Long Odds

by Harold Bindloss

Nares was asleep when they passed the forking and held on by the lower road, and Ormsgill did not tell the boys that he had seen a huddled black figure lying a few yards back among the undergrowth. He did not even stop to look at it. Labor is in demand in that country, and when it is supplied by a dusky contractor who collects the raw material in the bush the unfortunate who sickens on the long march from the interior usually dies. Transport on the human head makes provisions costly in a devastated country, and it is not economy to feed a man who will bring one nothing in. A white man, as everybody knows, may not own or sell a slave in any part of Africa under European control, but he must have labor, and there are in practice ways of getting over the obvious difficulty. They are not ways which are discussed openly, and, so far as one can ascertain, are by no means satisfactory to the negro for whose benefit they are sometimes said to be devised. In this, and a few other matters, the negro's opinion is not, however, deferred to. It is his particular business to gather rubber for the white man and grow his cocoa, and the fact that he is not as a rule content to recognize this obligation is very seldom taken into consideration.

It had been dark two hours, and the bearers could go no further without a rest, when Ormsgill camped on a ridge beneath tall tufted palms at least a hundred yards from the trail. There was a reason for this, and also for the fact that he allowed no fires to be made, though of all things the negro loves a cheerful blaze. The powers of evil are very real to him, which is by no means astonishing considering the land he lives in. The boys sat huddled about the empty hammock among the palms, while the two white men lay upon a waterproof ground sheet some fifty yards apart from them and nearer the trail. Ormsgill had had very little sleep during the last four nights, but he was very wide awake then, and a good magazine rifle, which had been smuggled through San Roque without the Commandant's notice, lay across his knees.

He was listening intently, but could hear nothing except an occasional rustling among the creepers and the heavy splash of moisture on the leaves. Nor could he see very much, for though here and there a star shown down between the towering trunks, a sour white steam hung almost a man's height about the dripping undergrowth. Save for the splash of moisture it was so still that Nares, with imagination quickened by the tension the fever had laid upon his nerves, could almost fancy he could hear things growing. The growth, at least was characteristic of the country in that it was untrammeled, luxuriant, and destructive rather than beneficent. Orchids and parasites sucked the life blood from the trees, and throve upon their ruin; creepers strangled them and tore them down half-rotten. It was a mad, cruel struggle for existence, and Ormsgill, whose hot hands were clenched upon the rifle, clearly recognized that man must take his part in it. As a matter of fact, he was not averse to doing so. There was a vein of combativeness in him, and circumstances had hitherto usually forced him well to the front when there was trouble anywhere in his vicinity.

What he and Nares talked about was of no particular consequence. They were men whose inner thoughts only became apparent now and then, and their conversation largely concerned the merits of certain Congolese cigars. By and by, however, Nares stopped abruptly, as a hand that evidently did not belong to his companion touched his arm, but it was characteristic of him that he did not start. He looked round instead, and saw an indistinct and shadowy figure rise out of the undergrowth. It pointed up the trail, and Ormsgill, who seemed to listen for a moment or two, nodded.

"I really think Lieutenant Luiz meant us to take the other road," he said. "That must be Domingo bringing down another drove, and as it is evidently a big one it is just as well we didn't meet him on the trail. Domingo doesn't like either of us, and he has been getting truculent lately."

Nares said nothing, and a faint patter of naked feet that grew steadily louder crept out of the silence. It was dragging and listless, the shuffle of weary and hopeless men; and it was evident that the hammock boy who sank down again into the undergrowth close beside Ormsgill was badly afraid. Five minutes later a shadowy figure appeared among the trees below them where the mist was thinner, grew a trifle plainer as it slipped across an opening and vanished again, but there were others behind, and for several minutes a row of half-seen men flitted by. Here and there one of them draped in white cotton carried a flintlock gun, but the rest were half-naked, and last of all a few plodded behind a lurching hammock. They went by without a sound but the confused patter of weary feet upon the quaggy trail, and left an impressive silence behind them when they plunged into the gloom again.

Then Ormsgill smiled grimly as he tapped the breech of his rifle.

"If homicide is ever justifiable it would have been to-night," he said. "One could hardly have missed that bulge in Domingo's hammock, and the longing to drive a bullet through it was almost too much for me."

Nares made no attempt to rebuke him. "That man," he said, "is permitted to be—one must suppose as part of a great purpose. The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they do their work thoroughly."

"It seems so," and Ormsgill laughed a little bitter laugh. "Anyway, the stones are wet with blood, and a good many of us have passed between them. One wonders now and then how long the downtrodden will endure that terrible grinding."