraid elobela; inglesa gib batukuno hut, gib food, gib plenty rings. him come long long way: hurt berrah much, sah, berrah sick; want eat, no can find nuff. him hide long time 'cos 'fraid boloko. now hab got massa; no 'fraid no more; boloko, elobela, dem 'fraid now." "where is samba then?" "samba him long long way: him go find fader and mudder." "i was right after all," said jack turning to barney. "i'm glad to hear the boy's alive. well, lepoko, take batukuno to one of the huts and give him some supper. another sign of king leopold's fatherly treatment, barney! uncle said they cut the hands from the dead, but it appears that the living are mutilated too." "the curse uv cromwell on them, sorr. but, begging your pardon, you made a mistake." "how's that?" "sure you said 'twas my irish english that sent little samba away." "did i?" said jack, laughing. "i'd forgotten it. he's a capital little fellow, barney. fancy, going by himself that long journey through the forest to find his people! and yet there are fools who think that because a man is black he hasn't feelings or affections like ourselves." batukuno was only the firstfruits of samba's missionary zeal. from day to day, men, women, and children began to drop in at jack's camp, many of them mutilated, all showing terrible signs of ill-usage and privation. some were survivors of samba's own people, the villagers of banonga; but they numbered among them men from other tribes. some had heard of the benevolent inglesa from samba's own lips; others from people he had told. among them was an old chief, who appeared heart-broken at having been compelled to leave his country. "why did i leave, you ask, o white man!" he said in reply to a question of jack's. "in the morning, bullets; in the evening, bullets. they shot our mouths away, they shot through our hearts and our sides. they robbed us of everything we had. why should we stay to be killed like that? that is why i ran away." "were many of your people killed?" "ah, ah!" he replied, "once we were as bafumba[3] in multitude; now we are only as these." he spread out his fingers twice or thrice. "and they have been killed--not dying by the sleeping sickness?" "no. we have lost a few by the sleeping sickness, but only a few. it is rubber that has killed our people. botofé bo le iwa!" jack's sympathy was keenly enlisted on behalf of these unfortunate people; and he looked forward more and more eagerly for mr. martindale's return. he could not but smile a little whimsically, remembering his uncle's protestations, to find that mr. martindale was gaining a reputation for general philanthropy through a large section of the upper congo territory. but as the stream of fugitives showed no signs of diminishing he began to feel a certain embarrassment. it was all very well to open a cave adullam for every one that was distressed: to start a hospital for the halt and lame and blind; but the space he had at command within his stockade was limited: already the huts he had reserved for mr. martindale and his men were occupied, and every fugitive meant another mouth to feed. he feared, too, lest the peace and order of his settlement should be disturbed by the influx of so many idle strangers. and more than all, he feared that some of the poor wretches who came seeking asylum with him would fall into the hands of elbel ere they reached their desired haven. it was that consideration that induced him to refuse none who sought admittance. elbel had been absent for some days from ilola, and the fugitives, by choosing always the fall of night to approach the place, had so far managed to elude observation by their enemies. but that could not continue; the presence of strangers in ilombikambua must soon become known to elbel; then a watch would be set, and the wanderers would be intercepted. what their fate then would be jack knew too well. none suffered so terribly at the hands of the forest guards as people caught straying from their villages. such absences interfered with the regularity of the rubber supply, which in turn affected the revenue and reduced profits. no runagate serf in mediæval europe was more severely dealt with than the congo native who dared to range afield. jack could not hand the people over to elbel's tender mercies; yet it would soon be impossible to find room for more. while he was puzzling how to deal with this perplexing situation it was suddenly made still more complicated. early one morning he heard pat barking with more than his usual vigour, and with a note of wild pleasure which he had not expressed for many a day. leaving his hut to ask what had happened, he was met by the terrier, who ran up to him, leaped this way and that, darted off towards the gate, then back again, all the time barking with frantic joy. in a moment jack saw the meaning of the dog's excitement. samba himself was running towards him! the boy flung himself down at jack's feet, paying no attention even to pat. "i am glad to see you, very glad," said jack in samba's own tongue. "what have you been doing?" his knowledge of the language was not great enough to permit him to follow samba's answer, poured out as it was with great rapidity, and a pitiful earnestness that brought a lump to jack's throat. but lepoko was at hand, and translated faithfully. samba was in terrible distress. he had found his father and mother, and had brought them through peril and privation to the very verge of safety, when they fell among a number of forest guards evidently placed to intercept fugitives. all three were captured and taken to boloko, who was beside himself with delight at the sight of his brother mboyo a prisoner. he had a special grudge against him, dating from their old rivalry in banonga. elbel had just returned from a visit to outlying villages; the prisoners had been carried before him, and when boloko explained who they were, the belgian ordered them to be tied up, and sentenced them to be thrashed publicly on the next day. samba had contrived to escape from custody, and had now come to implore the inglesa to save his parents. they were so worn out by their long journey, so ill from the hardships they had suffered, that they would certainly die under the whip. "poor little fellow!" said jack, laying his hand soothingly on the boy's head. "the whipping is to be to-morrow? you are sure?" yes; elobela would be absent this day; he would not return till the evening. the flogging was fixed for dawn on the following morning. "come into my hut; we will see what can be done. barney, you come too." "niggers have no feelings!" said barney, releasing pat from the grasp in which he had been struggling while samba told his story. "begorra! they might as well say the same uv dogs!" [1] any kind of letter or document. [2] riches. [3] driver ants. chapter xiii "honour thy father and thy mother" jack felt himself in a distressing predicament. could he allow samba's father and mother, for whom he suspected the boy must have made heroic exertions, to undergo a punishment which, as he had learnt from more than one of the refugees, frequently ended in the death of the victim? yet how prevent it? whatever might be urged against it, the use of the chicotte had become established as a recognized instrument of administration in the congo free state. as a stranger and a foreigner he had, to begin with, no right to interfere, and his previous relations with elbel had been such that a protest and an attempt at dissuasion would be equally useless. his action on behalf of lofundo's son had been taken on the spur of the moment; it would not dispose elbel to pay any attention to calmer and more deliberate measures now. even a threat to report him would probably have no effect on the belgian. he was only doing what the officers of the state, or the officials of the trusts holding authority from the state, were accustomed to do, whether by themselves or their agents. a protest from jack would merely aggravate the punishment of the wretched people. although elbel had not taken any open step against jack since their last meeting, the latter felt assured that he was nursing his spite and only awaiting a favourable opportunity to indulge it. indeed it was likely that something had already been done. perhaps elbel was in communication with boma. he had mentioned that a captain of the state forces was on his way up the river; for all that jack knew the officer might deal very summarily with him when he arrived. that elbel would tamely endure the humiliation he had suffered jack did not for a moment believe. jack put these points to barney. "if i attempt to do anything for samba's people," he added, "i must be prepared to back up my demands by force, and that will mean bloodshed. i can't run the risk, barney. uncle left me in charge, and, as i've told you, said i wasn't to fight except in self-defence." "bedad, sorr, but he'd fight himself if he were here." "that may be, but i can't take the responsibility." "cannot we get the people out uv the scoundhrel's clutches widout fighting, sorr? the bhoy escaped, to be sure." "true; how did you get away, samba?" the boy explained that he had been imprisoned separately from his parents: he did not know why. they had been chained by the neck and fastened to a tree in front of boloko's hut; he had been roped by the ankle and secured to another tree farther away. in the middle of the night he had wriggled and strained at his bonds until, after much toil and pain, he had released his foot. then, when the sentry's back was turned, he had slipped away, stolen behind the huts, and with great difficulty clambered over the stockade. "and are your parents still chained to the tree?" samba did not know. he had not ventured to approach them after releasing himself, for his sole hope was in the inglesa, and if he were recaptured he knew that his parents' fate was sealed. but if the inglesa wished, he would steal back into the village and see if the prisoners were still at the same spot. "that will never do," said jack. "the boy would certainly be caught, barney." "that's the truth, sorr. but 'tis the morning for lingombela to go to the village for eggs; could he not find out what you wish to know?" "he's a discreet fellow. yes, let him try. he must be very careful. i wonder that elbel has not forbidden our men to go into the village; and if he suspects any interference there'll be trouble." barney went out to send lingombela on his errand. meanwhile jack got samba to tell him, through lepoko, how he had found his parents. the boy gave briefly the story of his wanderings, his perils from the wild beasts of the forest, his hunger and want, his capture by the bambute, his escape, his adventure with the crocodile, his second capture and more successful escape under cover of a great forest storm. jack was deeply impressed at the time; but many of the details came to him later from others, and each new fact added to his admiration for the indomitable young traveller. the pigmies who had captured samba at the river were a different tribe from those with whom he had lived in the forest. like those, however, they made much of him, giving him plenty of food, but never letting him go out of their sight. one night, a fierce tempest swept through the forest, snapping great trees and whirling them about like feathers. thunder crashed, lightning cut black paths through the foliage; and the bambute cowered in their huts, dreading lest these should be crushed by a falling tree or scorched by the lightning's flame, yet feeling safer within than without. but samba rejoiced in the elemental disturbance. reckless of the terrors of the storm in his fixed determination to escape, he stole out when the uproar was at its height and plunged into the forest. all other peril was banished by the fury of the tempest. once he passed a leopard within a few feet, but the beast was too much scared by the lightning to seize the opportunity of securing an easy meal. after many days of wandering and privation samba came within a day's journey of what had been his village. stumbling accidentally upon one of his fellow-villagers, he told him his story, and was taken by him to a cave in the forest where several of the fugitives from banonga were in hiding, some badly wounded. samba came to them like a sunbeam. what he told them about mr. martindale gave them courage and hope. some set off at once to seek out the inglesa whose praise samba was so loud in singing; they would implore his protection: others, more timorous or less hardy, dreading the long and toilsome journey, resolved to remain where they were, for they were at least in no straits for food. none of them could give samba any news of his parents: so after remaining a day or two with them he went on alone. he reached the site of the desolated village in the evening, and took refuge in the branches of a tree. his intention was to push on next day and search the forest beyond the village. but with morning light something impelled him to wander round the scene of his happy childhood. here had stood his father's hut; there, not far away, the old chief mirambo had dwelt. it seemed to samba that the place was altered in appearance since he had left it in company with mr. martindale. an attempt had been made to repair the ruins of mirambo's hut. somewhat startled, samba approached it curiously, and was still more startled to hear low groans proceeding from a spot where a corner of the site had been covered with rough thatch. entering, he discovered with mingled joy and terror that his father and mother lay there, nearly dead from wounds and starvation. with the negro's instinct for returning to his old haunts, mboyo had come back with his wife to banonga, and managed to rig up a precarious shelter in his father's shattered hut. then his strength failed him. he had been wounded in the attack on the village, but had made good his escape to the forest with his favourite wife. his other wives and children had disappeared; of them he never heard again. the unwonted exposure soon told upon his wife lukela; she fell ill, and, weakened as mboyo was by his wounds, they were unable to scour the forest as they might otherwise have done for food. as the days passed their condition had gone from bad to worse, and at last they had painfully, despairingly, made their way back to their old home, to die. but samba did not mean them to die. he set himself at once to rescue them. as he knew well, there was little or no food near by; the wanton destruction of plantations had been very thorough. they were too weak to travel. he emptied his tin, to which he had clung through all his wanderings, of the food it contained, and making a rough barrier for them against wild beasts, cheered them with hopeful words and started back on his tracks for a further supply of food. when he reached the cavern where he had left his fellow-villagers, he found it empty. apparently even the timid ones had set off to seek the protection of the good inglesa. he could do nothing that night, but next morning he went down to the stream whence they had obtained their supply of fish and plied his spear until he had caught several. then he made the long journey back, filling his tin as he went with berries and nuts and anything else from which nourishment could be obtained. his parents were already a little better, thanks to the food he had already given them, and perhaps also to the new spirit awakened in them by the unexpected arrival of their dearly loved son. thus for several days samba watched over them, making long journeys for food. each time he left them his absence became more prolonged; food was harder to get, and he was less able to hunt for it. while his parents slowly regained a little strength, samba weakened from day to day. at last he could scarcely drag one foot after the other; he was worn out by the terrible fatigue of constant marching through the forest, and by want of sleep, for he stinted himself of rest so that his parents might be left alone as little as possible. more than once he sank exhausted to the ground, feeling that he could go no farther, do no more. his strength was spent; his head swam with dizziness; a mist gathered before his eyes. thus he would remain, half conscious, perhaps for minutes, perhaps for hours; he knew not: he had lost count of time. then with the enforced rest the small remnant of his strength returned to him, and with it the memory of his parents' plight. upon him depended the life of the two beings he held dearest in the world. as the perils to which they were exposed were borne in upon his fevered intelligence he would struggle to his feet, and grope his way painfully along the forest track, his feet blistered, his flesh torn with spikes and thorns: above all, a dreadful gnawing hunger within him, for he would scarcely spare himself sufficient food for bare sustenance while his parents were ill and in want. this dark and terrible period was illumined by one ray of hope. his weariness and toil were bearing fruit. day by day his parents grew stronger; in a fortnight they were able to move about, and a week later they were ready to start for the cavern. but now it was samba who required tendance. he could walk only a few yards at a time, supported by mboyo, who almost despaired of reaching the cavern before starvation again overtook them. but the weary journey was completed at last, and after a few days' stay at the cavern within easier reach of food, the party became fit to undertake a longer march, and set out hopefully for mr. martindale's camp. jack could only conjecture what the terrors of that march had been, for before samba's story was finished lepoko returned from the village. he reported that elobela, furious at the boy's escape, had announced that he would double the punishment to be meted out to his parents. this practice of striking at children through parents, and at parents through children, was so much the rule in the congo system of tax collection that jack did not doubt elbel would carry out his threat. meanwhile the two prisoners had been removed from the open air before boloko's hut at the far side of the village, and conveyed to a stoutly-built fetish hut near the stockade. this change of quarters had provoked murmurs not only from the villagers, but from elbel's own men. the fetish hut was sacred to the medicine man of the village, and even he affected to approach it with fear and trembling. the whole population was talking about the desecration of the hut by the presence of the two captives; men were shaking their heads and saying that something would happen; and the medicine man himself--a hideous figure with his painted skin--did not fail to seize the opportunity of inflaming the minds of the villagers against the impious white man. but no one ventured to remonstrate with elbel. he meanwhile had gone off with a number of forest guards to an outlying village, leaving orders that the captives were to be watched with particular vigilance. samba's face was an image of despair as he listened to lepoko's report. what hope was there of his parents' rescue now? "poor little chap!" said jack. "after going through so much for them he'll be heart-broken if he loses them now. what can we do for him, barney?" "faith, i can see nothing for it, sorr, but to lead a storming party. and i would go first, wid the greatest pleasure in life." "that's out of the question, especially as elbel's away. all's fair in war, they say, barney; but i shouldn't like to attack the village in elbel's absence. in any case i don't want to fight if there's any other way. samba, run away with pat; don't go beyond the gate; i want to see if i can think of any way of helping your parents." both the white men were touched by the boy's wistful look as he left the hut. jack stuck his legs out straight in front of him, plunged his hands into his pockets, and bent his head upon his breast as he pondered and puzzled. barney sat for a time leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, smoking an old clay pipe. but he soon tired of inaction, and rising, proceeded to open a tin of oatmeal biscuits in anticipation of lunch. he had just wrenched the lid off when jack sprang up with a sudden laugh and slapped him on the shoulder. "i have it, barney!" he cried. "they said something would happen; well, they were right; something shall happen, old man. and it's your doing!" "mine, sorr! niver a thing have i done this blessed day but smoke me pipe, and just this very minute tear a hole in my hand wid this confounded tin." "that's it, barney! it was the tin gave me the idea. you know how giants are made for the christmas pantomimes?" "divil a bit, sorr." "well, don't look so surprised. empty that tin of biscuits while i tell you, and when that's empty, open another and do the same." "bedad, sorr, but all the biscuits will spoil." "let 'em spoil, man, let 'em spoil. no, i don't mean that, but at present i think more of the tissue paper in those tins than of the biscuits. we'll make a framework, barney--any stalks or sticks will do for that--and cover it with that tissue paper, and paint a giant's face and shoulders on the paper, and we must find some coloured glass or something for the eyes, and something white for the teeth. we have some candles left, luckily. don't you think, barney, a lighted candle behind the paper would make a very decent sort of bogie?" "and is that the way, sorr, they make the giants at the pantomime?" "something like that, barney. but what do you think of the idea?" "'tis the divil's own cleverness in it, sorr. but i'll niver enjoy a pantomime any more, now that i know the way 'tis done. and how will ye go to work wid the bogie, sorr?" "why, we'll make the framework to fit my shoulders. then you'll see. the first thing is to get it made. go and get the materials. we shall want sticks about three feet long, and ngoji cane[1] to tie them together, as there are no nails here. and you must send over to imbono and ask for some colouring matter. red and black are all we shall need. i don't know what we shall do for the eyes; there's no coloured glass handy, i suppose. we must do without if we can't find anything. now, hurry up, barney, and send lepoko to me." for the rest of the day jack and barney were very busy in the hut. it was an easy matter to put the bamboo framework together. the tissue paper from the two biscuit tins proved just sufficient to cover it. when this was done, jack sketched with his pencil as ugly a face as his artistic imagination was capable of suggesting, then laid on the pigments with his shaving brush, no other being at hand. he gave the giant very thick red lips, opened in a hideous grin, heightening the effect by carefully tying in a number of goat's teeth. the eyes presented a difficulty. no coloured glass could be found among any of the villagers' treasures, and after several attempts to supply its place with leaves, petals of red flowers, and glass beads stuck together, jack decided that the best effect would be made by leaving the eye slits empty. the making of the bogie was kept a close secret between himself and barney; but he got some of his men to make two light bamboo ladders, which they did with great expedition, wondering not a little to what use lokolobolo would put them. in the afternoon, as soon as he was assured that his bogie would turn out a success, jack sent lepoko into ilola to foment the villagers' fear that the desecration of the fetish hut would certainly be followed by a visit from the offended spirit. he was to talk very seriously of a great medicine man he had once met on the coast, who knew all about the spirits of the streams and woods, and those who protected the forest villages. one of these spirits, said the medicine man, took the form of a giant, and any mortal upon whom he breathed would surely die. jack knew that this story would be repeated by the villagers to the forest guards, and would soon be the property of the whole community. reckoning upon the fact that elbel had his quarters near the gate of the stockade, and that the fetish hut was on the opposite side of the enclosure, not far from the stockade itself, so that the whole width of the village separated them, jack hoped to create such a panic among the superstitious sentries that he would have time to free the captives before elbel could intervene. at dead of night, when he believed that the enemy must be sound asleep, jack left his camp silently, accompanied only by samba. he himself carried the bogie; the boy had the ladders. but even his own parents would not have recognized the samba of this midnight sortie. jack had been much interested on the way up the congo by a kind of acacia which, when cut with an axe, exudes a sticky substance, emitting in the darkness a strong phosphorescent glow. with this substance a series of rings had been drawn on samba's body, and he wore on his head a number of palm leaves arranged like the prince of wales's feathers, smeared with the same sticky material. he made an awful imp in attendance on the horrific monster. samba stepping close behind jack to avoid observation, the two made their way stealthily around the village, keeping within the fringe of the encircling forest. then jack fixed the bogie upon his shoulders, lighted the candles placed in sconces of twigs cunningly constructed by barney, and crept forward towards the stockade, closely followed by samba, both bending low so as to escape discovery before the right moment. lepoko had reported that two sentries had been placed over the fetish hut. jack guessed that by this time their nerves would be at pretty high tension, and that they would not improbably be keeping a safe distance from the awful place they had been set to guard. one of the ladders was planted by samba against the stockade. on this jack mounted, and the hideous countenance rose slowly and majestically above the palisade. a small oil lamp swung from the eaves of the hut. by its light jack saw the two sentries some distance away, but near enough to keep an eye on the entrance so that the inmates could not break out unnoticed. at first they did not see the apparition. to quicken their perception, jack gave a weird chuckle--a sound that would have startled even sturdy english schoolboys in the depth of night. the negroes turned round instantly; there was one moment of silence: then shrieking with fear they rushed helter-skelter into the darkness. taking the second ladder from samba, jack calmly descended on the other side, and was quickly followed by the boy. the latter made straight for the fetish hut. a light shone through the entrance immediately he had entered; there was a muffled shriek; then voices in rapid talk, followed by the sound of heavy hammering. by the light of jack's electric torch samba was breaking the fetters. by this time the whole village was astir. at the first instant of alarm every man, woman, and child gave utterance to a yell; but as soon as they caught sight of the dreadful apparition, the vengeful spirit whose visit had been predicted, the giant with hideous jaw and flaming eyes, they ceased their cries, and scampered in awestruck silence across the compound towards the gate. slowly samba's parents limped out of the hut after him, and with his assistance mounted the ladder and descended on the other side of the stockade. jack had bidden samba take them for a time into the forest. to harbour them in his camp would involve further embroilment with elbel, a thing to be avoided if possible. they had barely disappeared in the darkness when a shot rang out, and jack felt something strike the framework above his head. elbel had been awakened from sleep by the first yell, but on leaving his hut found himself enveloped in so thick a crowd of quivering, panic-stricken negroes that he could neither see what had caused their alarm nor get an answer to his irritable questions. the delay had been just long enough to allow the prisoners to escape. jack heard elbel's voice raging at the people. as another shot whizzed by he reached up and extinguished the candles, then slipped over the stockade, drawing the ladder after him. burdened with the bogie and the two ladders he hastened away into the forest. for some minutes he wandered about, missing the guidance of samba, who was with his parents. at length he struck the path, and making his best speed regained his camp. barney was awaiting him at the gate with loaded rifle, the trained men drawn up under arms. "the bogie did it!" he cried, feeling very hot and tired now that his task was accomplished. "praise be!" ejaculated barney. "eyes front! present arrms! dismiss!" [1] this abounds in the forest, and is alike nails, string, and rope for the natives. chapter xiv lokolobolo's first fight "i am afraid we are in for it now," said jack, as he sat with barney, when the camp had become quiet, discussing the situation. "elbel will know well enough who played the bogie, and he has now another grievance against me. i wonder what he will do." "i would not disthress meself about it at all, sorr," said barney. "he had a peep at a pepper's ghost widout paying for a ticket, and 'tis himself that ought to be plased." "don't you ever have a fit of the dumps, barney? you seem to live always in the top of spirits." "what would be the good uv doing anything else, sorr? i've too little flesh on me bones now; what would i be if i grizzled?" "i'm glad enough, i assure you. i don't know what i should have done without you. uncle little imagined what he was leaving me to. do you think anything has happened to him? it is three months since he went away, and five weeks since i had any news of him. i am getting anxious." "'tis true he is behind, like the cow's tail, sorr. an 'tis meself can explain it. ye see, sorr, i've noticed wan thing about these niggers. time is not much to an irishman, to be sure, but 'tis less than nothing to a nigger. they don't keep count uv the days; an almanac would be clean beyond them; and 'tis my belief nando has just put the master back a month, sorr, unbeknown." "that's an original explanation, at any rate. but by jove! here's samba again. what does he want now?" "him say mudder lib for plenty sick, sah," said lepoko, called in to interpret. "mudder plenty tired fust; muss stand all de night in hut; no gib no food; her no can go no more; tumble down in forest. samba say please massa, let fader and mudder come; please, please, massa, please, massa, him say please massa plenty too much all time." "we must have them in, i suppose," said jack, unable to resist the appeal in samba's eyes and gestures. "i didn't want them here, they only add to our dangers and difficulties. let him fetch them, lepoko; he must be careful; if they are captured again they are sure to be shot." samba's face shone with delight. he scampered away. an hour passed before he returned. mboyo was carrying his wife in his arms; she was in the last stage of exhaustion. they were given shelter in lepoko's hut; and that night, when samba curled himself up to sleep with pat, for the first time for many weeks he was a happy boy. jack had but just finished his breakfast next morning when a note was brought him from elbel. monsieur,-on m'a fait informer que les deux individus échappés de ce village sont a présent réfugiés dans votre camp. j'ai l'honneur de vous sommer de rendre ces individus immédiatement, en outre le petit garçon dont j'ai déjà demandé la reddition. au cas que lesdits sujets de petat du congo ne soient pas ramenés dans ce village avant midi cejourd'hui, je serai obligé de faire à leur égard des démarches qui me sembleront bonnes. agréez, monsieur, l'assurance de ma considération distinguée, elbel, _agent de la société cosmopolite du commerce du congo_. "what do you think of this, barney? he says he's been told that the two persons who escaped from ilola are now in my camp. he has the honour to request that i will give them up at once. listen: 'in case the said subjects of the congo state are not brought back to this village by noon to-day, i shall be compelled to take such steps in regard to them as may seem to me good.' very precise and formal. my answer shall be a little shorter." he lost no time in penning his reply. he wrote: sir,-the three people you mention are with me. i shall be glad to learn the offence with which they are charged, and by what authority you take it upon yourself to try them and punish them. yours truly, john challoner. "we shall get no answer to that, barney." but he was mistaken. a second note was brought him in which elbel refused to explain or justify his actions to monsieur challoner. he was responsible to his société and to the administration of the free state. he repeated his threat that at twelve o'clock, failing compliance with his demand, he would take steps to recover the fugitives, and concluded by saying that monsieur challoner must be answerable for the consequences. "the fat's in the fire now, sorr," said barney, when jack had translated this letter to him. "i suppose you'll just say 'go and be hanged' in answer to that?" "no. i shan't answer it on paper. the crisis has come at last, barney. i couldn't attack elbel yesterday and be responsible for the first blow. but things are changed now. his action in regard to these poor people is sheer persecution; they've sought my protection, and no englishman that i ever heard of has given up a wretch fleeing from persecution. we'll have to stand firm now, barney. elbel shan't get hold of them if i can prevent it." "i'm wid ye, sorr, heart and soul. sure an irishman is not the man to stand by and see poor people ill-treated. what'll we do to get ready for him, sorr?" "you can go and get some of the men to rig up platforms at several points inside the stockade. what a lucky thing it was we taught 'em how to board and floor the huts! those planks will come in handy now. and stay: set two or three men to bore loopholes in the stockade--not our riflemen; the men who've lost their right hands can manage that, perhaps, with their left if they try. meanwhile, parade the riflemen. i'll come out to them in a few minutes." when the men were paraded, jack felt very proud of his little company. they were all alert, eager, ready. jack explained to them through lepoko what the difficulty was. "i don't want you to fight against your will," he said. "if any man is unwilling to fight he may leave the camp if he chooses, or remain and do any other work required. but if he elects to fight he must obey orders, do his best, and never give in. you understand that: never give in!" the men responded with loud cries of approval. not a man of them fell out of the ranks. the exercise and drill they had undergone had filled them with military ardour; they were proud of their new accomplishments, and evidently eager to test them in earnest. and the white officials were so well hated that the opportunity of setting one at defiance was in itself a sufficient motive. jack paid them a compliment on their readiness to serve--the negro dearly loves praise--and after inspecting each man's rifle and ammunition, dismissed them to various duties in the camp until the moment for action arrived. the day's water supply had scarcely been got in, and there were no vessels at hand for storing a large quantity. the stock of food in the camp was sufficient to keep the whole population for three days on full rations, and might be eked out for a week or more if each man's allowance was reduced. it was inevitable that the idea of a siege should cross jack's mind, and he foresaw that the difficulty about water would prove serious. meanwhile, he could at least send out a few men to obtain supplies of food from the chief's other villages. he chose for this errand the men least likely to be useful as fighters, and impressed on them the necessity of avoiding elbel's men. it would not be long before elbel had the surrounding country closely patrolled, and then no man would be able to approach without taking his life in his hand. what supplies they should succeed in collecting were to be held concealed in the forest until there was an opportunity of conveying them into the camp without danger. there were now within his stockade, besides himself and barney, twenty-two men armed with rifles; the chief mboyo, with his wife and samba; fifteen men, ten women, and twenty-five children who had sought asylum with him; and the livestock of the natives--a few goats and fowls. pat was one by himself. there were rifles for twenty men besides the twenty-two, but the fugitives were too much maimed, or too much reduced in strength by their sufferings, to make it seem worth while to arm them. four or five, however, had recovered very rapidly, and seemed likely to prove useful recruits. they had at any rate enough reason for fighting well; not only on behalf of their chief, but in memory of their own sufferings. pending an opportunity of teaching them the use of the rifle, jack armed them with spears and employed them as sentries. a careful watch was kept to guard against surprise, which was little likely to occur in broad daylight across the wide open space between the two settlements. jack awaited with no little anxiety the approach of noon, trying to forecast elbel's course of action. the belgian had, so far as he had been able to gather, about sixty men armed with albini rifles, with probably as many hangers-on; but the natives' conceptions of arithmetic are so vague that this information could not be relied on; the actual number might be larger or smaller. it was not likely that the followers of the forest guards could be utilized as fighting men; but the guards themselves were well armed and full of confidence, for they had become accustomed to lording it over the virtually unarmed and helpless populace from whose forced labour the congo free state derives its profits. jack was quite prepared to find that elbel, knowing that his opponent's men had but recently been armed, and were not, like his own men, to all intents professional soldiers, would think himself strong enough to rush the camp, especially as, since the day of his arrival, the belgian had appeared to show no further interest in the force at jack's disposal. "perhaps he thinks we've drilled them merely for parade," he remarked with a smile to barney. "but i think he'll find we can hold our own. i'm not afraid of a direct attack. but if he tries to starve us out it'll be a different matter. i'm bothered about the water." "be aisy, sorr. whin i was a bhoy me mother often did not know at breakfast time where the supper was coming from; but i only went to bed wance widout it, and that was whin i'd eaten it before the time, and was put to bed early as a punishment." soon after twelve o'clock the sentries reported that the white man was approaching from the direction of the village. jack hastened to the platform near the gate, which he had had barricaded, and saw elbel at the head of about forty men, at his side a negro bearing a white flag. about fifty yards from the stockade he halted, and formally demanded the surrender of the fugitives. in phrases as formal as his own jack replied that they would not be given up. while this brief exchange of courtesies was going on, the sentries stationed on similar platforms within the stockade had turned round with natural curiosity to see what was passing, and withdrew their attention from the ground they were supposed to be watching. all at once jack felt a tug at his arm, and looking round, saw samba excitedly pointing to the rear of the camp. a score of elbel's riflemen were scurrying across the open ground. to jack's surprise they were headed by a white man in military uniform. was this the captain van vorst, he wondered, who, elbel had told him, was coming up the river? had he to contend with a regular officer of the state as well as an official of the concession? one thing was clear, that while his attention was being held by the parade of the men in front, an attempt was being made to rush the camp from the rear. jack gave no sign of his discovery, but quietly ordered barney to take ten men with rifles and five with spears and deal with the attackers when their heads or hands appeared above the stockade. "keep out of sight until they're upon you," he added in a low tone. "fifteen men on the platform will be equal to more than double their number trying to scramble over." he had kept his face turned towards elbel as he spoke, apparently intent upon a serious consideration of what the belgian was saying. "i varn you. dis is not child's play. vunce more i say gif up de people; den i interfere no more. i am satisfied. but if you refuse, den i repeat: i will haf de people, and you shall see vat it is to defy de officers of de free state." jack was spared the necessity of replying. a series of yells and cries of pain told that the rear attack had begun. next moment a couple of shots rang out from the trees behind elbel, and jack, whose head just appeared over the stockade, felt one bullet whistle close above his topee, while a second embedded itself beside him in one of the saplings of which the stockade was constructed. taken in conjunction with the attempted surprise, this was as close an approximation to the methods of an assassin as could well be imagined; and jack, as he dodged down out of harm's way, felt, not for the first time, that he had to deal with a man who was not only astute but quite unscrupulous. in less than a minute the attack on the stockade had become general. the assailants showed no want of dash. perhaps they were encouraged by the impunity with which they had hitherto made their assaults on native villages similarly protected. but the conditions were different now. the defenders were armed with weapons as precise and deadly as those of the attackers themselves. elbel's men came forward at a rush, in a more or less compact body, and jack was amply satisfied with the result of his training as his men, at a sign from him, poured a volley through the loopholes bored in the stockade, while the enemy were still a dozen yards distant. several of them dropped; jack's men were completely screened from any effectual reply. the moral effect of white leadership became apparent when the forest guards, scarcely realizing their losses in the excitement of their dash towards the stockade, helped one another to swarm up, many effecting a lodgment on the top. it was at this point that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the defenders of an african village would have flung away their arms and run. but the discipline of the past two months told. at jack's command, before the enemy on the stockade had made their footing sufficiently sure to enable them to use their weapons, the men within, clubbing their rifles, sprang at them and hurled them to the ground. meanwhile barney, who thanks to samba's watchfulness had been enabled to forestall the surprise in the rear, had beaten off the attack and sent the enemy scurrying for cover. leaving only three or four men under lepoko to watch the position there, jack was able to bring almost the whole of his force to bear on repelling the main attack. elbel had greatly reduced his chances of success by detaching a third of his body; and he entirely lost their co-operation, for when they were repulsed by barney they made no attempt to rally, but simply disappeared from the fight. elbel and his men were crouching at the foot of the stockade in temporary security, for in that position the defenders could not bring their rifles to bear upon them. jack heard him give his men an order; in a few seconds a crowd of black heads again appeared above the stockade, but now some thirty yards from the point where the first assault had been made. with barney at his right hand jack led his men to the spot. from his platform he might have shot the attackers down with comparative ease; but he was determined from the first to do his best to avoid bloodshed, never forgetting his uncle's injunction to use rifles only in the last resort. the enemy themselves had no chance of firing, for they no sooner showed their heads above the palisade than they were beset by the defenders. there was a brisk five minutes in which jack and barney found plenty to do leading their men wherever the show of heads, hands, and shoulders over the stockade was thickest. barney was in his element. his rifle fell like a flail, and for every blow that got home he shouted a wild "hurroo!" which evoked responsive yells from the negroes beside him, catching his enthusiasm. jack's heart glowed as he saw how stoutly they fought. it was not until the enemy had made two attempts to mount the stockade that they realized how very different their present task was from the massacre of unresisting men, women, and children that had hitherto represented their idea of fighting. the first repulse merely surprised and enraged them: they could not understand it; they were not accustomed to such a reception; and they yelled forth threats of exacting a terrible vengeance. but when for the second time they found themselves hurled back, they had no heart for further effort. suddenly elbel discovered that he was alone, except for one man lying stark beside him; the unwounded had scampered across the open to the shelter of the nearest trees. some half dozen who had been hit with rifle bullets or clubbed at the palisade, were dragging themselves painfully towards the same shelter. jack, watching from his platform, perceived that elbel was not among the retreating crowd. was he hurt, he wondered? the next moment, however, he saw the belgian sprint after his men, bending his head between his shoulders as a boy does to avoid a snowball. several of jack's men who had joined him on the platform brought their rifles to the shoulder, and only a curt stern order from jack to drop their weapons saved elbel from almost certain death. "bedad, thin, 'tis a pity not to let them have their way, sorr," expostulated barney. "that may be," replied jack, "but i'm only on the defensive, remember. we're in no danger for the present; they've had enough of it; it's not for me to continue the fight. i hope elbel has learnt a lesson and will leave us alone." "sure i do not agree wid you at all at all, sorr," said barney, shaking his head. "to judge by the phiz uv him, elbel is a disp'rate bad character. and isn't it all his deeds that prove it, with his whips and his forest guards--blagyards i call 'em--and all? why, sorr, whin ye knocked him down the other day, why didn't he stand up fair and square and have it out wid ye? 'twas an illigant chance which no gentleman, no irishman, bedad! would have missed for worlds. gentleman! 'tis not the fortieth part uv a gentleman he has anywhere about him. 