Long Odds

"You have come here to meet Domingo. You are friends of his?" he said.

Herrero hesitated, but his companion laughed when an interpreter repeated the question.

"You can say we came to meet him, in any case," he replied.

"Was that wise?" asked the old man, and his voice had a jarring ring. "Still, as you have come you shall see him."

Then he smiled grimly, and made a sign to some of those behind. Again there was a stirring of the crowd, and Nares felt his nerves thrill with expectancy. He looked at Ormsgill, who was standing very still with empty hands at his side, and afterwards saw Gavin, the Boer, glance sharply round and change his grip on the heavy rifle. In another moment there was a very suggestive half-articulate murmur from the assembly, and then an impressive stillness as two men came forward bearing between them a heavy fiber package slung as a hammock usually is beneath a pole. They laid it down, and while Ormsgill and Gavin moved forward at the Headman's sign one of them took something out of it. He held it up, and Nares gasped and struggled with a sense of nausea, for it was a drawn and distorted human face that met his shrinking gaze.

"They've killed him!" he said hoarsely.

Ormsgill stood rigidly still. "Yes," he said, "it's Domingo. Considering everything one could hardly blame them."

Then the stillness was sharply broken. A cry rose from the assembly as Herrero's boys turned and fled. Their leader shrank back pace by pace from the old man's gaze, and then wheeling round sped after them. As he did so somebody shouted, and a couple of Sniders flashed. Their crash was lost in a clamor, and odd groups of men sprang out into the open space. Then Nares saw Gavin running hard come up with his comrade and grasp his shoulder. He drove him before him towards one of the larger huts while the Snider bullets struck up little spurts of sand behind them.

Nares set his lips, and held his breath as he watched them. The shadowy entrance of the hut was not far away, but it seemed impossible that they could reach it before one, at least, of them was struck. Herrero, blind with fear, seemed to flag already, but Gavin drove him on, and Nares could see that his face was set and grim. They went by a cluster of negroes running to intercept them, and the tall man in the white duck seemed to fling his comrade forward into the hut. Then he spun round pitching up the heavy rifle. There was a flash and a detonation, and Ormsgill heard a curious droning sound as if a bee had passed above his head. In another second a man who stood close at his Suzerain's side lurched forward with a strangled cry. Then Gavin sprang into the hut, and when the old man made a sign four of his retainers laid hands on Ormsgill and his companion. They were big muscular men, and Nares looked at Ormsgill, who submitted quietly.

"It's horrible," he said.

Ormsgill made a little gesture. "They brought it upon themselves. I'm a little sorry for Gavin, but I can't get away."

It was perfectly evident. Their captors held them fast, pinioning their arms with greasy black hands, and there were two to each of them, while there are very few white men who have the negro's physical strength, at least if they have been any time in that climate. Nares gasped and felt his heart throb furiously, as he waited with his eyes fixed on the hut.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE DAY OF RECKONING

There was silence in the village for almost a minute after Gavin vanished into the hut, and the men who had pursued him stood still, apparently irresolute. The entrance was dark and narrow, and they could not see inside, but it was evident that they recognized it was a very determined man who awaited them in its shelter. He was also white, which had no doubt its effect upon the negro mind, since it usually happens that when a race or caste asserts its superiority loudly enough its claims are admitted, especially when they are backed by visible force.

So while the seconds slipped away the negroes stood hesitating, and glancing at one another as well as at the hut which lay in the shadow. Their ebony limbs and scanty draperies were forced up against the glaring dust and sand in a flood of searching brilliancy. Nares, who felt his nerves tingle, could see the tension in their dusky faces and the oily gleam of their bodies as the perspiration broke from them. There was something curiously suggestive of pent up fury in the poses they had fallen into. In the meanwhile he could not move. Indeed, the big negro who held him fast had savagely drawn his arms behind his back, and the strain in the muscles was becoming almost intolerably painful.

