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.