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