The Pools of Silence Part 13

It spoke in a hoa.r.s.e, crowing voice not at all unpleasant. If you listen to English children playing in the street you will often hear this croaking sort of voice, like the voice of a young rook.

Papeete struck Adams as a good name for the animal and, calling him by it, he held out the watch as a bait.

The lured one approached closer, held out a black claw, and next moment was seized by the foot.

It rolled on the ground like a dog, laughing and kicking, and Adams tickled it; and the grim soldiers laughed, showing their sharp white teeth, and the old grandmother beat her hands together, palm to palm, as if pleased, and the other villagers looked on without the ghost of an expression on their black faces.

Then he jumped it on its feet and sent it back to its people with a slap on its behind, and returned to his tent to smoke till Berselius and Meeus returned.

But he had worked his own undoing, for, till they broke camp, Papeete haunted him like a buzz-fly, peeping at him, sometimes from under the tent, trotting after him like a dog, watching him from a distance, till he began to think of "haunts" and "sendings" and spooks.

When Berselius and his companion returned, the three men sat and smoked till supper time.

At dark the villagers were driven into their huts and at the door of each hut lay a sentry.

A big fire was lit, and by its light two more sentries kept watch over the others and their prisoners. Then the moon rose, spreading silver over the silence of the pools and the limitless foliage of the forest.

CHAPTER XV

THE PUNISHMENT

The sun rose, bringing with it a breeze. Above the stir and bustle of the birds you could hear the gentle wind in the tree-tops like the sound of a sea on a low-tide beach.

The camp was still in gloom, but the whole arc of sky above the pools was thrilled and filled with living light. Sapphire blue, dazzling and pale, but deep with infinite distance, it had an intrinsic brilliancy as though filled with sunbeams brayed to dust.

The palm tops had caught the morning splendour and then, rapidly, as though the armies of light were moving to imperious trumpet-calls, charging with golden spears, legion on legion, a hurricane of brightness, Day broke upon the pools.

We call it Day, but what is it, this splendour that comes from nowhere, and vanishes to nowhere, that strikes our lives rhythmically like the golden wing of a vast and flying bird, bearing us along with it in the wind of its flight?

The rotation of the earth? But in the desert, on the sea, in the s.p.a.ces of the forest you will see in the dawn a vision divorced from time, a recurring glance of a beauty that is eternal, a ray as if from the bright world toward which the great bird Time is flying, caught and reflected to our eyes by every lift of the wing.

The dawn had not brought the truants back from the forest.

This point Meeus carefully verified. Even the boy who had been sent to communicate with them had not returned.

"No news?" said Berselius, as he stepped from his tent-door and glanced around him.

"None," replied Meeus.

Adams now appeared, and the servants who had been preparing breakfast laid it on the gra.s.s. The smell of coffee filled the air; nothing could be more pleasant than this out-of-doors breakfast in the bright and lovely morning, the air fresh with the breeze and the voices of birds.

The villagers were all seated in a group, huddled together at the extreme left of the row of huts. They were no longer free, but tied together ankle to ankle by strips of _n'goji_. Only Papeete was at liberty, but he kept at a distance. He was seated near the old woman, and he was exploring the interior of an empty tomato tin flung away by the cook.

"I will give them two hours more," said Meeus, as he sipped his coffee.

"And then?" said Adams.

Meeus was about to reply when he caught a glance from Berselius.

"Then," he said, "I will knock those mud houses of theirs to pieces. They require a lesson."

"Poor devils!" said Adams.

Meeus during the meal did not display a trace of irritation. From his appearance one might have judged that the n.i.g.g.e.rs had returned to their work, and that everything was going well. At times he appeared absent-minded, and at times he wore a gloomy but triumphant look, as though some business which had unpleasant memories attached to it had at last been settled to his satisfaction.

After breakfast he drew Berselius aside, and the two men walked away in the direction of the pools, leaving Adams to smoke his pipe in the shade of the tent.

They came back in about half an hour, and Berselius, after speaking a few words to Felix, turned to Adams.

"I must ask you to return to Fort M'Ba.s.sa and get everything in readiness for our departure. Felix will accompany you. I will follow in a couple of hours with M. Meeus. I am afraid we will have to pull these people's houses down. It's a painful duty, but it has to be performed. You will save yourself the sight of it."

"Thanks," said Adams. Not for a good deal of money would he have remained to see those wretched hovels knocked to pieces. He could perceive plainly enough that the thing had to be done. Conciliation had been tried, and it was of no avail. He was quite on the side of Meeus; indeed, he had admired the self-restraint of this very much tried _Chef de Poste_. Not a hard word, not a blow, scarcely a threat had been used. The people had been spoken to in a fatherly manner, a messenger had been sent to the truants, and the messenger had joined them. At all events he had not returned.

Then, certainly, pull their houses down. But he did not wish to see the sight. He had nothing to do with the affair, so filling and lighting another pipe, and leaving all his belongings to be brought on by Berselius, he turned with Felix and, saying good-bye to his companions, started.

They had nearly reached the edge of the forest when shouts from behind caused Adams to turn his head.

The soldiers were shouting to Papeete to come back.

The thing had trotted after Adams like a black dog. It was within a few yards of him.

"Go back," shouted Adams.

"Tick-tick," replied Papeete. It was the only English the creature knew.

It stood frying in the sun, grinning and glistening, till Adams, with an a.s.sumption of ferocity, made for it, then back it went, and Adams, laughing, plunged under the veil of leaves.

Berselius, seated at his tent door, looked at his watch. Meeus, seated beside Berselius, was smoking cigarettes.

"Give him an hour," said Berselius. "He will be far away enough by that.

Besides, the wind is blowing from there."

"True," said Meeus. "An hour." And he continued to smoke. But his hand was shaking, and he was biting the cigarette, and his lips were dry so that he had to be continually licking them.

Berselius was quite calm, but his face was pale, and he seemed contemplating something at a distance.

When half an hour had pa.s.sed, Meeus rose suddenly to his feet and began to walk about, up and down, in front of the tent, up and down, up and down, as a man walks when he is in distress of mind.

The black soldiers also seemed uneasy, and the villagers huddled closer together like sheep. Papeete alone seemed undisturbed. He was playing now with the old tomato tin, out of which he had sc.r.a.ped and licked every vestige of the contents.

Suddenly Meeus began crying out to the soldiers in a hard, sharp voice like the yelping of a dog.

The time was up, and the soldiers knew. They ranged up, chattering and laughing, and all at once, as if produced from nowhere, two rhinoceros hide whips appeared in the hands of two of the tallest of the blacks.

Rhinoceros hide is more than an inch thick; it is clear and almost translucent when properly prepared. In the form of a whip it is less an instrument of punishment than a weapon. These whips were not the smoothly prepared whips used for light punishment; they had angles that cut like sword edges. One wonders what those sentimental people would say--those sentimental people who cry out if a burly ruffian is ordered twenty strokes with the cat--could they see a hundred _chicotte_ administered with a whip that is flexible as india-rubber, hard as steel.

Two soldiers at the yelping orders of Meeus cut the old woman apart from her fellows and flung her on the ground.