'twas not the trick uv a gentleman to try to take ye by the back stairs while he blarneyed ye at the front door. and did he not try to murder ye before the fight began? a dirty trick, sorr; i would have let my men shoot him widout the hundredth part uv a scruple." jack was compelled to smile at barney's honest indignation. "all you say is very true," he said, "but we couldn't take a leaf out of his book, you know, barney. besides, look at it in another way. suppose we shot elbel? what would happen to uncle's mining venture? there's another belgian here--i wonder where he came from. apparently he has skedaddled. he'd certainly go and report to the authorities what had happened. you may be sure he wouldn't put our side of the case; and even if he did, there's no knowing how the free state people would twist the evidence. they say the free state judges are completely under the thumb of the executive. no doubt elbel himself--who i suppose has to account for the cartridges his men use--will report this fight as a little affair with natives revolting against the rubber collection. he hasn't come well enough out of it to be anxious to call general attention to the matter. we've got off with a few bruises, i'm thankful to say; and we may very well be satisfied to let the quarrel rest there if elbel takes no further steps." barney shook his head. "ye're a powerful hand at argyment, sorr," he said, "and ye'd be elected at the top uv the poll if ye stood as mimber uv parlimint for kilkenny. but an irishman niver goes by argyment: he goes by his feelings, and my feeling is that there's no good at all in a man who refuses such an illigant chance uv a stand-up fight." "well, he's not altogether a ruffian. look! there are three of his negroes coming with a flag of truce, to fetch the poor fellow who was killed, i expect. the state officials as a rule look on the negro as so much dirt; but elbel seems to have some of the instincts of a human being." "bedad thin, i wouldn't be surprised if they're cannibals come for their dinner." "shut up, barney. it's too terrible to think of. you'll take away my appetite; here's samba, coming to tell us, i hope, that dinner's ready." jack scanned the neighbourhood. save for the negroes carrying their dead comrade there was no sign of the enemy. he left two sentries on guard and returned to his hut, hot and famished. the sultry heat of the tropical afternoon settled down over the camp. outside the stockade all was still; inside, the natives squatted in front of their huts, volubly discussing the incidents of the morning, and watching the antics of pat, who, having been tied up, much to his disgust, during the fight, was profiting by his liberty to romp with the children. the victory did not pass unchronicled. before the negroes retired to rest, one of them had composed a song which will be handed down from father to son and become a tradition of his tribe:- to the house of the dog to fight lokolobolo. inglesa was he, brave lokolobolo, lion and leopard, friend of imbono, chief of ilola. came elobela, (_chorus_) yah! bad elobela, (_chorus_) yo! to the house of the dog came lokolobolo, (_chorus_) yah! yo! short was the fight. where is he now, sad elobela? gone to the forest, beating his head, hiding his eyes from lokolobolo, friend of imbono, lion and leopard, brave lokolobolo. chapter xv a revolt at ilola every day since the advent of elbel, jack had been conscious of the growing danger of his position. a negro village, in the grip of rubber collectors; adjacent to it, a little settlement occupied mainly by negroes, many of whom were fugitives from a tyranny illegal indeed, but regularized by custom; in both settlements, natives who looked to him for help against their oppressors. it was a situation difficult enough to daunt the pluckiest lad not yet eighteen. but it is lads like jack challoner who make one of the prime glories of our anglo-saxon race. is not page after page of our national annals filled with the deeds of youths--drummers, buglers, ensigns, midshipmen--who have stepped forward in moments of crisis, and shown a noble courage, a devotion to duty, and a capacity beyond their years? jack did not quail before the responsibility his uncle had all unwittingly thrown upon him, even though he knew that his victory over the belgian might enormously increase his difficulties. already he had wondered why elbel had not put his settlement in a state of siege. the only conclusion he could come to was that the man was little more than a blusterer, without enough imagination to conceive the right means to adopt, or destitute of sufficient organizing power to put them in force. it would have been a comparatively simple matter, seeing his overwhelming strength in point of numbers, to prevent jack from securing his needful supply of water from the stream; but day by day elbel had allowed the women with their calabashes to go and come unmolested. surely, jack thought, he would now at any rate take that most obvious step towards the reduction of his enemy. and as he sat in his hut that evening, his head racked with pain from long thinking, he felt sick at heart as he realized how the fate of these poor people who had sought his aid seemed to depend on him alone. just as darkness had fallen, the chief imbono came into the camp. elbel had forbidden any one to leave the village, but the chief had bribed the sentry and been allowed to pass. he came to report that his young men had just returned from their rubber hunt after a week's absence in the forest, and learning of what had taken place, were bent on exacting vengeance for the insults and injuries inflicted on their people by the forest guards and by elbel himself. with his defeat the belgian's prestige had utterly gone, and to the ignorant negroes the opportunity seemed favourable for revenge. but imbono, more far-seeing than they, had come to ask advice. he had great difficulty in holding his men in. should he let them loose, to work their will upon their oppressors? jack earnestly advised the chief to do his utmost to restrain them. "believe me, my brother," he said, "if they do as you say they wish to do, it will almost certainly bring ruin upon you. elobela will be only too glad to have an excuse for visiting upon you the rancour caused by his reverse. true, he failed to force my camp; but he is still stronger in arms and men than i. i could do nothing to help you; for if i once move out of the shelter of my stockade, i shall be at elobela's mercy. in the open it is only rifles that count." "i will do as you say, o lokolobolo. but it is hard for me, for since the coming of elobela my people do not obey me as they used to do. if i say, do this, elobela forbids it; if i say, refrain from this, elobela bids them do it. it is hard for them to serve two masters. but i will tell them what my brother says; i can do no more." "you have another white man with you now, besides elobela?" "it is true, and he was struck by one of the balls from your guns, and is now lying sick in my hut: they have turned me out, and elobela has said that i am no more to provide food for you, my brother, either from ilola or from my other villages. but one of my young men told me that the party you sent out have obtained a supply, and wait in the forest until you bid them bring it in." jack thanked the chief, who returned to his village. the news he brought was not of a kind to lessen jack's anxiety. what he had expected had at last happened. he had little doubt that the commandeering of food would soon be followed by the stoppage of his water supply. without access to water the camp was doomed. it was possible that if he made common cause with imbono their united forces might overcome elbel's forest guards; but the attempt could be made only at a terrible risk, and if it failed the whole population of the two settlements must be annihilated. jack saw now that the presence of his camp so near ilola was a source of danger to it. this could not have been foreseen; but how much better it would have been, he thought, if he had chosen a different site. at another spot, remote from the village, with a more defensible position, and near a good water supply, the present weaknesses would not have existed, and at all events imbono might not have been involved in the consequences of the quarrel with elbel. but it was too late to think of that. certainly no move could be made while elbel was close by with a considerable force. if elbel took advantage of his superiority to hold the camp closely invested, there would never be any possibility of moving at all. deprived of water, jack must soon choose between the alternatives--to surrender, or to make a sally at the head of his men and put all to the hazard of an open fight. two days passed. jack kept a close watch on ilola through his field-glass; all seemed quiet there, and of elbel himself he saw nothing. what was his amazement, when at daybreak he took his stand on the platform overlooking ilola, to see elbel marching out at the head of the greater part of his force, and making for the river bank. he waited an hour, and when they did not return, and the patrols had not appeared, he sent out a couple of men by a roundabout way to follow the movements of the force, and allowed the usual water carriers to go out with their calabashes. these, returning soon with water, reported a strange thing. from the women of ilola whom they had met on a like errand at the river, they had learnt that elobela had set off with his men in their smoke-boat, and that boloko had been left in charge of the village with about as many men as he had brought at first. several hours later jack's scouts came back, and said that they had followed along the bank the course of elobela's launch; he was going rapidly down the river. they could only suppose that he was making for the headquarters of his company some hundreds of miles away. "what did i say at all at all?" remarked barney when jack told him the great news. "he's no gentleman, that's as plain as the nose on his face, sorr. a man who will take two lickings and thin run away is not fit to wipe your shoes on." "you seem disappointed, barney, but frankly i'm very glad. i could fling up my hat and cheer if i hadn't to keep up my dignity before these natives. though i fear we haven't seen the last of mr. elbel by any means. we shall have him upon us sooner or later with an overwhelming force. but sufficient unto the day; my uncle should be back long before that, if elbel doesn't meet and stop him on the road. well, we now have a chance to move our camp, for if elbel is on his way to headquarters he can't get back for weeks. and first of all, barney, take a dozen men and bring in that food that's waiting in the forest. we shan't be able to move for a day or two, at any rate; we must choose our site more carefully this time." thinking over the matter, jack was not long in coming to the decision that the best place to establish his new camp would be near the cataract. from his recollection of the ground above it he thought it was admirably situated from a strategical point of view. it would have the incidental advantage of protecting mr. martindale's claim. the one disadvantage was its distance from the sources of food supply. but this caused jack to give serious consideration to a matter which had once or twice dimly suggested itself to him. he had been more and more impressed with the necessity of his party being self-supporting, so far as the staple articles of food were concerned, if they were to make a long stay in this country. he remembered how stanley during his search for emin pasha had been able to sow, grow, and reap crops at fort bodo in a remarkably short time. why should not he do the same? when he was joined by mr. martindale's contingent a large quantity of food would be needed. no doubt they would bring stores with them; but these could not last very long, especially in view of the unexpected drain upon the resources of the expedition caused by the arrival of the fugitives from banonga and elsewhere. "i wonder what uncle will say when he sees them," jack remarked to barney, when he opened up to him this question of food supply. "you remember at banonga he said he wasn't going to start a boys' home; this is still more serious--a sort of convalescent home for non-paying patients." "'tis meself that isn't wan little bit afraid uv what the master will say. sure don't i know to a letther what 'twill be! 'my gracious me!'--don't ye hear him, sorr?--'what in the world will i want wid all these disgraceful lookin' objects? this ain't business. i'm not a philanthrophy, an' i don't exactly see my way to run a croosade.' an' thin he'll say, 'poor fellow!' an' 'poor wumman!' an' 'poor little chap!' an' he'll dive his hands into his pockets an' suddenly remimber himself that money is no manner uv good in this counthry, an' he'll say: 'we must kind uv fix up some sort uv something for 'em, barney.' didn't i know 'm by heart the first day i drove him in london, and he went up to the horse and opened his jaw an' looked in his eyes an' says 'he'll do.' sure i'd niver have named me little darlint uv a pat to 'm if i hadn't known the kind uv gintleman he was at all." jack smiled at barney's way of putting it, but admitted the truth of the portrait. mr. martindale was indeed a capable man of affairs--an example of the best type of the american man of business, the embodiment of the qualities by which the extraordinary commercial prosperity of the united states has been built up. but jack knew that he was more than a man of business. his was a big heart, and it was one of the minor vexations of his life that he had to take some trouble to conceal it. jack's final conclusion was that there was not only every prospect of an extended stay if this mining scheme was to be followed up, but that the number of persons to be provided for would be more considerable than it was possible at present to calculate. obviously, then, it behoved him to employ the time before mr. martindale's arrival in preparing for contingencies. elbel's departure had immediate consequences in ilola. his presence had in some measure curbed the worse propensities of his black followers: they could only be brutal in obedience to orders; but the moment he was gone they began to show themselves once more in their true light. before a day had passed imbono came into the camp to complain of the insolence and rapacity of boloko and his men. jack advised him to do nothing to give boloko any excuse for violence, but he had still to plumb the depths of savagery and brutality in the men whom the free state government callously allowed the trading companies to employ in the exploitation of rubber. he had still to learn that where violence was intended, not even the shadow of an excuse was any longer considered necessary. one morning imbono came to him in a frenzy of rage and indignation. his third wife had been tending her cooking pot when boloko came up and asked what food she was preparing. "a fowl," she replied civilly. "give it me," he demanded. "it is not yet cooked, o boloko," the poor woman answered. "you refuse me, ngondisi?" cried the ruffian. "lift your hands and open your eyes wide that i may see the white of them, or i will shoot you." ngondisi in terror obeyed. "you do not open them wide enough," said the wretch with a laugh, and he lifted the gun and fired; and the woman fell upon her face; she would never open her eyes again. but boloko had in this case reckoned without the spirit of confidence engendered in the natives by the discomfiture of elbel. he had only ten men in the village when the incident occurred; the rest were absent, levying toll on imbono's other villages a few miles distant. even while imbono, with tears of anguish, was telling jack what had been done, the spark had been applied to the tinder. an extraordinary commotion was heard in the direction of ilola: shots, yells, the war cry of infuriate men. rushing out with imbono, jack arrived in the village to find that retaliation had at last been wreaked for months of wrong. it was difficult at first to make out what had happened. it appeared that in imbono's absence the men of the village had suddenly seized their arms, and flung themselves in one desperate rush upon boloko and his men. what cared they if several of their number fell before the tyrants' rifles? heedless of wounds they closed about the forest guards; there was a brief hand-to-hand fight, eight of boloko's men had fallen to weapons wielded with the energy of despair, and of the party only boloko himself and two men had made their escape into the forest. elate with their victory, the men of ilola had hastened off to the other villages, to surprise the guards there. it was too late now to recall them, but jack had arrived on the spot just in time to rescue one man, whom the villagers were on the point of massacring. the white sous-officier who had been wounded in the fight before jack's camp had been placed in imbono's hut. roused by the sound of firing, he had dragged himself from his mattress and, rifle in hand, came to the entrance of the hut just as jack entered the gate with the chief. the villagers had forgotten him; but when they saw in their power a white man, one of those to whom all their afflictions were due, a band of them sprang towards him with uplifted spears. he fired: one of the men fell. the rest paused for an instant, and were on the point of dashing forward to make an end of their enemy when jack rushed between them and their prey, and cried to them in imbono's name to stay their hands. reluctantly, with lowering countenances, they obeyed the command of their chief's white brother. no mercy had been shown to them: why should they show mercy? but when imbono reminded them that the slaying of a white man would bring upon them the hordes of bula matadi, and that elobela had already gone down the river, probably to bring many soldiers back with him, they sullenly drew off, and allowed jack to remove the man to the safety of his own camp. the belgian knew no english, but jack had a fair working knowledge of french which he found was equal to the occasion. the man explained that he was an ex-noncommissioned officer of the state forces, whose services had been enlisted by elbel in dealing with the refractory natives. he seemed quite unable to understand jack's point of view. to him the natives were so many parasites, the goods and chattels of the state, with no property and no rights. "why, monsieur," he said, "we pay them for the work they do; we have a right to demand labour of them for nothing. see what we have done for their country! look at the rubber stations on the river, the fine buildings, the telegraphs, the cataract railway; where would all these blessings of civilization have been but for the noble self-sacrifice of king leopold?" jack gave up the attempt to argue with him that the country belonged primarily to its natural inhabitants, forbore to point out that king leopold had expressly declared that he had the advancement of the natives at heart. he contented himself with insisting that the actions of which elbel and his minions had been guilty in ilola were contrary to the law of the free state itself. he was much struck by the belgian's answer. "ah, monsieur, we have no book of rules, no code of laws. what can we do? we are the only law. yes, monsieur, we are the only god in the maranga." next day jack went with imbono and lepoko to the waterfall, to survey the place as a possible site for a camp, or, to speak more strictly, a settlement. the chief was troubled and displeased at the prospect of the removal of his blood brother's camp, but made no urgent remonstrance. on arriving at the spot, jack at once detected signs that some one had recently been making investigations there. he had no doubt that this was elbel. the secret of the gold had probably been disclosed in an incautious moment to one of his escort by the men who had accompanied mr. martindale on his second visit. elbel already knew enough of the american's business to make him keenly interested, and alert to follow up the slightest clue. knowing what he now knew of the methods of the state officials, jack was ready to believe that elbel would strain every nerve to get mr. martindale hounded out of the country, in order to have an opportunity of turning the discovery of gold to his own profit. could his sudden departure from the village, jack wondered, have been his first move in this direction? carefully examining the ground above the waterfall, jack saw that a good deal would have to be done to make it suitable for a settlement. he heard from imbono that during several months of the year the stream was much broader than at present, and at the point where it debouched from the hill, three or four miles below, it and other streams overflowed their banks, forming a wide swamp, almost a lake, some ten miles from east to west and more than half a mile broad. this, during the rainy season, practically cut off all communication from the direction of the village. on the far side of the hill the bluffs were so precipitous as to make access very difficult. this isolated hill formed therefore a kind of huge castle, of which the swamp for half the year was the natural moat. it seemed to jack that the most convenient site for his new camp was the slope of the hill immediately above the cataract. the incline here was very slight; the hill face only became steep again about a quarter of a mile from the fall; there it rose abruptly for fully fifty or sixty yards, sloping gently for the next half mile. jack saw that if he built his entrenched camp in the neighbourhood of the waterfall, it would be to a slight extent commanded by an enemy posted on the steep ascent above. but by raising his defences somewhat higher on that side he hoped to overcome this disadvantage. with a little labour, he thought, the soil around the cataract could be made suitable for planting food-stuffs. it was virgin soil, and owing to the slight fall of the ground at this spot, and to the fact that it was partially protected by the contour of the hill against floods from above, the leaves that for ages past had fallen from the thick copses fringing the banks, and from the luxuriant undergrowth on the small plateau itself, had not been washed down. these deposits had greatly enriched the alluvium, and imbono said that large crops of manioc, maize, groundnuts, and sweet potatoes could easily be grown, as well as plantains and bananas and sugar cane. on returning to his camp by ilola, jack told barney the results of his investigation, and announced that he had definitely made up his mind to settle on the new site. "very good, sorr," said barney; "but what'll become uv ilola? beggin' your pardon, sorr, 'twas a very solemn affair, that ceremony uv brotherhood, an' though sure it had niver a blessing from a priest--an' like enough father mahone would think it a poor haythen sort uv business--still, to the poor niggers, sorr, it may be just as great a thing as if the priest had blessed it in the name uv almighty god." "well, what are you driving at, barney?" "why this, sorr. the chief and you made a bargain to help wan another; an' sure ye've kept it, both uv you. well, if we go away, there's no more help for either uv you, an' 'tis imbono will be most in need uv it." "you mean that i'm deserting my ally, eh?" "bedad, sorr, isn't it me that knows ye'd niver do it? but i just speak for the look uv the thing, sorr. sure niver a man knows betther than barney o'dowd that things are not always what they seem." "to tell you the truth, barney, i've been thinking it over on the way back. i could see that imbono doesn't like the idea of our moving, though he was too polite to mention it----" "'tis a rale irish gintleman he is, sorr," interrupted barney. "there's no doubt that elbel, or boloko, or both, will come back sooner or later. leaving me out of the question, the slaughter of boloko's party won't go unpunished. to overlook that would ruin the authority of the forest guards for hundreds of miles round. well, what does it mean when they return? they'll make a terrible example of ilola. imbono and his people will be wiped out. and you're quite right in believing that i couldn't stand by and see that done. but you see what it involves. we must plan our camp so as to be able to take in the whole of imbono's people from the three villages--i suppose about four hundred in all, children included. that's a large order, barney." "true it is, sorr. but you wouldn't keep out the childher, poor little souls; an' mighty proud uv pat they are, too. besides, sorr, they'll all help, ivery soul, to build the camp; many hands make light work; an' ye couldn't expect 'em to set up a lot uv huts for us barring they saw a chance uv bein' invited now and again, at least as payin' guests, sorr." "well, barney, i'd made up my mind to it all along, but i thought i'd like to sound you first. so all we've got to do now is to relieve imbono's suspense and set to work. we'll start with clearing the soil for crops. it will take some time to plan the new camp, and we've always this one to retreat to. take lepoko over to ilola and make the announcement yourself, barney." "i will, sorr, wid the greatest pleasure in life. 'deed, 'twas meself that took the news to biddy o'flaherty whin her pig had won the prize at ballymahone show, and was just coming away wid a penny in me pocket when i met mike henchie. 'an' what would ye be afther, mike?' says i. 'carryin' the news to biddy o'flaherty, to be sure,' says he. 'arrah thin, 'tis too late ye are,' says i. 'isn't it meself that's just got a penny for that same news?' 'bedad,' says he, 'what will have come to biddy at all?' 'what is it ye'd be maning?' says i; 'sure she didn't give me a penny,' says mike, 'last year whin i brought her the news. she gave me a screech and went black in the face, an' sure 'twas for the same fun i'm here this blessed minute?' 'husht!' says i. 'biddy didn't win the prize last year at all. 'twas patsy m'manus.' 'an' who is it this time but that same patsy?' says mike. 'but i heard the judge wid me very own ears give it to biddy!' says i. 'deed so,' says he; 'but some wan renumbered him that patsy had won it two years on end. "me old friend patsy!" says he. "sure i couldn't break her heart by spoilin' the third time. i'll give it to patsy," says he.' an' patsy hadn't shown a pig at all that year, sorr." chapter xvi the house by the water with characteristic energy, jack next day set about the work in earnest. he posted sentinels several miles down the river and on the only forest paths by which a force was likely to approach, to give him timely notice if the enemy appeared. then, with as many men as he could muster, and a great number of women, he hastened to the waterfall, and began the work of clearing the ground. he had decided to start from the site of the proposed settlement and work outwards, so that the crops would be as much as possible under the protection of the camp: it would never do to raise a harvest for the enemy to reap. he placed mboyo, samba's father, in command of all his own people who had turned up, and of such people from other tribes as now came dropping in daily, the news of the white men who helped the negroes and feared not bula matadi having by this time spread abroad in the land. every new contingent of fugitives brought a fresh tale of outrage, causing jack to persevere under the discouragements with which he met, and to vow that he would do all in his power to protect the poor people who looked to him for succour. what the ultimate result of his action would be he did not stay to consider. it was enough for him that a work of urgent need lay ready to his hand. he did not blink the fact that he and his followers were now in reality in revolt against the constituted authorities of the free state. elbel, it was true, was only a servant of a concessionnaire company, vested with certain trading and taxing privileges; but government as understood in the free state was conducted by the delegation of powers from the central authority to private or corporate trading concerns. how far the powers of such a man as elbel really extended in point of law jack did not know. but he had been driven into his present position by a series of events in the face of which he could not find that any other course of action than the one he had adopted was open to him. and while he recognized fully the essential weakness of his position, however well fortified he might regard himself on grounds of humanity, he faced boldly what seemed the likeliest immediate consequence of his actions--the return of elbel in force. meanwhile he was beginning to be a little concerned at not hearing from mr. martindale. it was many weeks since his last note had arrived. jack was not yet seriously anxious about his uncle's non-appearance in person, for he could easily conceive that delays might occur in the prosecution of his business in strange places and among strange people, and when he reflected he came to the conclusion that mr. martindale might naturally hesitate to send many messengers. they were very expensive, having to come so many hundreds of miles, and moreover there was always a chance that a letter might miscarry. the congo was not too safe a highway; the free state methods had not been such as to instil a respect for "law" among the victims of its rule. jack knew full well that if a messenger from his uncle fell into elbel's hands, he would not be allowed to proceed. it was possible that mr. martindale's purchase of rifles, and their destination, had been discovered; and the idea that he might be involved in some trouble with the courts made jack feel uneasy at times. but he was so extremely busy that he had little leisure for speculation of any kind. the work of clearing the ground proceeded with wonderful rapidity. "they talk about the negro being lazy," he remarked one day to barney; "he doesn't look like it now." "ah, sorr, they say the same about my counthrymen. perhaps the truth is the same in ireland as 'tis here. for why are the niggers here not lazy, sorr? just because you'd explained to them what the work's for, and they know they'll get the good uv it. there may be scuts uv spalpeens that won't work at any time for anything or anybody at all. 'tis they i'd use that chicotte on, sorr; but i don't see any here, to be sure." when enough ground had been cleared and sowed to furnish a considerable crop, jack turned the whole of his available force on to the work of building the entrenched camp. imbona had welcomed with gratitude and enthusiasm the suggestion that the new settlement should be made large enough to contain the whole population of his villages in case of need; and his men having discontinued their unprofitable search for rubber when the forest guards disappeared, he could employ them almost all in the work. for jack did not recognize the prescriptive right of the men to leave all the field work, when the clearing had been done, to the women, as is the invariable negro custom. whether in the fields or on the new defences, he insisted on all taking a share. the greatest difficulty he encountered in the construction of his new camp was the want of materials. the country in the immediate vicinity of the waterfall was only sparsely wooded, and too much time and labour would be consumed in hauling logs from the forest below. but he found a large copse bordering the stream, higher up, and here he felled the trees, floating the logs down to the side of his settlement, not without difficulty, owing to the narrow tortuous bed. these, however, proved quite insufficient for the construction of a thick and impenetrable stockade round the whole circuit of the chosen site. jack therefore determined to use the boulders that lay in the course of the stream, thus unawares making his camp a cross between an afghan stone sangar and a log fort, such as were built by the pioneers and fur-traders of the american west. the labour of transporting the heavy boulders to the site of the settlement was very great; but the heart of the labourers being, as barney had said, in their work, they toiled ungrudgingly, and, with the ingenuity that the negro often unexpectedly displays, they proved very fertile in simple labour-saving devices. the fort was built on the left bank of the stream just above the cataract, so that the steep cliffs formed an effective defence to its southern side. before falling over the precipice, the stream ran through a gully some twelve feet deep. the western side of the fort rested on the gully, and was thus with difficulty accessible in this quarter. only on the north and east was it necessary to provide strong defensive works. these faces were each about a hundred yards long. at the western extremity of the northern face, where it rested on the stream, jack placed a solid blockhouse of logs. he constructed a similar blockhouse at the eastern extremity of this face, and a third at the south-east corner where the stone wall abutted on the precipice. all three blockhouses were constructed as bastions, so as to enfilade the northern and eastern faces. when the outer defences were thus completed, the negroes were set to work to build the necessary habitations within. hundreds of tall stems, thousands of climbers, vines, and creepers, piles of palm and phrynia leaves, were collected, and in an amazingly short time the space so lately bare was covered with neat huts built in native fashion for the negroes, with three more substantial dwellings, somewhat apart from the rest, for mr. martindale, jack, and barney. a wide open space was left in the middle. at one point a great heap of boulders was collected for repairing the wall if necessary; and jack placed his ammunition securely in an underground magazine. in two months from the departure of elbel jack was able to transfer his stores to the new settlement. the crops in the cultivated area were already far advanced. jack was amazed to see how quickly in this teeming soil the bare brown face of the earth became covered with the tender shoots of green, and how rapid was the progress to full maturity. clearly the new village, to which the natives had given the name ilombekabasi, "the house by the water," would be in no straits for its food supply. it was barney who suggested a doubt about the water. jack found him as a rule a good commentator, but a poor originator; he could very prettily embroider an idea, but very rarely had an idea of his own. but on this occasion he had a flash of insight. "by the powers, sorr," he said one morning, as jack and he were walking along the stream, "i do remimber just this very minute two lines uv poethry, out uv a poethry book i was made to learn whin i was a bhoy an' they talked uv sendin' me in for 'zamination by the intermaydiate board. it never come to anything, to be sure, because by the time i was old enough to sit for the 'zamination i was too old, sorr." "well, what are the lines?" '"water, water iverywhere, an' not a dhrop to dhrink.'" 'twas about some poor sailor man that shot a bird at sea, an 'twas a holy bird, an' whin 'twas dead the wind did not blow, an' the sailors dropped down dead, an' ghosts came aboard, an' the sky was like a hot copper, an' this poor divil uv a fellow was alone, all, all alone, as the book said, wid the dead bird slung round his neck, an' his lips parched, an' water all about, but as salt as a herring, so that he couldn't drink it; bedad, sorr, i remimber how mighty bad i felt meself whin my ould tacher--rest his sowl!--read out those lines in a sort uv whisper, an' me lips went as dhry as an old boot, sorr." the idea, you perceive, was by this time pretty well smothered under its embroidery. "you mean that the enemy might try to divert the stream if they attacked our camp?" "'tis the very marrow uv it, sorr, an' mighty aisy it would be. sure there are plenty uv boulders left, an' they could make a dam that would turn this stream at the narrow part above, an' niver a blessed dhrop uv dhrink should we get." "you're right, barney. we must be prepared for anything. let us go and look round." strolling up stream, they came, within a short distance of the spot where inspiration had flashed upon barney, to a small spring bubbling up near the river bank. "here's water, barney," said jack. "it rather suggests that we'd find water inside the camp if we sank a well." "true, sorr; but i'm thinking that would need a terrible deal uv diggin'." "still it may have to be done. we can't use this spring; it's a hundred yards at least away from the stockade--too far to come, under fire from albini rifles." "and we couldn't make it run into the camp, sorr, more's the pity." "stop a bit. i don't know that we couldn't. we might make a conduit." "what might that be, sorr?" "a pipe. it would have to be underground." "and if we got a pipe, an' could lay it, the marks uv the diggin' would bethray us. don't the streets uv london prove it whin the county council has been taking up the drains?" "unless we could cover them in some way. that might be managed. a greater difficulty is the natives. they've worked very well, but we don't know yet how far they can be trusted; and if they knew of this water-pipe we propose, they might blab the secret and undo all our work." "and where's the pipe, sorr? there are no gas pipes or drain pipes in this haythen counthry." "no, but there are plenty of bamboos. we could make an excellent pipe of them. the digging is the difficulty. we can't get the natives to do it without giving our plan away, and we can't do it ourselves for the same reason. i shall have to think this out, barney." "sleep on it, sorr. begorra, i remimber two more lines from that same poetry book- 'sleep, sleep, it is a blessed thing beloved from pole to pole'; an' no wonder at all, for many a time i've gone to me bed bothered about wan thing or another, and bedad, the morn's morn 'twas all as clear as the blessed daylight, sorr." "well, i'll sleep on it, barney, and let you know to-morrow what the result is." it was close thought, however, before he fell asleep that gave jack the solution of the problem. all the natives now knew that the object of the white man's presence here was to search for gold; they knew also that to obtain the gold the soil had to be excavated. why not turn their knowledge to good account? instead of laying his conduit in a direct line from the spring to the nearest point of the stockade, he would lay it along, or rather in, the side of the gully; it would thus be more likely to escape observation, and the disturbed ground could be planted with quick-growing creepers or covered up with boulders. as a blind to the natives, he would have a number of excavations made at the edge of the gully, both above and below the waterfall, and one of these could be used for the bamboo pipe without anybody being the wiser save the few who must necessarily be in the secret. next morning, accordingly, jack, under pretence of continuing the search for gold, set the men to make a series of shallow excavations. most of these were cut below the cataract, and, using the prospector's pan, jack obtained what he hoped his uncle would consider good results from the soil. he carefully noted the places along the exposed bed of the stream in which the best returns were found. but the excavations were abandoned one by one, and attention was not unduly directed to any of them. one of the excavations above the waterfall was the channel for the conduit. jack carried it from within a few yards of the spring to a spot near the north-west blockhouse, overlooking the gully. at one time it seemed that his plan would be wrecked, literally upon a rock, for a huge mass of stone of almost granite hardness was met with a little less than half-way from the spring. but jack was relieved to find soft earth beneath it, and the obstacle was turned by sinking the conduit at this place some feet below the usual level. at a short distance from the blockhouse, within the stockade, jack set the men to excavate a large tank, with a surface outlet over the cataract; and from the bottom of the tank he drove a tunnel, just large enough to accommodate a bamboo pipe, to the nearest point of the gully. the tank was an object of great curiosity to the natives, both those who had dug it and those who looked on. the children amused themselves by jumping in and out until the bottom became so deep as to make that sport dangerous; their elders congregated at the edge, chattering among themselves, some suggesting that it was intended as a storehouse for grain, others, as a grave in which to bury elobela and his men when they were killed in the fight that all expected. meanwhile jack had taken two of the natives into his confidence. they were mboyo and samba. the former was silent by nature and habit. samba would have torn out his tongue rather than divulge any secret of his master's. jack entrusted to them the construction of the conduit. he knew enough of their language by this time to be able to explain what he wanted without lepoko's assistance, and they quickly seized his idea. working by themselves in a bamboo plantation at ilola, they selected stalks of slightly different thickness which would fit into one another; and jack found that by carefully packing the joints with earth from the peaty swamp, he could make a pipe of the required length practically free from leakage. it remained to lay the conduit in position. this task he reserved for himself and barney, with the assistance of mboyo and samba. to avoid observation by the people, it was necessary to do the work at night. accordingly one day jack gave orders that no one was to leave the camp without permission after the evening meal was eaten. immediately after sunset the four quickly issued from the gate in the northern wall of the fort, one at a time so as not to attract attention. mboyo and samba brought the sections of the pipe from the place where they had concealed them, and under jack's direction they laid them along the gully, covering up each length of bamboo as it was placed. the trench having been already prepared, the actual labour involved was not great, the only difficulty being to remove as far as possible the traces of their operations. but it took time, and was impeded by the darkness, so that on the first night, after several hours of work, only the pipe had been laid, no connexion having yet been made with the tank or the spring. the work was continued under similar conditions on the following night. a connexion having been made with the tank, it only remained to tap the spring. a hole, some three feet deep, was dug where the water bubbled up, and formed into a fairly water-tight chamber by lining it with stone chipped from the boulders. into this one end of the conduit was carried. then the hole was filled in, and covered with two heavy pieces of rock, placed in as natural and unstudied a position as possible. while this was being done by mboyo and samba, jack and barney dibbled the roots of sweet potato creepers into the soil along the whole length of the conduit, knowing that they would grow so rapidly that in a few weeks every trace of their work would be hidden by the foliage; moreover the plant would serve a double purpose. the spring was a small one; nevertheless, by the time the night's task was completed, and the party returned to the camp, there were already two or three inches of water in the tank, and it was steadily rising. barney was even more delighted than jack. "'tis wonderful what a power uv good poethry can do in the world, sorr," he said. "an' sure the commissionaires uv education in the ould counthry would be proud men the day did they know that barney o'dowd, though he didn't pass his 'zamination, has made a mighty fine use uv the little poethry book." great was the surprise of the natives when they awoke next morning to see the mysterious tank full of water, and a tiny overflow trickling from it over the cataract. they discussed it for the whole of the day, inventing every explanation but the right one. the original spring had been so near the river and so inconspicuous that its disappearance was not noticed. jack felt a glow of satisfaction as he looked round on his work. here was an orderly settlement, on an excellent natural site, defended by a stockade and wall impregnable save to artillery, with fresh clean huts, well-cultivated fields, and an inexhaustible water supply. it had involved much thought and care and toil; how amply they had been rewarded! his men were now all transferred from their old settlement to the new one. imbono's people still remained in their villages, not without reluctance. they knew that the gate of ilombekabasi would always be open to them if danger threatened; but they felt the attractions of the place, and wished to migrate at once. and they were particularly jealous of the refugees. these people were strangers; why should they have better habitations and stronger defences than they themselves? why were they permitted to remain in imbono's country at all? jack had much ado to keep the peace between the two parties. quarrels were frequent, and that they did not develop into open strife was a tribute to jack's diplomacy, and to the strange influence which samba had acquired. the winning qualities which had captivated mr. martindale seemed to have a magical effect upon the people. the boy had always been a special pet among his own folks; his merry nature won the affection of imbono's subjects also. jack kept an observant eye upon him, and more than once saw him quietly approach a group where bickering and recrimination were going on, and by some grace of address, or some droll antic played with his inseparable companion pat, turn frowns to smiles, and suspicion to good fellowship. among the inhabitants of ilombekabasi was the belgian sergeant rescued from the villagers in ilola. he gave his parole not to attempt to escape, and indeed endured captivity patiently, for he knew not how far away his friends might be, and to wander alone in this forest country meant death. jack sometimes talked with him, taking the opportunity of airing his french, and finding some little interest in sounding the man's views. at first the belgian would not admit that the natives had any rights, or that there was anything particularly obnoxious in the system of administration. but he changed his mind one day when jack put to him a personal question. "how would you, a belgian, like it if some strange sovereign--the german emperor, say--came down upon you and compelled you to go into your woods and collect beech-nuts for him, paying you at the rate of a sou a day, or not at all, and thrashing or maiming or killing you if you did not collect enough?" the question was unanswerable, and from that time the belgian became a meditative man. the refugees were gradually increasing in number. by the time the camp was finished mboyo's command had grown to sixty men, with nearly as many women and twice as many children. all brought stories of the barbarous deeds of the rubber collectors; many bore in maimed limbs or scarred backs the personal evidences of the oppressors' cruelty. jack was moved almost to tears one day. a fine-looking negro came into the camp carrying something wrapped in palm leaves, and asked to be taken to lokolobolo. when brought before jack he removed the wrappings, and, unutterable woe depicted on his face, displayed a tiny black hand and foot. his village had been raided, he said, and with his wife and children and a few others he had fled to the forest, where they lived on roots and leaves and nuts. the forest guards tracked them out. one day, when he was absent fishing, a brutal sentry came upon his wife as she was collecting leaves for the evening meal. he learnt from one of his friends what happened. before the woman could escape the sentry shot her, and as she was only wounded, his "boys" chopped her with their knives till she died. others of his hangers-on took the children; and when the father returned to the place where he had left them, he found the dead body of his wife, and one hand and foot, all that remained of his little ones from the cannibal feast. it was incidents like these that stiffened jack's back. he had crossed his rubicon: the gate of ilombekabasi stood open to all who chose to come. and they came steadily. for a time many of them were too weak to be useful members of the little society. but as with good food and freedom from care their strength increased, they began to be self-supporting, mboyo employed them in attending to the crops and bringing new ground under cultivation. several were artificers, and were useful in doing smith's or carpenter's work. in addition to keeping the villagers employed, jack set apart a portion of every day for military exercises. every able-bodied man was armed; those for whom there were no rifles carried the native spears. when boloko fled from ilola he left a number of albini rifles and a stock of ammunition behind. these jack appropriated, so that his corps of riflemen now numbered sixty. he used his cartridges very sparingly, for his stock was not large, and he saw no possibility of replenishing it. now and again he arranged for a sham fight. one party of men was told off to storm the stockade, an equal party to defend it. no firearms were used on these occasions; the weapons employed were wooden poles with wadded ends. such fights afforded excellent practice against a real attack, and not a little amusement and enjoyment to the natives, who entered into the spirit of them enthusiastically, and took the hard knocks and bruises with as much cheerfulness as schoolboys on a football field. these little operations were useful to jack also. by their means he discovered the weak spots in his defences, and was able to strengthen them accordingly. but he was now becoming seriously alarmed at mr. martindale's continued absence. eight weeks had passed since his last letter came to hand, nearly five months since his departure. what could have happened? jack could not think that his uncle had willingly left him so long to bear his heavy responsibility, and now that he had more leisure he could not prevent himself from imagining all kinds of mishaps and disasters. at last, when he was on the point of sending a special messenger down the river to make inquiries, a negro arrived at the settlement with a letter. he had come within a hundred and fifty miles of ilombekabasi as a paddler on a white man's canoe; the remainder of the distance he had covered on foot. jack opened the letter eagerly. it read:-my dear jack,-sorry to leave you so long. have been on my back with an attack of malaria; three weeks unconscious, they told me. no need to be anxious: i'm on the mend; soon be as fit as a riddle. pretty weak, of course; malaria isn't exactly slathers of fun. it will be a fortnight or three weeks before i can start; then must travel slowly. expect me somewhat over a month after you get this. i've been in a stew about you. hope you've had no trouble. can you stomach native food? didn't forget your birthday. got a present for you--quite a daisy. your affectionate uncle, john martindale. p.s.--got some hydraulic plant at boma: a bargain. chapter xvii a buffalo hunt "dear old uncle!" said jack as he handed the letter to barney. "'pon my soul, i'd forgotten my own birthday, and i haven't the ghost of a notion what the day of the month is; have you, barney?" "divil a bit, sorr." "though, of course, i could reckon it out by counting up the sundays. d'you know, barney, i almost wish i'd made these negroes knock off work one day a week." "sure it wouldn't have answered atall atall sorr. a day's idleness would mean a day's quarrelling. uv coorse 'tis a pity they're ignorant haythens, an' i wish we could have father mahone out for a month or two to tache the poor craturs; but until they can be tached in the proper way, betther let 'em alone, sorr." "perhaps you're right, barney. doesn't it seem to you odd that uncle says nothing about the rubber question? his first letter, you remember, was full of it." "master's a wise man, sorr. what he does not say says more than what he does. he wouldn't be sure, you see, that his letter would iver reach you. and bedad, if he'd had good things to say uv the state officers, wouldn't he have said 'em? he's found 'em out, sorr, 'tis my belief." "i shall be jolly glad to see him, dear old boy." "and so will i, sorr, an' to see some things fit for a christian to ate. master's stomach won't take niggers' food, an' mine wouldn't if i could help it." "but you're getting fat, man!" "sure that's the terrible pity uv it. wid dacent food i kept as lean as a rake, and i'd niver have believed that the only way to get fat was to ate pig's food; for that's what it is, sorr, this maniac and other stuff. i'll now be wanting to get thin again, sorr." the white men's stores had long since given out. for weeks they had had no sugar, no coffee, tea, or cocoa. jack as well as barney had to share the natives' food. jack did not mind the change, and he believed that barney's objection was more than half feigned, for the irishman ate with unfailing appetite. the native diet was indeed nutritious and not unappetising. it included fish from the streams, which they ate both fresh and smoked; bananas, pine-apples, plantains, indian corn, manioc, ground-nuts, and sweet potatoes. manioc was their most important food, and jack after a time began to like it, as made into _kwanga_. the root of the plant is pounded to a pulp, soaked for twenty-four hours in running water, and when it ferments, is worked up into a stiff dough. cut into slices and fried in ground-nut oil it is very palatable. jack also found the groundnuts delicious when roasted. a few goats kept in the settlement provided milk, and they had a regular supply of eggs from their fowls, so that jack at least considered himself very well off. the crops around the settlement ripened and were gathered: fine fields of indian corn, amazing quantities of manioc and ground-nuts, that ripen beneath the soil. yet jack began to wonder whether his plantations would meet the needs of the population. it was still growing. the renown of lokolobolo and ilombekabasi had evidently spread far and wide, for every week more refugees came in from villages far apart. besides the men of jack's original party, there were now nearly two hundred people in the settlement, and jack always had to remember that these might any day be increased by the four hundred from imbono's villages, if elbel returned to avenge boloko's expulsion, as he certainly would do. further, mr. martindale would no doubt bring back with him a certain number of trained workmen--carpenters, engine-men, and so forth; all these must be provided with house room and food. jack was glad that he had planned the settlement on generous lines, though as he looked around he asked himself somewhat anxiously whether it would suffice to accommodate all. and what would his uncle say to it? would he endorse what jack had done, and take upon himself the protection of these outcasts against their own lawfully constituted, however unlawfully administered, government? only time could decide that, and jack awaited with growing impatience his uncle's return. one morning a messenger came in from ilola to say that news had reached imbono of a herd of buffaloes which were feeding about five miles off in the open country to the west. hitherto jack had not had leisure to indulge his tastes for sport; but the knowledge that big game was now so near at hand prompted him to try his luck. leaving barney in charge of the settlement, he set off the same morning with imbono and mboyo, who had both become very fair marksmen, the former with an albini rifle that had been boloko's, the latter with a mauser presented to him by jack. samba and lepoko were in attendance, carrying lunch for the party. though jack had picked up a good deal of the language, he found it in some respects so extraordinarily difficult that he was always glad of lepoko as a stand-by. by the time they had reached the spot where the herd had first been sighted, it had moved some distance away; but it was easily tracked, and by dint of careful stalking up the wind the party got within three hundred yards without being discovered by the keen-scented beasts. then, however, the country became so open that to approach nearer unseen was impossible, and jack decided to take a shot at them without going farther. he had brought the heavy sporting rifle which had accounted for imbono's enemy the hippopotamus in the river. selecting the largest of the herd--they were the red buffaloes of the district, a good deal smaller than the kind he had seen in america--he fired and brought it down. the others broke away towards a clump of euphorbias, and jack got another shot as they disappeared; but neither this nor the small-bore bullets of the chiefs' rifles appeared to take effect, for in an instant, as it seemed, the whole remaining herd vanished from sight. jack slipped two more cartridges into his empty chamber, and, leaving the bush from behind which he had fired, ran towards his kill. it was his first buffalo, and only those who have known the delight of bagging their first big game could appreciate his elation and excitement. he outstripped the rest of his party. the two chiefs, chagrined at their failure to bring down the animals at which they had aimed, seemed to have lost all interest in the hunt. samba left them discussing with lepoko the relative merits of their rifles, and hurried on after his master. jack bent over the prostrate body. despite the tremor of excitement he had felt as he cocked his rifle he found that his aim had been true: the buffalo had been shot through the brain. at that moment--so strange are mental associations--he wished his school chum tom ingestre could have been there. tom was the keenest sportsman in the school; how he would envy jack when he saw the great horns and skull hanging as a trophy above the mantelpiece when he paid that promised visit to new york! but while recollections of "tiger tom," as the school had nicknamed him, were running through his mind, jack was suddenly startled by a bellow behind him and a couple of shots. springing erect, he faced round towards the sound, to see samba's dark body darting between himself and a second buffalo plunging towards him from the direction of the bushes. as happened once to stanley travelling between vivi and isangila, the suddenness of the onset for the moment paralysed his will; he was too young a sportsman to be ready for every emergency. but the most seasoned hunter could not have dared to fire, for samba's body at that instant almost hid the buffalo from view, coming as it did with lowered head. the animal was only ten yards away when samba crossed its track; but the boy's quick action broke its charge, and it stopped short, as though half inclined to turn in pursuit of samba, who had now passed to its left. then it again caught sight of jack and the dead buffalo, and with another wild bellow dashed forward. in these few instants, however, jack had recovered his self-possession, and raised his rifle to his shoulder. as the beast plunged forward it was met by a bullet which stretched it inert within a few feet of jack's earlier victim. "bonolu mongo!"