Then several men broke away from the others and ran towards the hut, and once more Nares held his breath. He could have shouted as he saw the first dark form bound on, clutching a long Snider rifle in both hands, but he restrained himself. In another moment or two a thin flash blazed from the doorway of the hut, and the man went down with a shrill scream and lay clawing at the sand. Nares heard no detonation. He was only conscious of the little curl of blue smoke in the entrance of the hut, and the black object that writhed in the pitiless glare in front of it. Then the fallen man's comrades stopped, and a little shiver ran through him as he turned to Ormsgill, who nodded as if he understood him.

"You can only face it," said the latter. "They would scarcely listen to their Headman, and I can't move a limb. It's a single-shot rifle. They're bound to kill him." Then he broke off with a little gasp. "Ah," he said a moment later, "two of them are trying it now."

Nares did not wish to look, but he could not help it. The scene held his gaze, and he saw the two figures move cautiously towards the hut, keeping one wall of it between them and the doorway as far as they could. This, however, did not serve them. The deadly fire flashed again, and one negro who collapsed suddenly fell on his hands and knees. Then there was another streak of sparks and smoke, and the second man staggering forward went down headlong with a thud. Several Sniders flashed, and there was silence again.

"It's too much," said Ormsgill. "I can't stand this."

He struggled furiously, and he and the men who held him swayed to and fro, a cluster of scuffling, staggering figures for a moment or two. The effort, however, was futile, and he stood still again with his arms pinioned fast behind his back and the perspiration dripping from him while the Suzerain looked at him from his stool with a little grim smile.

"It is not your affair," he said.

Ormsgill said nothing, though the veins were swollen on his forehead and his face was suffused with blood, and at a sign from the Headman the negroes who held him relaxed their grasp a trifle. Nares also stood still, with every nerve in him thrilling. The man inside the hut no doubt deserved his fate, but that did not seem to count then, and the missionary felt only a sympathy with him that was almost overwhelming in its intensity. It was one man against a multitude, for there was no sign that Herrero was making any effort, and, after all, that man sprang from the same stock as he did. Then deep down in him he felt a thrill of pride, for Gavin was making a very gallant fight of it. It was in many ways a shameful work that he and his comrade had done, selling proscribed arms to the people who had turned against him now, fomenting discord between them and their neighbors, and debauching them with villainous rum, but, at least, he made it clear that the courage of his kind was in him. This was all at variance with Nares' beneficent creed, but the man was dying, indomitable, a white man.

Those who meant to kill him drew back a little farther from the hut, and standing and squatting flung up the long rifles. They were by no means marksmen, but the hut was large and built of cane and branch work. The heavy Snider bullets smashed through it, and for a few minutes the stagnant air was filled with the jarring detonations. There was no answering flash from the hut and Nares could see that its shadowy entrance was empty. Then as the ringing of the Sniders died away and a man here and there stole forward cautiously it seemed to him that a dimly seen white object dragged itself towards the doorway and crouched in it. He did not think it would be visible to the assailants, for they were keeping a little behind the hut, but it was clear to him that the one man against a multitude was bent on fighting still.

The straggling figures crept on, moving obliquely towards the perilous entrance, that the hut might shelter them, until they massed together for a dash at it. Then the flash blazed out again, and one of them dropped. Another went down screaming a few seconds later, and then the foremost broke and fled, and there was a sudden scattering of those behind. There were a host of negroes, but they shrank from that unerring rifle. They were evidently willing to face a hazard, but this was certain death. Then the Suzerain of the village signed to the negroes who held Ormsgill, and they led him forward.

"It seems it may cost us a good deal to kill that man," he said. "Go and see what terms he will make with me. An offer of a few good rifles would have some weight just now."

Ormsgill went, and crossing the hot space of dust and sand walked into the hut. Dazzled as he was by the change from the glare outside, he could see almost nothing for a moment or two. The place was also filled with an acrid haze, but by degrees he became accustomed to the dimness and made out Gavin lying against the wall. He looked up with a little wry smile, but Ormsgill moving nearer saw that his face was gray and drawn. There was dust on his thin duck clothing, and in two spots a small dark-colored stain.

