The Ivory Trail Part 43

There was a chair by the table. At sight of the commandant the sergeants made their victim use that as a step by which to mount the table and soap-box, and there he stood eying his oppressors as calmly as if he were witnessing a play. A murmur arose among the crowd. A number of natives called to him by name, but he took no notice after that one first steady gaze.

"They're sayin' good-by to him," said Brown, breathing in my ear.

"They're telling him they won't forget him!"

The crack of askaris' whips falling on head and naked shoulders swiftly reduced the crowd to silence. Then the commandant faced them all, and made a speech with that ash-can voice of his--first in German, then in the Nyamwezi tongue. Will translated to us sentence by sentence, the doctor standing on the top step behind us smiling approval. He seemed to think we would be benefited by the lecture just as much as the natives.

It was awful humbug that the commandant reeled off to his silent audience--hypocrisy garbed in paternal phrases, and interlarded with buncombe about Germany's mission to bring happiness to subject peoples.

"Above all," he repeated again and again, "the law must be enforced impartially--the good, sound, German law that knows no fear or favor, but governs all alike!"

When he had finished he turned to the culprit.

"Now," he demanded, "do you know why you are to be hanged?"

There was a moment's utter silence. The crowd drew in its breath, seeming to know in advance that some brave answer was forthcoming. The man on the table with his hands behind him surveyed the crowd again with the gaze of simple dignity, looked down on the commandant, and raised his voice. It was an unexpected, high, almost falsetto note, that in the silence carried all across the square.

"I am to die," he said, "because I did right! My enemy did what German officers do. He stole my young girl. I killed him, as I hope all you Germans may be killed! But hope no longer gathers fruit in this land!"

"Ah-h-h-h!" the crowd sighed in unison.

"Good man!" exploded Fred, and the doctor tried to kick him from behind--not hard, but enough to call his attention to the proprieties.

His toe struck me instead, and when I looked up angrily he tried to pretend he was not aware of what he had done.

Under the trees the commandant flew into a rage such I have seldom seen. Each land has a temper of its own, and the white man's anger varies in inverse ratio with his nearness to the equator. But furor teutonicus transplanted is the least controllable, least dignified, least admirable that there is. And that man's pa.s.sion was the apex of its kind.

His beard spread, as a peac.o.c.k spreads its tail. His eyes blazed. His eyebrows disappeared under the brim of his white helmet, and his clenched fists burst the white cotton gloves. He half-drew his saber--thought better of that, and returned it. There was an askari standing near with kiboko in hand to drive back the crowd should any press too closely. He s.n.a.t.c.hed the whip and struck the condemned man with it, as high up as he could reach, making a great welt across his bare stomach. The man neither winced nor complained.

"For those words," the commandant screamed at him in German, "you shall not die in comfort! For that insolence, mere hanging is too good!"

Then he calmed himself a little, and repeated the words in the native tongue, explaining to the crowd that German dignity should be upheld at all costs.

"Fetch him down from there," he ordered.

Schubert sprang on the table and knocked the condemned man off it with a blow of his fist. With hands bound behind him the poor fellow had no power of balance, and though he jumped clear he fell face-downward, skinning his cheek on the gravel. The commandant promptly put a foot on his neck and pinned him down.

"Flog him!" he ordered. "Two hundred lashes!"

It was done in silence, except for the corporal's labored breathing and the commandant's incessant sharp commands to beat harder--harder--harder. A sergeant stood by counting. The crack of the whip divided up the silence into periods of agony.

When the count was done the victim was still conscious. Schubert and a sergeant dragged him to his feet, and hauled him to the table. Four other men--two sergeants and two natives--pa.s.sed a rope round the table legs. Schubert lifted the victim by the elbows so that his head could pa.s.s through the noose, and when that was accomplished the man had to stand on tiptoe on the soap-box in order to breathe at all.

"All ready!" announced Schubert, and jumped off with a laugh, his white tunic b.l.o.o.d.y from contact with the victim's tortured back.

"Los!" roared the commandant

The men hauled on the rope. Table and soap-box came tumbling away, and the victim spun in the air on nothing, spinning round, and round, and round--slower and slower and slower--then back the other way round faster and faster.

They say hanging is a merciful death--that the pressure of rope on two arteries produces anesthesia, but few are reported to have come back to tell of the experience. At any rate, as is not the case with shooting, it is easy to know when the victim is really dead.