[1] exclaimed jack, clapping samba on the shoulder. "but for your plucky dash i should have been knocked over and probably killed. you saw him coming, eh?" "njenaki!"[2] replied samba, with his beaming smile. meanwhile the two chiefs had run up with lepoko and were examining the second buffalo, with an air of haste and excitement. they began to talk at one another so loud and fiercely, and to gesticulate so violently, that jack, though he could not make out a word of what they were saying, saw that a pretty quarrel was working up. "now, lepoko," he said, putting himself between the chiefs and sitting on the buffalo's head, "what is all this about?" "me tell massa," said lepoko. "imbono he say he kill ngombo; mboyo say no, he kill ngombo; lepoko say massa kill ngombo; no can tell; me fink one, two, free hab kill ngombo all same." "well, my own opinion is pretty well fixed, but we'll see. why, there are three bullet marks in his hide besides mine. that's mine, you see, that large hole in the middle of the forehead. one of you two must have hit him twice. and i'm hanged if the bullets didn't go clean through him. no wonder he was in a rage. tell them what i say, lepoko." on hearing what jack had said, the chiefs began to jabber at each other again. "kwa te!" said jack. "what do they say now, lepoko?" "imbono say he make two holes, mboyo say no, he make two holes. lepoko fink bofe make two holes--how can do uvver way?" "two and one make three, my man, not four. i'll soon tell you who made the two." by comparing the wounds he found that two of them had been made by mauser bullets and one by an albini. "there's no doubt about it, mboyo hit him twice. but to put an end to your squabble let me tell you that you both might have fired at him all day and never killed him if you hit him in those parts. neither of you did him any damage, though you might have done for me, irritating him as you did. we'll settle the matter by saying he is samba's buffalo. it was samba who got in his way and gave me time to take good aim at him. and samba might have been killed himself. i am grateful to your son, mboyo, and proud of him, and when i get back i shall give him one of the rifles i have left, as a reward." this end to the controversy satisfied both the chiefs. neither grudged samba anything. as for the boy, he was more than delighted. he had never dreamt of handling a rifle until he was at least fifteen, when the negro boy is as old as the white boy of twenty; and to have one his very own made him enormously proud. "he say larn shoot one time, massa," said lepoko. "lepoko plenty mislable. what for? 'cos he shoot plenty well; but massa no tell him to bring gun. no; lepoko must lib for talk, talk, talk all time; me no happy all same." "you shall have your chance next time. now, samba, run off to the camp and bring some men to cut up the buffaloes. we will wait hereabouts until you come back." when samba had gone it occurred to jack that he would eat his luncheon at the summit of a small hill that rose steeply about half a mile from the spot where the buffaloes had been killed. the chiefs, disinclined like all africans for exertion that was avoidable and seemed to have no object, pointed out that their present situation was quite suited for having the meal, and they were quite hungry enough without climbing for an appetite. but jack persisted. he wished to ascertain whether there was a clear view from the hill, and though he might have ascended it alone, he feared lest in his absence the chiefs would again fall out over the buffalo. with an air of resignation the negroes accompanied him on the short walk, and luncheon was eaten on the hill-top. jack at least felt that he was well rewarded for his climb. a magnificent panorama was open to his view--a vast extent of forest-clad country, with here and there strips of open ground such as that below in which they had discovered the buffaloes. the forest stretched in an almost unbroken mass of foliage as far as the eye could reach, approaching on the north-east very close to imbono's village. after luncheon jack got up and walked about the hilltop, taking a nearer view of the country through his field-glass. here he caught a glimpse of the river, a small bluish patch amid the green; there, of a little spire of smoke rising perhaps from the fire of one of imbono's scouts. all at once he halted and stood for some moments gazing intently in one direction. far away, across a clearing only just visible through the trees, something was moving, continuously, in one direction. so great was the distance that the appearance was as of an army of ants. but he fancied he detected a patch or two of white amid the mass of black. "mboyo, look here!" he called. the chief went to his side, and, stretching his head forward, gazed fixedly at the moving mass. "soldiers!" he exclaimed suddenly. "black soldiers, and white chiefs! they are going to ilola." imbono sprang to his side. "it is true," he cried. "mboyo speaks the truth. they are going to ilola!" jack drew a deep breath. the long-expected was coming to pass. the enemy was at hand! and it was ominous that he was coming from the west by land instead of by river from the south. this must have involved a detour of many miles, through difficult forest country; but thus the enemy avoided the certainty of his approach being heralded in advance, as it would have been if he had come by the river. elbel was planning a surprise! there was no time to be lost in getting ready for his coming. "can they reach ilola to-day, coming through the forest?" jack asked imbono. it was just possible, replied the chief, but only by dint of very hard marching, and they could not arrive before nightfall. "we must get back," said jack. "come, my brothers." they descended the hill, and set off at full speed for ilombekabasi. on the way they met a party of men coming under samba's guidance to bring in the buffaloes. jack bade them hasten in their task; they were far from any probable line of march of the enemy, and the meat might now prove very valuable. hurrying on to his camp, jack told barney what he had seen. "we're in for it now, barney," he said. "and we're ready, sorr, praise be!" said barney. jack lost no time. at his request imbono sent out scouts to get more exact particulars of the column and its progress, warning them to use the utmost care to avoid discovery. imbono himself returned to ilola to prepare his people for a migration to ilombekabasi. later in the day the scouts returned with the news that the enemy had pitched their camp about ten miles away. the force consisted of some two hundred forest guards armed with rifles, and a much larger number of followers carrying spears. boloko was with them, and elobela, and two other white men. the line of march had been direct for ilola, and strict silence was kept. one of the scouts had seen elobela himself strike a man who had incautiously shouted to his comrades. "there's no doubt of their intentions, barney," said jack. "they want to surprise ilola. that means a massacre; but by god's mercy we know in time!" the inhabitants of ilola and of imbono's other villages were already flocking into the camp, bringing with them large supplies of food and their principal belongings. before the sun set the villages were deserted. jack was glad now to think that this contingency had been so long foreseen. it would have been impossible to make adequate arrangements for so large an additional population if he had waited until the danger was upon them. as it was, the huts stood ready. it was a strange and impressive scene as imbono's people filed in. they were excited, but not with alarm or fear. some of them even were merry, laughing at little mishaps--the dropping of a basket of manioc, the breaking of a pot, the sprawling of children as pat dashed in and out among them, barking as though it was he that was shepherding the throng. barney was the master of ceremonies. with samba's help he separated the various families, and showed each father the hut or huts he was to occupy. it was not a wealthy community, and only a few of the men had more wives than one; but these tried barney's patience sorely, and he sighed for father mahone to come and tache the haythens betther manners. "only what could he do, if he came?" he said. "whin a man has been fool enough to marry two or three wives, faith, i don't see how ye can alter it unless ye make 'em all widders." about two miles from the camp there was a spot above the river from which the clearing and village of ilola could be seen. an hour before dawn jack went out with samba to this spot and waited. just after day had broken they perceived a large body of men rushing out from the forest towards the village stockade. through his field-glasses jack saw that the negroes were led by two men in white. imbono, before he left, had had the gate of ilola closed and barricaded. the invaders did not pause to break it down; they swarmed up the stockade and momentarily hesitated at the top, as though suspecting, from the silence of the village, that a trap had been laid for them. then some of them could be seen dropping down inside; the rest instantly followed; and jack smiled as he saw them assemble in little groups in the deserted compound, gesticulating in their excitement. a few minutes later dense volumes of smoke rose from the village. the forest guards had fired the huts, no doubt in their first fury at the escape of the villagers. jack could not help thinking that they would regret their hasty action. if they intended any long stay in the neighbourhood, the village would have been more useful to them intact than as a ruin. he had dismantled his own former camp, so that unless elbel's men set about building for themselves they would have no shelter. their folly only confirmed jack's belief that they were but a poorly-disciplined rabble, and that elbel himself was out of his element in work of a military kind. having learnt all that he wished to know, jack returned to his camp. elbel had clearly not expected the village to be abandoned. jack wondered if he had learnt of the formation of the new camp. it seemed likely that news of it would long since have been carried down the river. he had apparently planned to wipe out the villagers first and tackle jack later. "bedad, sorr, if he's any sinse at all he will lave us alone," said barney when jack told him what he had seen. "i don't expect that. i'm sure he'll use his men against me. he'll want his revenge, for one thing; and then he has his eye on the gold, remember. he didn't dig about the cataract for nothing. he'll be glad of any excuse for attacking, if he sees a fair chance of beating us. you may depend upon it he knows all that uncle has been doing, and if he can manage to drive us out and occupy this ground before uncle gets back, it's all up with poor uncle's claim, barney. possession is more than nine points of the law in this state. if uncle had known the sort of things that go on here, he'd have thought twice before spending his money." very soon after jack regained his camp, imbono's scouts came in to report that the enemy was on the move. before midday the head of the column was sighted making its way up the stream, this forming on the whole an easier approach than the rough stony ground on either bank. there was immense excitement in the camp as the people watched the advancing crowd. jack could not but be touched as he observed the demeanour of the people. a few months before the sight of so many of the dreaded forest guards would have made them cower in abject fear; now, so great was their trust in the young inglesa who had twice defeated elobela, and who had prepared for them this fine new village with its wonderful defences, that they viewed the progress of the enemy with feelings only of anticipated triumph. "please god, i won't fail them," thought jack. about half a mile below the cataract the column came to a halt, and three men in white, attended by half a dozen armed negroes, advanced to within less than a quarter of a mile of the wall. "the impident scoundhrels!" quoth barney, standing at jack's side. "they do show a pretty cool trust in our forbearance," said jack; "we could pick them off easily enough." "begorra, i would, sorr; do they deserve any betther? elbel was a deceitful villain--you remimber, sorr, whin he fired under a flag uv truce at the ould camp. i wouldn't have any more mercy on him than i would on a rat." "yes, you would, barney. we must play the game, whatever they do. and i wonder what they're up to. here comes a man with a white flag. we shall soon see." [1] "brave boy." [2] "i saw." chapter xviii elbel's barrels the negro looked by no means comfortable as he clambered up the steep side of the gully from the bed of the stream and approached the fort. there was no gate in the western face, and the man seemed somewhat uncertain what to do. but perceiving that he had a note in his hand, jack ordered lepoko to lean over the wall and take the paper on the point of a spear. "now let's see what he has to say," said jack, unfolding the paper. "listen, barney. 'having returned with a force sufficient to re-establish law and order in this part of the congo state, i call upon you instantly to surrender the camp which you have constructed without permission on the territory of the state. the negroes who are with you are subjects of the state, and will be dealt with by me in accordance with the powers that i possess. you, being a foreigner, will be taken to boma, to be tried under due form of law by the state courts.'" "which means quick murder for the niggers, sorr, and slow murder for you. don't answer his impidence, sorr." "oh, i must answer. we can't let things go by default, and we can go one better than he, barney. he hasn't copied his letter, you see. it's very lucky i've got a duplicate book; who knows?--these documents may come in handy some day." he wrote a brief reply, saying that he was not aware there was anything illegal in constructing a suitable camp on ground leased from the société cosmopolite; that, on the other hand, the natives who had sought shelter with him complained of treatment which was clearly against all law and justice; and that in these circumstances he proposed to remain where he was. when this note reached elbel, he read it to the two white men with him, laughed, put it in his pocket-book, then returned with his party down the stream. "a pretty little farce!" said jack. "he knew what my answer would be; all he wanted was a chance of examining our defences." "sure he didn't get much for his trouble. he'd have to be a deal taller to see much uv us, sorr." during the rest of the day elbel was seen in the distance on various sides of the camp making further observations. from a point on the slope above he could overlook part of the enclosure, and what he observed from there through his field-glass evidently gave him food for thought, for before sunset he marched all his men down the stream, followed cautiously by imbono's scouts. these reported by and by that the enemy had encamped about two miles away. the white men had tents, the natives were cutting branches to form temporary shelters. foragers had been sent out in all directions. jack knew that they would do little good. there were no people to harry, all were within his walls, and the crops around the villages had been gathered in. but this dearth was not likely to affect the besiegers for the present; for the scouts reported that some of their canoes had now come up the river loaded with stores. jack concluded from the fact of elbel being in command that the administration of the congo state had not yet seen fit to intervene and equip an expedition under regular military officers. the société cosmopolite, in fact, an extremely wealthy corporation, had determined to root out this source of disaffection and revolt within its territory. the force commanded by elbel represented practically the whole military establishment of the company. he had no doubt received telegraphic authority from europe to undertake the expedition, and could rely on the ultimate support of the state government, which meanwhile would prefer the work to be done by the company's troops rather than magnify the affair by employing its own forces. it soon became clear to jack that the lesson of his previous reverse had not been lost on elbel. for a time, at least, there was to be no repetition of the rushing tactics that had proved so disastrous. two days passed, and he had made no move. scouts reported that he was busily engaged in building and fortifying his camp. the site chosen was a good deal nearer to ilombekabasi than the first night's bivouac. it lay in a hollow somewhat more than half a mile from the cataract--in the face of an equal or inferior enemy, a very dangerous position, commanded, as it was, on almost all sides by the heights around. but it was sheltered from rifle-fire from the fort, and had a good water supply from a brook that fell some distance below into the stream that flanked jack's settlement. elbel could afford to ignore its strategical weakness by reason of his greatly superior numbers. for jack could not occupy the rim of the hollow without drawing most of his men out of the fort, thus leaving it open to attack; and in any case, with only forty-five rifles, he could not do much to endanger a camp held by two hundred. [illustration: ilombekabasi and surrounding country, showing elbel's first camp in foreground] these reflections passed through his mind as he pondered on the information given by the scouts. his constant preoccupation during the past months with problems of attack and defence had given rise to a habit of looking at every move or incident in its military bearings. "i wonder whether the fellows in the army class would envy me or pity me most!" he thought. elbel attempted nothing in the way of fortification for his camp except a light stockade--with his superior numbers defensive work seemed almost a superfluity. by comparing the reports of various scouts--who, as usual with negroes, were somewhat erratic in their ideas of number--and by his own observation through his field-glass, jack concluded that elbel had, in addition to his two hundred rifles, about five hundred spearmen. jack himself had, in addition to his forty-five rifles, three hundred spearmen. the mere numbers were, of course, no real index to the proportionate strength of the two forces. in ordinary circumstances, indeed, the spearmen might almost be neglected; the striking power was to be measured in rifles alone. but jack hoped that, with the drill and discipline his men had undergone, it would be proved that a determined fellow behind a spear was still by no means a combatant to be held lightly. had not the arabs of the soudan shown this? he had no little confidence that, when the time of trial came, his three hundred spearmen would prove every whit as staunch as the dervishes who broke the british square at abu klea and threw away their lives by the thousand at omdurman. on the second morning after elbel's appearance jack found that pickets were posted all round the fort. clearly it was no longer safe to send out scouts, at all events by daylight. the danger was little diminished after dark, for fires were lit at various points and a regular patrol was established. "i don't care about sending out any of the men now," said jack to barney. "if one of our fellows was caught, his fate would be horrible. it's to prevent scouting, i suppose, that elbel has posted men round us." "might it not be to prevent reinforcements from reaching us, sorr?" "not likely. there are no people for scores of miles round, and the country indeed is mostly virgin forest. the only reinforcement likely to reach us is my uncle's contingent, and their arrival is sure to be advised all along the river for days or perhaps weeks in advance; and that's one of my worries, barney. i don't want uncle to fall into elbel's hands, but how can i stop it?" "send a couple of men off to meet him, sorr, and tell him of the danger." "i might do that, perhaps. but, as you see, they'd have to run the gauntlet of elbel's forest guards. elbel either wants to catch my uncle, or he has got some scheme of attack in preparation which he's anxious we shouldn't discover. whichever it is he means to keep us bottled up." jack was sitting at the door of his hut with barney, talking by the light of a small fire. samba had been hovering about for some time, waiting, as barney thought, until the time should come for him to curl himself up as usual at the entrance to the hut after his friend the irishman had entered. the conversation ceased for a moment, jack bending forward and drawing patterns on the ground with his stick. samba came up and began to speak. "begorra, massa," he said, "me can do." "what can you do, my boy?" asked jack, smiling a little at the exclamation samba had adopted from barney. samba struggled to find words in the white man's puzzling tongue. but, recognizing that his small stock of phrases was insufficient, he ran off and fetched lepoko. "me tell massa all same," said the interpreter, when samba had spoken to him. "samba boy say, sah, he lib for go out see fings for massa. he no 'fraid. he go in dark, creep, creep, no 'fraid nuffin nobody. he lib for see eberyfing massa want see, come back one time say all same fings he see." "no, no, it's too dangerous. samba is the very last of my people i should wish to fall into elbel's hands." samba laughed when lepoko repeated this to him. "he no 'fraid elobela," said lepoko. "he hab got foot like leopard, eye like cat, he make elobela plenty much 'fraid. want go plenty much, sah; say mboyo one fader, massa two fader; two times he want go." "shall we let him go, barney?" asked jack doubtfully. "to be sure i would, sorr. he's gone through the forest and cheated the lions and tigers and all the other beasts and creeping things, ivery wan uv 'm a mighty power cleverer than elbel." "barring the lions and tigers, i think you're right, barney. well, if he's to go we must do all we can to help him. could he get down the gully side, i wonder?" "he say dat plenty good way, sah. he lib for swim like fish, go through water, come back all same." "we'll let him down by a rope, barney, and we'll place mboyo at the stockade in charge of it; he'll have the greatest interest in seeing that the boy goes in and out safely. and look here, i've heard samba imitating the cries of various animals; he'd better arrange with mboyo to be ready for him when he hears a certain cry. and he must carry enough food with him to last a day in case he is prevented from getting back. if he's out more than one day he must fend for himself; but i fancy, after what he has already been through, at least it'd be a very bare country where he couldn't pick up enough to keep him going. he's a splendid little fellow." "that's the truth's truth, sorr; and sure, whin we leave this haythen country, he'd better come back wid us to london, sorr. wid him wan side uv me an' pat the other, i'd be on me way to be lord mayor, bedad!" thus it was arranged. with a tinful of food slung about him, samba was let down by a rope from the stockade, and crept in the darkness down the gully. a few minutes later, from some point on the other side, came the strident call of a forest-beetle twice repeated, and mboyo knew that his son was safely across. when morning broke, jack saw that the pickets were placed as they had been on the previous day. he could easily have disposed of several of them, either by rifle fire or by a quick sally; but even at the present stage he had a great reluctance to open hostilities, which must involve much bloodshed and suffering. he resolved to bide his time, knowing that so far as food supply was concerned he had enough for at least a couple of months, and was in that respect probably better placed than elbel, while the secret of the water supply with good luck would escape detection. now that the purpose of the tank was known, jack's prestige among the natives, great as it had been before, was much enhanced, and they had added to their stock of songs one in which the wonderful providence of the inglesa in arranging that the daily water should not fail was glowingly extolled. the day passed undisturbed. jack was puzzled to account for the enemy's silence. elbel must have a scheme in preparation, he thought. what could it be? jack had heard a good deal of hammering going on in the camp below, the sound coming faintly on the breeze; except for that there was no sign of activity; and the hammering was sufficiently accounted for by the work of finishing off the construction of the camp. before turning in for the night he went to the spot where mboyo was posted, to learn whether anything had been heard of samba. while he was there, he caught the low rasping notes of the forest-beetle. "samba n'asi!"[1] cried mboyo, springing up. he lowered the rope over the stockade. in a few moments it was gently tugged, and soon samba slipped over the stockade and stood beside jack. he had an interesting report to make. in the forest, he said, a large number of men were tapping certain trees for a resinous gum, which was being run into small barrels. it was the work of making these barrels that had caused the continuous hammering jack had noticed. "good boy!" said jack. "i suppose you are very tired now, samba?" no, he was not tired; he was ready to go out again at once if lokolobolo wished. but jack said he had done enough for one day, and bade him go to sleep. "so that's their game!" said jack to barney, when all was quiet. "there's only one use for resin here, and that's to fire our fort, and they can't intend to make fireballs, or they wouldn't take the trouble to make barrels. they want barrels for carriage, and that means that they intend to bring the resin here. they can't shy barrels at the natives' huts, and so much of the wall is stone that it won't easily catch fire. what else is there inflammable?" "there's the blockhouses at the corners, sorr." "you're right. they are going to fire the blockhouses. i'm sorry now i didn't make 'm of stone as i intended. but we had enough trouble with the wall, and the natives are so little used to stonework that perhaps after all they'd have made a poor job of it." "sure, i don't see how they are going to get near enough to do any damage, sorr. they can't come up under fire. do the spalpeens think they'll catch us napping, begore?" "can't say, barney. we must wait and see. the sentries are arranged for the night, eh?" "they are that, sorr. 'tis mighty hard to keep the niggers awake; not wan uv 'm but would see the inside uv the guard-room pretty often if they were in the irish fusiliers. but samba and me just take turns to go the rounds all night and keep 'm stirring, sorr; and 'twould be a lucky man that got across into this place widout a crack over the head." the full purpose of elbel was seen earlier than jack had expected. a little before dawn makoko, who had been on duty at the gate in the northern wall, hurried down to say that he had heard a sound as of a number of men marching for some distance up the hill above the fort. jack accompanied him back, gently reprimanding him on the way for leaving his post. judging by the sounds, there was unquestionably a large body of men on the move. they were approaching as quietly as negroes can; it is not an easy matter to persuade a force of black men to keep perfect silence. while jack was still with makoko, another man came running up from the southern end of the fort and reported that he had heard the sound of many men advancing up the stream. clearly a serious attack was intended at last. sending word to barney to remain on the _qui vive_ at the southern wall, jack waited anxiously for the glimmering light of dawn to reveal the enemy. at last he could see them. they took little pains to conceal themselves. elbel's riflemen were assembling on the ridge of the slope above. among them were men carrying each a small barrel on his shoulder. they must have made a wide circuit from their camp below so that their movements might not be suspected until they were well in position. the word was rapidly passed round the fort. in a few seconds every man was at his appointed place. the women and children had been bidden to remain in their huts, for a part of the enclosure being exposed to fire from the slope above, it would have been dangerous for any one to cross. barney and his men at the southern wall were protected from this fire in their rear by the huts. at the northern wall jack stood on a narrow platform by the gate, similar to that which he had used at his former camp near ilola. his riflemen were posted below him, half of them at loop-holes left at intervals in the wall, the remainder just behind, ready to take their places at the word of command. jack was surprised to feel how little flustered he was. the responsibilities of the past months had bred self-control, and the capacity to grasp a situation quickly and act at once. and constant work with the same men, whom he had learned to know thoroughly, had created a mutual confidence which augured well for their success when put to the test. a glance assured jack that the main attack, if attack was intended, would be made by the riflemen. the spearmen in the valley of the river were designed to create a diversion and weaken the force available to oppose the principal assault. barney could be trusted to hold his own against them. so little did the enemy, having gained the position above, seek to conceal their movements, that jack was tempted to salute them with a volley that must have done great execution--the range being scarcely two hundred yards. but elbel seemed to know by instinct the feeling by which jack would be animated. he evidently counted on being allowed to fire first. and indeed there was little time for jack to consider the matter, for even as he made a mental note of the enemy's bravado, he heard a word of command given in a loud voice, and saw elbel emerge from a small clump of bushes at the edge of the gully. the whole force, except ten men carrying barrels, flung themselves flat on their faces; and jack had only time to give a rapid warning to his men when a scattered volley flashed from the line of prone figures, the bullets pattering on the stone wall like hail on a greenhouse. next moment the men with the barrels dashed forward, some making for the blockhouse above the gully, others for that at the opposite end of the northern wall. through the clear space between the two parties the riflemen continued to fire as fast as they could reload. it was clear to jack that elbel expected the fire of his two hundred rifles, added to the unexpectedness of the movement, to keep down the fire of the defenders long enough to enable the barrel men to reach the blockhouses. but in this he was disappointed; nothing but a direct and combined assault on the wall would have gained the time he required. his rifle fire from a distance was quite ineffective. jack had ordered his men to keep out of sight, and to fire through the loop-holes in the wall, aiming, not at the riflemen lying on the ground, but at the men sprinting with the barrels. consequently, when the twenty-five rifles within the fort replied to the first volley, three of the runners fell on the one side and two on the other, their barrels rolling down the slope, some over the edge into the gully, others towards the copse on the east. the other men, seeing the fate of their comrades, thought of nothing but their own safety. they dropped their barrels and rushed back. but even then they did not take the safe course. instead of scattering and so lessening the chances of being hit, the two parties joined, and ran up the slope in a compact group. none of them reached the line of prostrate riflemen who were still blazing away ineffectually at the walls and blockhouses. the unfortunate men were caught in full flight and fell almost at the same moment, each man struck by several bullets. not till then did jack allow his riflemen to turn their attention to the enemy's firing line. but one volley was sufficient. elbel saw that his scheme had totally failed, and his position was untenable. not a man of his opponents could be seen; his men had only small loop-holes to fire at, and the average negro is not a sufficiently good marksman to be formidable in such conditions. the defenders, on the other hand, found the enemy an excellent target; for, by some inexplicable piece of folly, elbel had not ordered them to seek cover behind the many rocks and boulders that were scattered over the ground. he had lost all his barrel men and several of his riflemen, and within five minutes of the first volley he drew off his troops. a yell of delight from the stockade followed his retirement. the men slapped their thighs and shouted "yo! yo!" until they were hoarse. the women and children poured out of the huts and danced about with wild enjoyment. imbono's drummer banged with all his might. some of the boys had made small trumpets of rolled banana leaves, and tootled away to their hearts' content, the sound being not unlike that made by blowing through tissue paper on a comb. amid all the uproar pat's joyous bark acclaimed the success. "faith, sorr, 'tis real mafficking, to be sure." "not quite, barney. there's nobody drunk." "true, an' the haythen sets an example to the christian. there are no grog-shops here, praise be, wan at this corner and wan at that, to tempt the poor craturs." "i only hope they're not shouting too soon, barney. we haven't done with elbel yet." [1] below. chapter xix breaking the blockade throughout that day jack was on the alert in anticipation of another move on the part of the enemy. but elbel's men, except the pickets, did not come within sight of the fort, and nothing was heard of them. samba wished to go out again on a scouting mission, but jack refused to allow him to leave the fort in daylight; perhaps in the darkness he might risk a journey once more. although the attempt to fire the blockhouses had been foiled, jack, thinking over the matter, saw that the feat would not have been impossible with the exercise of a little common sense coupled with dash. a second attempt, better organized, might be successful. "i wish we could guard against the risk," he said to barney. "we don't want to be continuously on the fidget in case the blockhouses are fired. yet we can't make 'em fireproof." "that's true, sorr; still, something might be done to rejuce the inflammation." "what's that?" said jack without a smile. to call in question barney's english was to wound him in the tenderest part. "why, sorr, why not drop down some uv them boulders we keep for repairing the wall? if we let them down wid care to the foot uv the blockhouses, close up against the woodwork, 'twould prevent any wan from setting a match to 'm." "a good idea! we'll try it. get the men to carry the stones up to the wall. we won't do anything more till it is dark." when the sun had set, jack had the stones hauled up to the roof of the blockhouse at the north-west corner, and then dropped down outside, as close to the woodwork as possible. the task was carried on in almost total darkness, only a few rushlights inside the camp preventing the workers from colliding with one another. but it was impossible to contrive that the heavy stones should fall silently, and a shot from up the slope soon told that the enemy had discovered what was going on. active sniping for a time gave jack a good deal of annoyance, and one or two of his men were hit; but he persevered in his work, and had partially accomplished it, when another danger suddenly threatened. up the slope, near the position occupied by the enemy in the morning, there appeared small points of light, which moved apparently at random for a few moments, and then came all in one direction, down the hill. they all started fairly close together, and jack counted twelve in a line; but soon some diverged from the rest and went off at an angle. the others came on more and more rapidly towards the fort, jumping occasionally, but keeping on the whole a surprisingly straight course. "barrels again!" said jack to barney. only a few seconds after he had first observed them, they came with a quick succession of thuds against the wall and the half-finished rampart at the foot of the blockhouse, and the points of light spread out into fierce tongues of flame. lighted matches had been attached to the barrels, and with the bursting of these by the stonework the resin they contained had taken fire. of the dozen barrels that started, only four had reached their goal, the rest having rolled over the gully on the western slope as had happened during the day. jack hoped that his new stonework was sufficient to protect the logs at the base of the blockhouse. but one of the barrels, under the impetus gained in its passage down the hill, had jumped the boulders, and breaking as it crashed over, burst into flame within an inch or two of the woodwork. another line of barrels was starting down the slope. jack had called up his best marksmen at the first alarm, and ordered them to take pot-shots at the twinkling points of light, or the figures above, dimly lit up by the matches attached to the barrels. whether any of the shots got home he could not tell; another set of barrels was trundling down towards the fort. it appeared to jack that nothing could save the blockhouse. burning resin could only be extinguished by a deluge of water, and he had no means of bringing water from the tank in sufficient quantities. the logs were dry, and, when once fairly alight, would burn furiously. barney suggested dropping a heavy boulder on the barrel most dangerously near, but jack saw that the effect of this would be merely to spread the flames without necessarily extinguishing them. the fire would continue beneath the stone; it would lick the lowest logs, and in a few minutes the whole base of the blockhouse would be ablaze. the imminence of the danger acted as a spur to jack's resourcefulness. it flashed upon him that there was one chance of saving the fort. calling to samba to follow him, he rushed from the roof of the blockhouse down the ladders connecting it with the second floor and this with the ground, and ran at full speed to his hut, where he seized an empty tobacco-tin and searched for a piece of wire. for a few moments he could not lay hands on any, but he then bethought himself of the wired cork of a stephens' ink-bottle. wrenching this out, he hastened to the underground magazine where the ammunition was, stored. samba had preceded him thither with a lighted candle in a little lantern of bamboo. among the ammunition was a keg of loose powder sent up by mr. martindale for refilling cartridge cases. while samba very cautiously held the lantern out of harm's way, jack, with the brad of a penknife, bored two thin holes in the tin and two corresponding holes in the lid. then he inserted the wire and filled the tin with powder. clapping on the lid and firmly securing it by twisting up the wire, he rushed back to the blockhouse, up to the roof, and cleared out all the men helter-skelter, bidding them go with samba and bring baskets full of earth to the base of the wall. the place was now reeking with acrid smoke from the burning resin, great black eddies of it whirling over the roof, stinging jack's eyes and making him cough and choke. when none but himself was left--for there was some danger in what he purposed--he went to the edge of the roof, and bending over, almost blinded by the fumes, he marked the spot where the flame seemed the fiercest, and dropped the tin into the midst of it. though he sprang back at once, he had not reached the inmost edge of the roof when there was a loud explosion. the blockhouse rocked; clouds of sparks flew up; and feeling the tremor beneath him, jack feared he had destroyed rather than saved. but the trembling ceased. he rushed back to the fore edge of the roof and peered over. as the smoke cleared away he saw no longer a blazing mass below him; nothing of the barrel was left; but all the ground for many yards around was dotted with little tongues of flame. the force of the explosion had broken up the huge devouring fire into a thousand harmless ones. but the woodwork near which the barrel had rested was smouldering. there was still a danger that the blockhouse would burn. while that danger remained jack felt that his task was not yet done, and he instantly prepared to meet it. flames from the other barrels that had struck the wall were lighting up the scene. to carry out his purpose involved a great risk, but it was a risk that must be run. calling to samba, who had remained nearest at hand, he bade him bring a rope and send barney and makoko to him. when they arrived he got them to knot the rope about him, and let him down over the wall on the gully side, which was in deep shadow. creeping round the blockhouse on the narrow ledge between it and the gully, he called to the men above to lower some of the baskets of earth which had been placed in readiness. as they reached him he emptied them upon the smouldering logs. it was impossible now to keep in the shadow; his every movement was betrayed by the still flaming barrels; and his work was not completed when bullets began to patter about him. his only protection was the rough rampart of boulders which had been thrown over from the roof. but he bent low; it is difficult even for expert marksmen to aim without the guidance of the riflesights, and elbel's men were far from being experts; jack finished his job as rapidly as might be, and escaped without a scratch. then creeping round once more to the gully, he laid hold of the rope and was drawn up into safety. the other blockhouses meanwhile had been in no danger. that at the north-east corner was defended by the nature of the ground, which sloped so rapidly that a barrel rolled from above could never hit the mark. that at the southeast corner, being at the edge of the precipice, could only be fired by the hand of man, and no man could approach it safely. by averting the danger at the north-west jack had saved the camp. but the attempt had been so nearly successful that he resolved to lose no time in completing the work of protection already begun. the moment was come, too, for showing elbel that he could only maintain a thorough investment of the fort with the acquiescence of the besieged. at any time a sally must break the chain of pickets, for elbel's force was not large enough to support them adequately all round. averse as jack was from shedding blood, he felt that it was necessary to teach the enemy a wholesome lesson. before he could do anything, however, he must know how the force was distributed, and how the pickets were placed. he remembered his half promise that samba should be allowed to go scouting that night. no other could be trusted to move so warily or act so intelligently. samba was accordingly let down into the gully. while he was gone jack explained to barney the plan he proposed to try should the boy's information favour it. "i shall lead some of the men out, i don't know yet in what direction. at least it will surprise elbel. i hope it will alarm his men and throw them into confusion. you must take advantage of it to go on with our defences. let down more boulders from the roof, and build them up as fast as you can to form a facing three or four feet high to the two northern blockhouses. you'll only have about half an hour for the job, for elbel will have got his whole force together by then, and i shan't be able to fight them all. but we've plenty of men to turn on to it, and when i give the signal they must tumble over the wall and get to work." within an hour samba returned. he reported that the enemy had all retired to their camp except the pickets. about forty men were posted about a camp fire up stream near the place where the barrels had been rolled down. another picket of the same strength was lying at the edge of the copse about a quarter of a mile to the east, and a third picket lay across the gully to the west. samba had had great difficulty in eluding this western picket, and would have returned sooner but for the detour he had been obliged to make. all favoured jack's enterprise. the pickets were so far from the camp below the southern face of the fort that some time must elapse before help could reach them. they could only support one another, and the idea of a ruse to prevent that had already flashed through jack's mind. selecting fifteen of his steadiest riflemen, including makoko and lepoko, jack had them lowered one by one into the gully, and then himself followed. the night was fortunately very dark; all the flames from the barrels had gone out, and he trusted that the enemy would be quite unprepared for any movement from the fort. when all were assembled, they crept up the gully in dead silence, walking as far from the water as the steep sides allowed, so as to avoid kicking stones into it and making a splash. at first the gully was at least twelve feet deep, but it became more shallow as they proceeded, until by and by its top barely rose above their heads. they had not gone far when they heard laughing and talking beyond them. however elbel might regard his defeat, it had evidently not affected the spirits of his men; the negro's cheerfulness is hard to quench. at a bend in the stream, out of sight from the fort, shone the faint glow of the camp fire; and jack, peeping cautiously round, saw a sentry on each bank, moving backwards and forwards, but stopping now and again to exchange pleasantries, or more often fatuous remarks about food, with the rest of the picket at the fire. it was nothing new to jack that the congo soldier's idea of sentry-go is somewhat loose. again jack was favoured by circumstances. the glow of the fire did not extend far into the darkness of the gully; the noise of the laughing and talking was loud enough to drown all slight sounds for some distance around. thus the sixteen men in the gully could approach very near the camp fire without being seen or heard. jack's plan, already half formed before he started, was quickly adapted to the conditions. silently gathering his men together, he ordered them in a whisper to follow him in a charge with the bayonet; not to fire except at the word of command; not in their pursuit of the enemy to go beyond the camp fire. it would have been easy to dispose of at least a third of the picket by firing upon them from the darkness; the distance was only about a hundred yards, and every shot would tell, for they were huddled together. such an act would be justified by all the rules of warfare. jack knew that in a like case he would receive no mercy from the enemy; but he was too young a campaigner to deal with them as they would deal with him; he could not give the order to shoot them down unawares. when his men clearly understood what was required of them he led the way, and they all crept forward again. the glow of the fire now made them dimly visible to one another, but not to the picket, who were in the full light, nor to the sentries, whose attention was largely taken up by the proceedings of their comrades. when the sound of talking lulled for a few moments, jack halted; when it grew in force, and he heard the sentries join in the chatter, he seized the opportunity to steal forward a few yards more. so by slow degrees they approached within forty paces. to go further without discovery seemed to jack impossible. pausing for a moment to whisper once more to his men, he suddenly shouted the order to charge, and, springing up the bank, dashed forward with a cheer that was reinforced by the yells from fifteen lusty throats. the sounds of joviality about the camp fire died on the instant; the cheer from the river, echoed by the rocky walls of the gully, seemed to come from a host of men. yells of alarm broke from the dusky figures by the fire. some of the men seemed for the moment spellbound; others leapt to their feet and made a dash for the rifles stacked close by, tumbling over one another in their agitation; the majority simply scurried away like hares into the darkness, only anxious to get as far away as possible from this shouting host that had sprung as it were out of nothingness. as jack's men rushed up there were a few reports of rifles hastily shot off, and eight or nine men made as if to stand firm near the camp fire; but they could not face the steel gleaming red in the glow. one or two hapless wretches were bayonetted before they had time to run; the rest, with a wild howl, flung down their weapons and bolted. the sound of the conflict, jack knew, would be taken by barney as the signal to begin work outside the blockhouses. what would be its effect on the enemy? would it draw their pickets on the right and left to the support of their comrades? or would they be so much alarmed that nothing but flight would occur to them? he thought the probabilities favoured the former, for the firing having ceased, the immediate cause of alarm would seem to have been removed. without staying to consider that the chain of investment would be broken by their action, the outer pickets would in all likelihood move towards each other for mutual support. here was an opportunity which jack was quick to seize. without a moment's loss of time, he called his men together and hurried back down the gully, where he ordered them to line the banks on both sides, keeping well in shadow from the light of the fire. the position they took up was about forty yards below the bivouac, almost the same spot from which the charge had been made. the men had only just established themselves when the picket from the eastern quarter came running up. jack's situation was now so serious that he had no longer any compunction. as the negroes emerged from the gloom into the light of the camp fire, he ordered his men on the opposite bank to shoot. several of the enemy fell; the rest turned tail, finding their comrades falling about them without being able to see their assailants. but they did not run far; when they had passed beyond the circle of light they halted. meanwhile all was quiet from the direction of the other picket beyond the gully. if this was advancing, it was with more caution. for some minutes no sound was heard; then on his left hand lepoko detected a slight rustle in the brushwood, and he whispered to jack that the enemy were creeping forward, feeling their way. at the same time there were sounds of movement on the right. now was the chance to attempt a ruse. withdrawing his men stealthily down the stream for a hundred yards, jack halted. the camp fire was dying down for want of fresh fuel; he hoped that the two parties would mistake each other in the gloom. a quarter of an hour passed. then the air rang with shots and shouts; the two pickets had met and come into conflict. the error was soon discovered, and then there arose a terrific clamour as each party accused the other. jack considered that the work of the fort should have been completed by this time, all danger of interruption by the pickets having been removed by his sortie. he therefore led his men back along the gully, and arrived to find barney putting the finishing touches to the work by the light of his bamboo lantern. "all well?" said jack. "all well, sorr. you're not hurt at all?" "not a bit. none of us scratched. now we'll get back. i don't think they'll try that particular dodge again." they had hardly returned within the stockade when they heard the sound of a considerable body of men moving up the opposite bank of the stream towards the pickets above. "too late!" said jack with a chuckle. "truth, sorr. that elbel was niver intended for a sojer, 'tis plain. but who are the two white men wid him, thin? sure, i thought he'd brought 'em wid him to tache him what to do, but they would all seem to be birds uv wan feather, sorr." "we may find out by and by, perhaps to our cost. meanwhile we had better man the walls and blockhouses in case he's going to favour us with a night attack." but the sounds of movement among the enemy ceased, and the remainder of the night passed in unbroken quietness. chapter xx david and goliath next morning jack's men found resting against the stone wall of the fort several barrels of resin which had not burned. the bumping they had received in rolling down the slope had shaken out the fuses. this was a lucky discovery. the inflammable contents of the barrels would come in useful--for making fireballs, if for no other purpose. jack had them carried into the fort and stored in the magazine. very soon after daybreak jack saw what seemed to be the greater portion of elbel's force moving up the hill. he counted at least five hundred men, and noticed that only about a hundred of these were riflemen, the remainder carrying spears, or tools of some kind. "you see what they are at, barney?" he said. "shifting their camp, by what it appears, sorr." "no, i don't think that's it. elbel has failed with fire; he's now going to try water. he's going to cut off our water supply." "sure he's entitled to, as we don't pay rates, which is rubber. but we can do widout his water supply, sorr, having a private distillery uv our own." "i'm pretty sure i'm right, for you see the men are going a great deal farther up the hill than they need if they're merely looking for another base of attack." "bedad, why shouldn't we have a little rifle practice at 'em, sorr? 