"You are hit?" he said.

"Yes," said Gavin, "I'm done." He gasped before he spoke again with evident difficulty. "They plugged me twice before they made the last attempt. I could just hold the rifle. If they'd kept it up they'd have got in."

"Where's Herrero?"

Gavin appeared to glance across the hut, and Ormsgill saw a huddled figure lying in the shadow. It did not move at all.

"Yes," said Gavin, "I think the first bullet that came in quieted him, and I wasn't sorry. He was worrying me. Lost his nerve, though he never had very much. Well, I suppose you have come to make a bargain with me?"

"Something like that. Our friend yonder hinted that he would probably do a good deal for a few rifles."

Gavin smiled dryly. "It isn't worth while now. As you have no doubt noticed, I can hardly talk to you."

He stopped for a moment with a heavy gasp. "This was my last kick, you see."

"Ah," said Ormsgill, "is there any other little way in which I could be of service? Any message you would like sent on?"

The man made a painful effort, but Ormsgill had now some little difficulty in hearing him. "None," he said. "They have forgotten me yonder, and, perhaps, it's just as well. Our folks – my mother was Cape Dutch, you know – believe in everything as it used to be, but I'm like my father; there was always a kick in me. One of your Colonial vacillations cost him his farm, for, though he said he was ashamed of his country, he wouldn't recognize the Boers as his rulers. I, however, got on with them until I vexed the authorities by something I did in resentment of the – arrogance of certain mine-grabbing Englishmen. I believe I might have made terms if I'd truckled to them a little, but that was a thing I wouldn't do, and so I came out here. There are probably more of us with the same nonsensical notions."

Ormsgill said nothing for a moment or two. He had also lived among the outcasts, and knew what comes of disdaining to regard things from the conventional point of view. Something in him stirred in sympathy with the dying man, and he sat down in the dust and laid a hand on his shoulder. Gavin made no further observation that was intelligible, until at last he feebly raised his head.

"If you wouldn't mind I'd like a drink," he said.

Ormsgill rose and walked out of the hut calling in the native tongue. The men who squatted about it in the hot sand still clenching their Sniders apparently failed to understand him, or were unwilling to do what he asked, and some time had slipped by when at last one of them brought a dripping calabash. Ormsgill went into the hut with it, and then took off his shapeless hat as he poured out the water on the hot soil. Gavin lay face downwards now, clutching his deadly rifle, but there was no breath in him. Then Ormsgill went back quietly to where the Headman and his Suzerain were sitting.

"I am afraid you can not have those rifles. The man is dead," he said.

After that he and Nares were led back to their hut, and when it was made clear to them that they were expected to stay there Ormsgill sat down in the shadow and pulled out his pipe.

"We wondered what was going on, and now the thing's quite plain," he said. "It's rebellion."

"How was it they didn't creep round the hut from behind?" asked Nares, who felt a trifle averse from facing the point that concerned them most.

"Lost their heads, most probably," said Ormsgill. "Didn't think of it. Any way, they'd have had to make a dash for the door eventually. Still, it would have saved them a man or two, and our friend the Suzerain noticed it."

"Why didn't he point it out to them?"

"I fancy he wanted to see how they'd stand fire, and break them in. Felt he could afford to throw a few of them away, as he certainly could, and he only stepped in when the thing was commencing to discourage them."

"It's quite likely you're right," and Nares looked at his comrade with a little wry smile. "Still, after all, I'm not sure it's very material."

The lines grew a trifle deeper on Ormsgill's worn face. "No," he said, "the real question is what our dusky acquaintance means to do with us, and we have to face it. Personally, I don't think he means us any harm, but it's certain he won't let us go until he and his friends have cleaned out San Roque. You see, in an affair of this kind the first blow must be successful, and he has probably a lurking suspicion that we might warn Dom Erminio. The trouble is that once the rebellion breaks out it will be almost impossible for us to reach the coast."

He spoke quietly, but there was a strain in his voice, and Nares guessed what he felt.