For seconds that seemed minutes--for minutes that seemed hours the poor wretch spun, his elbows out, his knees up, his tongue out, his face wrinkled into tortured shapes, and his toes pointed upward so sharply that they almost touched his shins. Then suddenly the toes turned downward and the knees relapsed. The corpse hung limp, and the crowd sighed miserably, to the last man, woman and child, turning its back on what to them must have symbolized German rule.

They left the corpse hanging there. It was to be there until evening, some one said, for an example to frequenters of the market-place. The crowd trailed away, none glancing back. The pattering of feet ceased.

The market-place across the square resumed its hum and activity. Then a native orderly came down the steps and touched me on the elbow. I struggled to my feet and limped after him up the steps.

Practically at the mercy of the doctor, I made up my mind to be civil to him whether that suited me or not. I rather expected he would come to meet me, perhaps help me to chair, and I wondered how, in my ignorance of German, I should contrive to answer his questions.

But I need not have worried. I did not even see him. He had left by the back door, and the orderly washed the wound and changed my bandages. That was all. There was no charge for the bandages, and the orderly was gentle now that his master's back was turned.

"Didn't he leave word when he would see me?" I asked.

"Habandh!" he answered--meaning, "He did not--there is not--there is nothing doing!"

CHAPTER EIGHT

IPSOS CUSTODES

We were an ignorant people. Out of a gloom we came Hungering, striving, feasting--vanishing into the same.

Came to us your foreloopers, told us the gloom was bad, Spoke of the Light that might be--simply it could be had-- Knowledge and wealth and freedom, plenty and peace and play, And at all the price of obedience. "Listen and learn and obey,"

We were told, "and the gloom shall be lifted. Ignorance surely is shame."

We listened to your foreloopersy till presently Cadis* came.

We were an ignorant people. Our law was "an eye for an eye,"

And he who wronged should right the wrong, and he who stole should die-- Bad law the Cadis told us, based on the fall of man; And they set us to building law-courts on the Pangermanic plan-- Courts where the gloom of ages should be pierced, said they, with Light And scientific theory displace wrong views of Right.

The Cadis' law was writ in books that only they could read, But what should we know of the strings to that? 'Twas gloom when we agreed.

We were an ignorant people. The Offizieren came To lend to law eye, tooth, and claw and so enforce the same.

Now nought are the tribal customs; free speech is under ban; Displaced are misconceptions that were based on fallen man, And our gloom has gone in darkness of the risen German's night, Nor is there salt of mercy lest it sap the hold of Might.

They strike--we may not answer, nor dare we ask them why.

We sold ourselves to supermen. If we rebel, we die.

----------------- * Cadi--judge.

I sat down once more on the hospital steps, and listened while Fred and Will relieved themselves of their opinions about German manners.

Nothing seemed likely to relieve me. I had marched a hundred miles, endured the sickening pain, and waited an extra night at the end of it all simply on the strength of antic.i.p.ation. Now that the surgeon would not see me, hope seemed gone. I could think of nothing but to go and hide somewhere, like a wounded animal.

But there were two more swift shocks in store, and no hiding-place.

The path to the water-front led past us directly along the southern boma wall. Before Fred and Will had come to an end of swearing they saw something that struck them silent so suddenly that I looked up and saw, too. Not that I cared very much. To me it seemed merely one last super-added piece of evidence that life was not worth while.

Plainly the launch had come from British East, of which Schubert had spoken. Hand in hand from the water-front, followed by the obsequious Schubert, all smiles and long black whip (for the chain-gang trailed after with the luggage, and needed to be overawed), walked Professor Schillingschen and Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon. They seemed in love--or at any rate the professor did, for he ogled and smirked like a bearded gargoyle; and she made such play of being charmed by his grimaces that the Syrian maid fell behind to hide her face.

None of us spoke. We watched them. Personally I did not mind the feeling that the worst had happened at last. I was incapable of sounding further depths of gloom--too full of pain bodily to suffer mentally from threats of what might yet be. But the other two looked miserable--more so because Fred's bearded chin perked up so bravely, and Will set his jaw like a rock.

Not one of us had said a word when the biggest askari we had seen yet strode up to us--saluted--and gave Fred a sealed envelope. It was written in English, addressed to us three by name (although our names were wrongly spelled). We were required to present ourselves at the court-house at once, reason not given. The letter was signed "Liebenkrantz,--Lieutenant."