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.