"I suppose he wouldn't be content with our assurance that we'd say nothing?" he suggested.

"Would you make it?"

Nares sat very still for a few moments, with a curious look in his eyes, and one hand closed, and his comrade once more recognized that there had been a change in him of late. He had the fever on him slightly, and while that is nothing unusual in those forests, he had grown perceptibly harder and grimmer during the last few weeks. Now and then he also gave way to outbreaks of indignation, which, so far as Ormsgill knew, was not a thing he had hitherto been addicted to doing. Still, the latter was aware that the white man's mental balance is apt to become a trifle unsettled in that land.

"I can't tell. It's a question I've grappled with in one shape or other before," he said. "The land is full of iniquities and horrors, and I think that some of them can only be washed out in blood. That law stands as it has always done. The great trade road to the south of us is paved with the bones of the victims, and they still come down to die, worked out in a few years on the plantations. It is a thing that can't go on."

He opened and closed a thin hand savagely while his voice rose to a harsher note. "For one man killed by the bullet if war breaks out a hundred perish yearly under the driver's lash on the great roads and, I think, among the coffee plants. They are dumb cattle, here and in the Congo. They can not tell their troubles, and they have no friends. How could they when the white man grows rich by their toil and anguish? Still, this earth is the Lord's, and there are men in it who will listen when once what is being done in this land of darkness is clearly told them. One must believe it or throw away all faith in humanity. I think if it rested with me I would let these bushmen come down and crush their oppressors, since it seems there is no other way of making their sorrows known."

He broke off abruptly, and seemed to shrink back within himself, for it was, after all, but seldom he spoke in that fashion. Ormsgill nodded.

"It's a very old way of claiming attention, and one that's sometimes effective," he said. "They might have tried it before, but, you see, those beneath the yoke have their hands tied, and those who aren't somewhat naturally don't care. That's one of the things which have hampered most attempts at emancipation. Only our friend the Suzerain has sense enough to realize that if they sit still much longer the yoke will be tolerably securely fastened on all of them. I think he has the gifts of a leader, but there is another man of the same kind on the coast. I mean Dom Clemente, and I'm not sure he'd be willing to have the land swept out in that unceremonious fashion. In fact, one could almost fancy that in due time he means to do the cleaning up, tactfully, himself."

He stopped a moment, and smiled somewhat grimly before he went on again. "After all, this doesn't directly concern either of us. It's a little hard that now when the thing we have in hand is in one sense accomplished and neither Domingo nor Herrero can worry us, we should be kept here indefinitely at the pleasure of this back-country nigger."

He glanced at the dusky men who squatted not far away in the shadow watching the hut. They had Snider rifles, and it was evident they were there to see that nobody came out. Then he sat moodily silent awhile, with a curious hardness in his lined face. He was lame and worn-out. The climate had sapped the physical strength out of him, and the wound in his leg still caused him pain. Also, struggle against it as he would, the black dejection which preys on the white man in that land was fastening itself on him. The thing was hard, almost intolerably so. He was a captive with the opportunity of accomplishing his task receding every moment further away from him, for it was clear that once the rebellion broke out it would be almost impossible for him to convey his boys across the track of it to the wished-for coast. Some time had slipped by when Nares roused himself to ask another question.

"Are these people likely to meet with any opposition from the natives when they march?" he said.

"That," said Ormsgill reflectively, "is a thing I'm not quite sure about. There is one Headman of some importance between them and the littoral. You know whom I mean, and it would make things difficult for our jailers if he remained on good terms with the authorities. In fact, in that case it seems to me these folks would have a good deal of trouble in getting any further. What he will do I naturally don't know, but if I was in command of San Roque I would make every effort to keep him quiet and content just now."

After that he once more sat silent, apparently brooding heavily, until the sudden darkness fell and the pungent smoke of the cooking fires drifted about the village. Then, soon after food was brought them, he sank into restless sleep.

