Victor Durnovo took off his hat with a sweep and a flourish, and, raising his bared brow to the stars, he said, “I swear to hold to that agreement. If I fail, may God strike me dead!”
XIV
Panic-Stricken
Is this reason? Is this humanity? Alas! it is man.
The next morning Jack Meredith was awakened by his servant Joseph before it was fully light. It would appear as if Joseph had taken no means of awakening him, for Meredith awoke quite quietly to find Joseph standing by his bed.
“Holloa!” exclaimed the master, fully awake at once, as townsmen are.
Joseph stood at attention by the bedside.
“Woke you before yer time, sir,” he said. “There’s something wrong among these ’ere darkie fellers, sir.”
“Wrong! what do you mean?”
Meredith was already lacing his shoes.
“Not rebellion?” he said curtly, looking towards his firearms.
“No, sir, not that. It’s some mortual sickness. I don’t know what it is. I’ve been up half the night with them. It’s spreading, too.”
“Sickness! what does it seem like? Just give me that jacket. Not that sleeping sickness?”
“No, sir. It’s not that. Missis Marie was telling me about that—awful scourge that, sir. No, the poor chaps are wide-awake enough. Groanin’, and off their heads too, mostly.”
“Have you called Mr. Oscard?”
“No, sir.”
“Call him and Mr. Durnovo.”
“Met Mr. Durnovo, sir, goin’ out as I came in.”
In a few moments Jack joined Durnovo and Oscard, who were talking together on the terrace in front of the house. Guy Oscard was still in his pyjamas, which he had tucked into top-boots. He also wore a sun-helmet, which added a finish to his costume. They got quite accustomed to this getup during the next three days, for he never had time to change it; and, somehow, it ceased to be humorous long before the end of that time.
“Oh, it’s nothing,” Durnovo was saying, with a singular eagerness. “I know these chaps. They have been paid in advance. They are probably shamming, and if they are not they are only suffering from the effects of a farewell glorification. They want to delay our start. That is their little game. It will give them a better chance of deserting.”
“At any rate, we had better go and see them,” suggested Jack.
“No, don’t!” cried Durnovo eagerly, detaining him with both hands. “Take my advice, and don’t. Just have breakfast in the ordinary way and pretend there is nothing wrong. Then afterwards you can lounge casually into the camp.”
“All right,” said Jack, rather unwillingly.
“It has been of some use—this scare,” said Durnovo, turning and looking towards the river. “It has reminded me of something. We have not nearly enough quinine. I will just take a quick canoe, and run down to Loango to fetch some.”
He turned quite away from them, and stooped to attach the lace of his boot.
“I can travel night and day, and be back here in three days,” he added. “In the meantime you can be getting on with the loading of the canoes, and we will start as soon as I get back.”
He stood upright and looked around with weatherwise, furtive eyes.
“Seems to me,” he said, “there’s thunder coming. I think I had better be off at once.”
In the course of his inspection of the lowering clouds which hung, black as ink, just above the trees, his eyes lighted on Joseph, standing within the door of the cottage, watching him with a singular half-suppressed smile.
“Yes,” he said hurriedly, “I will start at once. I can eat some sort of a breakfast when we are under way.”
He looked beneath his lashes quickly from Jack to Guy and back again. Their silent acquiescence was not quite satisfactory. Then he called his own men, and spoke to them in a tongue unknown to the Englishmen. He hurried forward their preparations with a feverish irritability which made Jack Meredith think of the first time he had ever seen Durnovo—a few miles farther down the river—all palpitating and trembling with climatic nervousness. His face was quite yellow, and there was a line drawn diagonally from the nostrils down each cheek, to lose itself ultimately in the heavy black moustache.
Before he stepped into his canoe the thunder was rumbling in the distance, and the air was still as death. Breathing was an effort; the inhaled air did not satisfy the lungs, and seemed powerless to expand them.
Overhead the clouds, of a blue-black intensity, seemed almost to touch the trees; the river was of ink. The rowers said nothing, but they lingered on the bank and watched Durnovo’s face anxiously. When he took his seat in the canoe they looked protestingly up to the sky. Durnovo said something to them rapidly, and they laid their paddles to the water.
Scarcely had the boat disappeared in the bend of the river before the rain broke. It came with the rush of an express train—the trees bending before the squall like reeds. The face of the river was tormented into a white fury by the drops which splashed up again a foot in height. The lashing of the water on the bare backs of the negroes was distinctly audible to Victor Durnovo.
Then the black clouds split up like a rent cloth, and showed behind them, not Heaven, but the living fire of Hell. The thunder crashed out in sharp reports like file-firing at a review. With one accord the men ceased rowing and crouched down in the canoe.
Durnovo shouted to them, his face livid with fury. But for some moments his voice was quite lost. The lightning ran over the face of the river like will-o’-the-wisps; the whole heaven was streaked continuously with it.
Suddenly the negroes leaped to their paddles and rowed with bent back, and wild staring eyes, as if possessed. They were covered by the muzzle of Durnovo’s revolver.
Behind the evil-looking barrel of blue steel, the half-caste’s
