At last, at noon, on the third day of their journey to this place they struck rising ground where the trees fell away till no trees were left, and the blue sky of heaven lay above their heads, and before them on the highest point of the rise, Fort M’Bassa burning in the sun.
CHAPTER XI
ANDREAS MEEUS
The Parthenon in all its glory could not have looked more beautiful to the returning Greek than this half-ruined fort in the eyes of Adams.
A thing built by the hands of white men and shone on by the sun—what could be more acceptable to the eye after the long, long tramp through the heart-breaking forest!
The fort of M’Bassa was quite small; the surrounding walls had gone to decay, but the “guest house” and the office, and the great go-down where the rubber was stored, were in good repair and well thatched.
Outside the walls were a number of wretched hovels inhabited by the “soldiers” and their wives, and one of these soldiers, a tall black, with the eternal red fez on his head and a rifle slung on his back, was the first to sight the coming expedition, and to notify its approach with a yell that brought a dozen like him from the sun-baked hovels and, a moment later from the office, a white man in a pith helmet, who stood for a moment looking across the half-ruined wall at the newcomers, and then advanced to meet them.
He was a middle-sized man, with a melancholy face that showed very white under the shadow of the helmet; he was dressed in dingy white drill, and he had a cigarette between his lips.