CHAPTER XXVII

AN ERROR OF JUDGMENT

Fort San Roque stood, as Father Tiebout sometimes said, on the verge of extinction in the shadow of the debatable land, but its Commandant or Chefe, as he was usually termed, had become accustomed to the fact, and, if he did not forget it altogether, seldom took it into serious consideration. After all, the European only exists on sufferance in the hotter parts of Africa, and as a rule, once he realizes it, ceases to trouble himself about the matter and concentrates his attention on the acquiring of riches by any means available. Dom Erminio was not an exception, and being by no means particular, endeavored to make the most of his opportunities, especially as his term of office was not a long one. It was, perhaps, not astonishing that in his eagerness to do so he became to some extent oblivious of everything else, since those entrusted with authority over a discontented subject people have at other times and in other places acted as though they were a trifle blind to what was going on about them. Dom Erminio was cunning, but, as occasionally happens in the case of cunning men, he was also short-sighted.

The evening meal had been cleared away when he lay in a canvas lounge, yellow in face, as white men often become in that part of Africa, with a cigar in his bony fingers. Darkness had just closed down on the lonely station, but the little rickety residency had lain for twelve hours under a burning sun, and now the big oil lamps raised the already almost insupportable temperature. The Chefe, however, did not seem to feel it. He lay in his chair apparently languidly content, a spare figure in loose and somewhat soiled white uniform, looking at his Lieutenant, who was fingering a glass of red Canary wine. Neither of them troubled themselves about the fact that there were men in that country who regarded them with a vindictive hatred.

"I almost think we may as well call that man in," he said.

The Lieutenant Luiz glanced towards the veranda, where a negro was patiently squatting, as he had, in fact, been doing for most of the day. He brought a message from a Headman of some importance in the vicinity, and there was no reason why he should not have been listened to several hours earlier, except that Dom Erminio preferred to keep him waiting. It was in his opinion advisable that a negro should be taught humbly to await the white man's pleasure, which is a policy that has now and then brought trouble upon the white man. Dom Luiz, who understood his companion's views on that subject, smiled.

"He has, no doubt, complaints to make. They always have," he said. "Considering everything, that is not astonishing. I wonder if the Headman expects us to give them much consideration."

Dom Erminio spread his yellow hands out. "One would have thought we had taught him to expect nothing. He is, it seems, a little slow to understand. Perhaps, we have not put the screw on quite hard enough. I fancy another turn would make him restive."

He looked at his Lieutenant, and both of them laughed. Then the Chefe made a little sign.

"Bring him in," he said.

The negro came in, a big, heavily-built man, with an expressionless face. When Dom Erminio made him a sign not to come too near he squatted down, a huddled object with apathetic patience in its pose, until the Lieutenant signified that he might deliver his message.

"The Headman sends you greeting. He has a complaint to make," he said, and another dusky man who had slipped in softly made his observations plain. "The soldiers have been beating the people in one of his villages, and carrying off things that did not belong to them again. The Headman asks for justice in this matter."

"He shall have it," said the Chefe. "His people have been insolent, and they are certainly getting lazy. We will send him a requisition for more provisions."

Nobody could have told whether the messenger felt any resentment, but, after all, very few white men ever quite understand what the African is thinking. He crouched impassively still, with the lamplight on his heavy face and his oily skin gleaming softly over the great knotted muscles of his splendid arms and shoulders. There was something in his attitude which vaguely suggested dormant force that might spread destruction when it was unloosed, but that naturally did not occur to the Chefe, who indicated by a little gesture that he might continue.

"There is another matter," said the negro. "The Headman can not send in the rubber demanded. Already we have cleared the forest of half the trees. One has to go a long way to find any more. He will do what he can, but he asks that you will be content with a little less than usual."

Dom Erminio shook his head reproachfully. "I have made this man concessions, and this is the result," he said. "There are many duties I have released him from, and I only ask a little rubber and a few other things for the favor."

Then he straightened himself in his chair. "Tell your Headman that not a load of rubber will be excused him, and he must restrain his people from provoking the soldiers. Also, the next time he has a complaint to make let him come himself and lay it before me."