'tis long range firing, indeed, but mighty good practice." "no. our ammunition is too precious to be wasted; and even if we hit a few of them, that wouldn't stop elbel's scheme, whatever it is. we'll keep our eye on the river and see if there's any shrinkage." it was not until late in the afternoon that he got positive proof that elbel was in fact diverting the stream. he had fancied for some time that the height of the water was less, but only about four o'clock did the fall become decided. after that, however, the stream dwindled very rapidly, until, towards nightfall, there was only a thin trickle of water in the river bed below the fort, where in the morning the stream had been twenty feet broad and nearly six feet deep. at the same time a remarkable change in the appearance of the country east of the fort had attracted the attention of the natives, who swarmed upon the platform on that side and gazed in amazement. lokolobolo had brought water into their camp; but who had made water run in a swift river where no river had ever been before? nearly a mile away to the east, a broad shallow stream was rushing down the slope that extended from the precipice on which the fort stood to the foothills two miles beneath. the river, dammed no doubt by boulders far up the hill, had now been forced into the course which, but for a rocky barrier, it would long since have discovered for itself. "a very pretty scheme, bedad!" said barney. "and i just wish we could set a fountain going, like those in trafalgar square, just to show mr. elbel that he may have his river all to himself if he pleases." "that wouldn't do at all, barney. we don't want to flaunt our good fortune. in fact, our best course is to keep elbel in the dark. indeed i think we had better stop that overflow from our tank. now that the cataract has dried up, the overflow would easily be seen." "but what'll we do wid the overflow, sorr? sure, we don't want a flood in the camp!" "certainly not. we'll break it up into a number of tiny trickles, and let them find their way through the wall at different points. they'll be sucked up or disappear before they reach the ground below." "bedad, now, i would niver have thought of that! mr. elbel will think we get our water from heaven, sorr, if he's iver heard uv it." the work of damming the river having been accomplished, the main body of the enemy marched down just before dark and regained their camp. as they passed within earshot of the fort, elbel's negroes could not refrain from flinging taunts at the men of their colour within the walls, telling them that they could no longer cook their food, much less wash their babies. this made the men very angry; they prepared to blaze away with their rifles at the gibing enemy, and jack's command to drop their weapons might, perhaps, for once have been disregarded had not samba suddenly struck up the song which one of the men had composed, chronicling lokolobolo's great deeds with water and fire: lokolobolo in ilombekabasi dug a great hole, filled it with waters great is his magic! how can we praise him- lokolobolo? lo! elobela came with the fire tubs to ilombekabasi. but the inglesa lokolobolo filled a pot with the fire-stuff. what a noise! what a smoke! fire tubs are broken. ha! elobela! where is your fire now? what is the good of you? inglesa's magic no one can master. is it fire? is it water? lokolobolo in ilombekabasi quenches the fire, keeps water for black men. ha! elobela, go home to your cook-pot. no good in this land, in ilombekabasi. the song was taken up one by one by the people, and in the delight of singing lokolobolo's praise and elobela's shame, the jeers of the negroes outside were forgotten. that night elbel posted no regular pickets round the fort. he had clearly given up the idea of a strict blockade, which was indeed impossible with the force at his command; but except for the desire to mask his own movements, he lost nothing by the withdrawal of his pickets, for even if the garrison took advantage of it to issue from the fort, they could make little use of their freedom in a country bare of supplies. jack did not doubt that elbel had many scouts abroad, and would be on the watch for an attempt to obtain water. he would imagine that none was procurable save from a distance of at least half a mile from the fort, and was doubtless already congratulating himself on the success of his strategy. several days passed, and life went on in the camp as peacefully as though no enemy was near. the women performed their daily tasks of cleaning and cooking; the men drilled and exercised; the children amused themselves as children always can. jack took it into his head to teach them some of the round games popular with english children, knowing that the elders were sure to copy them; and every little novelty tended to amuse them and keep them cheerful. indeed, he found the men so like children in their capacity for finding easy amusement, that one day he started a game of leap-frog for them, and soon the whole camp was hilarious, the men springing over one another's backs all round the enclosure with great shouts of laughter. as jack expected, elbel kept a sharp watch by means of scouts all round the fort, to ensure that no water reached the besieged. jack smiled as he pictured the belgian's amazement, when day after day went by without any sign of distress. now that the regular night pickets were removed, some of jack's men found it easy to get out for little scouting expeditions; and except for an occasional brush between men of the two forces employed in this duty, there was nothing to show that four hundred men on the one side, and seven hundred on the other, were engaged in deadly warfare. in these duels the men of ilombekabasi invariably came off best. they were at home equally in the forest and the plain; the enemy were for the most drawn from the lower congo--an inferior type of negro and less used to fighting in wooded districts. and a long immunity had rendered them careless. they were accustomed to see whole villages panic-stricken at the sight of an albini rifle. they had had no need to cultivate the art of scouting, except in tracking runaways; nor even the higher kind of marksmanship; for it was their practice to tie their victim to a tree before shooting: in this way the state or the concessionary company was saved ammunition. indeed, one cartridge was frequently sufficient to account for two or more men, women, or children, if they were tied up with due regard for the convenience of the marksman. it was a new and very disconcerting experience to meet men of their own colour who were not afraid of them, and they did not easily adapt themselves to the new condition of things. for this work of scouting jack had found no man yet to match samba. the boy seemed to be endowed with a sixth sense, for he went safely in the most dangerous places, returned more quickly than the rest, and brought more information. and though he soon made himself expert with the rifle presented him by jack after the buffalo hunt, he never took it with him on these scouting trips, preferring to go unencumbered. he relied on his knife. one morning, when jack was awakened as usual by barney, he noticed a very comical look on the irishman's face. "anything happened?" he said. "bedad, sorr, i didn't mean to tell ye till ye were dressed. what d'ye think that little varmint has done now?" "samba? no mischief, i hope." "mischief, begorra! just after daybreak, whin you were sound asleep, sorr, and i was going the rounds as usual, mboyo calls to me from the wall, and whin i comes up to 'm, there he is hauling like the divil on the rope. 'samba must be getting fat like me,' says i to meself, lending a hand, 'for sure the boy will not need such a mighty big haul.' mboyo jabbered away, but i couldn't understand him. and then, sorr, up comes a villainous ugly head, followed by a body ten times the size of samba's, and a big nigger comes over, almost choked with a new kind uv necklace he was wearing, and shaking with the most terrible fright mortal man was iver in. mboyo lets down the rope again, and up comes samba, grinning like a cheshire cat. "'me hab catch,' says he. 'catch what?' says i. 'begorra!' says he, 'bont'one!'[1] which was dutch to me, sorr, only he pointed to the nigger. 'catch him?' says i. he nodded his head till i thought 'twould break off. 'ku?'[2] says i. 'nyango!'[3] says he; and thin i laughed, sorr, 'cos the idea uv a boy taking prisoner a man ten times his size----" "draw it mild, barney." "true, sorr, he doesn't look quite so big as he did. i wished to wake ye at once, but samba said no, he'd keep the prisoner safe till your usual time, and here he is, sorr, and the prisoner too." jack had been putting on his clothes while barney spoke. leaving the hut he saw samba holding one end of the tendril of a creeper, the other end being looped about the neck of a tall strong negro. jack listened patiently, and with the aid of many questions, was able to piece out his story. creeping in the darkness up the dry river bed some distance from the fort, samba had seen for a moment the form of a man dimly silhouetted against the starlit sky. then the man disappeared; but it was child's play to find him again, for he made his way into the channel and moved slowly down towards the fort. he had a rifle, and was head and shoulders taller than samba; but neither his strength nor his weapon was to avail him against the ingenuity and cat-like agility of his young enemy. it would have been easy for samba to stalk him and make an end of him with the knife; but a brilliant idea occurred to the boy: how much better to capture him and take a living prisoner to the fort! for two hours samba kept in touch with him, never more than a few yards away, yet never by the slightest sound betraying his presence. at last the man found a position above the fort which satisfied him, for he established himself there, apparently intending to wait for the dawn. samba felt sure that when he moved to regain his own camp he would retrace his steps up stream. to go down would bring him within view of the fort. his course would be to ascend the channel and fetch a wide circuit back to his own people. samba acted quickly on this assumption. as silently as a shadow he glided past the man until, some distance up the channel, groping on the bank, he came across a tough creeper. from this he cut off three or four yards of a pliant tendril, and with deft fingers made a slip-knot at one end. then he went again down stream, and made his way to a rock overhanging the left bank, whence he had many a time speared fish while the fort was being built. on this rock he lay at full length, ready to move at the slightest sign of the negro stirring. when dawn broke samba saw that the man was staring intently at the fort. after a prolonged examination he turned, and, as samba expected, moved up the gully, keeping under the left bank to avoid observation from the walls. slowly and cautiously he picked his way upward, little recking of the lithe form stretched like a panther on the rock above. he was passing the rock, the rifle in his left hand, the right hand assisting his wary steps over the rugged channel, when the lasso curled gently over his head; a short vigorous tug, and the man, dropping his rifle and clutching at the strangling cord around his throat, was pulled backward on to the rocky side of the gully. samba had marked where the rifle fell, and leapt nimbly down. before the negro, wriggling to his feet, had succeeded in loosing the terrible noose, samba was at his side, the albini in his hand. the suddenness of the onset and the shock of his fall had robbed the man of all power of action. when samba said that he must either accompany him to ilombekabasi or be shot, he saw no third course and accepted the first. perhaps he was tired of his service with elobela; perhaps he was curious to see the village of the wonderful lokolobolo; certainly he was very much afraid of being shot. so he made no resistance, but went quickly down the gully, a step or two in advance of samba, who carried the rifle, as he did not fail to remind his captive from time to time. through lepoko jack questioned the man. he showed no reluctance to answer; no wish to conceal his employer's purposes. _esprit de corps_, jack surmised, was a sentiment not cultivated on the congo. the prisoner confessed that elobela exulted in the belief that within a few days the fort would be compelled to surrender by lack of water. and he had promised his men an orgy when the surrender should take place. not a soul should be spared. there were man-eaters among his force, and they were looking forward to a choice banquet; many young and tender children frolicked in ilombekabasi. jack felt himself turn pale as he heard this. the facts were coming home to him. the thought that little bakota, the chubby boy whom barney employed to wash dishes, or little ilangala, the girl whom the same indefatigable factotum had taught to darn his socks, might fall into the hands of these ruthless cannibals, to be torn limb from limb, and sacrificed to their brutal appetites, kindled emotion within him much more poignant than the mere report that such things had happened in the collection of rubber on the congo, somewhere, at some time. he dismissed the man under guard, and went to his hut, wishing to be alone. an hour or two later lepoko came to him; the prisoner had given more information. "him say, sah, big massa lib for come back up ribber. him say elobela no let massa come to ilombekabasi; catch him, sah." here was a new source of uneasiness and anxiety. jack had longed for his uncle's return; now he almost wished that something had happened to prevent his departure. already he had had such proofs of elbel's vindictive and unscrupulous temper that he dreaded what might happen should mr. martindale fall into his hands. but for the moment he saw no means of warning his uncle, and he tried to crush his fears and forebodings. during the next few days several of elbel's scouts were killed or wounded by jack's men, who had so far been wonderfully successful in escaping injury. one man of the enemy who was brought in wounded confirmed the first prisoner's statement that the inglesa was said to be on his way. the river was being watched at various points of its course, and jack recognized the hopelessness of attempting to evade these sentinels and give his uncle timely warning. ten days had passed since the stream had been diverted, and the last captured scout said that elobela was growing very impatient. he could not understand how the fort had been able to hold out so long. every day he expected to see a flag of truce hoisted, and to receive a message asking for the terms of surrender. one evening another scout was captured, and from him jack learnt that his secret had at last been partially discovered. angry at being so long baulked, elbel had determined to find out the source whence the defenders obtained the water he knew they must have. he sent out scouts for this express purpose. one of them, creeping up the bed of the stream below the southern face of the fort, had discovered that the precipice, which from a distance looked dry, was running with water, and that a thin stream was trickling into the gully. the ground had gradually become saturated, and the overflow, which had at first disappeared into the earth, was now making itself only too visible. when the discovery was reported to elbel, he concluded that there must be a spring within the fort. great was his fury at having wasted so much time and labour fruitlessly. in his anger he declared that the defenders should have plenty of water in future. "what did he mean by that?" asked jack. the man did not know. elobela did not tell all his purposes to the black men. the very next morning it was observed that a large body of men was again on the move up the hill. jack hurried to the top of the north-west blockhouse and followed the movements through his field-glass. this time an even larger force was engaged than had been previously employed to dam the stream. two parties, riflemen and spearmen, numbering in all, as he estimated, nearly six hundred, were marching up the heights. clearly some new work was to be undertaken, and it must be of no little magnitude. there were no signs of preparation for an immediate attack. the troops continued their upward march for at least a mile. then jack was surprised to see them set to work rolling boulders down the hill towards the slope at the north-east of the fort and the new course of the river. whatever the scheme was, it involved a great deal of labour, for the whole day was spent upon it, and still the parties of workers had made but small progress down the hillside. it became clear to jack that the supply of boulders lower down had been used up in constructing the dam. more boulders were evidently required, and to procure these elbel had had to take his men a considerable distance up the hill. late in the afternoon the negroes were marched back to camp. as soon as it appeared safe, jack sent samba out to ascertain what had been done. when he came back he reported that a large quantity of stones had been collected near the dam, and that though the main body had returned to their camp, there were still several large parties engaged in hauling boulders nearly a mile away from this point. jack could form no idea of what elbel's plan was; but it seemed to him that in any case the time had come to meet it with a counterstroke. for hours that night he sat with barney discussing every means of striking a blow that occurred to him; but he came to no decision. a stand-up fight in the open was impossible; there could only be one end to that, outnumbered as jack was in riflemen by nearly five to one, and at present the enemy's movements did not suggest to him any opportunity for stratagem. next morning he stood with barney at the wall, watching the enemy as once more they marched up to the scene of the previous day's work. as usual, he did his best to count them--no easy matter, for the men did not march in orderly ranks like a disciplined regiment, but either in small groups or in several long files. "elbel is getting impatient," remarked jack at last. "he wants to hurry up that work of his, for i make out that he is taking over fifty more men up to-day." "sure there can't be more than fifty left in camp, sorr." "i suppose not. that's rather risky," he added thoughtfully--"in an enemy's country, barney." "would you be meaning to go for them, sorr?" returned barney, his eyes lighting up. "bedad, i'd rejoice in that same. i haven't told ye, sorr, but many's the time i've felt i should just go raging mad if i had to stay in this camp much longer. 'tis all very safe and comfortable, sorr, but 'tis a prison all the same, and there's no man on earth likes to be caged up less than an irishman." "d'you think we could do it, barney? the camp is only about half a mile below us; elbel's men are a mile above, some at least a mile and a half. could we rush the camp before the main body could be brought to its relief?" "say 'tis two miles between 'em as the crow flies; they could run that in twelve minutes widout distressing themselves." "but they couldn't take the shortest road, because that would bring them under fire from our walls. the distance would be a good deal more than two miles. and we should have to cover half that distance to the camp and back, the return journey up hill. it doesn't leave much margin, barney." "five minutes at the very most, sorr. but a man can do a power uv fighting in five minutes." "let us think it out carefully. we mustn't throw away all our success by a mad enterprise now. we oughtn't to weaken the defensive strength here much, for elbel has such numbers that he could afford to lose a few in storming." "and we needn't, sorr. 'tis not numbers that will count in rushing the camp; 'tis dash, sorr, and ivery man together." "that's quite true. and i think our men will work together better than elbel's. but there's a very serious difficulty--that outpost of his half-way between us and his camp. it's the only post he has kept up permanently, and now it's a nuisance to us." he referred to a couple of men stationed at the edge of a copse to the west of the stream. they were screened by rocks, and from their position they could see the blockhouses and the tops of the huts, and keep the west and south quarters of the fort under fairly strict observation. "you see, they would instantly detect any movement of ours down the hill; and by the time we got to the camp the enemy would be on the _qui vive_." "there's only wan thing to be done, sorr." "well?" "shut the eyes and the ears and the mouths uv the niggers at the outpost." "all very well; but they're too well screened to be shot at, and killing them is the only way to destroy all their senses. besides, it would be madness to fire. the sound would alarm the enemy and spoil our plans." "'twas not meself that thought uv firing at all at all, sorr. i was thinking uv samba." "samba! what can he do?" "sure and i don't know no more than the dead, or i'd tell it you meself, sorr. but samba's the ould wan himself at schaming; will i fetch him?" "certainly. we'll see if he can do anything. hurry up!" [1] this man. [2] are you speaking the truth? [3] mother!--the strongest affirmative. chapter xxi a dash and all together barney brought back with him both father and son. mboyo was a finely-built negro, but samba, who had been growing rapidly, promised to outstrip his father in height, as he already excelled him in nimbleness of wit. he had a noble brow, and eyes of extraordinary lustre; and jack could not help contrasting him with the mean-looking white man, who, in the providence of king leopold, was entrusted with the lives of such people as these. jack explained his purpose, and the difficulty which seemed to stand in the way. a glance was exchanged between samba and his father; then the boy said that they would deal with the outpost. "how will you do it?" "we will creep upon them." "but it is daylight." "true. we may fail; but we will do our best." "very well. now we must get our men together, barney. it will be useless for samba and mboyo to start until we are ready. in fact, we will postpone the whole thing for an hour or two. in the hottest part of the day the men in the camp will very likely be dozing or fast asleep; even if they're awake, they'll probably not have all their wits about them." he selected twenty riflemen, including imbono, makoko, and lepoko, and fifty spearmen, the pick of the force, and ordered them to assemble at a given signal at a small exit he had recently had cut in the base of the wall on the gully side. the hole had been made at a spot where the gully was very rugged and covered with creepers, so that any one leaving the fort by this small aperture could scarcely be detected except by an observer placed immediately opposite. the portion of the wall which had been removed could be replaced, and it would be impossible, save on very close scrutiny, to discover the existence of the exit. a dozen of the men, besides carrying their weapons, were to sling round their shoulders some large fireballs which had been made under barney's superintendence from the resin in the confiscated barrels. "begorra, sorr, 'tis meself that has an idea!" cried barney in the midst of these preparations. "couldn't we do something to hould the attention uv those villains at the outpost while samba and the chief are doing their job?" "a good idea, indeed. what do you suggest?" "'deed now, i wish we had mike henchie and denis o'sullivan and a few more uv the bhoys. we'd treat the niggers to the finest dancing wid the shillelagh that iver was seen this side uv limerick." "i wish we had! you speak of shillelaghs. won't indian clubs do? i have it! we'll get some of the children to go through their exercises. go and collect them, samba--lofinda and ilafa and lokilo and isungila, they're the best, and about a dozen more. but hang it! i forgot. they won't be seen over the wall." "sure there's the platform by the blockhouse, sorr. 'tis uncommon small for a stage play, but 'tis meself could make it wider in a brace uv shakes." "then do so, like a good fellow. it's a capital idea of yours, barney." the platform was quickly enlarged. then, just after midday, when the sun was blazing fiercely, and in the ordinary course of things everybody would be at rest in the huts, barney marshalled some twenty children, boys and girls, on the platform, and jack accompanied mboyo and samba to the little exit. "you must give me a signal if you succeed with the outpost," said jack, as they prepared to slip through. "it must not be a sound. you had better show yourself for a moment above the rocks, samba." the instant they had reached the gully, imbono's drummer began to beat his drum, not with the powerful strokes that would have sent a thunderous boom echoing for miles around, but with gentle taps that would scarcely be heard beyond the two outposts. at the same time two or three children blew softly through their little trumpets of banana leaves. in a moment two woolly heads could be seen cautiously peeping over the rocks for which mboyo and samba were making. then the performance began. instructed by barney, the children on the platform swung their clubs about, wondering why they were forbidden to sing the song about lokolobolo which usually accompanied their exercise. they knew nothing of the intention of their instructor, nor why he had chosen this hot hour instead of the cool of the evening; but they loved him, and delighted in the rhythmic motion, and they plied their clubs gracefully, all unconscious of the four curious eyes watching them from the rocks a few hundred yards away. jack saw nothing of their pretty movements. he was at the wall. the two men of the outpost gazed at the children. jack gazed at them. below him squatted his warriors, subdued to unnatural quietness by the thought of what was before them. impatiently they waited for the word. they did not know exactly what they were to do; lokolobolo had simply said they were to follow him. but they knew lokolobolo; had he not time and again brought elobela's schemes to nought? lokolobolo had said they were to follow him; and they were confident that where he led was the one place in the world for them. twenty minutes passed. the performance on the platform still went on. then jack suddenly saw the two black heads above the rocks disappear. next moment samba's head showed itself where they had been. "aiyoko!"[1] said jack to his men. quickly, one by one, they slipped through the narrow hole, and formed up under cover of the thick-growing creepers in the gully. jack went last, saw that the opening was closed behind him, and turned to address his men. "we are going to elobela's camp," he said. "we shall go down the gully until we come opposite to it, then i shall lead you; you will come behind me silently, keeping your ranks. i hope the men in the camp may be asleep. you will not fire until i give the word. when we have driven them out of the camp, those of you who have fireballs will set fire to their huts. then seize on all the guns and ammunition you can find, and return as quickly as possible to the fort." the men's eyes gleamed with excitement. stealthily as panthers they crept down the dry gully after their leader. they did not know that behind them, at the wall, barney, having abruptly dismissed the children, was watching with a very wistful look. the good fellow wished that he were with them. down they went, as rapidly as the rough ground permitted, scarcely making a sound. at length jack halted. he turned and gave one quick glance over the eager faces; there was no falterer among his band. then he scrambled over the brink of the gully. lepoko was first after him, makoko was second; the rest of the men stood upon no order of going, but made each for the easiest point of ascent. and there mboyo and samba joined them. standing on gently sloping ground jack looked eagerly ahead. had his movement been detected? there, two hundred yards away, was the camp within its light stockade. not a man was to be seen. the midday sun beat fiercely down; doubtless the garrison were enjoying a siesta. no sentry was posted, or, if posted, he had forgotten his duty. the gate of ilombekabasi on the northern face was far away; what simple negro would suppose that the enemy was approaching silently from the nearer end? in compact and orderly ranks jack's men were sprinting noiselessly after him, holding their weapons so that no clash or click should disturb the silent camp. they were within a few yards of the stockade when suddenly there was a cry. all were black men in the camp save one. at that moment he, in the intolerable heat, was about to leave his tent and bathe in a clear stream that ran through the enclosure. he saw the running band; he cried to his men, and, flinging away his towel, sprang back to his hut to get his rifle. he was too late. jack, getting a "shove up" from one of his men, was on and over the stockade in a few seconds; his men were leaping all around him. and now their tongues were loosened. yells and rifle shots aroused the lethargic garrison, some from sleep within their huts, some from drowsy lolling in shady quarters by the stockade. for most of them one glance was enough. here was lokolobolo, the inglesa, and with him a crowd of men among whom they recognized some they had beaten in ilola with the whip. with frantic yells of alarm they ran for dear life across the compound to the gate on the further side, out into the open, never pausing until they had gained the forest fringe, with half a mile between them and the men they feared. but not all; the white man had seized his rifle and collected a small band about him. mboyo, near jack, gave a cry; among the negroes around the white man he saw boloko, his renegade brother. taking cover where they could, they began to fire at the invaders, hastily, frantically. but jack had his men in hand. bidding them also take cover, he sent those who had fireballs to creep round the camp and set light to the huts. soon volumes of dense suffocating smoke bellied across the camp, screening attackers from defenders. then jack gave the order to close in upon the few who resisted. with triumphant yells his men swept forward through the smoke--a few shots were fired; one or two men fell; then the white man, with boloko and the rest of his band at his heels, made a dash for the gate. two men dropped ere they could pass through; but the white man and boloko and half a dozen others were more fortunate. out in the open they ran like hunted deer; and elobela's burning camp was left in the hands of lokolobolo. jack lost no time. the stockade and the huts on the windward side were ablaze; soon the whole place must be in flames. the sound of the shots, the sight of the smoke, would bring back elbel and all his force. shouting to his men to collect all the arms and ammunition they could carry and then rush back to the fort, jack went outside the stockade beyond the cloud of smoke to keep watch. the flames were roaring and crackling behind him; but even at this distance, nearly two miles from the place where elbel was at work, he fancied he heard the shouts of the amazed and angry enemy. then suddenly the deep resonant note of imbono's drum struck his ear. barney must be warning him! he turned and called to his men to delay no longer. back to the fort! meanwhile barney had followed the movements of the gallant band. he heard the shots and yells, and saw the first spiral of smoke; then he hastened to the northwest blockhouse, calling to all the riflemen left with him to line the wall overlooking the gully. in a few minutes he saw the negroes above dashing helter-skelter down the slope. and yes! there was elbel at their head, a figure in white, running as though he were running for a prize. barney smiled with satisfaction. "begorra! they're forgetting me!" he murmured pleasantly, as he saw that the enemy, in their frantic haste, were making for the shortest path along the further edge of the gully, within easy range of the camp. barney determined to wait until they were well abreast of him, and then give them a volley. but the impatience of a negro forced his hand. in the excitement of the moment one of the riflemen, free from jack's restraining presence, fired his piece. the shot brought elbel to his senses. he suddenly remembered the danger into which he was running. turning sharp to the right, he sprinted straight to the cover of the copse. some of his men followed him; others ran heedlessly on. growling at the man who had spoilt his scheme, barney gave the order to fire, and half a dozen of the enemy fell. but elbel had escaped; and the rest of his men took warning and diverged from the direct course as he had done. barney saw that further efforts would be wasted; so, ordering his men to cease fire, he returned to the other end of the fort to see how jack was faring. [illustration: jack rushes elbel's camp] here they come! makoko is leading, staggering up the gully under the weight of half a dozen rifles. behind him is lombola, poising a load of ammunition on his head. there is lingombela, with a bundle of cartridge pouches roped to his back. so one after another they file up the gully. barney opens the little gate in the wall; willing helpers within haul the loads through. no man enters until all the rifles and ammunition have been handed in; then they scramble through, laughing and jesting; and jack comes last of all. "well done, sorr!" said barney heartily. "well done, barney!" returned jack, gripping his hand. "by jove! what's that?" a loud explosion set the air trembling, and a hundred echoes flying from the rocks around. a dense volume of flame and smoke rose from the site of elbel's camp. "there goes the last of their ammunition!" said jack with a laugh. "we've got best part of it here." "bedad, sorr, now's the chance for me meself. give me leave, sorr, and i'll go at them wid the men and wipe them clean off the face uv the earth." "stop, stop, barney! we mustn't be impatient. they've no more ammunition in reserve, but every man who was with elbel will have a good many rounds with him. we can't risk a pitched battle against two hundred rifles." "ochone, sorr! will i niver get a chance at all?" "cheer up! your chance will come, and you've done splendidly as it is. it was a fine idea of yours to sound that drum when you saw them running down. and it was your idea to set something going here to occupy the attention of the outpost. by the by, i haven't had time to ask samba yet how they dealt with those fellows." he called up the boy. his story was very simple. mboyo and he had crawled round under cover of the rocks and bushes, and came upon the unsuspecting sentries from the rear. they had their knives; the men died without a sound. jack shuddered. it was not an englishman's way of dealing with an enemy; it was the negro's way. but his feeling of compunction was somewhat diminished when samba added that one of the men was bomolo, the brutal forest guard who had been the terror of imbono's people. for how many maimings and murders had this man been responsible? surely in this quick death he had met with far less than his deserts! jack had every reason to be satisfied with the success of his sortie. to have burned the enemy's camp; captured more than half his reserve ammunition, and destroyed the rest, was no mean feat. and as for the people of ilombekabasi, they were frantic with delight. so quietly had jack made his preparations that the majority of the people knew nothing of what was happening until they heard the first shot. then they crowded to the wall and watched eagerly. the camp itself was hidden from them by the contour of the hill, but they saw the smoke rising above the bushes and hailed it with loud shouts. when they understood the meaning of the great noise that followed lokolobolo's return they were almost beside themselves with joy. and in the cool of the evening jack allowed them to hold a great feast, after which imbono reeled off a long oration in praise of lokolobolo, and the village bard composed and chanted a new song in numerous stanzas, the whole populace roaring the chorus:- o kelaki na? bomong'ilombe, bosak'owa wanga,[2] lokolobolo! for several days after the sortie jack was left undisturbed. he guessed how elbel was occupied, and his conjecture was confirmed by samba, who at once resumed his scouting work. elbel was constructing another camp a good distance east of his former position. and he was spending more time and labour on it; the stockade was more than usually high and thick, and was flanked with bastions after the model of the blockhouses at ilombekabasi. samba also discovered that on the day after the burning of the camp one of the white men with twenty paddlers had gone down the river. jack had no doubt that he had been despatched to the headquarters of his company for more ammunition. clearly elbel was rendered only the more determined by his successive rebuffs. "and i don't wonder at it," remarked jack, talking the situation over with barney. "we are making hay of the rubber collection in this district, and elbel's company will be pretty mad with him. i understand why he hasn't got help before this from the state forces. for one thing he has got to rehabilitate himself with his company, who'll certainly cashier him if he doesn't find a way out of the mess he has got into. for another thing, if he brings the state forces on the scene, he'll most likely lose all chance of collaring uncle's gold, and i believe that's at the bottom of it right through. but things can't last much longer as they are. the state must intervene soon, whether elbel likes it or not." "and what then, sorr?" "then it will be all up with us, i'm afraid. but we won't look forward to that. i only wish i could find some means of sending word to england of what goes on here, and what we're doing." "what would be the good uv it, sorr? sorrow a bit." "why do you say that?" "why! because in england they're all too busy making money to attend to such things--making money, sorr, or fighting tooth and nail about education, or dreaming about football. now if ireland had home rule----" "no politics, barney! i don't agree with you. i'm as sure as i'm alive that if the people at home really knew how abominably the natives are treated--knew about the floggings and maimings and murders, they'd make such an outcry that either king leopold would be forced to change his policy, or some one would step in and manage things for him. if only england and america would join hands!" when elbel had completed his new camp, he resumed the work far up the hill which the sortie had interrupted. jack was still at a loss to understand what the belgian's scheme was, and he was prevented from finding out, by the fact that every night a strong body was left on guard, as he knew by the many camp fires at the top of the ridge. one afternoon, however, the secret was explained. one of the men placed on the look-out at the north-eastern blockhouse reported that he saw a stream of water rushing down the hill. jack hastened to the spot with his field-glass, and was somewhat alarmed to see that the man's information was correct; water was certainly streaming down over the rocky ground, making a course that seemingly would bring it right against the fort wall. "he's going to flood us out!" thought jack. "he must have built an embankment across the new course of the river." this was a manoeuvre which he had not foreseen, and one which it seemed impossible to counter. the water, gathering impetus as it flowed down the hill, would almost infallibly undermine the wall, even if it had not force enough to wash it away altogether. but as he watched, for the moment so much taken aback that he could not think of anything to be done, his consternation was changed to amusement, for about two hundred yards up the hill the water made a swerve to his right, and flowed with increasing rapidity in that direction. the slope was such that, instead of coming straight down as elbel had evidently expected, the stream, finding the easiest course, took at this point a trend to the south-east. after all it would only wash the blockhouse on which jack stood. jack instantly saw what he ought to do. running down to the base of the stockade, he summoned a large body of workers, and set some of them to dismantle the blockhouse, the remainder to pull down the wall and build it up again several feet behind its former position, and in such a way that instead of forming the angle of a square it lay across, making a line parallel with the course of the stream. they had hardly got to work before the full body of water was upon them. but so many men were employed, and they moved so rapidly, that only one or two logs were carried away by the current, the solidly built blockhouse serving as a dam and protecting the workers behind. the main stream fell with a roar over the steep slope on the edge of which the blockhouse stood--a slope only less precipitous than that of the cataract, now a thing of the past, at the opposite corner of the fort. only a few minutes later a tremendous outcry was heard from the direction of elbel's new camp. for a moment it startled jack. had the enemy taken advantage of the sudden flood to organize an attack in force? but the thought had hardly crossed his mind when he burst into laughter, causing his workers to pause and look round in astonishment. "a magnificent idea!" he said to barney. "d'you see what has happened? the silly fellow is flooding his own camp!" "bedad, sorr, that's what comes uv being too clever by half." "it comes of playing with things he knows nothing about. he's tried an engineer's job without experience and without surveying instruments. it's ticklish work interfering with the course of nature, and you never know what will happen if you set water on the run. look at them, barney! 'pon my soul, it's the funniest thing i've ever seen. there's elbel himself, do you see? scampering down the hill like a madman." "like a mad gorilla, sorr." "and all his men after him! by jove! can't they yell! he'll have to shift his quarters again, barney." "and sure i hope all his food is soaked and all his clothes in the wash-tub. a bath will do those greasy niggers no harm." "we'll build up our blockhouse a few yards to the left, and be none the worse. let's go and lend a hand." [1] now. [2] who did it? the master of the house, a most clever person. chapter xxii a message and a meeting ilombekabasi had peace. elbel was sufficiently occupied for a couple of days in constructing a third camp, which he placed still further eastward in the direction of ilola, but still between jack and the main river. and even when the camp was completed he gave no sign of further operations. jack was forced to conclude that his enemy was tired of his continual failures, and would now wait inactive until reinforcements reached him. one afternoon, about a week after the flooding of the camp, a negro was seen running up the gully. shots rang out in the distance, and far down the gully appeared a band of elbel's men, who relinquished the pursuit of the runner on coming within sight of the fort. the man scampered up to the hole in the stockade. he was unarmed save for the universal dagger. he cried out to be admitted; he had a message for the inglesa; and jack ordered him to be hauled up through the aperture. "me nearly lib for dead," he said panting, "me run too fast." "well, who are you, and what do you want?" "me lofembi, sah. me boy massa him uncle." "what!" "yes, sah; me massa martindale boy." "where is he?" cried jack, feeling himself go pale with excitement at the sudden news. "he long long in forest, sah. come up ribber in boat; one man say young massa shut up in ilombekabasi; old massa get out of boat, hide in forest so long for young massa to know. he plenty sick at boma, sah; nearly gone dead. fust small small better, sah! lib for go sick all same; talk small small, sah; no make head straight. he try write; no can hold black stick; he fit for go sleep." "good heavens, barney! poor old uncle!" "sure, the man may be a liar, sorr," said barney. jack gave the man a keen glance. "my uncle tried to write, you say. what did he try to write?" "bonkanda to massa; oh yes! he want say he come; he want know what he fit to do. no want see bad man; no; want to come to ilombekabasi. plenty hard job, 'cos bad man dah." he pointed in the direction of elbel's camp. "if he is so very sick, how did he come from the river into the forest?" "four five men carry him, sah. plenty big lump; oh yes." "why did he send you? where's nando?" "nando lib for sick at leo[1]; no fit to come; him plenty sick; oh yes. me lofembi; me come, do talk for massa. massa gib fing to show young massa; here he am." he produced a gold scarf ring and handed it to jack. "this is my uncle's, sure enough, barney. it's genuine. what on earth can we do? poor old uncle! in his last note he said he was recovering; he must have had a relapse. how can we get him into the fort? we must bring him in somehow. it's awful to think of him lying ill in the forest without any one to look after him; and i am cooped up here!" "send samba to fetch him, sorr." "i can't, barney," said jack after a moment's thought. "samba goes alone safely, but i simply can't trust him to lead a party in, especially as uncle seems to be too bad to move. i can't see any way out of it. if i took some men out myself, and made a dash for it, the enemy would be on our track, and we should have to fight our way in against the whole lot of them. impossible; they outnumber us so greatly." barney was sympathetic, but unable to offer a suggestion. bidding him keep an eye on lofembi, jack went back to his hut to think the matter out by himself. he was torn with anxiety. an unlucky chance might at any moment reveal his uncle's whereabouts, and he knew what mercy mr. martindale might expect if he fell into the hands of elbel. something must be done; yet what? a dozen plans occurred to him, only to be rejected. one thing was clear; whatever was done must be done either by barney or himself. mr. martindale being incapacitated, another white man must lead his party, for the natives, unless properly led, might be seized with panic at the slightest check and bolt. barney he could not send. there was no finesse about him; he was a good fighter, with any amount of pluck, but the very antithesis of a scout. jack felt that he must go himself if his uncle was to have the best chance of getting in. there was no other course that offered the same prospect of success. what were his chances? his sortie against the enemy's camp had been a brilliant success. since then elbel had been practically on the defensive; he was afraid of wasting ammunition; afraid also of leaving any small body unsupported by his main force. during the past week jack's scouts had reported night after night that no pickets had been posted as formerly around the fort, so that, except on the south-east, where elbel's camp was, the neighbourhood was open. he could thus easily steal out at the gate in the northern wall under cover of darkness, and by making a wide detour ought to be able to bring mr. martindale and his party back in safety. yet he had qualms. ought he in any case to leave the fort? supposing he failed, what would happen to the hundreds of people who depended on him? driven by force of circumstances into a life-and-death struggle with elbel's company, he had not ventured to look forward to its ultimate issue. the duty of the moment seemed to be to hold on, to keep the poor negroes out of the clutches of their oppressors, and leave the end with god. could he trust barney to continue his work if he should be removed? ought he to think of it? thus he pondered and puzzled, the arguments for and against chasing one another in a circle through his mind. he had reached no conclusion when barney came to the hut. the good fellow seemed a little uncomfortable; he stood hesitating at the entrance, his readiness of speech having apparently deserted him. "barney, i'm the most miserable fellow alive," said jack, looking up. "all but wan, sorr; all but wan. 'tis the master who is more miserable than you or me, sorr. think uv it; alone in the forest, wid none but black idjuts to wait upon 'm. i've been thinking mighty hard, sorr, and the end uv it is this; 'tis you that must go, sorr. sure i can hold the fort while you are gone." "but what if i never come back, barney?" "'twould be a desp'rate hard case, sorr. but what thin? i'm an irishman, and, bedad! 