Long Odds

by Harold Bindloss

It was an hour after midnight when the Headman sent for Ormsgill, who found him sitting with his overlord beside a little fire that burned redly in the thin mist. The night was almost chilly, and the Suzerain crouched close beside the blaze, huddled in his loose garments, with the uncertain light on his impassive face. It seemed to Ormsgill that he looked worn and old, and he became conscious for the first time of a vague pity for him. The task he had undertaken was, the white man felt, one he could not succeed in. It was merely another futile protest, for the yoke that was being fastened on his people's necks could not be flung off that way. Ormsgill stood silent a moment or two until the old man turned to him.

"You have no cause to love those white men in San Roque," he said. "Well, I will give you forty boys with rifles. We want leaders who know how the white men fight."

Ormsgill shook his head. "No," he said, "I can not lead them. This affair is no concern of mine."

The negro appeared to ponder over his answer, for it was with difficulty they understood each other, though another man crouching in the wood smoke flung in a word or two.

"Are you all against us because we are black?" he said. "Those men at San Roque would shoot you if they could."

"It is very likely," and Ormsgill smiled a little. "Still, I think we are not all against you—though I can not lead your men. There are white men among the Portuguese who know that you have wrongs. Some day they will have justice done."

The negro spread out a dusky hand. "That is what the missionaries tell us, but we have waited a long time, and there is no sign of it yet. We can not wait for ever, and very soon all my people will be at work upon the white men's plantations. They get greedier and greedier. Now at last we strike."

Once more Ormsgill, standing still in the shadow watching him, was stirred by a vague compassion. He knew that revolt was useless, and wondered whether the old belief that there was a ban upon the negro and that he was made to serve the white man was not, after all, founded on more than superstition and self-interested sophistry. Other primitive peoples had, he knew, died off before the white man, but the Africans had thriven in their bondage, filling Brazil and the West Indies and the cotton-growing States. They were prolific, cheerful, adaptable to all conditions, and yet even where liberty had been offered them they remained a subject people, and made no effort to shake off the white man's yoke.

"You may sack San Roque," he said. "Still, I think you will never reach the coast."

The Headman started at this boldness, and there was a vindictive gleam in his eyes, but his overlord sat silent a space, apparently brooding heavily, and gazing at the mist. Then he turned to Ormsgill with a somewhat impressive deliberateness.