Guy Oscard only realised the meaning of that sound when a black shadow crept on to the smooth evenness of the river’s breast. Oscard was eminently a man of action. In a moment he was on his feet, and in the darkness of the room there was the gleam of a rifle-barrel. He came back to the window—watching.
He saw the canoe approach the bank. He heard the thud of the paddle as it was thrown upon the ground. In the gloom, to which his eyes were accustomed, he saw a man step from the boat to the shore and draw the canoe up. The silent midnight visitor then turned and walked up towards the house. There was something familiar in the gait—the legs were slightly bowed. The man was walking with great difficulty, staggering a little at each step. He seemed to be in great pain.
Guy Oscard laid aside his rifle. He stepped forward to the open window.
“Is that you, Durnovo?” he said, without raising his voice.
“Yes,” replied the other. His voice was muffled, as if his tongue was swollen, and there was a startling break in it.
Oscard stepped aside, and Durnovo passed into his own house.
“Got a light?” he said, in the same muffled way.
In the next room Joseph could be heard striking a match, and a moment later he entered the room, throwing a flood of light before him.
“Good God!” cried Guy Oscard. He stepped back as if he had been struck, with his hand shielding his eyes.
“Save us!” ejaculated Joseph in the same breath.
The thing that stood there—sickening their gaze—was not a human being at all. Take a man’s eyelids away, leaving the round balls staring, blood-streaked; cut away his lips, leaving the grinning teeth and red gums; shear off his ears—that which is left is not a man at all. This had been done to Victor Durnovo. Truly the vengeance of man is crueller than the vengeance of God!
Could he have seen himself, Victor Durnovo would never have shown that face—or what remained of it—to a human being. He could only have killed himself. Who can tell what cruelties had been paid for, piece by piece, in this loathsome mutilation? The slaves had wreaked their terrible vengeance; but the greatest, the deepest, the most inhuman cruelty was in letting him go.
“They’ve made a pretty mess of me,” said Durnovo in a sickening, lifeless voice—and he stood there, with a terrible caricature of a grin.
Joseph set down the lamp with a groan, and went back into the dark room beyond, where he cast himself upon the ground and buried his face in his hands.
“O Lord!” he muttered. “O God in heaven—kill it, kill it!”
Guy Oscard never attempted to run away from it. He stood slowly gulping down his nauseating horror. His teeth were clenched; his face, through the sunburn, livid; the blue of his eyes seemed to have faded into an ashen grey. The sight he was looking on would have sent three men out of five into gibbering idiocy.
Then at last he moved forward. With averted eyes he took Durnovo by the arm.
“Come,” he said, “lie down upon my bed. I will try and help you. Can you take some food?”
Durnovo threw himself down heavily on the bed. There was a punishment sufficient to expiate all his sins in the effort he saw that Guy Oscard had had to make before he touched him. He turned his face away.
“I haven’t eaten anything for twenty-four hours,” he said, with a whistling intonation.
“Joseph,” said Oscard, returning to the door of the inner room—his voice sounded different, there was a metallic ring in it—“get something for Mr. Durnovo—some soup or something.”
Joseph obeyed, shaking as if ague were in his bones.
Oscard administered the soup. He tended Durnovo with all the gentleness of a woman, and a fortitude that was above the fortitude of men. Despite himself, his hands trembled—big and strong as they were; his whole being was contracted with horror and pain. Whatever Victor Durnovo had been, he was now an object of such pity that before it all possible human sins faded into spotlessness. There was no crime in all that human nature has found to commit for which such cruelty as this would be justly meted out in punishment.
Durnovo spoke from time to time, but he could see the effect that his hissing speech had upon his companion, and in time he gave it up. He told haltingly of the horrors of the Simiacine Plateau—of the last grim tragedy acted there—how, at last, blinded with his blood, maimed, stupefied by agony, he had been hounded down the slope by a yelling, laughing horde of torturers.
There was not much to be done, and presently Guy Oscard moved away to his camp-chair, where he sat staring into the night. Sleep was impossible. Strong, hardened, weather-beaten man that he was, his nerves were all a-tingle, his flesh creeping and jumping with horror. Gradually he collected his faculties enough to begin to think about the future. What was he to do with this man? He could not take him to Loango. He could not risk that Jocelyn or even Maurice Gordon should look upon this horror.
Joseph had crept back into the inner room, where he had no light, and could be heard breathing hard, wide awake in his hammock.
Suddenly the silence was broken by a loud cry:
“Oscard! Oscard!”
In a moment Joseph and Oscard were at the bedside.
Durnovo was sitting up, and he grabbed at Oscard’s arm.
“For God’s sake!” he cried. “For God’s