'twas for hard cases irishmen was born. niver a fear but i'd stick to it, sorr. we've beaten the scuts all along. and if the captain goes, sorr, sure the liftinant takes his place and does his best to fill it dacently. what would have happened if ye had got knocked on the head in that sortie uv yours? do ye think barney o'dowd would have hung out a white rag and surrindered? sorrow a bit! i'd have nailed my colours to the mast, speakin' by the card, and dared the rufn'ns to come and take 'em." "you're a brick, barney!" cried jack, springing up and gripping him by the hand. "i'll go! i'll take samba, this very night, and bring dear old uncle in." "that's right, sorr. and we'll nurse him back to health and strength, and make him colonel uv the reg'mint." "call out those men who captured elbel's camp with me, and place them at the gate to make a dash if they hear firing. and meanwhile you man the wall and hold yourself ready to cover our entry. and, barney, if i'm caught and uncle doesn't come in, hold the fort as long as you can. don't make sorties; simply sit tight. the rainy season will be on us soon, imbono said, and elbel's camp is so badly placed that when the rains come he will be swamped. he may then get tired of the siege and draw off. if he does, i should arrange with the two chiefs for a trek into the forest. but if elbel still presses the siege and food begins to run short--it won't last for ever, you know--you had better choose a dark night and make a dash out to the north-east. if you go quickly you'll get a good many hours' start before elbel realizes what has happened; and when once in the forest you may shake off pursuit. our rifles will form a rearguard." "i'll do all that same, sorr. but i hope it will not be me fate to do it at all. i'd sooner be liftinant for iver, sorr." shortly after nightfall, jack, samba, and lofembi the messenger, made their exit by the hole in the wall. jack had wished to follow his original intention and leave by the northern gate, but lofembi earnestly begged him not to do this, saying that he would not be able to find the way if he did not go out by the same gate that he had entered. at the moment of departure barney gripped jack's hand. "the blessed angels go wid ye, sorr, and bring poor ould master back in safety." "good-bye, barney. hope for the best, and remember--hold the fort." it was slow work moving across the broken hilly country by night; but lofembi had previously pointed out to samba the general direction in which they had to go, and the boy was able to keep a fairly straight course. they had to strike, said lofembi, a path through the forest following the course of the sun. mr. martindale's camp was pitched close to the path, not far from where two large trees had fallen across it. in about an hour they came to the outskirts of the forest in that direction, the course being in the main the same as that taken by jack some weeks previously on his buffalo hunt, but leaving the open country somewhat earlier. so far there had been no sign of the enemy. progress was even slower in the forest itself. more than once lofembi halted in doubt; then after a whispered colloquy with samba he started again, guiding himself by the stars seen through the tree tops. save for these whispered conversations not a word was spoken. jack was too much absorbed in his mission, too anxious about his uncle, to have any inclination to talk, even if the risk of coming upon a scout of elbel's had not been present to his mind. at length the three came upon the narrow track lofembi had been seeking. here they went in indian file, the guide leading, jack coming next, then samba. the path was so narrow and so beset by obstructions that walking was a toil. sometimes lofembi swerved to one side or the other to avoid a prickly bush; sometimes they had to clamber over a fallen tree; more often the path wound round the obstacle. it seemed to jack many hours since they started; in reality it was scarcely more than three before they came upon the two fallen trees. lofembi stopped. "small small now, massa," he whispered. he gave a long low-pitched call. from the blackness on the left came a similar call in reply. the guide moved forward, plunging boldly along a narrow path--more narrow even than that by which they had reached this spot--in the direction of the sound. jack was about to follow him when samba touched him on the arm. "samba go first," said the boy. "no, no," said jack kindly. "we are all right; this is my place, samba." his heart beat faster under the stress of his emotion as he followed lofembi through the tangled undergrowth. how would he find his uncle? was he very ill? surely, surely, he was not in danger--he would not die? beads of sweat broke out upon jack's brow as the terrible possibility occurred to him. he went on almost blindly. three minutes' groping in the darkness brought them to a natural clearing, in which, by the dim light of the stars, jack saw a couple of tents, and, some little distance from them, what appeared to be a number of roughly made grass huts. "dis way, massa," said lofembi, touching jack on the arm. "which one?" said jack in a low tone, "dat one," replied lofembi, pointing to the nearer of the two huts. he stepped forward into the clearing. at the same moment a score of dusky forms rose and closed in stealthily from the undergrowth around. with a little cry samba plucked jack by the sleeve. but almost unconsciously he shook off the detaining hand, so full of anxiety was he. his uncle must be very ill, or he would be standing by the tent to welcome him. he sprang forward, stopped, and raised the flap of the tent. by the light of a small oil lamp swinging from the top he saw a form stretched upon a camp bed. "uncle! uncle!" he cried, falling on his knees by the side of the prostrate figure. a low murmur answered him. at the same moment he heard a sighing groan, as it were, from the entrance to the hut, and the sound of a heavy fall. then the forest glade rang with fierce shouts and the crack of a rifle. jack rose to his feet, confused by this sudden turmoil coming when his nerves were overstrung. as he half turned, a figure came out of the darkness towards him. "good efening, mr. shalloner," said a smooth voice. jack started back. "yes, it is me--guillaume elbel, bien entendu!" [1] leopoldville. chapter xxiii elbel squares accounts jack saw through it all now. elbel had captured his uncle, and used him to decoy from the fort the enemy whom fair fighting and open manoeuvres had failed to dislodge. he could have shot the belgian with his rifle where he stood, but saw in a flash how vain the action would be. outside was a horde of savage natives, who would instantly wreak vengeance on the white men. mr. martindale was too weak to resist, and what he would suffer at their hands was too horrible to be thought of. when elbel had spoken jack turned once more to his uncle, and kneeling down by his bedside clasped his hand. his pressure was returned but feebly. mr. martindale's weakness, coupled with his distress at jack's capture, rendered him unable to speak. "i beg you listen to me," said elbel. "i have a varrant for the arrest of chon martindale, chon shalloner, and a third man, whose name i do not know, on a charge dat dey incite de natives to rebel against de congo free state. i have two of the dree; dat is vell. it vill be for your advantage, to-morrow, to send a written order to de third man to render dat fort on de hill. it vill be for your advantage at de trial. if de fort resist longer, and cause blood to spill, it vill be so much de vorse for you ven you appear before de court in boma." "where is your warrant, mr. elbel?" asked jack. "ah! i have it not viz me; of course, it is in my camp." "i suppose you are going to take us there? you can show it to me when we get there." "no, you meestake. i vill not take you to my camp. i vill send you both at vunce to boma, vere you vill be tried." "but my uncle is not in a condition to travel; you know that." "bah! he vas in condition to travel here; vell, he is in condition to travel back." "but that is preposterous, mr. elbel. are you absolutely inhuman? i find my uncle so ill that he cannot even speak to me. god knows how much his illness is due to you or your friends. at least you will allow him to remain until i can give him some little attention--until he regains a little strength. to do anything else will be nothing less than murder." "dat is not my affair," said elbel with a shrug. "it is instructed me to send you to boma. to boma zerefore muss you go, and at vunce." then, as a thought struck him, he added, "though truly i will vait vun day, two days perhaps, if you give command to de man in de fort to render himself." "never!" came in a fierce whisper from the bed. mr. martindale had gathered his little strength for jack's sake. "never! we will make no terms with you. what my nephew has done he has done merely in self-defence against the acts, the illegal acts, of you and your freebooters. i am an american citizen; he is a british subject; as you, yes, and your free state, will find to your cost." he spoke in feeble gasps, yet with an energy that spoke of an unconquerable spirit. the exertion exhausted him, and he fell back on the bed from which he had half risen. "bah! fine vords!" said elbel. "ver' fine vords, monsieur. you say you are american--you dink dat frighten me! vy, i laugh. vat good is de american or de english in de congo free state? ve mock of dem. ve have our own vays to deal viz such canaille. you vill not send order to de fort? ver' vell; i do vizout." "your warrant won't hold in any case. no one can order the arrest of a man unnamed." "you zink so? ver' vell, it does not matter. you vill have opportunity to zink about my vords as you promenade yourselves to boma. so i vish you bonsoir. to attempt to escape, i tell you it is impossible. you see dat? you hab revolver, mr. shalloner. be so kind to gif me dat." jack hesitated. but he saw that resistance was useless, and handed over the weapon. "danks. in de morning you vill begin your promenade to boma. au revoir, messieurs; au revoir monsieur chon shalloner!" he left the tent. the interview had been too much for mr. martindale. he lay half unconscious, and was scarcely roused when elbel, in a couple of minutes, returned in a towering rage. "you, chon shalloner!" he shouted. "you make de natives to rebel, and more, you make dem to do murder. dat man, who i sent to the fort, he lie now outside, a dead man. some vun dat come viz you he stab him in de back. you english hombog, i teach you. dey shall know of dis in boma." jack did not condescend to answer him, and elbel flung out of the tent. if his messenger was dead, he had paid the penalty of his treachery. jack could only pity the poor wretch for meeting with such an end in such a service. no doubt it was samba's doing. jack remembered now the groan and the fall outside. had samba escaped? he was anxious on the boy's behalf, but it was impossible to ascertain what had happened to him. from elbel's manner and words he inferred that samba was safe. and as for elbel's indignation at the deed jack was not impressed by it. when he thought of the murders and maimings this man was answerable for, he could find no blame for the faithful boy who had punished as his instincts taught him, the spy who had betrayed his master. jack was left alone with his uncle. he looked vainly round the tent for a restorative--a drug, a flask of brandy, even a cup of water. there was nothing. he bent over the still form, and touching the brow, gently, felt it burning with the heat of fever. he knew that his uncle was accustomed to keep a small phial of quinine pills in his waistcoat pocket, and searching for that he found it and persuaded the sick man to swallow a little of the medicine. then he sat on the foot of the bed, not knowing what to do. how fully his forebodings had been justified! it had been a mistake to leave the fort. and yet he could not rue it, for otherwise he might never have seen his uncle again. he looked at the face with the half-closed eyes; how thin it was! how pale! the ruddy hue, the rounded shape of health, were gone. where was that bright twinkling eye that looked so shrewdly out from beneath a shaggy brow? what sufferings he must have undergone! at that moment jack looked over the past months to the day when he so light-heartedly bade his uncle good-bye, and so cheerfully accepted the charge laid upon him. how he wished they had never been parted! and then another thought drove out his regret. but for this parting ilombekabasi would never have been, and several hundreds of poor black people would almost certainly have been tortured, mutilated, done to death, in the name of law. could he have done otherwise than he had done? had providence, moving in mysterious ways, arranged all this--that one should suffer for the sake of many? he did not know; he could not think; his mind seemed to be wrapt in a cloud of mist, through which he saw nothing but the present fact--that his uncle lay before him, sick--perhaps unto death. by and by a negro entered, bearing food and palm wine. mr. martindale could not eat, but the wine revived him. "jack, old boy!" jack knelt by the bedside, clasping his uncle's hand. "jack, i must tell you what happened." "don't, uncle; you will distress yourself." "no, i shall do myself no harm. if you will be patient--for i shall be slow--a little at a time, jack. you must know. i've got pretty nearly to the end of my tether, dear boy. i shan't live to do anything for these poor niggers, but you will--you will, jack. and i want you to vow here, at this moment, to do what i must leave undone--fight the congo state, jack, fight leopold, with your hands, your tongue, your pen, here, in europe, in america; fight him in the name of humanity and of god. promise me that, jack, so that if i do not live till the morning i shall at least die happy." "god helping me, uncle, i will." mr. martindale pressed his hand. for some time there was silence, then the elder man began again. "i must try to speak calmly, my boy; i have so little strength; but it is hard. i told you in my first letter of what i had learnt about the ways of the congo state. you wondered, i dare say, why i never mentioned them again. you will understand why. when i got to boma, i reported to the governor-general, in a written memorial, the incidents that occurred as we went up the river--the altercation with elbel, the attempt on our canoes, the night attack on our camp, frustrated by samba. (i can't tell you how glad i was, jack, when you told me the boy had returned to you.) i forestalled the probable answer that elbel had nothing to do with those attempts by pointing out that the negroes samba saw were fully armed, and must have been under a white man's control. even then it was illegal, for i found that men in elbel's position, representing concessions, are not entitled to take more than five riflemen as escort beyond the limits of their trading factories. in my memorial i said that, after these attacks on me, i should be forced in self-defence to arm a certain number of my followers, and i disclaimed responsibility for the consequences. i also reported the scene of desolation at banonga, and the story i had heard from samba's lips; and called upon the governor-general to take instant action in the matter." jack moistened his uncle's lips, and he continued: "i got an acknowledgment, polite enough, even pleasant, promising that these matters should be inquired into. the governor-general added that the possession of firearms and the arming of the natives being prohibited by law, i should become liable to heavy penalties and imprisonment if the law was broken. i had luckily already sent you the rifles and ammunition; though had i not done so, i could easily have bribed an official to give me a permit to carry arms; it would have cost me five hundred francs for the licence, and as much as i chose for the bribe. "for a week i heard no more. i was deceived by the politeness of the governor-general's letter into believing that i was perfectly safe, and free to do, in this free state, what i had come to do. i set about my business, and, as i told you, bought a little machinery, from a fellow named schwab, agent for a düsseldorf firm. but i was a marked man. one day an officer came and asked me to show my patent. i did so. the man complained that it was not properly filled up; my name was spelled with an 'e' instead of an 'i'--martendale! i laughed at him, and he went away in a huff. next day another fellow came and said that my patent was worthless. since it had been granted a new arrangement had been entered into between the concession and the state, and all the mineral rights in the district reverted to the state. i laughed at that; a patent granted by the concession and authorized by the state could not be revoked; it had five years to run, and i meant to stick to it. they wanted to bluff me--an american!--out of it. "but things began to go badly with me. i was practically boycotted, jack. none of the storekeepers would supply me with anything i wanted. one of them frankly told me that to do so was as much as his life was worth. i did not believe him at first. but i found it was only too true. a storekeeper in boma i heard of--a british subject, jack, from the gold coast--had a part in showing up the rascality of some legal proceedings that had recently taken place. the officials gave the word. he was boycotted; his trade dwindled; he became bankrupt; one of his sons was driven mad by the persecution he suffered; and his troubles and worries so preyed upon the old man's mind that he took his own life. "then i fell ill. it was a near touch, jack. only the devotion of a fellow-countryman--a fine fellow from milwaukee--saved my life. remember his name, jack--theodore canrehan; if you ever meet him, and can do him a good turn, do it for my sake. when i got on my feet again, i was amazed to find the tune changed. everybody was as sweet as butter. the officers came and apologized to me; they regretted the unfortunate misunderstandings that had arisen; they would do all in their power to forward my business. i arranged for the dispatch of the machinery i had ordered from europe, and started to return. i couldn't make out what had made them suddenly so attentive; thought it was because i was an american, and they had some respect for the stars and stripes after all. canrehan told me that since i sailed a strong feeling had been growing in america with regard to the congo question; and i flattered myself the state authorities weren't anxious to add fuel to the flames by provoking a real serious grievance in which an american was concerned. but it was all a trap, jack--all a trap. i saw it too late--too late." hitherto mr. martindale had spoken slowly and calmly, husbanding his strength. but at this point his feeling overcame him. "don't talk any more now, uncle," said jack, fearing that the exertion would be too much for him. "tell me the rest another time. try to sleep. i will watch over you. thank god i shall be with you in the journey to boma. you'll pull through even now, and we shall be able to fight together." mr. martindale had already fallen into a doze. jack did his best to make his bed more comfortable, and watched him through the night, pacing round the tent for hours together to keep himself awake. from time to time his thoughts went back to the fort. what was barney doing? what would he do when morning came and yet the absent had not returned? what would be the fate of the poor people committed to his charge? at present all was dark to jack. it seemed that he and all connected with him were now in the fell grip of the congo state. as soon as it was light elbel came into the tent. "i hope you had good night," he said, with a grin. "you vill have breakfast, den you vill begin your promenade. tventy-five askari vill escort you. you vill go to de river vere mr. martindale left his canoes; dey are still dere. ah! he did hide dem, but vat good? you vill go on canoes till you come to de falls; dere you vill for a time voyage overland. by and by you come to stanleyville; dere you find steamer; de state officers vill have care of you de rest of de vay to boma. you understan'?" "i warn you, mr. elbel, that i shall hold you responsible for my uncle's safety down the river. you see for yourself he is not fit to travel. i shall take the earliest opportunity of informing the american government of your actions--your persecution, for it is no less." "dat is all right," returned elbel, grinning again. "de courts at boma vill give immediate attention. de judges, dey are excellent. now still vunce before you go, write de order to de vite man in your fort to render himself. it vill profit you." "never!" said jack. "go and execute your warrant." "ver' vell, ver' vell. it matters noding. in a half-hour de askari vill be here. you be ready." jack managed to get his uncle to eat a little food. he seemed somewhat stronger and less feverish than on the preceding evening. at seven o'clock the twenty-five soldiers appeared, accompanied by eight men as carriers. mr. martindale recognized these as belonging to the party he had brought up the river; the rest of his men, he supposed, had been impressed by elbel for service in his camp. it being obvious that the sick man was unable to walk, a litter had been constructed for him. he was placed on this. four men were told off to carry it, the other four bearing food sufficient to last the whole party until they reached the canoes. jack had wondered whether he was to be manacled; but the prestige of the white man, not any consideration for his feelings, had prevented elbel from going to such extremes. but as he stood behind his uncle's litter, two askari with loaded rifles placed themselves one on each side of him. when the party were ready to start, elbel sauntered up, his hands behind his back, and, approaching jack, said with a smile: "now, mr. shalloner, before ve part i have a little vat you call reckoning viz you. you strike me vunce, tvice, viz your feest. dat is de english vay--de boxe, hein?" elbel showed his teeth. "on de congo ve have anoder vay--de chicotte. vun does not soil vun's hands. so!" he took from behind his back a hippopotamus-hide whip, and, cutting short so as to avoid the askari close beside jack, dealt him two cuts with his utmost strength. jack clenched his teeth to stifle a cry as the edges of the thong cut through his thin clothes. "dere! now are ve quits!" as he spoke jack, blazing with anger and mortification, made a fierce spring at him. but elbel was ready: he jumped nimbly backwards, while half a dozen askari rushed between them, and pinioned jack's arms. honour was satisfied--so elbel appeared to think, for with a grin of malicious triumph he nodded to the askari in charge: the party might now proceed. "you see," said elbel, as they moved away, "if you try to escape you vill be shot. i vish you agreeable promenade." chapter xxiv a solemn charge the party set off. they marched all day, with brief intervals for food and rest. jack was only allowed to speak to his uncle during these pauses. the sick man lay inert, with closed eyes, protected from the heat by a light covering of grass, which his bearers made and fixed above his litter. jack watched him anxiously. he seemed no worse when they arrived at the river just before sunset. mr. martindale had brought up four canoes; two of these had already been appropriated by elbel and conveyed up the river; the other two remained. they passed the night on the canoes, and in the small hours, when the natives were asleep, mr. martindale insisted on continuing the story broken off the night before. "better now, dear boy," he said, when jack implored him to wait until he was stronger. "i shall never see boma; elbel knows that. he knows that in this climate a sick man cannot survive a journey of over a thousand miles. i want you to understand clearly before i go what these officials are doing. they call it the free state!--free! no one is free but the officials! the natives, poor wretches! are not free. never, when slavery was an institution, were there slaves in such abject misery as these slaves of the congo. why, they made a great to-do about slavery in my country fifty years ago, and some of the pictures in uncle tom's cabin were lurid enough. but the american slave's life was paradise compared with this hell upon earth. trade on the congo was to be free. is there any such freedom? look at my case. they give me a patent to work minerals; they let me make my prospecting trip; then when i have located the gold and ordered my machinery they revoke my patent. i make the loaf, they eat it. oh! it was all planned from the beginning. we have been fooled right through, jack." "but what of their courts, uncle? surely there is some redress for injustice." "their courts! they're all of a piece, jack. the state grants a concession to a trading company. half the time the state _is_ the trading company; it takes up the larger portion of the shares. the congo free state is nothing but a big commercial speculation, and the courts dare not do anything that conflicts with its interests. men come here, belgians, germans, italians, good fellows some, honest, well-meaning; but they haven't been here long before they have to swim with the current, or throw up their careers. one poor fellow, a district judge, ventured to protest against an illegal sentence passed by a court-martial; he was broken, and hounded out of the country. in a sense he was lucky, for it is easier for such a man to get into this country than to get out of it--alive! a man who does justice and loves righteousness has no place in the congo free state. "you see now why they let me go. they let me make what arrangements i pleased--engage a large party, buy a large quantity of stores; well knowing that at any moment of my journey they could arrest me and plunder my goods. and they knew of your doings up here, be sure of that. they intended to let me get into the neighbourhood of your fort and use me to decoy you out. they've done it. oh! it was all planned in boma. neither you nor i will ever reach boma if elbel and the officials have their way. elbel's suggestion of delaying so that we could get barney to surrender the fort was all a part of the trick; it would make no difference to our treatment, and it would be the death-warrant of those poor negroes. jack, i approve of all that you have done--approve with all my heart. i am proud of you, dear boy. what does it matter that i've lost my money, and my gold mine, and very likely my life too! i am thankful to almighty god that we came to this country, glad that he has put it into our power to do some little good. i wouldn't undo any of it; i am proud that one of my blood has been called to this good work. jack, providence has made us responsible for the poor negroes who have trusted their lives to us. do you remember i said at banonga that i wasn't a philanthropist and wasn't set on starting a crusade? i spoke lightly, my boy. i would say now that if god spared my life i would spend all my strength and all my energy in a nobler work than ever mediæval crusader undertook. i shall not live to do it; but i leave it to you. were this my last breath i would say, help the negroes of the congo, fight the corrupt government that enriches itself on their blood; go to the fountain-head and expose the hypocrisy of king leopold." "he may not know of it, uncle. so far away he cannot check and control all the actions of his agents." "not know of it! how can he help knowing of it? are not these things happening every day? and it is his business to know of it. suppose i had a factory in the united states, and it was proved that while i was coining millions my hands were dying of overwork, or of insanitary buildings, or getting wages insufficient to keep them decently clothed and fed; wouldn't there be an outcry? wouldn't the law step in, or if the law failed, public opinion? where does leopold get his dollars from? who pays for the estates he is buying, the palace he is building, the fine public works he is presenting to belgium? it is these poor black people. he is draining the life-blood out of the country he vowed before almighty god to rule justly and administer wisely for the good of the people; and the cries and groans of these negroes, men like himself, are rising to heaven, terrible witnesses of his broken vows, his callousness, his selfish apathy. oh! i grant him good intentions to begin with. twenty years ago he did not foresee all this; no man is a villain all at once! but it might have been foreseen. he was king of a few hundred miles of country; with a stroke of the pen he became sovereign of a state as big as europe; and if a man has the passion for getting, unlimited opportunities of doing so will bring him to any villainy unless he has the grace of god in him." jack was deeply moved by his uncle's earnestness. at the same time he was concerned to see the exhaustion that followed his passionate speech. he gave him a little wine, imploring him to spare himself. "don't trouble, dear boy," said mr. martindale with a smile. "the fire is burning out; what does it matter if it burns a little more quickly? but i won't distress you; you will think over my words when i am gone." in the morning the river journey was begun. it continued for several days, until with their arrival at the falls progress by water was interrupted, and a long portage had to be made. it was just at this point that they met a party of askari marching in the other direction. as soon as they came in sight the leader of jack's escort cried-"o etswa?"[1] "o!" replied the leader of the approaching band. "where are you going?" "to the camp of elobela." "what have you got in those bundles?" "cartridges for elobela's guns." "bolotsi o! he will be glad of them. he has very few left." "has he killed many people?" "no. but lokolobolo captured nearly all his cartridges." "mongo! who is lokolobolo?" "here he is! an inglesa who has built a fort and fights elobela. but we have got him at last, and he goes with an old inglesa to boma. oh! he will fight no more." "o kend'o?" "o!" during the river journey mr. martindale had grown steadily weaker. he fought hard against his illness; he had a new motive for desiring life; and jack, observing his occasional rallies, hoped still that he would pull through. but he was so weak when lifted from the canoe that he fainted, and jack feared that he would not survive the day. he rallied again, and once more jack had a gleam of hope. the horrors of that overland march will haunt jack's memory till he dies. for some time the askari had been ill-using the carriers. the greater part of the stores which mr. martindale had taken up the river had been appropriated by elbel, and the food left in the canoes was not sufficient for full meals for the whole party. it was the carriers who went short. they had to bear the burdens, to make frequent journeys to and fro up the steep river banks, while the askari looked on and had the best of the food. when the portage was begun, one of the canoes was added to their load. the other was left hidden in the bush to be fetched later. weak from lack of proper nourishment, they could go but slowly, and jack's blood boiled as he saw them quiver, heard them shriek, under the merciless chicotte. before the first day was ended, two of the men fell, worn out with hunger and fatigue. jack heard shots behind him, and saw that the wretched men had been put out of their misery. on the second day another man succumbed; what little life was left in him was beaten out with the clubbed rifles of the askari. three men ran away during the night, preferring the perils of the forest to the certain fate that awaited them at the hands of their fellow-men. only two carriers were now left, and since these were useless they were shot in cold blood. jack's heart was like a stone within him. these atrocities recalled the worst horrors of the old arab slave-raiding days; and he was unable to lift a hand to oppose them. if he had been the only white man with the party he felt that he would have risked anything in an effort to save the poor wretches; but while his uncle still lived he could do nothing that might involve his own death. the bearers being all gone, the askari had to take turns themselves in carrying the canoe, the remainder of their provisions, and mr. martindale's litter. this necessity did not improve their temper or their manners, and the litter-bearers went so carelessly over the rough ground that jack was constrained to protest. he implored, he threatened, feeling that the only chance for his uncle was to make more frequent halts; the fatigue of constant travelling would certainly kill him. but the askari roughly replied that they had orders to continue their journey without delay, and the march was resumed. after his protest jack was forced to walk at a distance from the litter, and even when the caravan halted for food he was not allowed to attend his uncle. sick at heart he plodded on, torn by his anxieties, yet still nourishing a hope that when they arrived at a station where a doctor might be found, and whence the journey would be continued by steamer, all might yet be well. but one evening, when the halt was made, he heard his uncle faintly calling. the sound of his voice struck a chill through him. in desperation, snatching a rifle from the guard next him, he threatened to shoot any one who tried to keep him from the dying man. "it's all up with me, old boy," said mr. martindale feebly, when jack knelt by his litter. "elbel is having his way. i shan't see another morning." jack gripped his hands; they were chill and clammy. a lump came into his throat; he could not speak the yearning affection that filled his heart. "bend down, jack; i'm afraid i cannot make you hear. remember--remember what i have said; it is my bequest to you--the cause of the congo natives. do what you can for them. fight! it is called the free state; fight to make it free. i cannot see the future; all is dark; i dread what may await you in boma. but buck up, dear fellow. barney--remember him. go to the british consul; tell him all. your people have generous sympathies; wake them up; wake them up! if they are roused, all this wrong will come to an end." "i will do all i can, uncle," murmured jack. "don't mourn overlong for me. i've had a good time. and this year the best of all. i wouldn't lose it, jack. tell my friends i'm not sorry; i'm glad, glad to have seen with my own eyes something that's worth doing. and i have faith in the future--in my fellow-men, in god. what is it about wicked doers? 'they encourage themselves in mischief, and commune how they may lay snares; they imagine wickedness and practise it. but god shall suddenly shoot at them with a swift arrow; yea, their own tongues shall make them fall.' how does it go on? i cannot remember. 'the righteous shall rejoice----.' jack, are you there?" "yes, uncle, i am here," replied jack, tightening his clasp. "is it the fifteenth psalm? 'he that walketh uprightly----' i cannot remember, jack.--is that boy samba better? poor little chap! no father and mother!--barnard said there was gold; why can't he find it?--no, that's not a nugget, that's--- only a dog, eh? i'm kind o' set on dogs...." and so he rambled on, muttering incoherently in his delirium; and jack did not stir, but remained cramped while the slow hours crawled on, and nocturnal insects hummed, and frogs croaked, and the leaves faintly rustled above him. then, as the dawn was creeping up the sky, mr. martindale opened his eyes. they rested on jack's pale drawn face, and the dying man smiled. "buck up!" he whispered. "remember! 'though i walk through the valley of the shadow....'" and so he died. [1] are you awake? (the morning greeting) chapter xxv a break for liberty with his own hands jack dug a grave near the brink of the river, and there he laid his uncle to rest. the askari looked on stolidly as he gathered stones from below the bank and heaped them to form a low rude cairn. then he went back with them to their camping-place. he could not touch the food they offered him, and when they told him the time was come to march he got up silently and moved away mechanically with the rest. he trudged on among his captors, a prey to utter dejection, conscious of nothing but his irreparable loss. he saw nothing, heard nothing, of what was going on around him, walking automatically in a kind of stupor. his uncle was dead!--for the moment the world had for him no other fact. by degrees, as his first dazed feeling passed away, he recalled little incidents in his past life that till then had lain dormant in his memory. he remembered the first time he had consciously seen his uncle, when he was a child of four, and he was dragged in all grubby from the garden, face and hands stained with strawberry juice, to see a big man with a red face, who laughed at him, and showed him a rough yellow lump that he wore on his watch-chain. he remembered the letter when his father died; and that other letter when his mother died; and the first visit to school, when, shown into the headmaster's study, the headmaster being absent, mr. martindale had made friends of the dog, and was found by the great man in the act of balancing a pen on the animal's nose. he remembered too the delightful holidays, climbing in switzerland, roaming in normandy, gondoliering in venice. odd things came to his recollection, and there was not one of them but recalled some trait of character, reminded him of some past happiness. then as he walked his grief took on a new complexion--a longing for vengeance on the miscreant whom he regarded as directly responsible for his uncle's death--morally as culpable as if he had with his own hands committed the murder. was this villain to remain unpunished? the thought of elbel induced a new change of feeling. what of the natives who for so many months had looked to him for guidance and leadership? what was barney doing? had samba escaped the clutches of his enemy and got back to the fort? was the fort, indeed, still there? he remembered his promise to his uncle. at the most solemn moment of his life, under the very shadow of death, he had vowed to do all in his power to help the negroes of the congo--and here he was, himself a prisoner among soldiers of this iniquitous government, on his way to an unknown fate. thus recalled to actuality, he roused himself and began to think. he had no longer his uncle to consider; that good man was beyond reach of chicanery and spite. why should he go to boma? nothing good awaited him there. he would be thrown into prison on arrival--supposing he ever arrived; he would be tried, sentenced no doubt: at boma in such cases there were none of the law's delays; he might never be heard of again. what chance was there of fulfilling his uncle's wishes there? was not his place at the fort, at ilombekabasi, with barney and imbono and mboyo, the people for and with whom he had already toiled and fought? there at the fort was tangible good to be done; he felt an overpowering impulse to return to his friends. elbel had been worsted; if the resistance could be still further prolonged surely the belgian would withdraw, though it were only to gather strength for a crushing blow; and the interval might be seized to migrate with the whole community into the forest or across the frontier. but there was the rub. between him and the fort there was a band of well-armed askari and several days' journey by river and forest. even if he escaped the former, what chance was there of success? a white man was very helpless in these african wilds--easily seen and followed, not used to fend for himself in obtaining the necessaries of life. even samba, forest-bred, had barely survived the perils of a solitary journey: how could a white man expect to fare so well? yet, so strong was jack's longing, he resolved that, be the difficulties and dangers what they might, he would seize the barest chance of escape that offered itself. anything would be better than to be carried on to boma, with the terrible uncertainty, not merely regarding his own ultimate fate at the hands of an unscrupulous officialdom and a tainted judicature, but still more as to the fate of his friends at ilombekabasi. from that moment his whole mental attitude changed. he did not forget his grief; that pitiful scene by the river's brink could never be effaced from his mind and heart; but he resolutely set his wits to work to find an avenue of escape, and the mere effort brought relief to his sorrow. no longer was he inattentive to his surroundings. without allowing his guards to suspect him, he was keenly on the alert, watching everything. it was not until the midday meal that accident befriended him. the askari came to a village which had clearly been for some time deserted--another monument, jack supposed, to king leopold's rule. he took refuge from the burning heat, which did not appear to incommode the negroes, in one of the empty and half-ruined huts. there he ate his meal of rancid _kwanga_--all that his guards would allow him. while he squatted on the floor eating, his eye was attracted by a bright light, the reflection of the sun on some polished surface in the wall of the hut. out of sheer curiosity he stepped across, and drew from the interlaced wattles the head of a small axe. its edge was very sharp, as jack found to his cost when he drew his finger across it; and although in parts rusty, it appeared to be of very fine steel, too fine to be of native workmanship. wondering who had been its owner, and how it came to be stuck, separate from its shaft, into the wall of a rough native hut, he slipped it into his pocket; it might prove a weapon of value to an otherwise unarmed man. there was nothing to cause his guards to suspect him when the march was once more resumed. in an hour or two they came to a place below the series of rapids where it was safe to launch the canoe. there the party divided. the carriers being all gone, the canoe left behind could only be fetched by some of the askari; and after some squabbling, ten of them went back, the rest promising to wait for them at a convenient spot down the river. as they paddled away, jack gathered from the talk of his escort, in a dialect which had some slight resemblance to that of the men of banonga, that they expected to arrive at this place, an old camping-ground of theirs by the river, before nightfall. they had placed him in the bow of the canoe, a light one suitable for portage, with no platform, and therefore nothing between him and the water but the thin side. keenly he watched the banks, hoping to be able at a favourable moment to turn his observations to account. but except for a few hippos half hidden in the long grass or reeds at the river-side, and here and there a crocodile basking on a rock or sandbank, its scaly back scarcely distinguishable from the soil, the river was deserted. forest lined the banks on both sides, its continuity only occasionally broken by clearings showing signs of burnt villages. the trees were beginning to throw long shadows over the water; sunset must be fast approaching; still no means of escape had suggested itself. yet escape, if effected at all, must be effected soon, for he did not know when, with his transference to a steamer, his immediate fate would be sealed. should he risk all, spring overboard, and swim for the bank? he was tempted to do so, though he could not repress a shudder as he thought of the crocodiles now beginning to wake from their afternoon nap. but he knew that as soon as he came to the surface he would be overhauled in two or three strokes of the paddles, even if the paddlers did not think his attempt to escape sufficient justification for a little albini practice. in any case his death or capture could be a matter of only a few minutes. but as time passed, jack resolved that he would chance the crocodiles if he could elude his guards. he would run any risk rather than go to boma and submit himself to the tender mercies of the congo state officials. a crocodile, after all, might prove a more merciful enemy! they came to a part of the river where the channel narrowed, and though the fall was not enough to deserve the name of a rapid, the increased velocity of the current and the presence of large rocks necessitated some caution on the part of the paddlers. jack could not help hoping that the canoe would come to grief. in the confusion there might be a bare chance of escape, though, being no more than a fair swimmer, he was not blind to the added risk he would run owing to the strength of the current and the danger of being dashed against the rocks. but the askari, experienced voyageurs, successfully navigated this stretch of the river, and as the canoe shot safely into smoother water jack's hopes again fell. then a thought occurred to him: why wait upon chance? why not make his own opportunity? he felt in his pocket; the axe-head was still there; its edge was sharp. if the canoe did not meet with disaster from without, why not from within? he was sitting on one of the thwarts amidships; the paddlers were standing on the thwarts forward and astern of him. all the askari were paddling except three, and these were squatting, two at the one end of the canoe, one at the other, with their rifles between their knees. in his position jack was almost completely screened from them. the paddlers had their rifles slung over their shoulders; the baggage was equally distributed over the whole length of the canoe. though built of the frailest material, the canoe was of considerable length. this was the one drawback to the plan which had suggested itself to jack--to drive a hole in the craft at any moment when the attention of the crew seemed sufficiently engaged to give him a chance of doing so unobserved, for the size of the canoe rendered it doubtful whether any hole he might make would be large enough to sink the vessel before it could be paddled ashore. this could only be proved by making the attempt. time passed on; no opportunity occurred. the passage here was easy, and the paddlers did their work almost automatically. it needed no attention. jack was almost giving up the idea when a chance suddenly came. he heard the leader of the askari call out: "there is the gorge just ahead: soon we shall be at our camping ground. be steady!" the canoe went faster and faster, and in a few minutes entered a gorge strewn with jagged rocks threatening destruction at every yard. the men stopped singing--they sang at their paddles from morning till night--and shouted with excitement when the vessel escaped as by a miracle being dashed to pieces on one or other of the rocks in mid-stream. choosing the moment when the shouting was loudest and the danger probably greatest, jack stooped down from his thwart and, drawing the axe-head from his pocket, thrust it with all his strength into the side of the canoe near the bottom, where there was already an inch of bilge water. working the steel to and fro, he enlarged the hole as much as he could, and then withdrew his clumsy implement; the water rushed in with a gurgling noise which must, he feared, attract the attention of the paddler just above him. but the man gave no sign; he was too intent upon his task. a few seconds later jack seized another moment of excitement to repeat his work on the other side of the canoe. his heart jumped to his mouth as he heard one of the men shout a word of warning; but he maintained his stooping position, thinking there was less chance of detection than if he suddenly moved. in consequence of the water rising in the bottom the second hole was made somewhat higher than the first; and as jack watched the level of the water gradually creeping up, he felt that the gaps were not large enough to prevent the paddlers from beaching the canoe if they ran into smooth water during the next few minutes. the bark seemed to close up as soon as the axe-head was withdrawn, leaving only as a narrow slit what had been a gaping rent. a glance ahead showed smooth water within a few yards. there might be just time to make two more rapid cuts. he plunged his hand into the water, now some inches deep, and drove the steel with all his force twice into the bottom beneath his feet. as soon as the canoe left the race, the heavy going due to the water that had been shipped would at once be detected, even if none of the paddlers, indeed, should happen to glance down and see the water washing the packages. true, they might suppose that it had come over the sides of the canoe during their recent rough passage; but the mistake must soon be discovered. jack saw that there was little chance of the canoe sinking in midstream. what could he do? was this, apparently his only opportunity, to be lost? he had only a few seconds to decide. he would wait until the leaks were discovered, and the canoe was headed towards the shore. then if he dived into the river his guards would be torn between two impulses--the one to pursue him, the other to beach the canoe before she sank with them and their stores. to them the situation would be complex; they would waste time in their confusion; and with a sinking canoe beneath them they would scarcely be able to use their rifles. things happened almost exactly as jack expected. when the canoe left the troubled reaches one of the askari suddenly caught sight of the water slowly rising, and washing from side to side with every stroke of the paddles. "a leak!" he shouted, inferring that a hole had been knocked in the bottom by a rock. the leader at once cried to the men to run for the right bank. jack's time came as the canoe was swinging round. rising suddenly from his seat, with a vigorous shove he sent the paddler behind him rolling back upon the next man; he in his turn fell upon the next; until four of the paddlers in the after part of the canoe were floundering in the water, and the frail craft rocked almost gunwale under. the other paddlers were so much occupied in adjusting themselves to the difficulty and preventing the canoe from being swamped that they were hardly aware of what their prisoner was doing until it was too late to prevent him. while the vessel was tilted over, jack placed one foot on the side farthest from the bank towards which they were paddling, and dived into the river. the leader of the askari immediately shouted to the men in the water to pursue him, pointing out the direction in which he had disappeared beneath the surface. he was making for the left bank. glancing back when he came up, jack saw that two men were swimming after him, and realized that he was no match for them. he was only a fair swimmer; his pursuers, drawn from one of the riverine villages of the lower congo, were as dexterous in the water as they were in the canoe. when jack became aware that he was being rapidly overhauled, he gripped more tightly the axe-head which he had never let go, resolving to fight to the last rather than suffer recapture. the negroes had divested themselves of their rifles, or had lost these when thrown so suddenly into the river; and even such a clumsy weapon as an axe-head might prove very formidable to unarmed men. in the excitement, jack had forgotten all about the constant peril of the congo--the crocodiles. straining every nerve, he was wondering whether he should stop swimming before he ran the risk of being completely exhausted, since there seemed little chance of his gaining the opposite bank before his pursuers, when he was startled by a despairing scream behind. the horrible meaning of it flashed upon him; he glanced back; only one swimmer was to be seen, and he was no longer coming towards him; he had turned and with frantic haste was making for the nearest point of the bank. the second man had disappeared; the crocodile had proved a better swimmer than any. shuddering in every limb, jack for a moment felt his strength leaving him. as in a nightmare he seemed to see the horrid jaws of crocodiles all round him waiting to tear him limb from limb. but he recovered in a moment; and, still gripping the axe-head, he struck out desperately for the far bank, which was now, indeed, scarcely more distant than the other. he touched the sandy bottom, struggled panting up the bank, and, completely exhausted by the physical and mental strain of this day's events, crawled rather than walked to a spot where he felt himself secure at least from the dreaded reptile. for several minutes he lay with his head upon his arms, so much spent as to be almost careless of what might become of him. but, rousing himself at length, he rose and scanned the river for signs of his late escort. what was his alarm to see them hastening towards him from the opposite bank; three minutes' hard paddling would bring them within reach of him. the sight of them woke jack fully to his danger; he turned his back on the river and plunged into the thick bushes that came almost to the water's edge, and extended into, the forest behind. with what marvellous quickness, he thought, had the askari brought their waterlogged vessel to the bank, emptied her of water, and temporarily stopped the leaks! no doubt they had been spurred to their utmost effort by the knowledge of what awaited them if they returned to their commander with the report that the prisoner had escaped them by any means but death. it was now late in the afternoon. within three or four minutes the pursuers would have beached the canoe and dashed in pursuit. jack knew that he must make the most of his few minutes' start. if he could evade them for an hour he would be concealed by the darkness. already, indeed, it was dim and dusky in the forest shades he had now entered. there was no path; he could but plunge on where the undergrowth seemed thinnest, his general direction being as nearly as he could judge at an obtuse angle with the stream. the askari would expect him either to follow the river, or to strike directly inland; at least he hoped that the diagonal between these two courses would not occur to them. while daylight lasted his trail would betray him, of course; but even if the men were trained forest trackers the light would in a few minutes be too bad for them to pick up his trail. in a few minutes he heard muffled shouts behind him. the pursuers had landed. then all was silent, save for the forest sounds now familiar to him. he moved as cautiously as the necessity for haste permitted, aware that the breaking of a twig, a stumble, any unusual sound, might bring his quick-eared enemy upon his track. but with all his care he could not avoid accidents. here a branch of cactus would