The League of the Leopard Part 21

Dane was somewhat astonished.

"How do you know that it was Miss Castro's gift; and what if he did?"

"I saw it once in her possession, and, as she naturally would not sell such a thing, I presumed that you had not stolen it. I heard that Rideau had persecuted that lady with his attentions. It would be well to remember henceforward that ceaseless vigilance is the price of safety."

Thus, with the prospect of treachery on one side, the partnership with Rideau began; but the new carriers were st.u.r.dy men, and the gold-washing was carried on with characteristic energy, alike under the burning sun of noon and by the glare of great fires until long into the steamy night. Dane labored with his own hands among his Krooboys, stripped to the waist. Maxwell seconded him loyally, for he had now relinquished the leader's place; and by degrees the pair drilled their dusky subordinates into capable workmen. It is true that they usually suspended operations the moment the white men relaxed their vigilance; but that was only to be expected, and their masters got a good deal out of them considering that most negroes have a chronic distaste for manual labor. Rideau's detachment, Dane noticed, were the most amenable to discipline, and obeyed all orders with a submission which puzzled the observer, for he knew that meek obedience is not a characteristic of the seaboard African. Their master, who did little beyond expressing his approval of Danes' efforts, grew more cordial as the weeks went by. But Maxwell was civil, and nothing more; and Dane surmised that he was rather more watchful and suspicious than he had been before.

One night when, worn out by physical exertion and aching in every joint, they dragged themselves, dripping with river water, back to their tent, there was a covert sneer in Rideau's laugh as he addressed them:

"You English are a curious people, and there are those who call you mad.

The more tired and dirty you are, the more happy. I once see your naval officer on the Niger harness with the indigene, like the mule, to drag the wheel-gun through a robber headman's swamp. One drole, he tell me it was the glorious fun."

"I dare say he meant it," retorted Maxwell. "It is probably owing to that very form of insanity that, while you--the French, I mean--have with commendable foresight appropriated the best of Africa, we others remain at least its commercial masters."

The pause and apparent correction was not made by accident, and Dane fancied that Rideau grasped its significance. He retired shortly, and Maxwell looked thoughtful.

"I am afraid I was not judicious; but we are only human, and there are times when my dislike for that rascal almost masters me," he said. "I would give much to learn who it is that slinks into his camp at night."

Dane looked puzzled, for Rideau's camp lay across the river, and was watched by black sentries; no negro was permitted on any excuse to pa.s.s its boundaries.

"As you know, I have of late taken an interest in botany," Maxwell laughed. "During my researches I found considerably more specimens of African vegetation in the forest surrounding Rideau's camp than I know the names of, and on several occasions what is of greater interest--footsteps leading toward our partner's tent. The man who made them wore sandals; there is n.o.body among our combined followers who does."

Dane had no suggestions to make, and therefore kept silent; but that piece of information left him uneasy.

It was a still, oppressive day some months later when Dane stood leaning heavily on a shovel near the edge of the bush. The temperature made exertion almost impossible, and there was a weight in the atmosphere which rendered respiration an effort; for the last two weeks the sun had been hidden all day long and the stars shrouded by haze at night, and the same heavy stillness had brooded over the camp. In such weather sickly white men die off, and wise ones lie still in a hammock whenever possible; but the l.u.s.t of gold had held two at least of the party strenuously to their task, and already a little heap of yellow grains reposed within an iron-bound chest. The men had, however, experienced some trouble with their colored a.s.sistants, who had been unusually dejected and apathetic of late.

While Dane ran his eyes along his trenches it struck him that the raw heaps of sand and the rude wooden flumes appeared strangely out of place in that gap in the primeval forest. It towered about them, vast, shadowy, and impressive, rotting as it grew, but throbbing with the pulse of an untrammeled life that would tear down the conduits, and bury the workings with verdure, almost as soon as their constructors relinquished them. The voices of the negroes, rising hollowly through the motionless atmosphere, sounded weak and feeble against its silence.

"If all goes well, and the yield increases as it has done of late, we should have enough to leave us a creditable profit before the year is done," Dane said. "We have been long enough in this country, Carsluith, and I mean to return to England before it wastes all the life out of me."

Perhaps it was the weather, for Maxwell appeared in an unusually somber mood.

"Your proviso covers a good deal," he replied. "This is a land of surprises, where it is more than usually useless to predict what any man will do. Neither are the signs auspicious at present."

"No," Dane agreed reflectively; "I can't say that I consider them so.

This dead stillness worries me. Does it presage a premature change in the seasons, or has it any other unpleasant meaning?"

"Who can tell? Anything abnormal carries a hint of death with it in this country. Still, there are other tokens. The few tribesmen who brought us in provisions have vanished completely. The last we saw looked like badly frightened men and were moving south with, for natives, surprising celerity. As you know, the interpreter failed to understand them, but I have an uneasy feeling that there was a sufficient cause for their hurry. The negro is not a foreseeing person, and does not run away unless the danger which threatens him is tangible and near."

Dane twice turned to move back toward the workings, but did not do so.

His physical nature revolted from toil that day, and his brain felt sick and useless under the stress of temperature. So the two lingered until a negro near them, dropping his shovel, rolled over, clawing at the sand, as suddenly as a rabbit stricken by the gun. His fall was so swift and unexpected that Dane stared at the twitching black limbs motionless until Maxwell's voice roused him.

