Long Odds Part 34

"He shall have it," said the Chefe. "His people have been insolent, and they are certainly getting lazy. We will send him a requisition for more provisions."

n.o.body could have told whether the messenger felt any resentment, but, after all, very few white men ever quite understand what the African is thinking. He crouched impa.s.sively still, with the lamplight on his heavy face and his oily skin gleaming softly over the great knotted muscles of his splendid arms and shoulders. There was something in his att.i.tude which vaguely suggested dormant force that might spread destruction when it was unloosed, but that naturally did not occur to the Chefe, who indicated by a little gesture that he might continue.

"There is another matter," said the negro. "The Headman can not send in the rubber demanded. Already we have cleared the forest of half the trees. One has to go a long way to find any more. He will do what he can, but he asks that you will be content with a little less than usual."

Dom Erminio shook his head reproachfully. "I have made this man concessions, and this is the result," he said. "There are many duties I have released him from, and I only ask a little rubber and a few other things for the favor."

Then he straightened himself in his chair. "Tell your Headman that not a load of rubber will be excused him, and he must restrain his people from provoking the soldiers. Also, the next time he has a complaint to make let him come himself and lay it before me."

The man stood up, splendid in his animal muscularity, but there was for just a moment a little gleam in his eyes which suggested that hot human pa.s.sions were at work within him. The white men, however, as usual, did not notice it, and the black interpreter, whose opinion was seldom invited, said nothing.

"I will tell him," said the messenger, and Dom Erminio looked at the Lieutenant Luiz when he went out with the interpreter.

"I think," he said reflectively, "we will give the screw that other turn. It is supposed that our new rulers down yonder"--and he apparently indicated the coast with a stretched out hand--"are in favor of a more conciliatory policy, which is not what we would wish for just now."

"It is clearly out of the question," and Dom Luiz grinned. "I think it would be advisable if I went out with a few files and made some further trifling requisition to-morrow."

"You will go, and do what appears desirable," said the Chefe, who lighted another cigar.

Dom Luiz set out on the morrow with a handful of dusky ruffians in uniform, and left rage and shame behind him in the villages he visited, which, as it happened, had results neither he nor Dom Erminio had antic.i.p.ated. The Headman did not come to San Roque to make his humble complaint, but he sent an urgent message to the Suzerain of the village Ormsgill was confined in, and at last one morning the old man sent for the latter.

"We march in a few hours, and as we can not leave you here you and the boys you asked me for will come with us," he said. "What our business is does not concern you, and you will go with us as prisoners. Just now I do not know what we will do with you afterwards. It will depend"--and he looked at Ormsgill with a little grim smile--"a good deal upon your own behavior."

Ormsgill, who grasped the gist of what he said, could take a hint, and went back to Nares. The latter listened quietly when he told him what he had heard.

"I believe there is no other way. Their oppressors have brought it upon their own heads," he said.

His comrade noticed the curious hardness of his face, and the glint in his eyes. It was very evident to him that Nares, who had been down again with fever while they lay in the sweltering heat, had changed.

He had borne many troubles uncomplainingly for several weary years, and, perhaps because of it, the events of the last few weeks had left their mark on him. After all, there is a subtle concord between mind and body, and in that land, at least, the fever-shaken white man who persists in staggering on under a burden greater than he can reasonably bear is apt to be suddenly crushed by it. Then his bodily strength or mental faculties give way once for all beneath the strain.

Ormsgill could not define the change in his companion, but he recognized it. It was a thing which he had seen happen to other men.

They started in the heat of that afternoon, and Ormsgill, marching with his boys, watched the long dusky column wind into the forest in front of him. There were men with Snider rifles, which they were indifferently accustomed to, men with glinting matchets, and men with flintlock guns and spears, besides rows of plodding carriers. They were half-naked most of them, men of primitive pa.s.sions and no great intelligence, but they had risen at last in their desperation to strike for freedom. Behind them rose a tumultuous uproar of barbaric music, insistent and deafening, that floated far over the forest.

Ormsgill smiled a little as it grew fainter.

"I'm not sure there will be any music when they come back again," he said. "Still, I almost think they will accomplish--something."

Nares looked straight in front of him as he plodded on, but there was a curious gleam in his eyes.

"There is no other way," was all he said.

The long dusky column pushed on steadily through dim forest, wide mora.s.s, and tracts of hot white sand, and it happened one evening when the advance guard were a considerable distance ahead that Dom Erminio sat alone on the veranda at San Roque. It was then about eight o'clock, and the night was very dark and hot. Now and then a little fitful breeze crept up the misty river, and filled the forest that rose above it with mysterious noises. Then it dropped away again, and left a silence the Chefe commenced to find oppressive behind it. He could hear the oily gurgle of sliding water, and at times a sharp crackle in the crazy building behind him, out of which there drifted a damp mildewy smell, but that merely emphasized the almost disconcerting absence of any other sound. Indeed, it was so still that the soft rustle his duck garments made as he moved jarred on him, and he was glad when the little muggy breeze flowed into the veranda again.