rip a great rent in his thin linen coat, with a sound that set the teeth on edge. there a low-growing creeper would trip him up, so that he fell with a crash headlong, and rose with his face bleeding from a dozen deep scratches. but he kept the axe-head always in his grasp; that was his only defence. the fall of night found him still pressing resolutely forward; but when he could no longer see to thread his way in the close tangle of vegetation he halted, and became aware that he was dripping wet, and that he had to spend the night, soaked as he was, without shelter in the primeval forest. it would not have been a pleasant prospect even to a native inured to forest travel; the negroes indeed are careful not to be benighted far from their villages. in other circumstances, as black darkness wrapt him round, jack might have felt not a few tremors; from samba he had learnt something of the perils of night in densely-wooded places. but he had lately passed through experiences so trying that the visionary terrors of these gloomy depths had no power to trouble him. he sought, however, a suitable tree and climbed out of the reach of prowling beasts, hoping that he would also escape the attentions of leopards and pythons, which made no account of the lower branches. he had never spent a more uncomfortable night. insects stung him; caterpillars crawled over him; woodlice worried him. dozing in spite of these annoyances, he would wake with a start and the nightmare feeling that he was falling, falling helplessly through space. his wet clothes stuck clammily to his skin; he shivered as with ague, his teeth chattered, his head was racked with pain. stiff and sore from his narrow perch and his cramped position he clung on through the night; and when, after the long darkness, the pale dawn at last stole through the foliage, and he dropped to the ground, he moved like an old man, with aching limbs, unrefreshed, feeling the want of food, yet utterly without appetite. but he must go on. his enemies had not discovered him; no beast had attacked him; these were positive gains. he could make no plans; all that he could do was to follow a course calculated by the sun to take him in the direction of the river, going up stream. he walked stiffly, but steadily, during the morning, picking here and there handfuls of phrynia berries--the only berries of the forest which he knew to be edible. about midday he resolved to risk a more direct course to the river, in the hope that his pursuers, finding no trace of him, had given up the hunt. but it was easier to decide than to carry out. for all he knew he might have been wandering in a circle, and the windings of the river might make every step he took one in the wrong direction. after some hesitation he turned somewhat to the left and trudged on, so intent upon his immediate surroundings that his range of vision was restricted to a few yards. he noticed that the ground, as he walked, was becoming a little less thickly covered with undergrowth; but it was with a shock of alarm that, at a sudden lifting of the eyes, he saw, standing in front of him, a young straight dusky figure armed with a long rifle. springing instinctively behind the nearest tree, he grasped the axe-head ready to do battle. but what was this? a voice spoke to him, a voice that he knew, giving him pleasant salutation, calling him by name. "lokolobolo losako[1]!" he came from behind the tree and went forward, stretching forth his hands. "samba!" he cried joyously. [1] salutation addressed to a superior. chapter xxvi turning the tables samba at once led the way in a different direction from that lately followed by jack, saying that he would explain his presence as they went along. jack had hardly reached the tent to which he had been decoyed by elbel's messenger before samba knew that his uneasy feeling was justified; his master had fallen into a trap. stealing up close behind lofembi he had plunged his knife into the man's back, and dashed into the forest. he had no difficulty in escaping from the spot; but the report of the rifle fired after him had reached elbel's camp below the fort, and samba found that he had to make a very wide detour to avoid the enemy's scouts. but he managed at last to get into the fort, and implored barney to send out a party to rescue his captain. barney was much distressed by the news, but resolutely refused to throw away lives and risk the safety of the fort in a forlorn hope of that kind. all that he would do was to allow samba, with three other men, makoko, lianza, and lingombela, to follow up mr. martindale and jack, and rescue them if any chance occurred; if not, to see what became of them. but the four had great difficulty in getting out of the fort undetected; the enemy's vigilance appeared to be doubled, and a full day elapsed before they were able to set off in the track of the prisoners. failing to overtake the party in the forest before they embarked on the canoes, they had had to cover on foot the long distance for which the askari were able to use the river, though they shortened the journey to some extent by cutting straight across country when the river wound. at last, when samba had all but given up hope, they saw a party of ten askari coming towards them from down the river. samba did not suspect at first that these men were connected with those he sought. but keeping well out of sight he tracked them to a spot where a canoe was concealed, and then he guessed at once that the men had been sent back to fetch a canoe left behind for want of sufficient carriers. it would be easy to keep ahead of this party, burdened as they were with the vessel; so samba and his three companions pushed on, and soon came upon tracks of mr. martindale and jack. they had noticed the newly-made grave with its stone cairn: it had puzzled them, and they did not know it was a grave until samba pointed out that the litter had ceased to be used: there were no longer the marks of four men walking always at the same distance apart; they then concluded that the elder inglesa had died. they came by and by to the place where the party had re-embarked. samba's only hope of overtaking them now was that they would certainly wait at some part of their journey until they were caught up by the other canoe; and it seemed to him that his expectation was borne out when, scouting ahead of the three, he sighted in the dusk a long canoe lying under the opposite bank in charge of three askari. he ran back to his companions and told them to hide in the bush; then he returned to the spot, and from a safe concealment prepared to wait and watch. night fell: the river was too broad for him to see across it; but presently he heard the sound of men approaching the canoe, and soon afterwards voices. then all was silent. he kept up his watch for some time, half expecting to hear the sound of paddles; but concluding from the continued silence that the men would not move till the morning, he went to sleep in a tree. waking before dawn, he resumed his watch. in the early morning he saw eleven men land and make off in two parties into the forest, leaving three men on guard. instantly he jumped to the conclusion that lokolobolo had escaped; and a daring scheme suggested itself to him. returning to his friends, he told them what he had seen, and what he proposed. the four immediately set about building a light raft of bamboos and cane "tie," and when it was finished they carried it some distance along the bank launched it out of sight of the men in charge of the canoe' and punted themselves across to the other side. an hour later only one man remained in the enemy's canoe, and he was a prisoner. jack forbore to inquire what had become of the others; samba merely said that their ammunition had been spoilt by the water. samba and his companions were congo natives; free from the restraining influence of the white man, it would be scarcely surprising if they took the opportunity of paying off some of the wrongs they had suffered at the hands of the askari. from the prisoner samba learnt the whole history of the party since the time it left elbel in the forest. tying the man up, samba and his companions at once set to work to find the trail of the fugitive, and of the men who had gone in pursuit. in the morning light it was easy to a practised scout like samba to find what he sought. he soon discovered that the two parties of askari had failed to track their quarry, and were going haphazard through the forest. he himself then started to follow jack up, and his three companions went forth to the canoe to await the return of the enemy. it was unlikely that the two bands would appear at the same time. if they returned separately, the three scouts in ambush would only have to deal with six men or five men, as the case might be. they were still waiting. what would they do, asked jack, when the enemy came back? "fire upon them from behind the trees," replied samba. "three men will certainly be killed; are not the scouts makoko, lianza, and lingombela, three of the best marksmen in ilombekabasi? if the two or the three men left do not run away, they will fight them. if they run away, they will follow them up and fire at them from behind trees." even as samba spoke there came through the trees a sound as of distant firing. samba quickened his steps; for an hour or more his master and he plunged through the forest, the boy halting every now and then to listen intently. at length whispering "nkakayoko!"[1] he laid his hand on jack's sleeve and gave a low call like the rough scratching sound of a forest beetle. it was answered from the right hand. striking off sharply in that direction he led the way through a thin copse, and in a few moments the two stood at the brink of the river beside the canoe. samba looked keenly around, whispered "mpiko!"[2] and pointed to a low bushy tree close at hand. for a second or two jack could see nothing but green: but then through the dense foliage he caught the glint of a rifle barrel, and behind it--yes, a black face. the man came out with a low chuckle of amusement. it was makoko. "bolotsi o!" he said. his forest craft had been too much for lokolobolo. suddenly samba held up his hand in warning. they listened; it must have been the flight of a forest bird. "what was the firing?" asked samba in a low voice. "the killing of five men," replied makoko. jack caught the last words, "bant'atanu!" and started. "where are they?" he asked. "gone to feed the crocodiles. three first, then two." again samba raised his hand. all listened intently. jack heard nothing; but samba whispered, "they come!" and plucked him by the sleeve. all three hid among the trees. two men came out from the other side--they were lianza and lingombela. "they are coming--six men," said lianza in answer to samba's question. "quickly! they heard the shots." "we must shoot again from behind the trees," said samba. but jack could not bear the idea of shooting down the unsuspecting wretches in cold blood. "perhaps we can make them surrender," he whispered. "lako! lako!" said the negroes indignantly. "yes; we will try." makoko and the other two men grumbled, but samba silenced them. "it is lokolobolo's order," he said. he offered jack his mauser, but jack refused it with a smile, taking one of the albinis which had been removed from the canoe. with the four he concealed himself behind the bushes. he had already noticed that all traces of the recent incidents had been carefully obliterated. a few minutes later six askari came from the thick wall of bush. they started and looked at one another when they saw the canoe unguarded. then they called their comrades. receiving no answer, they began to discuss the strange disappearance of the three men who had been left in charge. with a sign to samba to follow him, jack came out from behind his bush. the men ceased their chatter; their jaws dropped, they stared at their late captive in blank amazement. he spoke to them quietly, samba translating. "i was hiding: i come to save you from being killed. your eight comrades are already dead. if one of you lifts his hand, he is a dead man. behind the bushes my men wait ready to shoot you. listen! they will answer when i call. you will see how hopeless it is to resist. makoko!" "em'one!" "lingombela!" "em'one!" "lianza!" "em'one!" "lay down your rifles," continued jack, "and beg for mercy." there was but a moment's hesitation, then one of the men sullenly obeyed, and the rest, one after another, followed his example. at jack's call the three scouts came from their hiding-place. two of them covered the askari with their rifles, while the third collected the surrendered albinis and placed them in the canoe. how jack's position had altered! an hour or two ago he was a fugitive, practically unarmed, with nearly a score of askari hunting him down. now he was in command of four scouts fully armed, and in possession of a canoe and half a dozen prisoners, who had proved themselves on the journey down to be expert paddlers. but, as samba reminded him, he had still to deal with the ten askari who had been sent back to fetch the second canoe. they must be on their way down stream: perhaps they were near at hand. something must be done with them. to let them pass, or to leave them behind, would be equally unwise; they would almost certainly follow up jack and his party, perhaps find a means of sending word to elbel in time to cut them off from the fort. the safety of himself and his men demanded that this second band should be disposed of. to deal with them as he had dealt with the six would not be easy. they would come by water, not by land. he did not wish to kill them. what other course was open to him? he remembered that the askari had spoken of an old camping-place a little below the spot on which they stood. this had doubtless been fixed as the rendezvous of the whole party. the prisoners would know its exact locality. with a little luck, he thought, all the ten might be captured unharmed. he got samba to question the sullen men. yes, they knew the camping-ground. "then they must paddle us to it," said jack. making sure that the holes he had cut in the canoe had been sufficiently caulked to allow of a short passage without danger, jack embarked with all the men, and in a quarter of an hour reached the camping-ground. it was about a hundred yards back from the opposite bank, pretty well hidden from the river. a few rough grass shelters, somewhat tumbledown, and traces of former encampments, showed that it was a frequent place of call for parties going up or down. when all had landed, jack sent makoko and lianza along the bank up the river to look for the oncoming of the askari, who, though they must necessarily have moved slowly while carrying the canoe, would no doubt make rapid progress when once more afloat. the six askari looked a little hopeful when they saw the two scouts leave; but samba damped their spirits at once when he told them that at the slightest sign of revolt they would be shot without mercy. to make things sure, and prevent the scheme he had in mind from being foiled, jack ordered the men to be bound hand and foot, which was very quickly done by samba and lingombela with the stripped tendrils of climbing plants. it was dark before the scouts returned. they reported that the askari had camped for the night some distance up stream, and would certainly arrive early next morning. jack arranged that when the canoe should come in sight, only himself and two of his prisoners would be visible in the centre of the camp. the askari would suppose that the rest of the party were out foraging--taking, as the custom is with the troops of the free state and the concessions, what they pleased from the black subjects of king leopold, and paying nothing, except perhaps blows, in return. the newcomers, not expecting any change in the relations of their comrade with the white prisoner, would march unconcernedly into camp. jack was pretty confident that if things came to this point, he would succeed in making the men surrender without fighting. in the early morning the askaris' paddling song was heard as they came down the river. the singing ceased; there was a shout; and jack ordered the captured askari by his side to call an answering greeting. then the party came in sight, eight men in a straggling line approaching up the path. the remaining two had evidently been left behind to tie up the canoe. the first man addressed a chaffing remark to the askari with jack, and then asked where the rest of the party were. the men pointed vaguely to the forest; their comrades were, in fact, there, gagged and securely bound to the trees. half a dozen rifles were stacked in the middle of the camping ground, the newcomers placed theirs close by, and then began to chatter about trifles in the african's way. meanwhile jack was keeping a keen eye on the men. the two captured askari were obviously ill at ease. there were the rifles within a few yards of them, yet they dared not move towards them, for they knew that in the shelter of the trees behind stood samba with the three scouts ready to shoot them down. they replied briefly to their comrades' questions; and then, in obedience to instructions given by jack previously, suggested that the newcomers should go to a cane-brake a few yards down stream, and bring back a supply of canes for building shelters like those already erected; there were not sufficient for the whole party. the men moved off. no sooner had they disappeared than samba and the three men came from behind the trees, removed all the rifles into the huts, and all except samba stationed themselves in hiding on the side of the encampment opposite to that through which the askari had just gone. samba remained with jack. in a quarter of an hour the men returned. to their amazement the white prisoner went forward to meet them. through samba he spoke to them. "it will not be necessary for you to build the huts." "why? what does the white man mean by talking to us? and who are you?" samba did not reply to their questions: he waited for the next words from jack. "there are enough empty huts here!" "how can that be? there are ten of us, and fifteen before. the huts will not hold half of us; and who are you?" "the fifteen are dead, or taken prisoners." the men gaped, unable to appreciate the full import of the news. they dropped their loads of cane and looked at the boy in astonishment. "what do you mean? what has happened? who are you?" "tell them, samba." "i am samba, the servant of lokolobolo. i came down the river with other servants of lokolobolo. we fell upon your comrades and scattered them like the leaves of the forest. we have the rifles--your rifles." the men gave a startled glance to where the stacks of arms had been. jack thought they paled beneath their dusky skin. "see!" continued samba, "if lokolobolo lifts his hand you will all be shot. his men are there, behind the trees. you have no rifles. of what good are knives against guns? you will be even as the men who are short with their rubber. you will be shot down before you can strike a blow. no; do not move," he said quickly, as the men appeared inclined to make a dash for the forest. "you cannot run so fast as the bullets. you know that, you men who shoot boys and women as they flee from you. throw down your knives at lokolobolo's feet, if you wish to live!" the man who had acted as spokesman for his comrades obeyed without a word. the rest were but little behind him. at a sign from jack, makoko and the others came from their place of hiding, and tied the feet of the prisoners, in such a way that while they could walk with short steps, they were unable to run. in a few moments the two men left at the canoe were similarly disposed of. and now jack was in command of four armed scouts and sixteen unarmed prisoners. he at once decided to make use of the askari as paddlers. one canoe would be sufficient; he would sink the vessel in which he had dug the holes. with sixteen men expert in the use of the paddle, he would make a rapid journey up stream. he was about to give the order to start when it suddenly occurred to him that it would be well to assure himself first that the coast was clear. so far he had seen no natives either on river or on land since he left elbel, save those of his own party and the band coming up with ammunition. the riverine villages had all been deserted, and the tributary down which he had travelled was at all times little frequented. but it seemed very unlikely that many more days should pass without his seeing a stranger, and when he began to think on these lines, he wondered whether perhaps elbel himself might not have occasion for sending messengers down stream, and whether the party they had met conveying stores to elbel's force might not be returning. having escaped by such wonderful good fortune, it would be sheer folly to throw away his chances of getting back to ilombekabasi by any want of caution. accordingly he sent makoko up the river and samba down the river to do a little preliminary scouting. about midday samba came running back in a state of great excitement. he had run so fast that his legs were trembling, and sweat poured from his body. not an hour's paddling distant, he had seen a smoke-boat and a large number of canoes coming up the river. he had never seen so many boats before, and they were crowded with men. and on the smoke-boat there were white men. "at last!" ejaculated jack. this, he supposed, was the captain van vorst, of whom elbel had spoken, coming up with regular troops of the state. whoever was in command, the flotilla could portend no good to jack or ilombekabasi, and he saw at once that he must give up the idea of using the askaris' canoe. he could certainly travel faster than the expedition, which must go at the pace of its slowest cargo boats; but scouting or foraging parties of the enemy might push on ahead and sight him on one of the long stretches of the river; and his men could be descried from a long distance as they made the portage. pursuit and capture would then be almost certain. his mind was instantly made up. his journey to the fort must be a land march, and it must be begun in all haste. he quickly gave his orders. the canoes were unloaded, and the stores and ammunition given to the askari to carry. the vessels were then scuttled and sunk, and the whole party plunged into the forest, after a time taking a course almost the same as that which samba had followed on his solitary journey. but before they had gone far, jack, not disposed to leave the neighbourhood without getting more exact particulars of the advancing host, went back with samba, leaving the rest of the party to continue their march. samba rapidly wormed his way through the forest back to the river bank. they reached a position, whence, unseen themselves, they could command a long reach of the river. there they waited. soon they heard the regular beat of the steamer's paddles; then the songs of the canoe-boys. by and by a steam launch came into view round a bend of the river. it was crowded. far away as it was as yet, jack could easily distinguish the white-clad figures of three europeans on deck, amid a crowd of negroes in the tunic, pantaloons, and fez of the state troops. clearly it was as he had feared. the concession had followed the usual course, when the rapacity of its officials had provoked a revolt too formidable to be coped with by its own forces, and had called in the aid of the regular army. as canoe after canoe appeared in the wake of the steamer, jack could not help a feeling of dismay at the size of the force arrayed against him. his spirits sank lower and lower as he watched. by the time the steamer came abreast of his hiding-place, the flotilla filled the whole of the stretch of river open to his view. in the still air, amid the songs and chatter of the natives, he could hear the laughter of the europeans as they passed. he knew that only a portion of the men in this armada were fighting men; the rest were paddlers and carriers, not part of the combatant force. but a rough attempt to count the men bearing rifles gave him at least three hundred, and he started as he saw in one canoe what was clearly the shield of a machine gun. captain van vorst, if it was he, undoubtedly meant business. before the last canoe had passed their hiding-place jack and samba started to overtake their party. the former was deep in thought. "we must reach the fort before them," he said. "they go very slow," was samba's reply. "yes, and the carrying of all their stores and canoes up the rapids will take many days. but we must hurry as fast as we can." "much chicotte for the paddlers," said samba, with a grin. jack did not reply. he could not adopt the barbarous methods of the enemy; but he had not the heart to dash samba's very natural hopes of paying back to the askari something of what they had dealt to the carriers on the way down. short of thrashing them he would urge them to their utmost speed. what difficulties he might meet with in regaining the fort he did not stop to consider. the thought of barney holding his own there--had he been able to hold his own?--and of the large reinforcements coming to support elbel, was a spur to activity. ilombekabasi and its people were in danger; and the post of danger demanded the presence of lokolobolo. [1] immediately. [2] there. chapter xxvii the return of lokolobolo "lokolobolo! lokolobolo! lokolobol'olotsi! lokolobolo is here! lokolobolo has come back to us! bolotsi o! why do we laugh? why do we sing? samba has found lokolobolo! samba has brought him back to us!" ilombekabasi was delirious with joy. men and women were shouting, laughing, singing; the children were dancing and blowing strident notes upon their little trumpets; imbono's drummer was banging with all his might, filling the air with shattering thunder. jack quivered with feeling; his lips trembled as he sat once more in his hut, listening to the jubilant cries his arrival had evoked. it was something, it was much, that he had been able so to win the devoted affection of these poor negroes of the congo. outside, the two chiefs imbono and mboyo were talking of the joyful event. "yes! wonderful! lokolobolo is here! and with him two strange white chiefs. wonderful! did you ever see such a big man? i am big," said imbono, "but i am not so big as makole the chief of limpoko, and one of the strange white men is bigger than he." "it needed two ropes to draw him up from the gully," said mboyo. "i am strong, but though i had four men to help me it was hard work. he must be a very great chief." "and the other must be a great chief too. did not samba say that lokolobolo gave him his last bottle of devil water?" "but the big man is hurt. it is the leg. it is not so bad as ikola's; but ikola was shot. they have put him in barnio's hut; the other chief is with lokolobolo. it is good that the white chiefs have come. now lokolobolo will sweep elobela down the hillside, even as a straw in the storm." "but what of the smoke-boat that samba says is coming with the white men in white, and the black men in cloth the colour of straw, and things on their heads the colour of fire? will lokolobolo be able to beat them too?" "lokolobolo is able to beat all bula matadi; and he has the other white men to help. never fear! lokolobolo will beat them all. we shall see. there he is, coming out of his hut with the white chief. lokolobolo wanda!"[1] "you must be a proud man to-day, mr. challoner," said the stranger. "i am too anxious to be proud," said jack with a smile. "i haven't the heart to stop them shouting and making a noise, but it's a pity to disturb our enemy in the camp down yonder. i shall have to go and make a speech to them, i suppose; it is more in your line than mine, mr. arlington. luckily i'm not sufficiently fluent in their language to be long-winded." they went together into the midst of the throng. when within three marches of ilombekabasi jack's party had stumbled upon a wretched encampment in the forest which proved to contain two white men and three negroes. samba came upon them first, and, startled to find white men at this spot, he was cocking his rifle, supposing them to be state officers, when one of them called to him in a congo dialect not to shoot; he was an inglesa. when jack came up he found that the taller of the two men, the one who had spoken, a huge fellow with a great black beard, was a missionary named dathan, the other being the honourable george arlington, with whose name jack was familiar. mr. arlington was a man of mark. after a brilliant career at cambridge he had entered parliament, and became an under-secretary of state at a younger age than almost any one before him. when his party was out of office he took the opportunity of travelling in many quarters of the globe, to study at first hand the great problems which more and more demand the attention of british statesmen. now, in his fortieth year, he was recognized as an authority on the subjects which he had so specially made his own. he had come out to make a personal study of the congo question, and in order to secure freedom of observation had decided to enter congo territory, not from boma, whence he would be shadowed throughout by officials, but from british territory through uganda. in unyoro he had met his old college chum frank dathan, now a missionary engaged on a tour of inspection of his society's work in central africa. dathan, having completed his task in uganda, was to make his way into the congo state and visit several mission stations there. the two friends thereupon arranged to travel together. mr. arlington being anxious to see a little of what was an almost unexplored part of africa, they chose as their route the northern fringe of the great forest. but they got into difficulties when they entered country which, though not yet "administered," or "exploited," was nominally free state territory. at the sight of white men the natives they met with one accord took to the woods. the result was that the travellers were once or twice nearly starved; many of their carriers deserted with their loads; and they both suffered a good deal from exposure and privation. to crown their misfortunes, dathan fell with a loose rock one day when he was climbing down a steep bank to get water, and broke his leg. arlington tried without success to set the bone, and was hurrying on in the hope of finding a free state outpost and a doctor when jack came upon them. jack at once frankly explained his position. he did not give details of his work at ilombekabasi, but he saw no reason for concealing the circumstances which had driven him into antagonism with the officials of the concession. he related what had happened to his uncle, and how he had escaped from the net woven about him by elbel; he told the strangers also what he had actually seen of the congo government's method of dealing with the natives. then he asked them whether they would like to place themselves under the care of elbel, who could, if he were disposed, send them under escort to stanleyville, where the missionary might receive competent treatment. both were disinclined to do this; they would prefer to keep themselves free from the congo state or its trusts. the alternative seemed to be to accompany jack. this might certainly give rise to complications; mr. dathan especially was loth to appear to identify himself with an armed revolt against the state. missionaries, as he told jack, were already in bad odour with the authorities; they had told too much of what was going on. in many parts they had come to be looked upon as the natives' only defenders, and had done a little, a very little, towards mitigating the worst features of their lot. but he was still more loth even to seem to countenance elbel's proceedings by seeking his camp; and mr. arlington thought that his presence in ilombekabasi, when it became known to elbel, might have a salutary effect on him. ultimately, then, they decided to run the blockade with jack into the fort. the augmented party had had no difficulty in reaching their destination. the same general course was followed as had been arranged for the reception of mr. martindale's party. they halted in a copse on an eminence about six miles from the fort and above it. to reach this spot they had to make a longer circuit than either mr. martindale or elbel in his first attempt to surprise ilola. but before going farther it was necessary to discover how the land lay. samba was obviously the best of the party for this scouting work, but he could hardly be spared if the fort happened to be too closely invested for the entrance of the whole party to be made. jack therefore chose makoko, a sturdy fellow and an excellent scout, scribbled a brief note to barney, hid it in the negro's thick woolly hair, and sent him on alone. if he came safely to ilombekabasi and it seemed to barney possible to run the blockade, a flag was to be hoisted on one of the blockhouses. the signal would be acted on as soon as possible in the darkness. makoko left at nightfall. before dawn samba went on some two miles ahead to a place whence he could see the fort. he returned with the welcome news that a piece of red cloth was flying on the northern blockhouse. jack waited impatiently throughout the day; as soon as it was dark samba led the party forward. they moved slowly, partly to allow time for careful scouting, partly because mr. dathan had to be carried, and proved a heavy burden even for six strong askari. no difficulties were met with; elbel had ceased to patrol the surroundings of the fort at night, and in the early hours of the morning in pitch darkness the party marched quietly in at the gate on the north side of the fort. jack put his own hut at mr. arlington's disposal. mr. dathan was carried to barney's; and before hearing what had happened during his absence jack insisted on the missionary's having his injuries attended to. barney managed to set the broken limb, though not without causing a good deal of pain for which he whimsically apologized. then jack listened eagerly to his account of what had happened. elbel had made two serious attacks. the first was an attempt to carry the fort by assault, from the place whence he had sent his fire barrels rolling. but after the capture of elbel's rifles and ammunition a considerable number of jack's men who had hitherto been spearmen had been trained in the use of the albini; so that barney had a force of nearly ninety riflemen with which to meet the attack, half of them at least being good shots. one charge was enough for the enemy; the fire from the wall and blockhouses mowed down the advancing negroes by the score; they never reached the defences, but turned and fled to cover in the gully and behind the rocks above. [illustration: ilombekabasi and surrounding country, showing the diverted stream and elbel's third camp] then elbel demolished the dam he had built on the slope, and allowed the river to flow again in the channel it had cut for itself down the long incline to the eastward. "what would he be doing that for, sorr? seems to me he has wasted a terrible deal uv good time in putting up and pulling down. two men i sent out as scouts niver came back, and i wondered to meself whether they'd been bagged, sorr, and had let out something that made elbel want to play more tricks wid nature. often did i see elbel himself dodging round the fort wid his spyglass in his hand, and 'tis the truth's truth i let some uv the men have a little rifle practice at him. sure he must have a cat's nine lives, sorr, for ten uv the niggers said they were sartin sure they'd hit him." "trying to solve our water puzzle, barney! go on." there was an interval of some days; then, at daybreak one morning, while a strong demonstration, apparently the preliminary of an attack, was observed on the north and east, a body of men crept up the gully and made a sudden rush with ladders for the hole in the wall by which the scouts had been accustomed to go in and out. it was clear that elbel's best men were engaged in this job, for barney heard loud cries for help from the small body he had thought sufficient to leave on the western face of the fort. rushing to the place with a handful of men, he was just in time to prevent the enemy from effecting an entrance. there was a brisk fight for two or three minutes; then the ladders placed against the wall were hurled into the gully, and with them the forlorn hope of the storming party. "that was three days ago, sorr. and two or three uv our men declared they saw mbota among the enemy, pointing out the very spot where the hole is--whin it is a hole. you remember mbota, sorr--the man who brought in his wife on his back, her wid the hands cut off. 'twas he i sent out scouting. sure the chicotte had been at work wid him; for niver a wan uv our men, i would swear before the lord chancellor uv ireland, would turn traitor widout they were in mortal terror for their lives, or even worse." "and you have not been attacked since?" "no, sorr. but i've had me throubles all the same. samba ought to be made, beggin' your pardon, sorr, high constable uv this fort." "indeed!" "yes, sorr, 'cos it seems 'tis only he that can keep the peace. would you believe it, sorr, the very next day after you were gone, imbono's men and mboyo's men began to quarrel; 'twas orange and green, sorr, and a fine shindy. whin samba was here, he'd make 'em laugh, and 'twas all calm as the liffey; but widout samba--bedad! sorr, i didn't know what in the world to do wid 'em. sure i wished elbel would fight all the time, so that there'd be no time left for the spalpeens here to fight wan another. but at last, sorr, a happy thought struck me; quite an intimation, as one might say. i remimbered the day when the master--rest his soul!--and you made yourselves blood-brothers uv imbono. that was a mighty fine piece uv work, thinks i. so wan morning i had a big palaver--likambo the niggers call it, your honour." (barney's air as he gave this information to mr. arlington was irresistibly laughable.) "i made a spache, and lepoko turned it into their talk as well as he could, poor fellow; and sure they cheered it so powerful hard that i thought 'twas a mimber uv parlimint i ought to be. well, sorr, the end was i made imbono and mboyo blood-brothers, and niver a word uv difference have they had since." "a plan that might be tried with leaders of parties at home," said mr. arlington with a smile. "there's wan other thing that throubles me," added barney. "our food is getting low, sorr. we had such a powerful lot that wan would have thought 'twould last for iver. but in a fortnight we shall be on very short commons; we've been on half rations this week or more." "that's bad news indeed. but we shall know our fate in a fortnight. the state troops are coming at last, barney." barney pulled a long face when jack told him about the flotilla he had seen coming up the river. but the next moment he smiled broadly. "sure 'twill be our salvation, sorr. there'll be a power uv food on those canoes, and 'twill come in the nick uv time to save us from famine." "but we've got to capture it first!" "and won't it be aisy, sorr? it won't drop into our mouths, to be sure, but there's niver a doubt we'll get it by this or that." jack smiled at barney's confidence, which he could hardly share. he estimated that he had about a week's grace before the state troops could arrive, unless they made a forced march ahead of their stores, which was not very likely. he could not look forward without misgiving. elbel's troops, strongly reinforced and commanded by an experienced military officer, would prove a very different enemy. he doubted whether it would be wise to wait the issue of a fight. apart from the risk of being utterly crushed, there was a strong political reason against it, as mr. arlington did not fail to point out. hitherto jack had been dealing with an officer of the société cosmopolite, and he could argue reasonably that he was only opposing unwarranted interference. but if he resisted an armed force of the state, it became at once open rebellion. "you render yourself liable to the punishment of a rebel, mr. challoner," said mr. arlington, "and your british nationality will not help you. you might be shot or hanged. what i suggest to you is this. when the state forces appear, let me open negotiations with them. they will probably know my name; i have a certain influence in high quarters; i could probably make terms for you." "but the people, mr. arlington! you could not make terms for them. what would happen to them? they would fall into the power of their oppressors, and the old tale would be continued--illegal demands and exactions, floggings, maimings, murders. it was a solemn charge from my uncle to stand by the defenceless negroes; it is no less the dictate of humanity: we, they and i, are in the same boat, sir, and we must sink or swim together." as it was of supreme importance to jack to know at what rate the hostile column was moving, he sent out that night samba, makoko, and lingombela with orders to report the progress of the expedition from day to day. by taking the road through the forest they should get into touch with the enemy by the time they reached the place where mr. martindale had left his canoes. if the scouts should find themselves unable to return to the fort they were to light a large fire on the spot whence samba had seen barney's flag flying, as a signal that the expedition had passed the place in question. if a small column should be coming on in advance they were to light two fires a little apart from one another. samba was even more light-hearted than usual when he left the fort with his comrades. he seemed to feel that this was a mission of special importance, the prelude to a final victory for lokolobolo; for the possibility of defeat for lokolobolo never suggested itself to any man in ilombekabasi. mboyo and lukela were at the wall to bid their son goodbye. he laughed as he slipped down into the darkness. "ekeke e'afeka!"[2] he whispered gleefully, and hastened to overtake makoko and lingombela, who were already some distance up the gully. shortly after dawn next day the sentries reported a sound as of a large body of men moving up the hill. jack instantly called the garrison to arms. there was a good deal of noise in the darkness above the fort. here and there a dim light showed for a few moments, and was promptly fired at. when day broke jack saw that the enemy had built a rough wall of stones loosely piled up, some fifty yards long and about four feet high, parallel with the north wall of the fort, one end resting on the edge of the gully. from a convenient spot in the gully, about two hundred yards above the fort, the enemy could creep to the extremity of the wall without coming under the fire of the garrison. it had evidently been erected to screen some operations going on behind it. to guard against a sortie from the fort a covering force had been placed on the hill a quarter of a mile farther up; and between the ill-fitting stones there were small gaps which would serve as loopholes for the riflemen. during the day the enemy were hard at work digging a trench under cover of the wall. jack wondered at first whether elbel was going to make approaches to the fort by sap and mine, in the manner he had read of in histories of the great sieges. but another and still more disturbing thought occurred to him. would the trench cut across the line of his conduit? had elbel at last fathomed the secret of his water supply? he anxiously examined the landmarks, which had been disturbed somewhat by the construction of the wall. as nearly as he could judge, the spring was a few yards south of the wall, and neither it nor the conduit would be discovered by the men digging the trench. yet he could not but feel that elbel's latest move was not so much an attempt to undermine the defences of the fort as to discover the source of its water supply. if he should have hit upon the fact that the water was derived, not from a well inside the walls, but from a spring outside, he would not be long in coming to the conclusion that it must be from a spot opposite the northern face; and by cutting a trench or a series of trenches across the ground in that direction he must sooner or later come upon the conduit. the work proceeded without intermission during the whole of the day, and apparently without success, for the level of the water in the fort tank did not fall. but elbel's activity was not stopped by the darkness. when morning dawned jack saw that during the night an opening about five feet wide had been made in the wall, giving access to a passage-way of about the same height leading towards the fort and roughly covered with logs, no doubt as a protection against rifle fire. only about twenty yards of this passage-way had been completed. the end towards the fort was closed by a light screen of timber resting on rollers, and sufficiently thick to be impervious to rifle fire, as jack soon found by experiment. evidently another trench was to be dug near the fort. to avoid the labour of building a second covering wall, elbel had hit on the idea of a passage-way through which his men might reach the spot where he desired the new trench to be begun. protected by the screen, they could dig a hole several feet deep, and then, too low to be hit by shots from the fort, could proceed with the trench in safety. jack wondered whether elbel had not yet heard of the approach of the state forces. such feverish activity was surely unnecessary when reinforcements were only a few days' march distant. it was barney who suggested that elbel had made such a mess of things hitherto that he was eager to do something, to gain a success of some kind, before the regular forces should arrive. under cover of the wooden screen the enemy, as jack had expected, started to dig another trench parallel with the wall. they had no lack of labourers; as soon as one gang was tired another was ready to take its place; and the work was carried on very rapidly. with growing anxiety jack watched the progress of the trench towards the gully. his conduit was only three feet from the surface of the ground. judging by the fact that his marksmen never got an opportunity of taking aim at the diggers, the trench must be at least five feet deep; and if an opening were made into the gully the conduit was sure to be exposed. there was just one hope that they would fail. jack remembered the outcrop of rock which had necessitated the laying of the pipes, for a length of some yards, several feet lower than the general level. if the enemy should happen to have struck this point there was a fair chance of the conduit escaping their search; for, coming upon the layer of rock, they would probably not guess that pipes were carried beneath it. to reassure himself, jack called up imbono and mboyo and asked them if they could locate the spot where the rock occurred. their impression agreed with his, that it must at any rate be very near the place where the enemy's trench would issue into the gully. but jack's anxiety was not relieved at the close of the day, for again the work was carried on all night. he thought of a sortie, but reflected that this would be taken by elbel as an indication that he was hot on the scent. and while a sortie might inflict loss on the enemy, it would not prevent elbel from resuming his excavations as soon as the garrison had retired again within their defences. with great relief jack at last heard the sound of pick-axes striking on rock. it seemed too good to be true that the enemy had come upon the exact dozen yards of rock where alone the conduit was in little danger of being laid bare. yet this proved to be the case. in the morning elbel drew off his workmen, apparently satisfied, before the trench had been actually completed to the gully, that he was on the wrong track. a great load was lifted from jack's mind. if the secret of the water supply had been discovered, he knew that the end could only be a matter of a few days. as soon as the enemy drew off, jack's men issued forth, demolished the wall, and filled up the trench. three days passed in comparative inactivity. during these days jack had much of his time taken up by mr. arlington, who required of him a history of all that had happened since the first meeting with elbel. the traveller made copious jottings in his note-book. he asked the most minute questions about the rubber traffic and the methods of the state and the concessions; he had long interviews with imbono and mboyo, and endured very patiently lepoko's expanded versions of statements already garrulous; he took many photographs with his kodak of the people who had been maimed by the forest guards, and asked jack to present him with a chicotte--one of those captured along with the askari. he said very little, probably thinking the more. certainly he let nothing escape his observation. meanwhile mr. dathan was making friends of all the children. unable to endure the stuffiness of the hut, he had himself carried on a sheltered litter into the open, where, propped up on pillows, his burly form might be seen in the midst of a large circle of little black figures, who looked at him earnestly with their bright intelligent eyes and drank in the wonderful stories he told them. many of their elders hovered on the fringe of the crowd; and when the lesson was finished, they went away and talked among themselves of nzakomba[3] the great spirit father who, as the bont' ok'ota-a-a-li[4] said, had put it into the heart of lokolobolo to defend and help them. before the dawn one morning lingombela came into the fort. he reported that the new enemy had only just finished the portage of their canoes and stores. the steamer had been left below the rapids, and the white men were embarking on canoes. there were not enough to convey the whole expedition at one time, although some had been sent down the river to meet them. two or three had been lost through attempting to save time by dragging them up the rapids. lingombela had himself seen this, with samba. samba had no doubt already told what he had seen, but he did not know about the big gun which could fire as many shots as a hundred men, for the white men had not begun to practise at a mark in their camp above the rapids until samba had left. "but we have seen nothing of samba; where is he?" "he started to return to ilombekabasi a day before i did." "and makoko?" "makoko is still watching." lingombela's statement about samba alarmed jack. what had become of the boy? had he fallen into the enemy's hands? it was too much to be feared. what else could have delayed him? in threading the forest none of the scouts could travel so fast as he. if he had started a day before lingombela he should have gained at least five or six hours. the news soon flew through the settlement that samba was missing. mboyo and his wife came to jack to ask whether lingombela had told the truth. their troubled looks touched jack, and he tried to cheer them. "samba has not arrived yet, certainly," he said, "but he may not have come direct. something may have taken him out of his course; he would go a long way round if he thought it would be of use to us. don't be worried. he has gone in and out safely so often that surely he will come by and by." the negroes went away somewhat comforted. but jack felt very anxious, and his feeling was fully shared by barney. "'tis meself that fears elbel has got him," he said. "pat has been most uncommon restless for two days. he looks up in the face uv me and barks, whin he's not wanting anything at all. 