Adams nodded, and then went back into the house and into the bedroom, where he found Meeus hanging head downward out of his bed.
Rubber would trouble Andreas Meeus no more; his soul had gone to join the great army of souls in the Beyond.
It is strange enough to look upon the body of a man you have killed. But Adams had no more pity or compunction in his mind than if Meeus had been a stoat.
He turned to Berselius, who was sleeping. The delirium had passed, and he was breathing evenly and well. There was hope for him yet—hope for his body if not for his mind.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE VOICE OF THE FOREST BY NIGHT
The first thing to be done was to bury Meeus. And now came the question, How would the soldiers take the death of the Chef de Poste? They knew nothing of it yet. Would they revolt, or would they seek to revenge him, guessing him to have been killed.
Adams did not know and he did not care. He half hoped there would be trouble. The Congo had burst upon his view, stripped of shams, in all its ferocity, just as the great scene of the killing had burst upon Berselius. All sorts of things—from the Hostage House of Yandjali to the Hostage House of M’Bassa, from Mass to Papeete’s skull—connected themselves up and made a skeleton, from which he constructed that great and ferocious monster, the Congo State. The soldiers, with their filed teeth, were part of the monster, and, such was the depth of fury in his heart, he would have welcomed a fight, so that he might express with his arms what his tongue ached to say.