here—judge if hell, with all its power to damn,
can add one curse to the foul thing i am—
there are some places in the world where a curse seems to brood in the atmosphere. msala was one of these. perhaps these places are accursed by the deeds that have been done there. who can tell?
could the trees—the two gigantic palms that stood by the river's edge—could these have spoken, they might perhaps have told the tale of this little inland station in that country where, as the founder of the hamlet was in the habit of saying, no one knows what is going on.
all went well with the retreating column until they were almost in sight of msala, when the flotilla was attacked by no less than three hippopotamuses. one canoe was sunk, and four others were so badly damaged that they could not be kept afloat with their proper complement of men. there was nothing for it but to establish a camp at msala, and wait there until the builders had repaired the damaged canoes.
the walls of durnovo's house were still standing, and here guy oscard established himself with as much comfort as circumstances allowed. he caused a temporary roof of palm-leaves to be laid on the charred beams, and within the principal room—the very room where the three organisers of the great simiacine scheme had first laid their plans—he set up his simple camp furniture.
oscard was too great a traveller, too experienced a wanderer, to be put out of temper by this enforced rest. the men had worked very well hitherto. it had, in its way, been a great feat of generalship, this leading through a wild country of men unprepared for travel, scantily provisioned, disorganised by recent events. no accident had happened, no serious delay had been incurred, although the rate of progress had necessarily been very slow. nearly six weeks had elapsed since oscard with his little following had turned their backs for ever on the simiacine plateau. but now the period of acute danger had passed away. they had almost reached civilisation. oscard was content.
when oscard was content he smoked a slower pipe than usual—watching each cloud of smoke vanish into thin air. he was smoking very slowly this, the third evening of their encampment at msala. there had been heavy rain during the day, and the whole lifeless forest was dripping with a continuous, ceaseless clatter of heavy drops on tropic foliage; with a united sound like a widespread whisper.
oscard was sitting in the windowless room without a light, for a light only attracted a myriad of heavy-winged moths. he was seated before the long french window, which, since the sash had gone, had been used as a door. before him, in the glimmering light of the mystic southern cross, the great river crept unctuously, silently to the sea. it seemed to be stealing away surreptitiously while the forest whispered of it. on its surface the reflection of the great stars of the southern hemisphere ran into little streaks of silver, shimmering away into darkness.
all sound of human life was still. the natives were asleep. in the next room, joseph in his hammock was just on the barrier between the waking and the sleeping life—as soldiers learn to be. oscard would not have needed to raise his voice to call him to his side.
the leader of this hurried retreat had been sitting there for two hours. the slimy moving surface of the river had entered into his brain; the restless silence of the african forest alone kept him awake. he hardly realised that the sound momentarily gaining strength within his ears was that of a paddle—a single, weakly, irregular paddle. it was not a sound to wake a sleeping man. it came so slowly, so gently through the whisper of the dripping leaves that it would enter into his slumbers and make itself part of them.
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 sake, man, don't let me go to sleep!”
“what do you mean?” asked oscard. they both thought that he had gone mad. sleep had nothing more to do with durnovo's eyes—protruding, staring, terrible to look at.
“don't let me go to sleep,” he repeated. “don't! don't!”
“all right,” said oscard soothingly; “all right. we'll look after you.”
he fell back on the bed. in the flickering light his eyeballs gleamed.
then quite suddenly he rose to a sitting position again with a wild effort.
“i've got it! i've got it!” he cried.
“got what?”
“the sleeping sickness!”
the two listeners knew of this strange disease. oscard had seen a whole village devastated by it, the habitants lying about their own doors, stricken down by a deadly sleep from which they never woke. it is known on the west coast of africa, and the cure for it is unknown.
“hold me!” cried durnovo. “don't let me sleep!”
his head fell forward even as he spoke, and the staring wide-open eyes that could not sleep made a horror of him.
oscard took him by the arms, and held him in a sitting position. durnovo's fingers were clutching at his sleeve.
“shake me! god! shake me!”
then oscard took him in his strong arms, and set him on his feet. he shook him gently at first, but as the dread somnolence crept on he shook harder, until the mutilated inhuman head rolled upon the shoulders.
“it's a sin to let that man live,” exclaimed joseph, turning away in horror.
“it's a sin to let any man die,” replied oscard, and with his great strength he shook durnovo like a garment.
and so victor durnovo died. his stained soul left his body in guy oscard's hands, and the big englishman shook the corpse, trying to awake it from that sleep which knows no earthly waking.
so, after all, heaven stepped in and laid its softening hand on the judgment of men. but there was a strange irony in the mode of death. it was strange that this man, who never could have closed his eyes again, should have been stricken down by the sleeping sickness.
they laid the body on the floor, and covered the face, which was less gruesome in death, for the pity of the eyes had given place to peace.
the morning light, bursting suddenly through the trees as it does in equatorial africa, showed the room set in order and guy oscard sleeping in his camp-chair. behind him, on the floor, lay the form of victor durnovo. joseph, less iron-nerved than the great big-game hunter, was awake and astir with the dawn. he, too, was calmer now. he had seen death face to face too often to be appalled by it in broad daylight.
so they buried victor durnovo between the two giant palms at msala, with his feet turned towards the river which he had made his, as if ready to arise when the call comes and undertake one of those marvellous journeys of his which are yet a household word on the west coast.
the cloth fluttered as they lowered him into his narrow resting-place, and the face they covered had a strange mystic grin, as if he saw something that they could not perceive. perhaps he did. perhaps he saw the simiacine plateau, and knew that, after all, he had won the last throw; for up there, far above the table-lands of central africa, there lay beneath high heaven a charnel-house. hounded down the slope by his tormentors, he had left a memento behind him surer than their torturing knives, keener than their sharpest steel—he had left the sleeping sickness behind him.
his last journey had been worthy of his reputation. in twenty days he had covered the distance between the plateau and msala, stumbling on alone, blinded, wounded, sore-stricken, through a thousand daily valleys of death. with wonderful endurance he had paddled night and day down the sleek river without rest, with the dread microbe of the sleeping sickness slowly creeping through his veins.
he had lived in dread of this disease, as men do of a sickness which clutches them at last; but when it came he did not recognise it. he was so racked by pain that he never recognised the symptoms; he was so panic-stricken, so paralysed by the nameless fear that lay behind him, that he could only think of pressing forward. in the night hours he would suddenly rise from his precarious bed under the shadow of a fallen tree and stagger on, haunted by a picture of his ruthless foes pressing through the jungle in pursuit. thus he accomplished his wonderful journey alone through trackless forests; thus he fended off the sickness which gripped him the moment that he laid him down to rest.
he had left it—a grim legacy—to his torturers, and before he reached the river all was still on the simiacine plateau.
and so we leave victor durnovo. his sins are buried with him, and beneath the giant palms at msala lies maurice gordon's secret.
and so we leave msala, the accursed camp. far up the ogowe river, on the left bank, the giant palms still stand sentry, and beneath their shade the crumbling walls of a cursed house are slowly disappearing beneath luxuriant growths of grass and brushwood.