'tis only samba can rightly understand all pat says, and seems to me pat has got an idea that something has happened to samba." an hour later pat also had disappeared. he had broken his strap and run away. [1] the highest salutation, given to a person of great dignity. [2] the last time. [3] god. [4] very tall man. chapter xxviii the chicotte a small palm, spared for the sake of its welcome shade when the rest of the ground was cleared, sheltered monsieur elbel's tent from the fiercest rays of the tropical sun, in the tent monsieur elbel, smoking a bad belgian cigar, his camp chair tilted back to a perilous angle, his feet on a small rickety table, read and re-read with a smile of satisfaction a short official communication that had just reached him from brussels. owing to the retirement of the company's principal agent, and in recognition of monsieur elbel's energy in doubling the consignment of rubber from his district during the past year, the comité had been pleased to appoint monsieur elbel to be administrative chief of the maranga concession. at the same time the comité hoped that monsieur elbel would see his way to deal promptly and effectively with the reported outbreak at ilola, without incurring undue expense, and that the american who had been giving trouble, and whose patent was now revoked (with the concurrence of the state) would be persuaded of the necessity of leaving the country. monsieur elbel was gratified by the news of his promotion; although it was his due by all the standards of conduct set up for the guidance of officials, whether state or trust, charged with the exploitation of congoland. under no officer had the development of king leopold's african dominions gone more blithely forward than under monsieur elbel. where he and his men went they left a wilderness behind them; but the amount of rubber they collected was most gratifying; and if maranga stock stood high it was largely through their exertions. true, in twenty years there would be no people left in maranga, even if there were rubber to collect. but after all that was not monsieur elbel's concern: in twenty years he would not be on the congo; those who came after him must find their own collectors. he and the king took short views: sufficient unto the day--they were both men of business. yes, as a man of affairs guillaume elbel was hard to beat. it was no wonder that the comité had promoted him to the vacant post; if he had been passed by, where would be the inducement to zeal, to loyal faithful service? where indeed? in the circumstances monsieur elbel was in good humour, a relaxation he rarely allowed himself. he drank the remains of his absinthe, tilted his chair back to the critical angle, and blowing a cloud of smoke skywards saw in the curling eddies visions of snug directorates in brussels. why not? he flattered himself there were none who knew more about the congo than he; he could estimate to a few francs the possibilities of any district as expressed in rubber; and, what is more, he knew how to get it. with him the people always lasted as long as the rubber. there was no waste; he plumed himself on the point. _he_ had never burnt a village before the rubber was exhausted, whatever might be said of other agents. for after all, his business was to promote commerce--that is, collect rubber--not mere destruction. and if he did not know his business there was nobody who could teach him. yes--his majesty had an eye to men of his stamp. a directorate--a few directorates--a snug place at court--who knows? ... monsieur elbel again glanced at the official letter; and again smiled and blew a ring artistically true. then his eye caught the word "expense," and his expression changed. this ilola difficulty would not only reduce his rubber consignments; it would mean a considerable outlay--how much he did not like to think. and then there was the column of state troops now on its way. no doubt the concession would have to pay for that, too. peste! if only he could finish this business before van vorst came up! he did not desire the presence of van vorst or any other state officer, if it could be avoided. for there was gold in the stream, without a doubt; and those state officials were greedy rascals; they were capable of edging him out--they had no scruples--his moral claim would go for nothing, absolutely. yes, the fort must be captured at once before van vorst came up. if only he could tap the water supply it would be easy enough. it could be done; the little fool had let out so much; but how?--that was what he had to find out, and his name was not elbel if he couldn't do it. he rose and went to the door of the tent. a few yards away, securely tied to the trunk of the slender palm, was a negro boy. monsieur elbel looked at him critically as if measuring his strength. last night, although threatened with the chicotte, the boy had refused to speak. only once, when elbel had offered him freedom and rewards if he would point out the source of the water in the camp above, did he open his lips, saying fiercely: "i will never tell you!"--betraying to the questioner that he had some knowledge of the secret. now he had had twelve hours of hunger and thirst to help him to a more reasonable frame of mind. all night the cords had been eating into his wrists and ankles; he was weak from want of food, and consumed with an intolerable thirst. he stood there in the blazing sun, a listless, pitiable figure, held upright only by the thongs that bound his wrists; and monsieur elbel as he looked at him, felt not a little irritated. it was absurd that he should be inconvenienced; nay, more, that the development of the concession should be delayed, and expense incurred--avoidable, unnecessary expense--expense without any return in rubber--all because this slip of a boy refused to tell what he knew. elbel beckoned to his servant and interpreter, standing close by, attentive and expectant. "tell him," he said, "that i will give him one more chance. if he will not speak he shall be thrashed with the chicotte until he does." the man roughly grasped the boy by the shoulders and translated his master's words. the captive slowly shook his head. "fetch the chicotte," said elbel sharply. "we'll see what that will do." the man entered the tent, where the chicotte invariably lay ready to hand; and when he emerged the space in front of elbel's quarters was filling with askari and their followers flocking like vultures to the feast. samba, the son of mboyo, chief of banonga, was to be whipped. boloko had caught him last night: he was a clever man, boloko. and samba knew where the inglesa got the water for his camp, the secret was to be cut from him by the chicotte. that was good; it would be a sight to see. no time was lost. elbel signed to the man as he approached, and stepping back left him a clear space to swing the whip. the negro prided himself upon his skill; as elbel's servant, indeed, he had more opportunities of perfecting himself with this typical instrument of congo government than falls to most. he could deliver a stroke with great delicacy, raising only a long red weal upon the skin, or if the case called for real severity could cut the offender's flesh from his body almost as neatly as with a knife. in this case his master desired information; it was not a mere question of punishing a sullen defaulter. he would begin gently lest the prisoner should lose the power of speech and shame the executioner before his master and the crowd. a slight convulsive shiver shook the boy's frame as the whip fell, but he clenched his teeth and no sound escaped him. the man waited for a moment. "will you tell?" there was no answer. again the whip rose and fell, this time with a more vicious sound; it was answered by a low groan; but still to the same question there was no reply. by slow degrees the executioner increased the vigour of his stroke. the askari applauded, and surely he was meriting praise from his master, for after many strokes the prisoner was quite conscious, as his pallid face and staring eyes and clenched teeth clearly showed. and besides, did he not writhe and groan with every blow? but there is no reckoning with the vagaries of the white man. the culprit's obstinate silence irritated monsieur elbel more and more as the punishment went on. it was intolerable that he should be defied in this way. it was a bad example to the natives. where would the white man's authority be if this kind of thing were permitted? they would lose all respect: the collection of rubber would become a farce. suddenly he blazed out in anger, snatched the whip from the hands of his servant, and, whirling it round his head, brought it down with all his force on the bruised and bleeding form. it cut a deep purple gash in the boy's back; but monsieur elbel's wrath had come too late; before the lash fell samba had fainted. elbel hesitated for a moment; then, seeing that further punishment would be a mere waste of time, he gave a curt order. they cut samba's cords and carried him away. he was to be whipped again to-morrow. that afternoon lepoko came to jack with a broad grin on his face. "mbota come back, sah." "that's the scout of massa barney's who was captured, isn't it?" "yussah! he come back, sah. oh! it make me laugh plenty much. elobela send mbota back; he say, 'you go back, cut off lokolobolo him head. me gib you twenty, fousand, plenty, plenty brass rods!' mbota say, 'all same, massa. anyfing what massa like. me get plenty men what help.' den mbota come back; he laugh, sah; elobela plenty big fool fink him lib for hurt lokolobolo." "bring mbota to me at once." when the man came, jack got out of him a more lucid story than lepoko had given. elbel had promised freedom and large rewards if he would stir up a revolt against jack, or assassinate him. the negro had readily promised, with no intention but to reveal the whole scheme to his beloved lokolobolo. jack was still talking to the man when he heard loud cries. running out of his hut, he found barney clutching by the arm a strange negro, thronged about by a shouting crowd of the men of ilombekabasi. "who is he?" "'tis wan uv elbel's men, sorr. lianza caught him in the forest, and brought him in. the men are simply mad to get at him, sorr, especially since they've heard uv what elbel said to mbota." "leave him to me. i will deal with him." the men slowly dispersed. jack took the trembling negro to his hut and questioned him. "do you know anything of samba, the son of mboyo and nephew of boloko, one of your master's men?" yes, he knew.--was there a man in elobela's camp who did not know?--who had not exulted when the news spread that samba, the best of lokolobolo's scouts, had been captured and was to pay the penalty? surely not a man was absent when samba suffered the torture. had not many of them tried in vain to discover the secret which samba would be forced to betray? the scout described to jack the whole pitiful scene, in the glowing language, with the telling dramatic gestures, which the negro has at command when he feels that his audience is interested. and while the man told his story jack went hot and cold by turns--cold with sheer horror of the scene conjured up by the man's vivid words, hot with a great wrath, a burning passionate desire to seek instant vengeance upon the evildoer. bidding barney keep the negro carefully under guard, he went back to his hut, at the entrance to which mr. arlington had been anxiously watching the scene. "it is devilish, sir," he burst out. "elbel not only offers rewards for assassinating me, but he uses his brutal whip on a boy, to force him to reveal the secret of our water supply. samba is probably half-dead--he fainted under the lash but would not betray us--brave little fellow! think of the agony he must have suffered! and he is only one; thousands have suffered in the same way before him, and are suffering to-day in one part or another of this state. do you blame me now, sir?" "no, i don't blame you. i am deeply sorry for the poor boy. the whole thing is an outrage upon human nature, so revolting that any action that can be taken against it is fully justified. i have been thinking over what we said the other day. it is not for me to advise; indeed, my friends at home would open their eyes at the idea of my abetting resistance to authority; but i will give you my opinion. you must hold your fort. while the banner of revolt is kept flying there is always a prospect of forcing the hand of the officials in the direction of effective reform. they have an enormous area to control--a disaffected area seething with indignation against bitter wrong. a successful revolt will encourage outbreaks elsewhere. if you can only hold out; if you can make yourself strong enough here in this remote corner to defy the authorities, it will be an opportunity of forcing the government to terms--to the granting of elementary rights of justice and liberty to its own subjects, and the throwing open of this sorely-afflicted country to free intercourse with the outside world." "ah! if only i can do it, sir! but i can only hold the fort now by striking a blow at elbel before his reinforcements join him. if the forces unite, they will be strong enough to carry on a strict siege. our food is giving out; the people have been for some time on half rations; they don't grumble, but it will have to be quarter rations soon, and then the end is not far off. we must either surrender or trek." "if you have to trek, it would be better to do so at once, while you have food to take your party on your way." "yes, we must either do that or thoroughly beat elbel. that would ease the pressure; the others would think twice before attacking us; they might even draw off until an overwhelming force could be brought against us. that would give time for us to grow more crops, and for you to go back to england, sir, and raise your voice against this atrocious government." "i shall certainly do that. but you talk of fighting elbel; have you thought of the risk?" "till my head aches with thinking. i know that failure will mean ruin. it must be a smashing blow; pin-pricks are no good; and i can't smash him without taking a large force out of the fort. if we were obliged to retreat we should be followed up; they might rush the fort, and there would be an end of everything." "it is a difficult position. i can't help you; i am not a soldier--it seems to me you ought to be one, mr. challoner. i could take no active part; i should in any case be little good. i feel that you have landed me in a very awkward position," he added with a smile. "but it can't be helped now; i can only wait and see you go through with it." at the back of jack's mind there was another consideration which he did not mention. he could not have said how far he allowed it to count. it was the bare chance of rescuing samba--if samba was still alive. if it had been put to him, he would probably not have admitted it. the good of the community could not be jeopardized by any action on behalf of an individual, whatever his claim; the circumstances were too critical. but that the fate of samba was an additional argument in favour of the course he was on other grounds inclined to adopt there can be no doubt. next day the urgency of the situation was brought home to him. two fires were seen at the appointed spot; makoko had done his work. five or six hours later, just after nightfall, makoko himself came in. he reported that one white man with twenty soldiers in two canoes, with many paddlers, had started up river in advance of the bulk of the force, which had now reached camp at the head of the rapids. jack guessed that the white man was the officer in command, probably the captain van vorst of whom elbel had spoken, coming ahead to view the position and select an encampment for his followers. about noon on the next day there was a great sound of jubilation from the camp below. van vorst, if it was he, had arrived. he must have travelled night and day, the river route being so much longer than the forest one that otherwise he could hardly have reached the camp in another twelve hours. but his paddlers were no doubt pressed men from the riverine villages, costing nothing and having no rights, and a congo state commandant in a hurry would not hesitate to drive them. in the afternoon a negro bearing a white flag was seen approaching the fort from the south. he evidently expected to be admitted by the hole in the wall. but at jack's bidding lianza of the brazen throat called to him to come round to the gate on the north; it was well to observe due order and ceremony. the man brought a note signed "van vorst," demanding the instant surrender of the fort. in reply jack wrote asking for the assurance that his people, having acted throughout in self defence against the illegalities of the société cosmopolite, should be guaranteed liberty to depart, and immunity except against the regular legal process of the courts. in half an hour the messenger returned with a curt summons to unconditional surrender. jack sent back a polite refusal, feeling that he had now burnt his boats. shortly afterwards he saw a party of three white men and about twenty state soldiers, all armed with rifles, making a tour round the position, keeping carefully under cover. through his field-glass jack recognized elbel, one of his subordinates, and one of the officers he had seen on the steamer. elbel pointed this way and that with outstretched hand, and appeared to be talking with some excitement. occasionally they came within easy range of the fort, and barney begged jack to let the men fire upon them; but jack resolutely stuck to his determination to refrain from provocation. the party by and by reached a position above the fort, near the spot whence the abortive barrel-rolling had been started. from this place a small area of the fort enclosure was open to the view of the enemy. all at once jack saw the strange officer take a rifle from one of the soldiers and raise it to his shoulder. jack instantly ordered his men, who were crowding the wall, to drop down out of sight. the officer fired: there was a moment's silence; then jack heard a great yell of rage from the men behind him. turning, he saw an old woman lying huddled in the centre of the enclosure. two calabashes lay near; she had been crossing the exposed portion of the area to fetch water from the tank when van vorst's bullet struck her. a shout of delight from the negro soldiers up the hill acclaimed the successful shot of their officer; the old woman was quite dead. jack went hot with rage. and mr. arlington, who had witnessed the officer's action, was stirred out of his usual philosophic calm. "that is not an act of warfare, mr. challoner, but of sheer savagery--the act of a callous marksman showing off. it invites reprisal." "you see how the state treats its subjects, mr. arlington. they have taken cover; it's too late to fire now. but it settles the matter for me. the state has fired the first shot and killed a non-combatant. i shall do my best this very night to deal the enemy a staggering blow." chapter xxix reaping the whirlwind during the inaction of the past two days jack had been carefully thinking out his plan. stout-hearted as he was, he felt oppressed by the difficulties of his position. he had now four hundred men in all; scarcely a hundred of them were armed with rifles, and not more than fifty were practised shots. how could he hope to dislodge from a stockaded camp more than seven hundred, of whom some two hundred and fifty, including van vorst's advance guard, were riflemen? it seemed at the best a desperate hazard, but the alternative was worse, and having resolved upon his course he rejected all half measures. some few of his own men must be left in the fort, if only to prevent a panic; but those must be the minimum--he would need every man he could muster. he was staking all on the cast of a die; it would never do to risk failure by timorousness in using all his effective combatant strength. he would throw his whole available force against the enemy in one supreme effort to break and scatter him. the offensive, he knew, counted for much, especially with men who had not known defeat. where he and barney led he felt sure they would follow. but a check might be fatal. a single well-directed volley from the enemy might sweep his little company of riflemen away, and his spearmen would then never get to close quarters. he gave full weight to all these considerations. but having decided that the attempt must be made he devoted long hours of anxious thought to the devising of a plan that would give best promise of success. he had to do his thinking alone. barney was a fighter, not a strategist. he could be trusted to strike hard and carry out orders to the minutest detail; he could not plan or organize. mr. arlington and the missionary of course must not be consulted. so that when barney was called into jack's hut that afternoon, it was to learn particulars of a scheme worked out by jack alone. when he left it an hour or two later, his eyes were glowing with a new light. "sure 'tis me chance that has come at last!" he said to himself. it was two o'clock in the morning. ilombekabasi was astir. men and boys were moving this way and that. the night was dark, but by the light of the small lamps kept burning before a few of the principal huts it could be seen that every face was tense with excitement and a subdued energy. in one spot congregated the maimed people, armed with such weapons as they could wield, for the news that a great movement was intended had spread in the camp, and every man and many of the girls and women had begged to be allowed to bear arms. near the south-eastern blockhouse the bulk of the able-bodied men and boys were squatting, rifles and spears lying beside them. at the gate in the north wall stood twenty-five men, the picked men of the corps, the men whom lokolobolo had twice led out to victory. there was lepoko, all smiles and consequence. there was makoko, hugging his rifle as though he loved it. there was lianza of the brazen throat, and lingombela the man of hard bargains, and imbono, the prudent chief of ilola, and mboyo, solemn and silent, thinking of samba. on the ground lay a number of bundles and bales, large and small. a group approached the gate from lokolobolo's hut. lokolobolo himself, and barnio, as the natives called him, came first, walking slowly side by side. behind came mr. arlington, his strong features fixed impassively. at his side was the litter of mr. dathan, borne by four negroes. "is it quite clear?" said jack to barney. "you have twenty good men here, besides another twenty of the maimed who may be of use in an emergency. batukuno will be left in command. all the rest will go with you; yes, let the boys go; they can use their knives even if they cannot throw a spear. get them all paraded an hour before dark, ladder men first. keep them as quiet as you can. wait till you hear shots in the enemy's camp; that will be the signal. then send your men out, over the stockade by the south-eastern blockhouse; they can scramble down the slope there. you had better take half of them first and form them up at the bottom. the rest can follow as soon as they see you move off. lead them at the double straight down the hill and fling them at the stockade. the second party will be just in time to support you if the first rush is checked. but there must be no check; we daren't admit the possibility. this is your job, barney." "amen, sorr. for the honour uv ould ireland and the sake uv these poor niggers i'll do me very best." "i know you will, old fellow." they grip hands, looking into each other's eyes. this may be their last good-bye. one long hand-clasp, one moment of tense emotion, then, clearing his throat, jack gives an order to his men. they stoop to their bundles, then file quietly out of the gate. each man has a package to carry, such a package as forms part of every white man's baggage in africa: one a trunk, another a gun-case, a third a canvas bag, others bales of various kinds. two strong negroes at the end of the line bear, slung on ropes, a package, strangely shapeless, and to all appearance particularly heavy. the last has gone out into the darkness. then jack turns once more. "good-bye, mr. arlington." "good-bye! success to you." "good-bye, mr. dathan." "god help you, my dear lad," says the missionary. then jack too leaves ilombekabasi, and the darkness swallows him up. towards dusk on the following evening, a party of twenty-five carriers were marching through the forest in the direction of elbel's stockaded camp. in the midst were four men carrying a litter. they followed the path leading from the river--the path along which captain van vorst had come a few days earlier. for some time they had been shadowed by a negro bearing the arms of a forest guard. they paused for a few moments to rest, and the negro, apparently satisfied by his observations, came up and accosted them. "you are the servants of mutela?" "yes, that is so. has mutela arrived?" mutela was the native name for van vorst. "oh yes! he came two or three days ago." "are we on the right road?" "certainly. the camp is but a little way beyond us. i will lead you to it. you have heavy loads." "ah! mutela is a man of riches. he has many pots, and many bottles, and very many coats for his back. and guns too; see, here is his elephant rifle. mutela is a great hunter; a great man of war." "true, he is a great man of war. yesterday he killed a woman in the fort of the inglesa. i saw it. i laughed; we all laughed; it was so funny! but who is in the litter?" "a white officer. oh yes! he is as great a man of war as mutela. but he is sick; white men so easily turn sick! and he sleeps, although it is a rough road." "aha! it is a pity he is sick. mutela will be sorry. mutela is going to kill all the men in the inglesa's fort. lokolobolo they call him. aha! we shall see how strong he is! see, there is the camp yonder through the trees." when the party were still within some yards of the gate, the scout gave a hail. it was answered by a negro whose face appeared just above the stockade. by the time the leading men reached the gate it had been thrown open by one of elbel's european subordinates, and a crowd of negro soldiers and hangers-on was collected to witness the entrance of the white officer and mutela's baggage. lepoko, who had led the file, deposited his bundle just inside the gate and burst into a roar of laughter, holding his sides and bending his body in uncontrollable mirth. he was soon surrounded by a crowd of negroes, to whom he began to relate a very funny story; how ekokoli, the daring ekokoli, had mounted a crocodile's back just below the rapids, and had a splendid ride. the comical story set the throng laughing in chorus, and they begged to hear it again. meanwhile, the rest of the carriers had filed in with their burdens, the litter had been set down, and the white officer, though so sick, stepped out quite briskly to greet the belgian, whose attention was divided between the laughing negroes and his guest. at the same time the four bearers drew out from the litter a rifle apiece--for a sick man rifles surely made an uncomfortable couch!--and also half a dozen objects which to a man of ilombekabasi would have looked suspiciously like fire-balls. from the packages which lay near the gate each of the other carriers with a single pull abstracted a mauser or an albini; while the two men who had staggered along at the end of the line under the weight of a clumsy heavy bundle dropped it in the gateway with a thud that suggested the fall of a rock rather than a carrier's ordinary load. it lay against the gate, preventing it from being closed. lepoko was already telling his story for the second time. elbel's officer, about to speak to the sick white man, who had just stepped out of the litter, suddenly hesitated, wheeled round, and with a loud cry of alarm rushed toward the centre of the camp, where, in a large tent, elbel was at that moment regaling captain van vorst with a dinner that did much credit to his native cook. his cry passed unnoticed by the delighted negroes whom lepoko was so humorously entertaining. but next moment they choked their guffaws, and, without waiting for the end of the story, scampered with more speed than grace after their white officer towards elobela's tent. what had startled them? the sick man from the litter, after one hasty glance round, had suddenly fired into the air the rifle he bore. and the carriers who seemed so tired and so glad to lay down their burdens had all at once sprung into feverish activity. dividing into two parties they had disappeared behind the huts nearest to the stockade on each side of the gateway, and if the hubbub had not been so great, an attentive listener might have heard sundry scratches that ensued upon their disappearance. but there was no one to hear. the garrison of the camp were rushing still towards the centre with loud cries; the carriers and the sick officer were no longer to be seen; and what was this? clouds of smoke, thick, acrid, suffocating, were floating on the south wind from the huts towards elobela's tent. and now the camp was in an uproar. mingled with the yells of alarm were distinct cries, "mutela!" "elobela!" "lokolobolo!" and amid all the din came ever and anon the sharp piercing bark of a dog. monsieur guillaume elbel, of the société cosmopolite du commerce du congo, had just opened a second bottle of madeira for the delectation of his guest captain van vorst, of the congo state forces. the dinner had been a good one; the captain had praised his cook, the best cook on the congo; and monsieur elbel was in better humour than he had been since the arrival of the state troops. he was even pleasantly boasting of the coming triumph at ilombekabasi, and discussing what they should do with the englishman after they had caught him, when sounds from outside so startled him that he poured the wine on to the tablecloth instead of into the glass, and interrupted himself with the sudden exclamation-"what's that?" he snatched up a rifle and hurried out, followed more slowly by his companion, who had seen too many camp quarrels to be greatly alarmed by this sudden outbreak. elbel at first could distinguish nothing in the confusion. the short dusk of a tropical evening was already becoming darkness, but he could see that crowds of men were pouring out of the huts, rushing, hustling, in a state that was very like panic. and a pungent smoke saluted his nostrils; it was drifting in great whorls northwards over the camp, and surely behind it he saw here and there little red flashes of flame. who had fired that shot which had so shaken monsieur elbel's hand? he did not know; it had been a single shot; surely the camp could not be attacked, for other shots would have followed long before this. but the moment he appeared outside the tent a volley rang out, and elbel saw that it was fired by his own men into the midst of the smoke. he was hurrying across the camp to inquire into the meaning of all this when a volley flashed from the other direction--from the very heart of the smoke. shrieks proclaimed that some of the shots had told. "fools!" cried elbel, "don't you see they're screened by the smoke, whoever they are? what's the good of firing when you can't take aim? curse that dog! i can't hear myself speak!" another volley flashed from the smoke. men were dropping on every side; there were wild rushes for cover. soon the central space was deserted, and the panic-stricken garrison fled for shelter behind the huts on the north side of the camp. while elbel and van vorst were shouting themselves hoarse in a vain attempt to stem this tide of flight, the sergeant who had opened the gate had rushed to the north side, where van vorst's contingent were quartered, and hastily got them into some sort of order, together with those of elbel's men who, having their huts on that side, has been less affected by the sudden alarm. dividing the company of about a hundred men into two parties, he sent them skirmishing forward in the spaces between the huts towards the enemy he supposed to be approaching on the east and west. that enemy, however, was not approaching. jack had fired the huts and thrown the camp into confusion; his little party was not strong enough to turn the confusion to utter rout. its smallness would be perceived if he led it into the open; his was a waiting game. the wisdom of his policy was soon proved. a sharp volley came from the men whom the belgian sergeant had got together. jack heard the man beside him groan heavily and fall to the ground; then he himself felt a stinging burning pain below the left knee. he called to his men to keep within cover, and hastily bound a handkerchief about the wound. and now the wind dropped, and the smoke which had hitherto screened his movements floated upwards. a scattering volley from the enemy reduced his band by two more men. the state troops were working round on each side of him; and the red glare from the burning huts was lighting up the whole camp. it would soon be seen how small his little company was; then one determined rush would annihilate it. less than four minutes had passed since he entered the gate; it seemed an age. would barney never come? why was he delaying? surely he had heard the signal shot; surely by this time he must have seen the ruddy glare! the enemy were regaining confidence; their cries of alarm were changed to yells of defiance. elbel and van vorst had taken command, one on each side; each was steadily moving down from the northern stockade towards the gate. barney, barney, will you never come? hark! what is that? the cries of the enemy are suddenly drowned in a babel of yells behind them. they halt, amazed; van vorst shouts an order; the men wheel round and dash northwards, leaving only a few to watch the rear. the belgian sees now the meaning of this daring scheme. what has he to gain by routing the little band behind? before him is pandemonium; a whole host must be upon him; here is the danger to be met. but he is too late! "lokolobolo! lokolobolo!" two hundred voices roar the name. and lokolobolo himself sees a portion of the northern stockade black with moving figures, and rifle barrels, spear heads, gleaming red in the light of the flaming huts. towards him rushes the greater part of the garrison, their first fright trebled. these guards of the forest can fight unarmed despairing rubber collectors, but their hearts are as water when the villagers prove to be men. let the men in uniform, the clad soldiers of bula matadi, fight if they will; this is no place for forest guards; the gate! the gate! van vorst's handful of more disciplined men present a bolder front to the enemy. but it would need many times the number he can muster to break the wave of exultant warriors now swarming over the stockade. there is barney! jack sees him drop to the ground, brandishing in one hand a rifle, an ancient cutlass in the other. "hurroo! hurroo!" he shouts. a second, no more, and then the crest of the wave breaks over the stockade into the camp. "barnio! lokolobolo!" with a great roar the men of ilombekabasi follow their leader. they are already sweeping the garrison like sea-wrack before them, when another wave comes tumbling behind, the shrill cries of boys mingling with the deeper shouts of the men. see, they come, furiously, irresistibly! and who is this? a tall white-clad figure springs over with the movement of a hurdle-racer. it is mr. arlington himself, stirred for the nonce out of his habitual calmness, caught up and carried away in this roaring current. the enemy fire once, then, though van vorst may rave and storm, they turn their backs and flee helter-skelter for the gate. "lokobololo! barnio!" the tempestuous war-cries pursue them. struggling, yelling, they converge to the narrow gateway. it is jammed, wedged tight with human forms, squeezed by the presence of the frantic crowd behind into a solid mass of feebly struggling wretches lost to all consciousness but that of a great fear. the weaker men fall and are trampled to death; the stronger push and pull, and scramble over the fallen, mad with fright. some win through or over, and rush with blind haste into the forest. others, despairing of escape by that one constricted outlet, climb the palisade. some impale themselves on the sharp-pointed stakes, and, hapless benefactors! serve as gangways for their comrades who follow. seeing the utter rout of the enemy, jack had already ordered his men to cease fire. his end was gained; he had no lust for useless slaughter. but although makoko and lingombela and the rest with him loyally obeyed, nothing could check the storming party. they heard nothing, saw nothing, but the enemy in front. not one of them but had a father, or mother, a wife or child, to avenge--a ruined home, a blasted life. as well attempt to bridle the whirlwind as this infuriate flood. on and on they pressed, past the spot where jack held his men in leash; and as they ran they shot and stabbed, yelling "barnio! lokolobolo!" and as they were accustomed to receive no mercy, so now, in this hour of retribution, they gave none. as jack made his way towards the gateway, hoping to do something to ensure quarter for the fleeing wretches, he caught sight of a figure crawling painfully forth from a burning hut. at one moment he recognized the man and the man him. "nando!" he cried. "sabe me, massa!" "getaway to the other end. wait for me there. any other men in the hut?" "no, massa, no! only me!" but as he turned to run jack heard the bark which ever and anon had struck his ears during these full minutes, and felt a tug at his coat. the cloth, already tattered, gave way; but pat caught his trousers, then ran a little way ahead, then back again, then once more towards the burning hut. tearing off his coat, jack wrapped it round his head and dashed in. the smoke was so dense that nothing could be seen save here and there spurts of flame. scarcely able to breathe he flung himself on the ground and began to grope round the right of the hut. by and by his hands touched a human body, and then the shaggy coat of the terrier. lifting the body in both arms he staggered with it to the entrance, guided by the dog's barks. he gasped and drew long breaths when once again he came into the open air; but as he laid his burden upon the ground he stumbled and fell beside it, sick and dizzy. [illustration: samba rescued from the burning hut] he was unconscious but for a few moments. when he came to himself and sat up, he saw that samba lay in his father's arms. mboyo was sobbing, rocking his body to and fro, murmuring endearing words. pat was stretched beside him, his eyes fixed on samba, his ears pricked forward. "he dies, o lokolobolo!" said mboyo piteously, seeing jack rise. "no, no! get water! take him to the other end of the camp. i will come to you when i can." jack hurried off. many of the huts were blazing; now that the fire had done its part it must be checked, or the stores and ammunition which would be invaluable in ilombekabasi would be destroyed. collecting such of the men as had not dashed out of the camp in pursuit of the enemy, jack set them to beat out the flames where they could, and to demolish one or two of the still unburnt huts that were most in danger of catching fire. luckily the wind had dropped; there was little risk of sparks or cinders flying through the air. then he set some of the boys to make torches, and by their light he surveyed the camp. he shuddered as he passed over the scene of the disastrous flight and pursuit. the forms of dead and wounded lay scattered over the ground. he ordered nando and other of mr. martindale's carriers who had been left in the camp to attend the wounded as well as they were able, and sternly forbade the despatching of those of the enemy who were still alive but unable through injuries to escape. then he went towards the gate. it was with a shock that he saw, amid the black bodies crushed to death in the gateway, the white-clad form of van vorst. in that terrible struggle for precedence the white man's skin had not saved him. but he was the only european left in the camp; jack looked for elbel and his subordinate; they were nowhere to be seen. complete darkness had settled over the country, and put a stop to the pursuit. jack's men began to return, at first in ones and twos, by and by in groups that grew larger as the night drew on. they came laughing and singing; once more elobela, even aided by mutela, had been beaten by lokolobolo. what a night it was for the men of ilombekabasi! and barnio!--was it not barnio who had led them to the stockade with that wild war-cry of his? they must not forget barnio! and lianza made a song as he marched back to the camp: barnio! barnio! down from the forty from ilombekabasi, dashed in the night, sought elobela, cruel mutela. hurroo! hurroo! barnio leads, after him black men, hundreds and thousands, sweep like the wind, rage like the torrent, over the wall. hurroo! hurroo! big clouds of smoke, forests of flame, into the midst, barnio! barnio! over the wall, into the camp, straight for the gate barnio rushes, after him black men. hurroo! in the gate thousands of black men, only one white man, cruel mutela! ha! he will never, never whip black men, never kill women, never kill children, laugh again never! dead is mutela! why do we sing? why do we laugh? whom do we praise? barnio! barnio! lokolobolo! friends of imbono, friends of the black men of ilombekabasi. hurroo! begorra! chapter xxx sinews of war barney came back to the camp tired out. following up the only party that seemed to have cohesion after leaving the fort--a party led by the belgian sergeant--he had soon found himself left far behind in the race. but his men had done their work thoroughly; they had dispersed the band, few of whom escaped. "'twas for this i was born, sorr," said barney as he gripped jack's hand. "sure i'll be a fighter for iver more." "you did splendidly, old fellow. i knew all was well when i heard your hurroo! but there are five hundred men roaming the country and only a score of able-bodied men in our fort. we must look after that. get fifty fellows together and send them back under imbono, barney." "and what'll ye be afther doing yourself, sorr?" "oh! i'm going down to the river. the job's only half done while that flotilla is intact. i'm going to have a shot at it before the enemy get over their fright. i'll take a couple of hundred men with me. you'll keep a hundred and remove all the stores and ammunition here to the fort; get the women and children to help; you can light the way with flares. when the camp's empty burn it. and look after samba, barney; he's here, nearly dead, poor little chap! mboyo's got him; we'll go and see how he is getting on." making their way to the north side of the camp they found samba laid on the floor of a hut, his father on one side of him, pat on the other. the dog leapt up excitedly when he saw his master, and invited him with a yelp to come and see samba. by the light of a torch barney tenderly examined the boy. he was conscious, and smiled, even though he winced under the gentlest of touches. "ochone! ochone!" exclaimed barney. "'tis the divil's own work, sorr. his poor flesh is wan jelly. by all the holy powers, if i catch that murdering ruff'n uv a fellow, that elbel--- and i've no ointment at all at all. bedad! but now i remimber mr. arlington has a whole docthor's shop in wan uv his traps, and if he hasn't got boracic ointment among his stuff, sure i'll think a mighty deal less uv him. 'twill take a month or more, sorr, to heal all the wounds on this poor body; but we'll do it, plase god! and make a man of him yet." "he dies, o lokolobolo?" said mboyo, looking up yearningly into jack's face. "no, barnio says no. he is very ill, but in a month he may be well, and barnio says he is going to make a man of him." "bolotsi o! bolotsi o!" cried the negro, slapping his thighs. "n'dok 'olo aiyoko!"[1] he laughed and clapped his hands like a child. "it was pat that showed me where samba was," said jack to barney. "nando was tied up in a hut with him--he must have been captured with dear old uncle--and the wretch saved himself by burning his ropes through and left samba to perish in the flames. pat dragged me to the spot." "the darlint is worth his weight in gold," cried barney delighted. "that's twice he has saved samba, sorr. black men and white men are brothers, or ought to be, and there's niver a doubt that dogs are cousins at the very least. and beggin' your pardon, sorr, i'll take a pleasure in kicking nando whin i get a look uv him. 'tis a little military discipline he needs, to be sure." "you can give him that in the fort. and by the way, you'll find a lot of rifles here; the enemy either hadn't time to get hold of them or else threw them away. arm some of our spearmen; they can tell the muzzle from the stock at any rate, and if any attempt is made to rush the fort they could do a good deal of damage at close quarters. and keep scouts out. we don't know the exact whereabouts of van vorst's main body, and it won't do to risk anything. but i hope you won't have any trouble." bidding barney farewell, jack called up makoko and lingombela, and sent them out with orders to discover the exact position of the flotilla, and to return at daybreak. an hour afterwards, with a hundred and fifty picked spearmen, sixty rifles, and a body of carriers with food for three days, he began a night march to the river. he himself was unable to walk. his wound was becoming more and more painful, but he had said nothing about it to barney, being resolved not to spare himself while anything remained to be done to complete his work. four men, relieved at frequent intervals, carried him in the litter of which he had made such effective use to gain an entrance to the enemy's camp. this time, he thought with a smile, there was no pretence about it. he guessed that van vorst's flotilla would be found about half way between ilola and the spot where mr. martindale's canoes had been hidden. it was one day's march across country, a much longer distance by the river. for some hours he followed the path on which his uncle and he had been escorted by the askari. the recollection of that march brought sad thoughts to his mind. lying in the litter amid his men, as the column wound its slow way along the forest track, the red glare of their torches throwing weird shadows around, he had plenty of time for melancholy reflections. the incidents of his uncle's last days were burnt into his memory. he remembered the drawn, wasted features, now pale with exhaustion, now bright with the hectic flush of fever; the quick uneasy breath; the slow labouring voice. he remembered the tale of persecution and wrong. more than all he remembered the earnest, passionate words in which the dying man had bequeathed to him the cause of the congo natives, and besought him to use his utmost strength on their behalf. "dear old uncle!" he thought; "i am trying to do what you would have wished me to do. i can't do much; this is only a small corner of the plague-ridden country; how many thousands of poor people are without even such help as i can give! but it will be something if only the few hundreds in ilombekabasi can regain and keep a little of their former happiness; and uncle would be pleased; he is pleased, if he knows." then the other side of the picture stood out sharply to his mental view. he saw the fleeing crowds of the enemy; the jammed gateway; the camp enclosure strewn with dead and wounded. once or twice, even, his marching column came upon wounded men, too weak to crawl away into the bush, and he could do nothing for them. this terrible loss of life, this misery--was not this too due to the evil government of a monarch who, far away, in wealth and luxury and ease, spoke with two voices--one the voice of beneficence, benignity, zeal for peace and good order; the other the voice of greed, avarice, the callous demand for riches even at the price of blood? "botofé bo le iwa! rubber is death!"--the woful proverb haunted him like a knell: death to the dwellers in this well-favoured land, death to the minions of the power that oppressed them, death to those who, like his uncle, dared to make a stand for freedom and found themselves engulfed in the whirlpool of injustice and wrong. as jack approached the river, these gloomy thoughts gave way to the necessities of the moment. lepoko, leading the column, announced that the river was very near. then jack ordered the torches to be put out, and the men to creep forward even more silently than they had already done. had news of the storming of the camp been carried, he wondered, by fugitives to the flotilla? since they had left the direct path to the river and struck obliquely towards it there had been no sign of fugitives. he supposed that the scared enemy had kept to the route they knew, and would follow the river bank until they reached the canoes. this involved many extra miles through the winding of the stream, unless the flotilla had come farther up than he thought was likely. the principal danger was that some of elbel's scouts, knowing the country better than the majority of the garrison, might already have taken the short cut jack was now taking and would reach the flotilla before him. there were two white officers in charge; they might set off at once to the relief of their superior and reach the fort while jack was still absent. would barney be strong enough to hold out against them? the march was continued with brief rests throughout the night. shortly after dawn a man sprang panting out of the thicket to the right of the path, and hurried to jack's litter. "o lokolobolo!" he cried, "i have news!" jack saw that it was lofundo, sub-chief of akumbi. "it was in the smoke and the flame, lokolobolo. i saw elobela, with fear in his face, climb over the fence and rush out into the night. after him i sprang--i, and bolumbu, and iloko, and others. it was elobela, the cruel, the pitiless! after him, into the night! but first iloko tired, then bolumbu, then the others. i, lofundo, i did not tire; no; was it not elobela whose men ill-used and slew my people and burnt my village, and who with his own hands flogged my son? i ran and ran, hot on his trail, and in the morning light i came up with him, and saw him with fear in his face; and i had my knife; and now elobela is dead, yonder, in the forest." "is it far, lofundo?" "a little march in the forest, lokolobolo." jack had himself carried to the spot. there, beneath a tree, covered with felled branches and leaves to protect it from beasts, lay the stark body of guillaume elbel. jack could not help pitying the wretch whose zeal in an evil cause had brought him to so miserable an end. but as he thought of the misery this man had caused--the ruined homes, the desolated lives: as he remembered his uncle, lying in his lonely grave, and samba, lacerated by this man's cruel whip, pity froze within him. "cover him up," he said. he waited while his men buried elbel, there at the foot of the tree. "let us go!" he said; "we have work to do." when jack's column, according to lepoko, was still an hour's march from the river, lingombela, one of the advance scouts, came back with a negro in his grasp. he had captured him, said lingombela, as he was running from the river into the forest. jack questioned the man through lepoko. he said that his name was bandoka, and he had been a paddler in mutela's flotilla, and had suffered many times from the chicotte; he showed the marks on his back. just after daybreak several men had come rushing madly into the clearing on the river bank where the soldiers of bula matadi had halted for the night. there was great confusion in the camp. he had heard it said among the paddlers that there had been a fight up the river at the inglesa's fort, and that the men of elobela had been badly beaten. the paddlers had already heard the name of lokolobolo. the fugitives said that mutela was sorely in need of help, and the white officer had at once started up the river in swift canoes, with most of the fighting men, leaving the rest to follow with the carriers. in the confusion attending the departure of the force with three days' stores, bandoka had contrived to slip away into the forest. he would rather brave anything than endure further service with bula matadi. jack's first thought on hearing this news was that it simplified his position. the congo officers had two days' journey before them; it was strange if he, with his lightly equipped force of men thoroughly acquainted with the country, knowing the short cuts through the forest, the fordable places on the river, could not do much to impede and harass their advance. but on subsequent reflection a still bolder course suggested itself to him. was it possible to cut off the main body from its stores? the fighting men under their white commander had already started up the river; the stores would follow more slowly; jack's line of march would strike the river at a point between the two portions of the enemy's force. if he could capture the stores, would he not have the main body at his mercy? "how many fighting men are left to escort the canoes?" he asked. "him say no can tell. he run away plenty soon; plenty much nise, all talk one time." in the absence of precise information jack could only conjecture. the news brought by the fugitive from elbel's camp was such that a force despatched in support would probably consist of at least two-thirds of the available combatant strength. the officer must be aware that a body of men that could defeat elbel with his seven hundred mixed troops could scarcely be met with less than two hundred and fifty rifles. no doubt he would expect to be joined by some of elbel's men; the full magnitude of the disaster would hardly be known; and like any other white commander he would be inclined to discount the alarmist reports of the fugitives. it would be safe to assume, thought jack, that not more than a hundred rifles had been left with the stores. how many of the paddlers were also fighting men, how many impressed like bandoka, it was impossible to guess. "bandoka is sure the white officers are not coming through the forest?" he asked, as the bare chance of meeting them occurred to him. "sartin sure, massa. dey come in boats. bandoka he fit to paddle in white man's canoe. 