"Shake yourself together, Hilton. There is work before us! That fellow must be carried into the bush before the rest discover what he is suffering from."

The man proved a heavy lift, and his greasy limbs writhed within their grasp; but they laid him among the creepers without attracting attention, and Dane, running to the tent, returned with a phial.

"Where do you feel them pain lib?" he asked.

The sufferer laid a black hand on his waist-cloth.

"Somebody done put hot iron in heah, sah, and turn him round and round."

Dane managed to drench him from the phial before his teeth met in an agony, and Maxwell closed one hand as he looked at his partner.

"It is very hard that this should happen--now--but you and I must see the poor devils through," he said. "Our help may not be worth much, but it is all that stands between them and destruction. It is one of the scourges of this afflicted country--swifter than cholera, and more deadly. This camp will resemble the pit presently."

Maxwell next glanced down at the negro pitifully, his forehead contracted and his lips firmly set, but he nodded abruptly when Dane spoke again.

"I have seen something like it in South America. Is it invariably contagious?"

"To negroes, yes; to white men, less so. In any case you have run the worst risk of infection already."

"Confound you! Do you suppose--?"

Maxwell interrupted, laying a hand on his shoulder.

"I think you and I are going to fight a very tough battle together, Hilton."

He had hardly spoken when Rideau appeared from behind them, and glanced at the groaning man. Then he shuffled backward well away from him; answered Maxwell's look of interrogation with a nod; and, while his face grew distinctly less like that of a European, he fumbled inside his jacket. The barrel of a pistol was visible the next moment. "It is," he said suggestively, "if the cases are few, the best way for preserve the others. In their own country they use the paddle. One good blow where the skull she is thinnest, and--voila, the safe remedy!"

Dane stretched a big hand out, and Rideau winced with a stifled expletive as he dropped the weapon; while the Briton was sensible of a distinct disappointment when he saw that the man's wrist remained unbroken. The suggestion had apparently revolted Maxwell also; he stared at the speaker with unconcealed loathing, while the latter opened his lips for a moment in a wolfish snarl as he glanced sideways at Dane.

Just then, Victor Rideau looked very much less like a French gentleman than a low-caste negro. Nevertheless, he was the first to recover his serenity.

"You have the mistaken squeamish; but me, I know the most advisable, and have great fear of the sick which catches," said he. "She is distressful for me. Sacre! Here is more other. To-morrow I consult you. Alors, I go."

A shrill scream of human agony rang through the lifeless air, and Rideau, who did not stand upon the order of his going, departed with all possible celerity.

Neither of his partners was much inclined for mirth, but there is often a ludicrous side to a tragedy; and Maxwell positively laughed when Dane savagely hurled the pistol after its vanishing owner.

"Missed! I would have given a good deal of the gold to strike him squarely between the shoulders. I meant it to hurt," he said.

Then an uproar began. Black figures, swarming out of the workings, gathered about the fallen man, clamoring excitedly, and Maxwell resumed command.

"They're panic-stricken; and fear will spread the sickness fastest. This must be stopped at once! We have not a moment to lose, or there will be murder done."

Dane felt very helpless as they ran forward to disperse the mob of terror-stricken black men. He still carried the shovel, though Maxwell went empty-handed, because, either from pride or policy, he never displayed a weapon once camp had been pitched. He appeared quietly resolute, though Dane afterward admitted feeling desperately anxious and more than a little afraid, for the ma.s.s of dusky faces with unreasoning fear and its accompanying ferocity stamped upon them was not an encouraging spectacle. Any one of those negroes was physically a match for two white men, and there were a good many of them.

The mob came to a standstill at the sight of them. Maxwell, removing his hat, straightened out the dints in it before he spoke a few words, and then, thrusting his way through the groups which opened up before him, halted beside the fallen man.

Some of the negroes began to chatter; some shrank farther back; but there was presently an ominous growling, and again the mob surged forward, one man with a matchet launching himself straight at his white master. Hitherto he had shown himself both cheerful and docile, but now he seemed possessed of a devil, the devil of fear trans.m.u.ted into maniacal savagery. Maxwell did not at first see him, and when he did it would have been too late, but that Dane whirled aloft the shovel, and when it came down the negro fell like a pole-axed ox at his comrade's feet. Even then Dane felt sick and sorry as he saw the red drops run from the steel, for he had often encouragingly patted his victim's brawny shoulder; but the negro is above all things unstable, and that blow was the saving of many lives. The crowd stood silent, cowed for a few moments by the swift retribution.

"Thanks," said Maxwell; "I think you have nipped it in the bud, Hilton."

Before he began to speak again his lieutenant, Amadu, and Dane's special follower, Monday, sprang to their side. Both carried rifles; and that turned the scale. Before half an hour had elapsed the two had not only restored a degree of confidence and order, but had picked out a number of men who might be trusted to act as sanitary police. By this time, however, the plague had claimed other victims, and Maxwell started forthwith to choose an isolated site for a hospital camp; while Dane, moving to and fro among the laborers, set apart any with suspicious symptoms.

It was midnight before either found leisure for food or rest, and then Dane knelt, with a biscuit in one hand, beside the little medicine chest in the tent, while Maxwell bent over a medical treatise as he ate.

Several sick men lay moaning just outside the illuminated canvas, and one, apparently in delirium, had during the last hour never ceased crooning the hammock-bearers' song.

"That chanty grows wearisome," said Maxwell at length; and, because Dane was overwrought, his companion's composure jarred upon him.