Before the green tent strutted a sentry as pompously as if he were on duty before the Kommandant’s bungalow. Inside, sprawling in a camp chair, was the corporal, in blue striped pyjamas, smoking a cigarette. Upon the floor crouched one of his women with a safety razor stuck in her woolly thatch, opening a can of beef. On the camp table were a bottle of brandy which had had its neck knocked off, a shaving mirror and an open tin of cigarettes. Squatting on the bed was another woman in field boots, cleaning up a can of salmon with one finger. The rest of the tent was a litter of broken cases, bottles, cans and papers.
Ten yards away under the thorn shrub, lay Birnier, and near to him were Mungongo and the others. Mungongo’s regard shuttled between this scene in the tent and the white man with a mingled expression of terror and amazement: terror at the temerity of the corporal in treating a white in such a manner and incredulous bewilderment that the white did not immediately strike them all dead. But the others, more sophisticated to the white man’s ways, were solely occupied in envying the corporal’s debauch.
The mauve shadows turned to blue as they lengthened. The clouds of small flies thinned and their ranks began to be refilled by the mosquitoes. Birnier lay with his back to the tent with a fly switch of grass, [pg 107] but he watched the doings of the corporal covertly. The corporal and his women had been drinking a good deal of the brandy and now he was supplying generous quantities to his men. Once he had come out to jeer. Birnier had taken no notice, nor even of the kick implanted by one of his own field boots on the foot of the woman. Already there was a bloodshot glint in the corporal’s yellow eyes and a pronounced uncertainty in his movements. Whether the man had had any particular instructions regarding the manner of his death Birnier did not know until he became loquacious and took to shouting insults at his white prisoner. The great white chief had given the white man to him as a slave, he yelled, and now he was going to take him home with him. This idea seemed to tickle him vastly and also his women, who giggled and applauded as the corporal began to describe what obscene acts they would make their white dog perform every day, what they would give him to eat, how he should be made to dance.
They grew noisier and the women began to sing lewd songs. The soldiers too revealed signs of their frequent potations. Soon the whole crowd would go mad, Birnier knew, and sooner or later collapse, which would give him a chance to escape, unless they chained him, or, what was far more probable, they decided to bait him to death during an orgy. What they would probably do to him was unthinkable. Somehow he must find a way out by self-destruction. Even should he escape, he would be unarmed and without food, and there was every possibility that they would trail and overtake him in the morning. He was lame and footsore; also he was weak from want [pg 108] of food. Once, when despoiling his chop boxes, the corporal had contemptuously thrown him a half eaten tin of sardines and a cigarette. He let the cigarette lie. Nourishment he must have; and so after an inward struggle he had eaten it, having to claw out the fish like a monkey, while the big black and his women sprawled and laughed.
The soldiers, except the one on sentry who still paced a trifle erratically, were grouped on their haunches around the fire in front of the tent on the threshold of which the corporal presided with as much pomposity as if he were the great Mogul, all drinking and smoking and eating. Now and again the women would screech insults over their heads at the white; and once the corporal threw an empty bottle at him, evoking a gale of applause. The women began the belly dance, crooning while the men accompanied with the rhythmic grunt, which ever leads to hysterical exaltation.
The sun was dipping. They might come for him at any moment. He watched the sentry and contemplated making a rush, taking a venture on the man’s bad aim and unsteady hand. They would not follow him far in the dark for dread of the spirits that walk by night. The only alternative to suicide was the river, in flood and full of crocodiles, a slender chance. He determined to try it. He considered making the attempt then. But the darker the better; they would more easily miss. At any risk he must never let them get their hands upon him. He drew himself together, flexing his limbs for a leap and a rush, anxiously observing the chanting crowd around the fire in the sunset glow.
The leashes of discipline were fraying. The sentry still plodded up and down, but with a rolling eye for his companions. The working of his mind was revealed when he walked round tying knots in the long grass which, as every Munyamwezi knows, is a sure method to prevent a prisoner’s escape; then he halted in front of Birnier, grinned, and pointed to the fire; evidently he knew or had heard that an orgy was coming. The man stood and watched him. Fearful that the fellow was about to drag him over or suggest that the victim be seized, if only in order to release him from his irksome duty, Birnier snatched up the cigarette lying in the grass and asked for a light to distract the man’s attention. The sentry shook his head and pointed to the fire. Hastily Birnier searched his pockets for a match; recollected that he had used the last, and took out a small tin box of wax vestas wrapped in oiled silk which he kept as a reserve in a special pouch of his belt. In the very act of striking the match Birnier ejaculated: “God!”
“Nini?” demanded the sentry.
“I burned myself,” returned Birnier.
“Nothing to what you will soon!” retorted the nigger, grinning, made an obscene suggestion and swaggered across to the fire.