'no, no,' he say; 'me no like dat. white man lib for go too fast; me know what dat mean; dat mean chicotte!' den he run away, sah." "well, i wish i knew a little more about the men with the stores." "know plenty more one time," said lepoko, pointing ahead. "dat am makoko." makoko, a scout in a thousand, had brought just the news jack most desired. he had counted the fighting men on the canoes: there were a hundred and ten with rifles and more than two hundred with spears. on each cargo canoe there was a rifleman--to encourage the paddlers, thought jack. the flotilla had just started when makoko left the river, at least two hours after the main body had left. one white officer had gone with the swift canoes, a second remained with the stores. the line of boats was headed by two large war canoes, each containing twenty riflemen besides the paddlers; and two similar canoes similarly manned brought up the rear. it was clear to jack that the enemy was doing everything possible to hasten progress. but the canoes were heavily laden, and the paddlers had the stream against them. meanwhile barney must be warned of the approaching expedition. jack was not anxious about the fate of the fort. behind the walls barney's hundred and twenty riflemen and three times as many spearmen could easily hold their own. the enemy's machine gun, a deadly weapon in the open, would be of little use against stone walls. so, confident in barney's ability to sit tight, jack sent lingombela back through the forest to give him timely notice of the troops coming towards him by the river. the arrangements made by the officer in charge of the convoy of stores, as reported by makoko, were well enough adapted for progress through a country in which the natives, even if hostile, were armed only with bows and arrows or spears. by keeping in mid-stream the canoes were practically out of danger from the banks, and an enemy on the water could be effectively dealt with by the leading canoes, carrying a strong force of riflemen armed with albinis. the similar force acting as a rearguard discouraged any tendency on the part of the crews of the store-boats to bolt down stream. and each canoe had a forest guard ready with a chicotte to stimulate the paddlers' zeal. jack felt sure that by setting an ambush at a suitable point he could produce a panic among the guards and paddlers almost as effectual for his purpose as the panic in elbel's camp. but he had a not unnatural shrinking from such a course. an ambuscade--concealing oneself to shoot another man down--went against the grain with him. he knew that it was fair by all the rules of warfare, and warfare had been thrust upon him by the state troops. but he preferred if possible to attain his end by other means, involving the minimum of bloodshed and suffering. the scenes in elbel's camp and in the forest were too fresh in his memory for him to court a repetition of this wholesale destruction, even of the savages who wore the uniform of king leopold. the disposition of the enemy's forces suggested a plan whereby his end might be gained with little or no serious fighting. if the plan failed there still remained the alternative of an attack in force on the long-drawn-out line of the flotilla. he had noticed, when coming up the river to ilola with his uncle, that, about half a day's paddling from the flotilla's point of departure, the channel was divided by a small island. only on the near side was the river navigable at this season, even by canoes; on the other side the channel was wide but shallow, thickly beset by sandbanks. by striking to the left and taking a short cut through the forest known to makoko, the river bank opposite this island could be reached in two hours' hard marching. there would still be a good margin of time to make all necessary arrangements for carrying out his plan before the head of the convoy came into view. the men had already had a couple of hours' rest; the worst of their fatigue after the night march was gone; there was now no time to be lost, and jack gave the order to move off under makoko's lead. before midday the troops were halted opposite the island, a lozenge-shaped eyot about a third of a mile in length and a hundred yards across, covered with rank vegetation and patched with one or two clumps of large trees. on reaching the spot jack left his litter to superintend the men's work, in spite of his stiff leg. he posted scouts in each direction, up and down the river, to guard against surprise, then set the men to cut a large number of tough creepers which abounded in the forest, and by twisting and knotting the tendrils to make a rope about eighty yards long. while this was being done with marvellous speed by the expert negroes, a few saplings were uprooted and lashed together to form a raft, too slight indeed for serious navigation, but strong enough to convey a few men at a time across the river. when the rope was finished one end was taken across to the eyot and firmly secured to one of the large trees; the other end was left for the present loose. the place where the rope entered the water on each side was carefully screened from view, and a few stones attached to it at intervals sank it beneath the surface of the stream. jack directed the work untiringly, encouraging the workers with praise. "bravo!" he cried, when all was done. "now we'll have some chop, lepoko." "plenty hungry, massa," returned the man. "men all want to know somefing, massa." "well, what is it?" "dey say: 'lokolobolo make us do plenty fings. what for? we lib for do anyfing for lokolobolo; no fit to know what for.' dat am what dey say, sah." jack smiled. "well, lepoko, i'll tell you in confidence, and i know it won't go any further. we're going to see an exhibition of swimming." "me no like big talk like dat," said lepoko, looking puzzled. "here's little talk, then. men no want to swim; we want to see them swim. savvy?" "me know all 'bout dat, sah," cried lepoko delighted, and he went off to tell the men, jack smiling at their satisfaction with an explanation that explained so little. the whole force had a meal, keeping almost perfect silence in obedience to an impressive order from jack. they were concealed within the forest fringe. when the meal was finished a dozen men with rifles were sent across to hide themselves amid the vegetation on the island, and all waited with rifles ready. presently the scout from down stream came running up with the news that the leading canoes of the flotilla were approaching a bend in the river half a mile below the eyot. the paddlers, who had apparently had a meal and a rest, were sending the canoes along at a good rate. jack bade twelve of his men grasp the rope of creepers, and stand ready to pull when he gave the word. there was dead silence among the troops. they heard the enemy drawing near--the songs of the paddlers, the chatter of the fighting men, occasionally a yell as the chicotte fell with stinging force upon a paddler's back. jack watched from his coign of vantage in the bush. there were the two war canoes as makoko had described them; in the second of them was a white officer. they passed the eyot. then came the store canoes, one after another, keeping about the same distance apart. jack forgot to count them, for he was beyond measure delighted to see in one of them the shield of the machine gun. "what luck! what tremendous luck!" he thought. "where the shield is the gun is sure to be." the last of the store canoes passed. then, at a little longer interval than separated the store canoes, came the first war canoe of the rearguard, the second about a boat's length behind. jack signed to his twelve men to be ready. watching carefully the point at which the rope entered the water and the point on the opposite side where it reached the eyot, he waited for the first of the war canoes to approach the line. the nose of the vessel was within two or three yards of the rope when he gave his men the signal. with desperate energy the twelve sturdy negroes hauled on the rope. jack could not have timed the movement more fortunately. as the rope became taut and rose to the surface it struck the bottom of the canoe about a fourth of its length from the bow. the united pull of the twelve men lifted the forepart of the vessel bodily from the water; the stern dipped under, and in a moment the canoe filled and its occupants were struggling in the water. at any other time such a feat would have provoked yells of triumph from the performers. it was a tribute to jack's discipline that his men made no other sound than a grunt of satisfaction, which must be entirely smothered by the shouts of the men in the water. and at a word from jack they rushed at full speed down stream with the rope, holding it a few inches above the gunwale level of the last canoe, the crew of which were frantically back-paddling to escape the mysterious fate of the other. but the paddlers had not got into their swing when the rope, stretched tight between the fastening on the eyot and the running men, overtook them. it caught them about the knees; they were swept from the thwarts, and fell towards the opposite bank; and the sudden weight on the starboard side turned the canoe completely over. not half a minute from the time when jack gave the first sign the whole of the rearguard was out of action. in mortal dread of crocodiles the men swam desperately for the banks, some on one side, some on the other; but as they landed they fell an easy prey to jack's men, and were promptly hauled into the forest and tied up. but while they were still in the water the news of the disaster had been communicated with marvellous rapidity from canoe to canoe, and reached the head of the flotilla and the white officer. standing up and lifting his field glass to his eyes he could just see, over the intervening vessels, a capsized canoe, a number of men swimming in the river, and others moving on the bank. there was no sign of the cause of the disaster. the paddlers indeed were shouting "lokolobolo! lokolobolo!" in accents of terror; but the name appeared to convey nothing to the lieutenant, who was disposed to attribute the upset to a hippopotamus or a snag. certainly it was causing a great deal of confusion in the flotilla, and some of the paddlers, the rearguard being removed, seemed inclined to turn their canoes and head down stream. it was very annoying. shouting to the men in the leading war canoe to paddle just enough to keep their vessel stationary against the stream, the lieutenant hurried to the scene of the accident. on the way the shouts of the paddlers became more coherent; what was this they were saying? ilombekabasi? absurd! but it was as well to prepare for anything that might occur, so the officer ordered his men to be ready to fire when he gave the word. at present he saw nobody to fire at. his canoe was going rapidly on the current towards the eyot when a volley flashed from the undergrowth on the right bank, and he heard the shots strike the side of his vessel. the effect of the discharge at a range of only thirty yards was instantaneous. jack had ordered his men to aim at or near the waterline; not a man had been hit; but the paddlers waited for no more. with one accord they sprang overboard and swam for the nearest shore, that of the eyot. one or two of the soldiers replied to the volley, aiming hap-hazard at the bank; the rest awaited the order of their officer, who, however, was either dazed by the unexpected attack or unwilling to waste ammunition by aimless firing into the bush. the boat meanwhile was drifting down the stream: a second volley bored another score of tiny holes in the thin side. the occupants were without paddlers or paddles; they had no means of beaching the vessel; and jack, watching her progress, felt that it was only a question of minutes before, riddled like a sieve, she would have shipped enough water to sink her. then the occupants, officer and men, would share the fate of their comrades. he sent makoko with twenty rifles and twice as many spearmen to the nearest point where the hapless party might be expected to land; and at the same time he despatched a band of the same size up river to deal with the war canoe, which had by this time gone out of sight. in a few minutes the lieutenant and his men struggled one after another up the bank. those who retained their weapons were unable to use them, for they were dripping wet. jack's men dealt with them as with the others, leaving the white officer, however, unbound. him they led to jack, who commiserated the crestfallen man on his unfortunate plight, and promised him excellent treatment if he made no attempt to escape. for some time jack's party had made no further effort to conceal themselves. the store canoes had been moving aimlessly about the river, the paddlers not knowing whether to go ahead or to retreat. at jack's bidding lepoko now ordered them to beach their vessels, promising that lokolobolo would protect them, and, if they pleased, would take them into his service. they obeyed with alacrity, and soon the whole of the stores and the machine gun were in jack's possession. he wondered why the latter had not been taken up the river with the main body, and questioning the officer, learnt that in the haste and confusion one of the parts of the gun could not be found, and but for the delay in searching for it he himself would have arrived an hour or more earlier. the capture of the convoy had been effected so quickly that jack felt there might still be time by a forced march to reach the fort before the arrival of the enemy's main column. hastily selecting from the stores such food and other articles as he urgently needed, and taking care to bring with him the machine gun, he made instant preparations to return. he placed makoko in charge of the flotilla, with a body of thirty riflemen and eighty spearmen, ordering him to drop down the river half a day's paddling and await further instructions. he arranged for a chain of messengers to keep up communication between makoko and himself; then he set out with the bulk of his force for ilombekabasi, sending a scout to order the men who had gone up river to join him across country as soon as they had captured the only remaining canoe. [1] now i am well. chapter xxxi summons and surrender two days after, on a strip of open ground half-way between ilombekabasi and elbel's ruined camp, a group of six negroes were assembled. three of them were in the uniform of the state troops; the other three were lepoko, imbono, and mboyo. all were unarmed. in the midst of the group were two rough chairs such as were used by native chiefs. the southern wall of ilombekabasi was thronged with men, women, and children eagerly surveying the scene; lower down the hill the state troops, in a rude encampment hastily constructed on the previous day, were drawn up in orderly ranks, and gazed north with equal intentness. all at once a great cry of "lokolobolo!" rent the air, and floated down the hill from the fort to the camp. no answering shout met it. but an officer in white left the camp and walked slowly up the slope. at the same time a tall figure in tattered garments of european cut limped out of the fort, and moved downwards. the group of negroes fell apart as the white men arrived. the latter touched their helmets in military salute; and the younger of the two smilingly motioned to the elder to seat himself on one of the chairs, he himself taking the other. they sat facing each other, and the negroes moved a few paces back on each side. the two men formed a strange contrast: the one, a tall slim young fellow not yet nineteen, his bronzed face clean shaved, showing firm well-cut lips and an obstinate kind of chin; his nose prominent, his brown eyes large and searching, his hair black as night and somewhat unruly; not a handsome face, but a strong one, worth looking at twice and not easily forgotten: the other nearly as tall, but much broader and more stiffly built; some ten years older; lips and chin concealed by thick brown moustache and beard, blue irritable eyes blinking through big spectacles under fierce and shaggy brows. "instead of replying to your summons to surrender, monsieur jennaert," said jack slowly in his best french, "i thought it better to meet you, so that we might clearly understand each other. i am obliged to you for so readily agreeing to my proposal." the belgian bowed. "yours, monsieur, is the third or fourth summons of the same kind. monsieur elbel summoned us----" "where is monsieur elbel, monsieur?" "monsieur elbel, monsieur, is dead." lieutenant jennaert started. "dead, monsieur?" "yes, he was pursued into the forest by a man whose son he had thrashed, whose relatives his men had maimed and butchered, whose village he had burned. the man killed him. well, as i was about to say, monsieur elbel summoned us more than once. at first he was much stronger than we were, both in arms and men. but when he began to back his summons by force of arms he failed,--more than once. as you know, four days ago we captured his camp for the second time and dispersed his troops, largely with the aid of rifles which had once been his." "yes, i know that," said lieutenant jennaert somewhat impatiently. "but monsieur elbel was not a trained soldier, and his men were only forest guards. i did not come to hear of your exploits, monsieur, but to receive your surrender. i am a soldier; my men are state troops; the case is different." "quite so, monsieur. i appreciate the difference between his men and yours. but you will pardon my pointing out that you are in a far more critical position than monsieur elbel before his camp was stormed." "you think so, monsieur?" said the officer with an amused smile. "would it be indiscreet to ask your reasons?" "not at all. i wish to be entirely frank. it is to the interest of us both." "assuredly, monsieur." lieutenant jennaert's smile was now quite indulgent. he was at first inclined to be peremptory with this young man, who appeared to presume on the victories he had obtained over a company's official, and a captain taken at a disadvantage, and never particularly competent, in his subordinate's opinion. but the young fellow was certainly very polite; why not humour him by letting him talk? so jennaert smiled again. the other continued-"well, monsieur, what is the position? take mine first. you see before you a fortified camp, difficult of approach, as monsieur elbel could have told you, and as you can judge for yourself; well provisioned, and with a good water supply; garrisoned by four hundred or more well-armed men--all now provided with albinis or mausers, and a machine gun." the officer started. "a machine gun?" "yes--a machine gun." "monsieur elbel made no mention of a machine gun." "no, it is a new acquisition. but if you would like to assure yourself on the point i can convince you." the officer hesitated. jack turned to lepoko. "run up and tell mr. barney to show the big gun on the blockhouse." lepoko ran away. "it is very hot, monsieur," said jack pleasantly. "the rains, i am told by my friends the chiefs here, are long overdue. i am afraid you would have found your journey rather more difficult if it had been a little later, with the river in flood.--ah! there it is!" a number of men had hoisted the gun on to the edge of the parapet, in full view of the group below. "you see, monsieur, we are well provided. a machine gun, you will admit, is even more useful within walls than without. now as to your position. you have under your command some three hundred men trained--more or less. whether as a military force they are better than our men can only be decided if unfortunately you determine to put the matter to the test. but consider your risks. two days ago we captured your stores."--the officer jumped.--"your rearguard is in our hands, and that was your machine gun."--the officer stared.--"you are at least three weeks from your base, with perhaps two days' provisions in hand, no reserve of ammunition, and, as i said, the rains overdue. yonder country, during the rains, is a swamp." lieutenant jennaert turned pale. his messengers sent back to hurry on the dilatory convoy had strangely failed to return. but recovering himself, with a feeble attempt to smile he said-"you are joking, monsieur. you permit yourself a ruse. ah! ah! i am not to be entrapped in that way." "pardon me, monsieur. you shall have the fullest assurance as to the truth of what i am saying. lepoko, ask mr. barney to send out the white officer." the belgian was now looking very uncomfortable. this was a strange turning of the tables; his summons to surrender had been completely forgotten. jack had no need to kill time by keeping up the conversation, for in a minute or two the lieutenant captured in the river left the fort under an armed guard and walked quickly down. "beuzemaker!" exclaimed lieutenant jennaert under his breath. "yes, monsieur--monsieur beuzemaker." lieutenant beuzemaker smiled ruefully as he joined the group. he gave a rapid narrative of the capture of the convoy. "it only remains, therefore," said jack, "for you to decide upon your course, monsieur. may i make you a proposal? you shall surrender your arms and ammunition except a dozen rifles. i will supply you with canoes to take your men down the river, and provisions for a fortnight. within ten days you should enter a district where more food can be obtained. as you know, the country hereabouts has been made almost a desert by your people." but this was too much. was it he, lieutenant jennaert, who was being called upon to surrender? he rose in a fury. "never! the thing is absurd! monsieur, i take my leave. beuzemaker!----" he stopped, biting his lips. "monsieur beuzemaker is my prisoner," said jack suavely, rising. "he will accompany me back to my camp. of course, if you accept our terms, we will release all the prisoners." the belgian turned away in a rage. the meeting broke up; the two parties went their several ways. jack, as he walked back to the fort, hoped that on thinking the matter over the officer would see the wisdom of compliance. the alternative was starvation. he must see that it would be no easy matter to storm the fort, and that jack had only to sit tight for a few days. the state troops, none too well disciplined at the best, would soon be clamouring for food. with a starving soldiery, an active well-fed enemy on his rear, and a swarm of scouts cutting off his foraging parties, he must see the impossibility of making his way back through several hundred miles of country inhabited by tribes only waiting an opportunity to rise against their oppressors. so that when barney met him as he re-entered the fort, and asked eagerly, "well, sorr, and did the patient swallow the pill?" he smiled as he shook his head, saying-"not yet, barney. but he _will_ swallow it, bitter as it is." "or his men will swallow him, bedad!" and a few hours later a negro soldier marched up the hill with a white flag. lieutenant jennaert's note was very brief. monsieur,-j'agrée vos conditions. jennaert, _lieutenant dans l'armée de l'état du congo_. chapter xxxii the dawn of freedom it was a fortnight later. ilombekabasi was the scene of great activity. gangs of negroes were busy carrying, hauling, stones of all shapes and sizes from the dry bed of the stream that once flowed past the fort; other gangs were building a wall above the original northern wall of the fort, a few yards beyond the spring whence the water supply was derived. on the cultivable land on the west and east men and women were digging, ploughing, planting, hoeing, for in some parts seed sown only two weeks before was already sprouting. barney o'dowd superintended the mason work, sporting a red fez taken from one of the slain askari and dry-cleaned by a process of his own. in his mouth was his old short clay pipe, in which, after long deprivation, he was smoking a mixture made by himself from tobacco grown on a bed in front of his hut. it was not shag, he said, nor twist, but it made a betther smoke than cavendish, and sure 'twould give a man a little comfort till the rale thing could be grown. the agriculturists were directed by imbono. an air of cheerful industry pervaded the whole settlement. when the state troops under lieutenant jennaert had disappeared, jack determined, after a breathing space, to enlarge the fort and to plant new crops. the enlargement was prompted not merely by the wish to have the source of the water supply within the wall, but by the expectation that the defeat of bula matadi would cause an increase of the population. and, in fact, within a week of jennaert's departure, natives from distant parts to which the news had penetrated came flocking into ilombekabasi to join the community which looked up to lokolobolo as its invincible chief. looking round upon the cheerful faces of the people; observing their willingness to work, and eagerness to please; watching the happy family life they led when unmolested and free from anxieties, jack felt that his toil had not been in vain, and was immeasurably glad that providence had laid this charge upon him. if only his uncle had lived to see this day! jack found that his feelings were shared by mr. arlington and his friend the missionary. they had awaited the issue of his hazardous enterprise with more anxiety than they cared to admit, and while they hailed his success with cordial congratulations, they were scarcely less troubled about the future. the congo state could not permit this leaven of revolt to spread; it would certainly organize an expeditionary force of sufficient strength to crush jack and his people; and then would not their lot be infinitely worse than it had ever been? "even so we shall have had some months of happiness, and set an example," said jack, talking things over with his friends the day before they left ilombekabasi. "but i hope for better things. we may have the rains upon us any day now; the country for miles around will be one vast morass; we shall be safe in our castle for six months, perhaps. and what may not be done in six months, mr. arlington?" "you mean?" "i mean if you and mr. dathan will hurry home and tell what you have seen and know. mr. arlington, you are no longer a member of parliament, i believe?" "no. the house of commons is no longer what it was." "surely it is what men like you choose to make it, sir. if you would go home, stand at a bye-election, and return to the house, what an immense influence a man with your record might wield! do you know what i would do in your place, sir? you do not mind my speaking out?" "not a bit. i am deeply interested." "well, sir, i would badger the foreign secretary; i would move the country until england moved the world." "go on the stump like gladstone?" "why not, sir? isn't the cause of the negroes every bit as good as the cause of the bulgarians or macedonians or armenians? nay, ten times better, because they're more helpless and suffer under a christian king! and you would succeed, sir." "i haven't gladstone's power of moving the masses." "what does that matter? the facts don't need any eloquence to back them, sir. i don't mean that you are not eloquent," he added with a smile. "i haven't heard you speak, but i have read your speeches; and if you tell what you have seen here, the country must listen, and something will surely be done. why, if you go to my old school and speak to the fellows in the schoolhouse, i'll back there's not a boy there but will want to rush off here by the first train, to lend a hand!" "upon my word, mr. challoner, i think you'd better come back with us and do the stumping yourself." "no, no," said jack, his face flushing. "i cannot leave these people. my place is here, and here i'll stick until i'm driven out, or until leopold is brought to book." "well, i'll do what i can. i promise you that. perhaps i've ploughed the lonely furrow long enough. what do you say, dathan? shall we join hands in this? we rowed in the same boat at trinity; we kept the head of the river. this boat's rather low down now, but d'you think we could make a bump?" "we'll make a shot for it, george. and please god, we like bishop latimer, will light such a candle in england as shall not be put out until this wrong is crushed and right is done." jack felt more than satisfied. if his countrymen had not grown strangely deaf, surely they would listen to these two--ay, and do more than listen. "you leave to-morrow?" he said. "yes. my leg won't carry me yet, but with a canoe and a litter i can make shift to get along until we reach the nyanza. can you lend me an interpreter?" "lepoko is a good fellow. i think i can spare him now. we'll see what he says." he sent for the man, and explained that he wished him to accompany the travellers during the first part of their journey. "me plenty sorry, massa," said lepoko. "me no fit to go. what for? me comfy heah! no lib for go talk talk for nudder massa. what for? nando go to boma with old massa; what den? he come back, get cotched, chicotte, feel plenty bad. no, no, sah; lepoko know all 'bout dat. lepoko go long long, do anyfing for massa; he lib for lub lokolobolo, no nudder massa dis time. why, me hab got wife in ilombekabasi; what for leabe wife? no good at all; dat what bula matadi make black man do, leabe wife, leabe pickin, go 'way all 'lone 'lone. make black man sick inside, sah; feel awful bad. no, no, i tell massa. nando go. he know inglesa plenty fine; he hab no got wife; he die of shame 'cos he leabe samba in fire hut; no one lub nando now. oh yes, sah! nando go: me tell him one time." after this breathless speech, lepoko ran off to find his brother. nando at first was by no means disposed to leave the fort on so long and hazardous a journey. but at last he was persuaded, though on bidding jack good-bye he said earnestly-"me nebber, nebber, nebber lib for hab nudder brudder what talk inglesa: oh no!" one afternoon a few days after this, one of the look-outs on the south-eastern blockhouse reported that he saw a crowd of people emerging from the forest a couple of miles away. hurrying to the spot, jack took a long look through his field-glasses and made out that the approaching throng was composed of natives, men, women, and children, the women being laden with babies and bundles. when the crowd came within earshot of the fort, a negro stepped forward, and, lifting his hands to his mouth, vociferated-"yo! yo!" "answer him, lianza," said jack to the man of the brazen throat. "i am here," shouted lianza. "is that ilombekabasi?" "it is ilombekabasi." "and lokolobolo?" "and lokolobolo." "i am lokua. my chief is makole. we come from limpoko to see lokolobolo." "lokolobolo says that makole and lokua may enter, but no more." "i am going." "are you going?" "o!" the negro returned to his company, who were now squatting in a series of circles just above the site of elbel's ruined camp. he presently returned with a negro in chief's array, a head taller than himself. the two negroes were admitted. makole stood before jack, a bundle of palm leaves in one hand. they exchanged greetings. "i am proud to see lokolobolo," said makole. "i come from limpoko. all my people have come with me, my four wives, my children, all my people. we have heard of the great things done by lokolobolo in ilombekabasi, and how he beat elobela and mutela and other servants of the great white chief who eats up the black men. we come to ask lokolobolo to let us be his people. i am makole, the chief; i have four wives and many children; but i say i will be lokolobolo's servant; all my people shall be his servants, if he will take us into ilombekabasi and let us live in peace." "why do you wish to leave limpoko?" asked jack. "we do not wish to leave limpoko. but what can we do, o lokolobolo? the rubber is done; we have no more of it; day by day the servants of the great white chief beat us and kill us because we cannot fill our baskets; limpoko will soon be a wilderness. we come before we are all gone, and we beg lokolobolo to hear our entreaty." "shall we admit makole?" asked jack of imbono, who had come to his side. "makole is a tall man, a great chief. we will be blood brothers and live together." "you may bring your people in, makole. but i warn you it may not be to live in peace. we have offended bula matadi; bula matadi will come with a great host to destroy us. all who live in ilombekabasi must not look for ease and peace, but for work and war. your people must share with the rest; they must build their own huts, till the fields, repair the walls, learn to scout and to fight in our way. it is not peace, makole." "i praise lokolobolo! i trust lokolobolo! i will do all he says, and my people shall learn all that he teaches," cried the chief, slapping his thighs. then, unwrapping the bundle of palm leaves, he displayed a shrivelled hand, and said-"this is my gift to lokolobolo." "what is this, makole?" asked jack, shuddering. "it is the hand of boloko, who whipped us and killed us, who can say how many? we met him as we came through the forest, and my young men killed him, and i bring his hand to lokolobolo to show that he is dead, and will trouble us no more." "but we do not deal with our enemies thus," said jack. the chief looked surprised. "it is the way of the servants of the great white chief," he said. "they kill us, and cut off our hands, and take them to their chiefs, and the chiefs are pleased and pay brass rods for them. i thought lokolobolo would be pleased." "lokolobolo is inglesa," said lepoko. "it is only bula matadi that pays for the hands of black men. give it to mboyo; he is boloko's brother. boloko hated mboyo, he hated samba; mboyo will be pleased." "bury it at once, out of sight," said jack, "bring your people in, makole. lepoko, take him to mr. barney; he will show him where to build his huts." all ilombekabasi flocked to the gates to see the entrance of this new contingent. they came in laughing, singing, dancing, the mothers eagerly asking where was lokolobolo that they might point him out to their little ones. but lokolobolo was not to be seen. chapter xxxiii conclusion jack had turned sadly from the sight of this joyous entry, and made his way towards the largest of the huts--the hut built for mr. martindale. there samba lay--had lain since barney, with a woman's tenderness, had carried him from elbel's camp to the beloved ilombekabasi which he had thought never to see again. little indeed he saw of the fort and of what was passing there as he lay, day by day, on his simple bamboo bed; for though his wounds slowly healed, not all the loving care lavished upon him by his parents and by barney, who spent every spare hour at his bedside--not the constant companionship of pat himself--brought back strength to his slowly wasting form. still, he was always cheerful. the ready smile lit up his face as lokolobolo appeared in the narrow doorway. barney rose as jack entered and made room for him at the head of the bed. "how are you now, samba?" asked jack, taking his hand. "better, master, better," answered the boy, his voice scarcely audible. "that's right. getting a little appetite, eh? must eat, you know, if you're to grow strong." "see my _kwanga_," said the mother, coming forward. "he eats no more than a bird." "it is nice, mother; i will eat more by and by. i am so tired now." "poor little fellow! you are in no pain?" "no, master, no pain; only tired." "cheer up! you will feel better in the morning." he pressed the boy's hand and turned to leave with barney. at the door mboyo overtook him. "he will not go yet to the great spirit, o lokolobolo?" he whispered anxiously. "we cannot tell, mboyo. all we can do is to tend him well. hope for the best." "poor bhoy!" said barney as they went away; "'tis mighty little betther he is, sorr, i'm fearing. 'twould tax the strength uv a horse to get over it, widout docthors an' all." as they walked across the camp, here a man, there a woman, paused in their work to ask lokolobolo how samba was. children came up--lofinda, for whom samba had shaped a tiny gun; lokilo, proud of his little fishing-rod, samba's gift; isangila, wearing a necklace of dried maize he had made for her--and asked shyly when samba would come out and play with them again. some brought offerings of food specially prepared, delicate fish and rare fruits, the choicest spoil of forest and stream for miles around. everybody loved the boy; and jack loved him with a particular affection. over and above his winning ways, samba stood for so much to jack, who, in thoughtful moods, seemed to see him as the spirit of the negro race, the embodiment of all that was best in the black man, the representative of millions of his kind, helpless pawns in a royal game of beggar my neighbour. it was samba whose woful plight had first brought home to his heart the terrible realities of the rubber slavery; it was samba who had been the means of founding ilombekabasi; to him was due the torch of freedom lit at last in this stricken land--a torch that jack, in his heart of hearts, dared to hope would never be extinguished. surely the conscience of christendom was awakening! pray god the awakening came not too late! a great silence lay upon ilombekabasi. to a stranger beyond the walls the place might have seemed deserted, so still it was, with none of the cheerful bustle that marks the beginning of a new day. men and women were gathered in little knots; they talked in whispers; some were sobbing; the eyes of most were dim with tears. even the children were subdued and quiet; they forgot their play, staring at their elders with puzzled, solemn eyes. why was the world so sad to-day? was it because samba was going away? surely he would come back to them; he had come back before. samba was leaving ilombekabasi. four persons stood by the little bamboo bed. at the foot a dog crouched, whimpering. father and mother bent in mute agony over their son; lukela, the fountain of her tears dried through long weeping, hovering above her boy as though by sheer power of love to guard him from the dread visitant already at the threshold; mboyo rocking himself to and fro in the abandonment of sorrow. and the two white men bowed their heads in silent sympathy and grief. they knew that the end was very near. jack felt a great lump in his throat as he gazed at the still form, lying with outstretched arms, too weak to move. poor little fellow! was this the end of the bright young life, so full of promise? he thought of the days of health, when the boy with happy face went hither and thither, eager to do some service for his beloved master, no matter how hard or how perilous. he thought of the dangers samba had faced for his parents' sake, and the brightness he had brought into their lives and the lives of hundreds of his people. he thought with agony of the terrible scene when samba, rather than say a word to the undoing of those he loved, had endured the tortures inflicted by the inhuman agent of a detestable tyranny. and now the end was at hand! the blithe spirit was departing, the poor body done to death by the greed of a christian king. "botofé bo le iwa! rubber is death!" the words rang in jack's ears; would they were the knell of this despotism, this monstrous "system" that bought wealth with the price of blood! the end came soon. samba moved his hand, and turned his eyes, and murmured "pat!" the watchers barely caught the word, but the dog sprang up, and went to the bed, and nestled his head on the boy's shoulder. samba murmured his pleasure, a happy smile lit up the brave young eyes, and then the light faded, and went out. samba had left ilombekabasi. they buried him next day in the forest he knew and loved so well, with the ceremonies of his people, and as befitted the son of a chief. all the people of ilombekabasi, men, women, and little children, followed him to the grave. they laid by his side the few possessions of the boy--his rifle, his knife, his tin, his wooden spear. and some of his comrades, makoko and lingombela and lianza and lepoko, fired a salute over him and left him there among the trees. that night, sitting in jack's hut, barney talked of the past and the future. "poor ould master came here for gold, sorr. all the gold in all the world is not worth little samba's life. whin the master looks down out uv paradise and sees the people here, i know what he'll say, just as if i heard 'm. he'll say: 'i was niver a philanthrophy, niver did hould wid that sort uv thing. but i'm rale glad that bhoy uv mine wint out wid me in time to make a few poor black people happy. poor craturs! god bless 'em!' sure, sorr, black people have got their feelings--same as dogs." the end _butler and tanner, the selwood printing works, frome, and london_ just published _by the same author_ one of clive's heroes a story of the fight for india illustrated by w. rainey, r.i. the headmaster of harrow: "i have read it and think it a very good book. the historical accuracy is really wonderful in a romance, and the local indian colour well preserved. mr. strang is to be congratulated." athenaeum: "an absorbing story.... the narrative not only thrills, but also weaves skilfully out of fact and fiction a clear impression of our fierce struggle for india." aberdeen free press: "mr. strang may congratulate himself on having achieved another superlatively good story." guardian: "an excellent tale. mr. herbert strang's care and accuracy in detail are far beyond those of the late mr. henty, with whom it is the fashion to compare his work, while he tells a story infinitely better." christian world: "a book from mr. herbert strang is now as regular and welcome an event as in former days were mr. henty's yearly volumes. _one of clive's heroes_ will thrill many a young heart during the christmas holidays. sound history and thrilling romance." lady's pictorial: "when in doubt what to buy for a boy, or boys, for a christmas gift, choose mr. herbert strang's _one of clive's heroes_." church times: "boys are fortunate indeed to have found in mr. strang a worthy successor to their old friend, the late g. a. henty." notts guardian: "'the successor to henty' is a title that needs living up to; but mr. herbert strang, upon whom it has been conferred, richly deserves it." educational times: "far better than henty." education: "a splendid book for boys. we used to think that no one could take henty's place; and we feel certain that no one will ever be able to take mr. strang's." saturday review: "herbert strang tells a story as well as henty told it, and his style is much more finished." hodder and stoughton publishers london * * * * * just published _by the same author_ (herbert strang's first half-crown book) jack hardy or, a hundred years ago illustrated by w. rainey, r.i. bookman: "a story about a gallant young middy could not have a more alluring sub-title than 'a hundred years ago.' on his way to join the _fury_ the gallant midshipman discovered a hotbed of smuggling at luscombe, and unearthed a spy of napoleon's. jack's first fight with the smugglers ended disastrously, and he soon found himself in a french prison. thence he made a daring escape, recaptured the _fury_, and picked up a fine prize ship on his way back to portsmouth. the characters in the story are drawn with originality and humour, especially that fine seaman babbage.... finally jack triumphs all along the line, and his gallantry is rewarded by his appointment to join the _victory_. boys will expect to hear more of jack hardy, and of what he did at trafalgar." athenaeum: "herbert strang is second to none in graphic power and veracity.... here is the best of character sketching in bold outline." speaker: "a greater than henty." school guardian: "mr. herbert strang fills in stories for boys the place of the late mr. henty." tribune: "herbert strang's former books 'caught on' with our boys as no other books of adventure since henty's industrious pen fell from his hand." dublin express: "it has become a truism to say that the mantle of henty has descended to herbert strang, and indeed in some respects mr. strang surpasses henty." hodder and stoughton publishers london * * * * * by herbert strang kobo a story of the russo-japanese war athenaeum: "in kobo, herbert strang has provided much more than a good boys' book for the christmas market. whilst readers of _tom burnaby_ will not be disappointed of an ample meal of stirring adventures and hard war fights, readers of a more serious turn will find an excellent picture of japanese life and character, ... not to mention some vivid sketches of modern naval warfare." spectator: "an excellent story, such as one might expect to have from the author of that capital book, _tom burnaby_.... 'with a japanese, duty comes inexorably first.' this, indeed, is the key-note of the whole story. this principle of action dominates bob's friend, and it dominates the story." saturday review: "last year a new name of great promise appeared in the list of writers of boys' books. this year the promise shown by mr. herbert strang in _tom burnaby_ is more than borne out by _kobo_ and _boys of the light brigade_.... he shares the late mr. henty's knowledge of history and war; he is less encyclopaedic in his descriptive methods perhaps than was henty, though he gives the same air of verisimilitude to his chapters by means of maps and charts ... he has an admirable style, and a sense of humour which he handles with the more effect because he never turns a situation into broad farce." academy: "for vibrant actuality there is nothing to come up to mr. strang's _kobo_." daily telegraph: "this vivid story owes not a little of its attractiveness to its many picturesque touches of local colour." pall mall gazette "mr. herbert strang, whose splendid story, _tom burnaby_, proved so brilliantly successful last year, has written another that will rank as its equal for vivid interest." westminster gazette: "an adventure story after a boy's own heart." * * * * * by herbert strang brown of moukden athenaeum: "herbert strang may be congratulated on another first-rate book.... characterization is a strong feature, ... and ah lum, the literary chief of the brigands, is a memorable type." spectator: "mr. strang has very rightly taken up again the subject in which his story of _kobo_ achieved such a success last year.... the story is very skilfully constructed.... of particular scenes we may single out for mention the episode of the railway train, ... a most effective piece of narrative.... the relief of humorous passages and situations has been given, and without stint.... ah lum, the spectacled brigand chief, with all the wisdom of confucius and lao-tze at his finger tips, is a most amusing person.... _brown of moukden_ is certainly a success." academy: "related with the same spirit and intimate knowledge of the east that made _kobo_ a marked success." church times: "the incident of the locomotive race down the siberian railway is, for breathless interest, the equal of anything we know of in the whole range of juvenile fiction.... the book will hold boy readers spellbound." army and navy gazette: "when mr. henty died boys were disconsolate, for they had lost a real friend; but now we have mr. herbert strang most capably taking his place. he was welcomed as showing great promise in _tom burnaby_, but he did better in _kobo_, that strong story of the earlier pages of the russo-japanese war, and now he has done better still in _brown of moukden_." gentlewoman: "mr. herbert strang may really be said to be the successor of the late mr. henty, and parents and others on the look-out for desirable boys' books must be grateful to him each year for an excellent story at christmastide.... this is the literature we want for young england." journal of education: "mr. strang's former books have led us to expect great things from his pen, and these volumes prove him to be in the foremost rank of writers of boys' books. they are thoroughly healthy in tone, full of stirring adventures; and in each case linked to history in a manner that is never oppressive, and adds considerably to the interest of the story." * * * * * by herbert strang boys of the light brigade a story of spain and the peninsular war spectator: "mr. strang's name will suffice to assure us that the subject is seriously treated, and a better subject could hardly be found.... altogether a capital story." professor oman (chichele professor of modern history at oxford, and author of _a history of the peninsular war_): "pray accept thanks from a historian for having got historical accuracy, combined with your fine romantic adventures." outlook: "let us be thankful for a boy's book really worth reading." schoolmaster: "we have read this book with great interest and delight. more than four hundred pages of the most thrilling events are told with a marvellous fidelity to history." standard: "it is a book which no boy will be able to put down when once started." the adventures of harry rochester a story of the days of marlborough and eugene academy: "_tom burnaby_ and _kobo_--the best books of their season--have a worthy successor in _the adventures of harry rochester_." glasgow herald: "mr. herbert strang again displays all the qualities that attracted attention and secured for him such a brilliant success when he made his appearance two years ago as the author of _tom burnaby_.... we recommend it to all parents who want something thoroughly sound, as well as interesting, to put into the hands of their boys." army and navy gazette: "the descriptive power and characterization are quite remarkable." dundee advertiser: "in some essentials, such as constancy in bold action, this well-studied and finely-coloured tale is superior to any written by the lamented henty. with the need of some one to take henty's vacant place has come the man." * * * * * by herbert strang tom burnaby field-marshal lord wolseley: "it is just the sort of book i would give to any schoolboy, for i know he would enjoy every page of it." sir a. conan doyle: "... i think it is a really excellent picture of african life." mr. j. l. paton, head-master of manchester grammar school: "... it is worth reading and thoroughly wholesome. i wish it all success." dr. r. p. scott, secretary of the head-masters' association: "... i have read the book from cover to cover, and found it thoroughly interesting, vivid, healthful, and helpful. i can cordially recommend it to boys, and will do so whenever opportunity offers." pall mall gazette: "that splendid story _tom burnaby_." educational news: "the stirring pages of _tom burnaby_." literary world: "... mr. strang ... has put as much work into this story as one finds in a really good novel; the little bits of useful information that he sprinkles through it are palatable and readily digestible, and the 'atmosphere' (if one may mix one's metaphors) 'rings true.'" mark lane express: "... mr. strang has come to the front rank with a bound...." world: "... the tone of the story is excellent; manly and spirited, it cannot fail to rouse a response in a boy's heart." financial news: "as a writer of stirring stories the author of the famous _tom burnaby_ stands in the front rank of those who devote their talents to the edification of the rising generation." school government chronicle: "mr. herbert strang understands the taste and temper of the british public-school boy." liverpool mercury: "the record of his career deserved to be bound in leather and blocked on all sides with gold." dundee advertiser: "... as good as the plot is the way in which the author conveys a living impression of the region and its inhabitants." glasgow evening news: "... a masterpiece in the henty manner." englishman (calcutta): "it is a book that every wholesome-minded boy will revel in, for it is alive with action and picturesque adventure." 