The awful man at the table was beginning to work himself up. He had risen at the second question, and at the third time of asking he seized Meeus by the shoulders. "_Did you kill those people----?_"
"Punishment," stuttered Meeus.
A cry like the cry of a woman and a crash that shook the plaster from the ceiling, followed the fatal word. Adams had swung the man aloft and dashed him against the wall with such force, that the wattling gave and the plaster fell in flakes.
Meeus lay still as death, staring at his executioner with a face expressionless and white as the plaster flakes around him.
"Get up," said Adams.
Meeus heard and moved his arms.
"Get up."
Again the arms moved and the body raised itself, but the legs did not move. "I cannot," said Meeus.
Adams came to him and bending down pinched his right thigh hard.
"Do you feel me touching you?"
"No."
Adams did the same to the other thigh.
"Do you feel that?"
"No."
"Lie there," said Adams.
He opened the door and went out into the night. A moment later he returned; after him came the two porters bearing Berselius between them.
Berselius was quiet now; the brain fever that had stricken him had pa.s.sed into a muttering stage, and he let himself be carried, pa.s.sive as a bag of meal, whilst Adams went before with the lamp leading the way into the bedroom. Here, on one of the beds, the porters laid their burden down.
Then they came back, and under the directions of Adams lifted Meeus and carried him into the bedroom and placed him on the second bed.
Adams, with the lamp in his hand, stood for a moment looking at Meeus. His rage had spent itself; he had avenged the people at the Silent Pools. With his naked hands he had inflicted on the criminal before him an injury worse than the injury of fire or sword.
Meeus, frightened now by the pity in the face of the other, horribly frightened by the unknown thing that had happened to him, making him dead from the waist down, moved his lips, but made no sound.
"Your back is broken," replied Adams to the question in the other"s eyes.
Then he turned to Berselius.
At midnight the rains broke with a crash of thunder that seemed to shake the universe.
Adams, worn out, was seated at the table in the living room smoking some tobacco he had found in a tin on the shelf, and listening to the rambling of Berselius, when the thunder-clap came, making the lamp shiver on the table.
Meeus, who had been silent since his death sentence had been read to him, cried out at the thunder, but Berselius did not heed--he was hunting elephants under a burning sun in a country even vaster than the elephant country.
Adams rose up and came to the door; not a drop of rain had fallen yet. He crossed the yard and stood at the fort wall looking into blackness. It was solid as ebony, and he could hear the soldiers, whose huts were outside the wall, calling to one another.
A great splash of light lit up the whole roof of the forest clear as day, and the darkness shut down again with a bang that hit the ear like a blow, and the echoes of it roared and rumbled and muttered, and died, and Silence wrapped herself again in her robe and sat to wait.
Now, there was a faint stirring of the air, increasing to a breeze, and far away a sound like the spinning of a top came on the breeze. It was the rain, miles away, coming over the forest in a solid sheet, the sound of it increasing on the great drum of the forest"s roof to a roar.
Another flash lit the world, and Adams saw the rain.
He saw what it is given to very few men to see. From horizon to horizon, as if built by plumb, line and square, stretched a glittering wall, reaching from the forest to the sky. The base of this wall was lost in snow-white billows of spray and mist.
Never was there so tremendous a sight as this infinite wall and the Niagara clouds of spray, roaring, living, and lit by the great flash one second, drowned out by the darkness and the thunder the next.
Adams, terrified, ran back to the house, shut the door, and waited.
The house was solidly built and had withstood many rains, but there were times when it seemed to him that the whole place must be washed away bodily. Nothing could be heard but the rain, and the sound of such rain is far more terrifying than the sound of thunder or the rumble of the earthquake.
There were times when he said to himself, "This cannot last," yet it lasted. With the lamp in his hand he went into the sleeping room to see how Berselius and Meeus were doing. Berselius was still, to judge from the movements of his lips, delirious, and just the same. Meeus was lying with his hands on his breast. He might have been asleep, only for his eyes, wide open and bright, and following every movement of the man with the lamp.
Meeus, catching the other"s eye, motioned to him to come near. Then he tried to speak, but the roar outside made it impossible to hear him. Adams pointed to the roof, as if to say, "Wait till it is over," then he came back to the sitting room, tore the leopard skin down from the wall, rolled it up for a pillow, and lay down with his head on it.
He had been through so much of late that he had grown callous and case-hardened; he did not care much whether the place was washed away or not--he wanted to sleep, and he slept.
Meeus, left alone, lay watching the glimmer of the lamp shining through the cracks of the door, and listening to the thunder of the rain.
This was the greatest rain he had experienced. He wondered if it would flood the go-down and get at the rubber stored there; he wondered if the soldiers had deserted their huts and taken refuge in the office. These thoughts were of not the slightest interest to him; they just came and strayed across his mind, which was still half-paralyzed by the great calamity that had befallen him.
For the last half-hour an iron hand seemed round his body just on a level with the diaphragm; this seemed growing tighter, and the tighter it grew the more difficult it was to breathe. The fracture had been very high up, but he knew nothing of this; he knew that his back was broken, and that men with broken backs die, but he did not fully realize that he was going to die till--all at once--his breathing stopped dead of its own accord, and then of its own accord went on rapidly and shallowly. Then he recognized that his breathing was entirely under the control of something over which _he_ had no control.
This is the most terrible thing a man can know, for it is a thing that no man ever knows till he is in the hands of death.
It was daylight when Adams awoke, and the rain had ceased.
He went to the door and opened it. It was after sunrise, but the sun was not to be seen. The whole world was a vapour, but through which the forest was dimly visible. The soldiers were in the courtyard; they had just come out of the office where they had taken refuge during the night. Their huts had been washed away, but they did not seem to mind a bit; they showed their teeth in a grin, and shouted something when they saw the white man, and pointed to the rainswept yard and the sky.
Adams nodded, and then went back into the house and into the bedroom, where he found Meeus hanging head downward out of his bed.
Rubber would trouble Andreas Meeus no more; his soul had gone to join the great army of souls in the Beyond.
It is strange enough to look upon the body of a man you have killed. But Adams had no more pity or compunction in his mind than if Meeus had been a stoat.
He turned to Berselius, who was sleeping. The delirium had pa.s.sed, and he was breathing evenly and well. There was hope for him yet--hope for his body if not for his mind.
CHAPTER x.x.xI