Only an honest man doing his duty.
When Jack Meredith said that there was not another man in Africa who
could make his way from Loango to the Simiacine Plateau he spoke no more
than the truth. There were only four men in all the world who knew the
way, and two of them were isolated on the summit of a lost mountain in
the interior. Meredith himself was unfit for the journey. There remained
Joseph.
True, there were several natives who had made the journey, but they were
as dumb and driven animals, fighting as they were told, carrying what
they were given to carry, walking as many miles as they were considered
able to walk. They hired themselves out like animals, and as the beasts
of the field they did their work--patiently, without intelligence. Half
of them did not know where they were going--what they were doing; the
other half did not care. So much work, so much wage, was their terse
creed. They neither noted their surroundings nor measured distance.
At the end of their journey they settled down to a life of ease and
leisure, which was to last until necessity drove them to work again.
Such is the African. Many of them came from distant countries, a few
were Zanzibaris, and went home made men.
If any doubt the inability of such men to steer a course through the
wood, let him remember that three months' growth in an African forest
will obliterate the track left by the passage of an army. If any hold
that men are not created so dense and unambitious as has just been
represented, let him look nearer home in our own merchant service.
The able-bodied seaman goes to sea all his life, but he never gets any
nearer navigating the ship--and he a white man.
In coming down to Loango, Joseph had had the recently-made track of
Oscard's rescuing party to guide him day by day. He knew that this was
now completely overgrown. The Simiacine Plateau was once more lost to
all human knowledge.
And up there--alone amidst the clouds--Guy Oscard was, as he himself
tersely put it, “sticking to it.” He had stuck to it to such good effect
that the supply of fresh young Simiacine was daily increasing in bulk.
Again, Victor Durnovo seemed to have regained his better self. He was
like a full-blooded horse--tractable enough if kept hard at work. He was
a different man up on the Plateau to what he was down at Loango. There
are some men who deteriorate in the wilds, while others are better,
stronger, finer creatures away from the luxury of civilisation and
the softening influence of female society. Of these latter was Victor
Durnovo.
Of one thing Guy Oscard soon became aware, namely, that no one could
make the men work as could Durnovo. He had merely to walk to the door of
his tent to make every picker on the little Plateau bend over his tree
with renewed attention. And while above all was eagerness and hurry,
below, in the valley, this man's name insured peace.
The trees were now beginning to show the good result of pruning and a
regular irrigation. Never had the leaves been so vigorous, never had the
Simiacine trees borne such a bushy, luxuriant growth since the dim dark
days of the Flood.
Oscard relapsed into his old hunting ways. Day after day he tranquilly
shouldered his rifle, and alone, or followed by one attendant only, he
disappeared into the forest, only to emerge therefrom at sunset. What he
saw there he never spoke of. Sure it was that he must have seen strange
things, for no prying white man had set foot in these wilds before
him; no book has ever been written of that country that lies around the
Simiacine Plateau.
He was not the man to worry himself over uncertainties. He had an
enormous faith in the natural toughness of an Englishman, and while he
crawled breathlessly in the track of the forest monsters he hardly gave
a thought to Jack Meredith. Meredith, he argued to himself, had always
risen to the occasion: why should he not rise to this? He was not the
sort of man to die from want of staying power, which, after all, is
the cause of more deaths than we dream of. And when he had recovered he
would either return or send back Joseph with a letter containing those
suggestions of his which were really orders.
Of Millicent Chyne he thought more often, with a certain tranquil sense
of a good time to come. In her also he placed a perfect faith. A poet
has found out that, if one places faith in a man, it is probable that
the man will rise to trustworthiness--of woman he says nothing. But of
these things Guy Oscard knew little. He went his own tranquilly strong
way, content to buy his own experience.
He was thinking of Millicent Chyne one misty morning while he walked
slowly backwards and forwards before his tent. His knowledge of the
country told him that the mist was nothing but the night's accumulation
of moisture round the summit of the mountain--that down in the valleys
it was clear, and that half an hour's sunshine would disperse all. He
was waiting for this result when he heard a rifle-shot far away in the
haze beneath him; and he knew that it was Joseph--probably making one of
those marvellous long shots of his which roused a sudden sigh of envy in
the heart of this mighty hunter whenever he witnessed them.
