Durnovo heard the clatter of tongues, and Guy Oscard, smoking his contemplative pipe in a camp-chair before his hut door, noticed that the sound did not seem very welcome.
Joseph’s arrival with ten new men seemed to give a fresh zest to the work, and the carefully-packed cases of Simiacine began to fill Oscard’s tent to some inconvenience. Thus things went on for two tranquil weeks.
“First,” Oscard had said, “let us get the crop in and then we can arrange what is to be done about the future.”
So the crop received due attention; but the two leaders of the men—he who led by fear and he who commanded by love—were watching each other.
One evening, when the work was done, Oscard’s meditations were disturbed by the sound of angry voices behind the native camp. He turned naturally towards Durnovo’s tent, and saw that he was absent. The voices rose and fell; there was a singular accompanying roar of sound which Oscard never remembered having heard before. It was the protesting voice of a mass of men—and there is no sound like it—none so disquieting. Oscard listened attentively, and suddenly he was thrown up on his feet by a pistol-shot.
At the same moment Joseph emerged from behind the tents, dragging someone by the collar. The victim of Joseph’s violence was off his feet, but still struggling and kicking.
Guy Oscard saw the flash of a second shot, apparently within a few inches of Joseph’s face; but he came on, dragging the man with him, whom from his clothing Oscard saw to be Durnovo.
Joseph was spitting out wadding and burnt powder.
“Shoot me, would yer—yer damned skulking chocolate-bird? I’ll teach you! I’ll twist that brown neck of yours.”
He shook him as a terrier shakes a rat, and seemed to shake things off him—among others a revolver which described a circle in the air and fell heavily on the ground, where the concussion discharged a cartridge.
“ ’Ere, sir,” cried Joseph, literally throwing Durnovo down on the ground at Oscard’s feet, “that man has just shot one o’ them poor niggers, so ’elp me God!”
Durnovo rose slowly to his feet, as if the shaking had disturbed his faculties.
“And the man hadn’t done ’im no harm at all. He’s got a grudge against him. I’ve seen that this last week and more. It’s a man as was kinder fond o’ me, and we understood each other’s lingo. That’s it—he was afraid of my ’earing things that mightn’t be wholesome for me to know. The man hadn’t done no harm. And Durnovo comes up and begins abusing ’im, and then he strikes ’im, and then he out with his revolver and shoots ’im down.”
Durnovo gave an ugly laugh. He had readjusted his disordered dress and was brushing the dirt from his knees.
“Oh, don’t make a fool of yourself,” he said in a hissing voice; “you don’t understand these natives at all. The man raised his hand to me. He would have killed me if he had had the chance. Shooting was the only thing left to do. You can only hold these men by fear. They expect it.”
“Of course they expect it,” shouted Joseph in his face; “of course they expect it, Mr. Durnovo.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re slaves. Think I don’t know that?”
He turned to Oscard.
“This man, Mr. Oscard,” he said, “is a slave-owner. Them forty that joined at Msala was slaves. He’s shot two of ’em now; this is his second. And what does he care?—they’re his slaves. Oh! shame on yer!” turning again to Durnovo; “I wonder God lets yer stand there. I can only think that He doesn’t want to dirty His hand by strikin’ yer down.”
Oscard had taken his pipe from his lips. He looked bigger, somehow, than ever. His brown face was turning to an ashen colour, and there was a dull, steel-like gleam in his blue eyes. The terrible, slow-kindling anger of this Northerner made Durnovo catch his breath. It was so different from the sudden passion of his own countrymen.
“Is this true?” he asked.
“It’s a lie, of course,” answered Durnovo, with a shrug of the shoulders. He moved away as if he were going to his tent, but Oscard’s arm reached out. His large brown hand fell heavily on the half-breed’s shoulder.
“Stay,” he said; “we are going to get to the bottom of this.”
“Good,” muttered Joseph, rubbing his hands slowly together; “this is prime.”
“Go on,” said Oscard to him.
“Where’s the wages you and Mr. Meredith has paid him for those forty men?” pursued Joseph. “Where’s the advance you made him for those men at Msala? Not one ha’penny of it have they fingered. And why? Cos they’re slaves! Fifteen months at fifty pounds—let them as can reckon tot it up for theirselves. That’s his first swindle—and there’s others, sir! Oh, there’s more behind. That man’s just a stinkin’ hotbed o’ crime. But this ’ere slave-owning is enough to settle his hash, I take it.”
“Let us have these men here—we will hear what they have to say,” said Oscard in the same dull tone that frightened Victor Durnovo.
“Not you!” he went on, laying his hand on Durnovo’s shoulder again; “Joseph will fetch them, thank you.”
So the forty—or the thirty-seven survivors, for one had died on the journey up and two had been murdered—were brought. They were peaceful, timorous men, whose manhood seemed to have been crushed out of them; and slowly, word by word, their grim story was got out of them. Joseph knew a little of their language, and one of the head fighting men knew a little more, and spoke a dialect known to Oscard. They were slaves they said at once,
