“But you don’t excuse the devils, do you?” broke in Le Blanc. “Their cruelties are incredible. A friend of mine once met a man in Zanzibar who told him he had seen a group of slaves, mostly young girls, who, after being fattened up, were tied together and marched from one of the villages to the other that the buyers might select and mark upon their bodies the particular cuts they wanted.”
“I haven’t a doubt of it. It’s all true,” replied Herbert. “I once saw the same thing myself when I was helpless to prevent it, as I was in hiding at the time and dared not expose myself. Yet I recognized even then that the savage was only following out the traditions of centuries, with no one to teach him any better. We ourselves have savage tastes that are never criticised; to do so would be considered mawkish and sentimental. We feel, for instance, no regret when we wring the neck of a pigeon—that is, we didn’t,” Herbert added with a dry smile, “until Lemois advanced his theories of ‘mercy’ the other night. We still feed our chickens in coops, stuff our geese to enlarge their livers, fatten our hogs until they can barely stagger, and, after parading them around the market-places, kill and eat them just as the African does his human product. Even Lemois, with equal nonchalance, hacks up his lobsters while they are alive or plunges them into boiling water—he wouldn’t dare serve them to us in any other way. The only difference is that we persuade ourselves that our pigs and poultry are ignorant of what is going to happen to them, while the captured African begins to suffer the moment he is pounced upon by his captors.”
“And you mean to tell me you don’t blame these wretches!” burst out Le Blanc. “I’d burn ’em alive!”
“Yes, I am quite sure you would—that is the usual civilized, twentieth-century way, a continuation of the eye-for-an-eye dogma, but it isn’t always efficacious, and it is seldom just. The savage has his good side; he can really teach some of us morals and manners, though you may not believe it. Please don’t explode again—not now; wait until I get through. And I go even farther, for my experience teaches me that the savage never does anything which he himself thinks to be wrong. I say this because I have been among them for a good many years, speak their dialects, and have had, perhaps, a better opportunity of studying them than most travellers. And these evidences of a better nature can be found, let me tell you, not only among the tribes in what is known as ‘White Man’s Africa,’ opened up by the explorers, but in the more distant parts—out of the beaten track—often where no white man has ever stepped—none at least before me. Even among the cannibal tribes I have often been staggered at discovering traits which were as mysterious as they were amazing—deep human notes of the heart which put the white man to shame. These traits are all the more extraordinary because they are found in a race who for centuries have been steeped in superstition with its attendant cruelty, and who are considered incapable even of love because they sell their women.
“You, Le Blanc, naturally break out and want to burn them alive. Lemois, more humane, as he always is, would exercise more patience if he could see anything to build upon. You are both wrong. Indeed, between the educated white man freed from all restraint and turned loose in a savage wilderness, and the uneducated savage I would have more hope of the cannibal than the freebooter, and I say this because the older I grow the more I am convinced that with a great majority of men, public opinion, and public opinion only, keeps them straight, and that when they are far from these restraints they often stoop to a lower level than the savage, unless some form of religion controls their actions. To make this clear I will tell you two stories.
“My first is about a young fellow, a graduate of one of the first universities of Europe. I am not going to preach, nor throw any blame. Some of us in our twenties might have done what that white man did. I am only trying to prove my statement that the cannibal in his cruelties is only following out the instincts and traditions of his race, which have existed for centuries, while the white man goes back on every one of his. I wish to prove to you if I can that there is more in the heart of a savage than most of us realize—more to build upon, as Lemois puts it.
“Some years ago I met, on the Upper Congo, a young fellow named Goringe, of about twenty-four or five, who had a contract with the company for providing carriers to be sent to the coast for the supplies to be brought back and delivered to the several camps, mine among the others. He, like many an adventurer drawn to that Eldorado of adventure, was a man of more than ordinary culture, a brilliant talker, and of very great executive ability. It was his business to visit the different villages, buy, barter, or steal able-bodied men for so much a month, and rush them in gangs to the coast under charge of an escort. On their return the company paid them and him so much a head. There were others besides Goringe, of course, engaged in the same business, but none of them attained his results, as I had learned from time to time from those who had come across his caravans in their marches through the jungle.
“One morning a runner came into my camp with a message from Goringe, telling me that he intended passing within a mile or so of where I was; that he was pressed for time or would do himself the honor of calling upon me, and that he would deem it a great favor if I would meet him at a certain crossing where he meant to rest during the heat of the day. I, of course, sent him word that I should be on hand. I hadn’t seen him for some years—few other white men, for that matter—and I wanted to learn for myself the secret of his marvellous success. When in London he had worn correct evening clothes, a decoration in his button-hole, and was a frequenter of the best and most exclusive clubs—rather a poor training, one would suppose, for the successful life he had of late been leading in the jungle—and it was successful so far as the profits of the home company were concerned. While their other agents would hire ten men—or twenty—in a long march of months, gathering up former carriers out of work, some of whom had served Stanley in his time, Goringe would get a hundred or more of fresh recruits, all able-bodied savages capable of carrying a load of sixty-five pounds no matter what the heat or how rough the going.
“I arrived at the crossing first and waited—waited an hour, perhaps two—before his vanguard put in an appearance. Then, to use one of Louis’ expressions, I ‘sat up and began to take notice.’ I had seen a good many barbaric turnouts in my time—one in India when I was the guest of a maharaja, who received me at the foot of a steep hill flanked on either side by a double row of elephants in gorgeous trappings, with armed men in still more gorgeous costumes filling the howdahs; another in Ceylon, and another in southern Spain at Easter time—but Goringe’s march was the most unique and the most startling spectacle I had ever laid my eyes on, so much so that I hid myself in a mass of underbrush and let the last man pass me before I made myself known.
“The vanguard was composed of some twenty naked men, black as tar, of course, and armed with spears and rawhide shields. These were the fighters, clearing the way for my lord, the white man. These were followed by a dozen others carrying light articles: the great man’s india-rubber bath-tub, his guns, ammunition, medicine-chest, tobacco, matches, and toilette articles—with such portions of his wardrobe as he might choose to enjoy. Separated from the contaminating touch of those in front by a space of some twenty feet and by an equal distance from those behind, came Goringe, walking alone, like a potentate of old. As he passed within a few yards of where I lay concealed I had ample opportunity to study every detail of his personality and make-up. I was not quite sure that it was he; then I got his smile and the peculiar debonair lift of his head. Except that he was fifty pounds heavier, he was the man with whom I had dined so often in London.