Oscard immediately went to his tent and came out with his
short-barrelled, evil-looking rifle on his arm. He fired both barrels
in quick succession and waited, standing gravely on the edge of the
Plateau. After a short silence two answering reports rose up through the
mist to his straining ears.
He turned and found Victor Durnovo standing at his side.
“What is that?” asked the half-breed.
“It must be Joseph,” answered Guy, “or Meredith. It can be nobody else.”
“Let us hope that it is Meredith,” said Durnovo with a forced laugh,
“but I doubt it.”
Oscard looked down in his sallow, powerful face. He was not quick at
such things, but at that moment he felt strangely certain that Victor
Durnovo was hoping that Meredith was dead.
“I hope it isn't,” he answered, and without another word he strode away
down the little pathway from the summit into the clouds, loading his
rifle as he went.
Durnovo and his men, working among the Simiacine bushes, heard from time
to time a signal shot as the two Englishmen groped their way towards
each other through the everlasting night of the African forest.
It was midday before the new-comers were espied making their way
painfully up the slope, and Joseph's welcome was not so much in
Durnovo's handshake, in Guy Oscard's silent approval, as in the row of
grinning, good-natured black faces behind Durnovo's back.
That night laughter was heard in the men's camp for the first time for
many weeks--nay, several months. According to the account that Joseph
gave to his dusky admirers, he had been on terms of the closest
familiarity with the wives, and families of all who had such at Loango
or on the Coast. He knew the mother of one, had met the sweetheart of
another, and confessed that it was only due to the fact that he was not
“a marryin' man” that he had not stayed at Loango for the rest of his
life. It was somewhat singular that he had nothing but good news to
give.
Durnovo heard the clatter of tongues, and Guy Oscard, smoking his
contemplative pipe in a camp-chair before his hut door, noticed that the
sound did not seem very welcome.
Joseph's arrival with ten new men seemed to give a fresh zest to the
work, and the carefully-packed cases of Simiacine began to fill Oscard's
tent to some inconvenience. Thus things went on for two tranquil weeks.
“First,” Oscard had said, “let us get the crop in and then we can
arrange what is to be done about the future.”
So the crop received due attention; but the two leaders of the men--he
who led by fear and he who commanded by love--were watching each other.
One evening, when the work was done, Oscard's meditations were disturbed
by the sound of angry voices behind the native camp. He turned naturally
towards Durnovo's tent, and saw that he was absent. The voices rose and
fell: there was a singular accompanying roar of sound which Oscard never
remembered having heard before. It was the protesting voice of a mass of
men--and there is no sound like it--none so disquieting. Oscard listened
attentively, and suddenly he was thrown up on his feet by a pistol-shot.
At the same moment Joseph emerged from behind the tents, dragging some
one by the collar. The victim of Joseph's violence was off his feet, but
still struggling and kicking.
Guy Oscard saw the flash of a second shot, apparently within a few
inches of Joseph's face; but he came on, dragging the man with him, whom
from his clothing Oscard saw to be Durnovo.
Joseph was spitting out wadding and burnt powder.
“Shoot ME, would yer--yer damned skulking chocolate-bird? I'll teach
you! I'll twist that brown neck of yours.”
He shook him as a terrier shakes a rat, and seemed to shake things off
him--among others a revolver which described a circle in the air and
fell heavily on the ground, where the concussion discharged a cartridge.
“'Ere, sir,” cried Joseph, literally throwing Durnovo down on the ground
at Oscard's feet, “that man has just shot one o' them poor niggers, so
'elp me God!”
Durnovo rose slowly to his feet, as if the shaking had disturbed his
faculties.
“And the man hadn't done 'im no harm at all. He's got a grudge against
him. I've seen that this last week and more. It's a man as was kinder
fond o' me, and we understood each other's lingo. That's it--he was
afraid of my 'earing things that mightn't be wholesome for me to know.
The man hadn't done no harm. And Durnovo comes up and begins abusing
'im, and then he strikes 'im, and then he out with his revolver and
shoots 'im down.”
Durnovo gave an ugly laugh. He had readjusted his disordered dress and
was brushing the dirt from his knees.
“Oh, don't make a fool of yourself,” he said in a hissing voice; “you
don't understand these natives at all. The man raised his hand to me.
He would have killed me if he had had the chance. Shooting was the only
thing left to do. You can only hold these men by fear. They expect it.”
