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 a.s.sa.s.sination, 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 h.e.l.l, where sits in eternal d.a.m.nation Eccelin de Romano.
Cruelty for cruelty"s sake: the mad pleasure of watching suffering in its most odious form: that is the pa.s.sion which hides demon-like beneath this door, and that was the pa.s.sion 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 teta.n.u.s, 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.
CHAPTER XVI
DUE SOUTH
When Berselius and Meeus returned to Fort M"Ba.s.sa Adams, who met them, came to the conclusion that Berselius had been drinking. The man"s face looked stiff and bloated, just as a man"s face looks after a terrible debauch. Meeus looked cold and hard and old, but his eyes were bright and he was seemingly quite himself.
"To-morrow I shall start," said Berselius. "Not to-day. I am tired and wish to sleep." He went off to the room where his bed was, and cast himself on it and fell instantly into a deep and dreamless sleep.
The innocent may wonder how such a man would dare to sleep--dare to enter that dark country so close to the frontier of death. But what should the innocent know of a Berselius, who was yet a living man and walked the earth but a few years ago, and whose prototype is alive to-day. Alive and powerful and l.u.s.tful, great in mind, body, and estate.
Before sunrise next morning the expedition was marshalled in the courtyard for the start.
A great fire burned in the s.p.a.ce just before the house, and by its light the stores and tents were taken from the go-down. The red light of the fire lit up the black glistening skins of the porters as they loaded themselves with the chop boxes and tents and guns; lit up the red fez caps of the onlooking "soldiers," their glittering white teeth, their white eyeb.a.l.l.s, and the barrels of their rifles.
Beyond and below the fort the forest stretched in the living starlight like an infinite white sea. The tree-tops were roofed with a faint mist, no breath of wind disturbed it, and in contrast to the deathly stillness of all that dead-white world the sky, filled with leaping stars, seemed alive and vocal.
It was chill up here just before dawn. Hence the fire. Food had been served out to the porters, and they ate it whilst getting things ready and loading up. Berselius and his companions were breakfasting in the guest house and the light of the paraffin lamp lay on the veranda yellow as topaz in contrast with the red light of the fire in the yard.
Everything was ready for the start. They were waiting now for the sun.
Then, away to the east, as though a vague azure wind had blown up under the canopy of darkness, the sky, right down to the roof of the forest, became translucent and filled with distance.
A reef of cloud like a vermilion pencil-line materialized itself, became a rose-red feather tipped with dazzling gold, and dissolved as if washed away by the rising sea of light.
A great bustle spread through the courtyard. The remaining stores were loaded up, and under the direction of Felix, the porters formed in a long line, their loads on their heads.
As the expedition left the compound it was already day. The edge of the sun had leaped over the edge of the forest, the world was filled with light, and the sky was a sparkling blue.
What a scene that was! The limitless sea of snow-white mist rippled over by the sea of light, the mist billowed and spiralled by the dawn wind, great palm tops bursting through the haze, glittering effulgent with dew, birds breaking to the sky in coloured flocks, snow, and light, and the green of tremendous vegetation, and over all, new-built and beautiful, the blue, tranquil dome of sky.
It was song materialized in colour and form, the song of the primeval forests breaking from the mists of chaos, tremendous, triumphant, joyous, finding day at last, and greeting him with the glory of the palms, with the rustle of the n"sambyas tossing their golden bugles to the light, the drip and sigh of the euphorbia trees, the broad-leaved plantains and the thousand others whose forms hold the gloom of the forest in the mesh of their leaves.
"I have awakened, O G.o.d! I have awakened. Behold me, O Lord! I am Thine!"
Thus to the splendour of the sun and led by the trumpet of the wind sang the forest. A hundred million trees lent their voices to the song. A hundred million trees--acacia and palm, m"bina and cottonwood, thorn and mimosa; in gloom, in shine, in valley and on rise, mist-strewn and sun-stricken, all bending under the deep sweet billows of the wind.
At the edge of the forest Berselius and Adams took leave of Meeus. Neither Berselius nor Meeus showed any sign of the past day. They had "slept it off." As for Adams, he knew nothing, except that the villagers had been punished and their houses destroyed.
The way lay due south. They were now treading that isthmus of woods which connects the two great forests which, united thus, make the forest of M"Bonga. The trees in this vast connecting wood are different from the trees in the main forests. You find here enormous acacias, monkey-bread trees, raphia palms and baobabs; less gloom, and fewer creeping and hanging plants.
Berselius, as a rule, brought with him a taxidermist, but this expedition was purely for sport. The tusks of whatever elephants were slain would be brought back, but no skins; unless, indeed, they were fortunate enough to find some rare or unknown species.
CHAPTER XVII
SUN-WASHED s.p.a.cES