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.