“Of course they expect it,” shouted Joseph in his face; “of course they
expect it, Mr. Durnovo.”
“Why?”
“Because they're SLAVES. Think I don't know that?”
He turned to Oscard.
“This man, Mr. Oscard,” he said, “is a slave-owner. Them forty that
joined at Msala was slaves. He's shot two of 'em now; this is his
second. And what does he care?--they're his slaves. Oh! shame on yer!”
turning again to Durnovo; “I wonder God lets yer stand there. I can only
think that He doesn't want to dirty His hand by strikin' yer down.”
Oscard had taken his pipe from his lips. He looked bigger, somehow, than
ever. His brown face was turning to an ashen colour, and there was a
dull, steel-like gleam in his blue eyes. The terrible, slow-kindling
anger of this Northerner made Durnovo catch his breath. It was so
different from the sudden passion of his own countrymen.
“Is this true?” he asked.
“It's a lie, of course,” answered Durnovo, with a shrug of the
shoulders. He moved away as if he were going to his tent, but Oscard's
arm reached out. His large brown hand fell heavily on the half-breed's
shoulder.
“Stay,” he said; “we are going to get to the bottom of this.”
“Good,” muttered Joseph, rubbing his hands slowly together; “this is
prime.”
“Go on,” said Oscard to him.
“Where's the wages you and Mr. Meredith has paid him for those forty
men?” pursued Joseph. “Where's the advance you made him for those men at
Msala? Not one ha'penny of it have they fingered. And why? Cos they're
slaves! Fifteen months at fifty pounds--let them as can reckon tot it up
for theirselves. That's his first swindle--and there's others, sir! Oh,
there's more behind. That man's just a stinkin' hotbed o' crime. But
this 'ere slave-owning is enough to settle his hash, I take it.”
“Let us have these men here--we will hear what they have to say,” said
Oscard in the same dull tone that frightened Victor Durnovo.
“Not you!” he went on, laying his hand on Durnovo's shoulder again;
“Joseph will fetch them, thank you.”
So the forty--or the thirty-seven survivors, for one had died on the
journey up and two had been murdered--were brought. They were peaceful,
timorous men, whose manhood seemed to have been crushed out of them; and
slowly, word by word, their grim story was got out of them. Joseph knew
a little of their language, and one of the head fighting men knew a
little more, and spoke a dialect known to Oscard. They were slaves they
said at once, but only on Oscard's promise that Durnovo should not
be allowed to shoot them. They had been brought from the north by a
victorious chief, who in turn had handed them over to Victor Durnovo in
payment of an outstanding debt for ammunition supplied.
The great African moon rose into the heavens and shone her yellow light
upon this group of men. Overhead all was peace: on earth there was
no peace. And yet it was one of Heaven's laws that Victor Durnovo had
broken.
Guy Oscard went patiently through to the end of it. He found out all
that there was to find; and he found out something which surprised him.
No one seemed to be horror-struck. The free men stood stolidly looking
on, as did the slaves. And this was Africa--the heart of Africa, where,
as Victor Durnovo said, no one knows what is going on. Oscard knew
that he could apply no law to Victor Durnovo except the great law of
humanity. There was nothing to be done, for one individual may not
execute the laws of humanity. All were assembled before him--the whole
of the great Simiacine Expedition except the leader, whose influence lay
over one and all only second to his presence.
“I leave this place at sunrise to-morrow,” said Guy Oscard to them all.
“I never want to see it again. I will not touch one penny of the money
that has been made. I speak for Mr. Meredith and myself--”
“Likewise me--damn it!” put in Joseph.
“I speak as Mr. Meredith himself would have spoken. There is the
Simiacine--you can have it. I won't touch it. And now who is going with
me--who leaves with me to-morrow morning?”
He moved away from Durnovo.
“And who stays with me?” cried the half-breed, “to share and share alike
in the Simiacine?”
Joseph followed Oscard, and with him a certain number of the blacks, but
some stayed. Some went over to Durnovo and stood beside him. The slaves
spoke among themselves, and then they all went over to Durnovo.
So that which the placid moon shone down upon was the break-up of the
great Simiacine scheme. Victor Durnovo had not come off so badly. He had
the larger half of the men by his side. He had all the finest crop the
trees had yielded--but he had yet to reckon with high Heaven.