There was nothing in all this to trouble a man who was accustomed to it, but the Chefe was not quite at his ease. Dom Luiz, whom he had sent out a few days earlier, should have been back that afternoon, but there was no sign of him yet, nor had the three or four dusky soldiers who had gone out on some business of their own with his consent as yet made an appearance. There were very few men in the fort, and when nine o'clock came Dom Erminio, who was quite aware that the natives had no great cause to love him, admitted that he was a trifle anxious. Still, he had, with what he considered a more sufficient reason, been anxious rather frequently. It was a thing one became accustomed to in the debatable land, and sitting still he lighted another cigar. He could see the mists that rolled up from the river, and the forest cutting faintly black against the sky, and wondered vaguely what was going on in it. That there was something going on in it he now felt tolerably certain, though he did not exactly know why.

At last the hoa.r.s.e cry of a sentry rose out of the night, and when it was answered he went down to the gate of the stockade. It was not a gate that opened in the usual fas.h.i.+on, but one that dropped, a stout affair of logs copied from the form adopted by the inhabitants of the plateaux to the south. When he reached it two or three black soldiers were heaving it up, and there was a patter of feet outside. Then a line of shadowy figures grew out of the darkness, and though there did not seem to be as many as he had expected it was with a sense of relief he saw Dom Luiz come in through the gap. The logs clashed down behind the last of his men, and Dom Erminio straightened himself suddenly when a sergeant came up with a lantern.

Two of the row of barefooted men appeared scarcely fit to stand. Their garments were rent to pieces, and there was blood and mire on them, while neither of them carried rifles. Dom Luiz saw the question in the Chefe's eyes, and nodded.

"Yes," he said, "I should have been here earlier. It was these two who detained me. I sent them on to the village in the thicker bush two days ago, and they came back dragging themselves with difficulty--as you see them. It seems the villagers had beaten them, and they did not know what had become of their rifles."

Dom Erminio's face became suddenly intent. "Ah," he said, "they shall be beaten again to-morrow. You will hand them to the guard. I suppose you saw nothing of the Sergeant Orticho?"

"No," said Lieutenant Luiz, who was a trifle puzzled by the sudden change in the Chefe's manner, "I saw no sign of him."

He called to his men, and as they filed by him loaded heavily with miscellaneous sundries, Dom Erminio smiled significantly.

"They have, it seems, been successful, which is fortunate," he said.

"I almost think it will be some little time before they make any more requisitions of the kind again."

He turned back towards the house, and was once more sitting on the veranda when the Lieutenant Luiz rejoined him.

"It would no doubt be advisable that I should set out again in the morning with a stronger party and chastise those villagers who have beaten our men?" said the latter.

"No," said the Chefe dryly, "you will probably be busy here. When the natives venture to beat our men it is, I think, wiser to keep every man we have inside the fort."

"Ah," said his companion, "you believe they have courage enough to go further?"

Dom Erminio smiled. "I believe we both admitted that the natives might resent our att.i.tude. We were, I think, for several reasons not unwilling that they should do something to make their resentment evident."

He stopped a moment, and the manner in which he spread out his yellow hands was very expressive. "Now I fancy we have got what we wished for--and, perhaps, a little more than could reasonably have been expected. It is rather a pity that we have lost several men with sickness lately."

Dom Luiz straightened himself in his chair. "There are very few of us, and I am not quite sure that one or two of the fresh draft could be depended on. Still, Orticho has most of them well in hand."

Dom Erminio made a little gesture. "I think we can not count upon Orticho in this affair. It is scarcely likely that he and the men who went out with him will come back again. What he has heard in the bush I do not know, but it is evident that he regards this thing very much as I do. In fact, I fancy he is heading as fast as possible for the coast by now."

"Ah," said Dom Luiz, and looked at his companion inquiringly.

"The business we have in hand is perfectly simple," said Dom Erminio.

"We were sent here to hold San Roque, and it must be done. When these bushmen call upon us we shall be ready. With that in view you will set about moving the quick-firing gun from where it is now, and when that is done you will open a loophole for it at the rear of the stockade.

It is not quite so strong at that point, and our friends, who know where the gun stood, will probably attack us there. It would be advisable to have it done before the dawn comes."

Dom Luiz rose and set about it. There was no uneasiness in his companion's manner, but there was a look which had not been there for some little time in his eyes. He was, perhaps, in several respects a rogue, but, like other men of that kind, he had his strong points, too, and n.o.body had ever accused him of being deficient in manhood, which, unfortunately, is not always quite the same thing as humanity.

He was also Chefe, Commandant and Administrator, which he never forgot, and he sat on the veranda smoking cigarette after cigarette while Dom Luiz toiled for once very strenuously half the night. It was very dark and hot, the logs he handled were heavy, and the dusky soldiers seemed unusually slow at understanding. Still, when the dawn broke the little quick-firing gun stood at the rear of the stockade, which had been strengthened wherever it was possible.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE CHEFE STANDS FAST

It was an hour after midnight when the Headman sent for Ormsgill, who found him sitting with his overlord beside a little fire that burned redly in the thin mist. The night was almost chilly, and the Suzerain crouched close beside the blaze, huddled in his loose garments, with the uncertain light on his impa.s.sive face. It seemed to Ormsgill that he looked worn and old, and he became conscious for the first time of a vague pity for him. The task he had undertaken was, the white man felt, one he could not succeed in. It was merely another futile protest, for the yoke that was being fastened on his people's necks could not be flung off that way. Ormsgill stood silent a moment or two until the old man turned to him.

"You have no cause to love those white men in San Roque," he said.

"Well, I will give you forty boys with rifles. We want leaders who know how the white men fight."

Ormsgill shook his head. "No," he said, "I can not lead them. This affair is no concern of mine."