It was true. I was placed face down on the ground, my cloth turned back, and the twisted hippo hide whip was brought out by one of the servants of the white man.
Down it came on me, lash after lash, cutting clean into the flesh at every stroke, and causing the blood to flow!
I do not know how many strokes were given me then; how could I count? The pain was bad enough, but the shame was worse. Then I was sent off, the blood drops on the sand showing the path I followed, without payment for the rubber I had brought, and with the order to bring a double quantity next time. [[59]]
For my own sake I tried to do so. I bought some from a man in the village who had managed to amass a reserve stock, but I had to pay a ruinous price for it. I soaked some in water to make it heavier, and next time I was allowed to leave without any punishment.
One day the white man told us of a new arrangement he was making for us rubber workers. A number of men were to be set apart as sentries, we called them, but the white man called them guards of the forest. They were to be taken from amongst our own people, and armed with guns, and they would accompany us on our journeys to and from the forest and protect us, and they would also escort us to the white man’s place when the day arrived for taking in the collected rubber. This sounded well, and as the rubber grew more and more scarce, and we had to go further into the forest to secure it, surely, we thought, a gun would be a protection, and keep our enemies from interfering with us.
Alas! once more were our hopes dashed to the ground. These men, who were supposed to be our protectors, became in time our worst oppressors. Instead of going with us into the forest, they at once appropriated the best houses [[60]]in the villages for themselves, or if these were not good enough for them, they caused new ones to be erected at our expense. After hurrying us off to the forest alone and unprotected at the earliest possible moment, they established themselves in the village, and lived in such a style as to far outshine any of our chiefs—in fact, taking a delight in insulting and depreciating them and relegating to themselves every vestige of authority which had formerly been vested in the chiefs of our own people.
As soon as ever we young men had gone, they behaved as though everything in the village belonged to them; the few goats we had, our fowls, dogs, food, all our goods and possessions—nothing was safe from their greed, and it was not long before even our wives were not safe if left at home alone.
Things had been gradually getting worse for a long time, and now that the sentries were placed over us were so much worse than ever before that we began to give up hope.
We reported their doings to the white man many times, but we soon found that he and they were as one man, and that if we told we almost invariably lost the palaver before the white man, and then the sentries found means [[61]]of their own to punish us for having spoken against them.
We frequently visited the other white men when we had the time to spare—I mean those who taught about God—and told them our grievances.