Ormsgill smiled again. "I don't purpose to afford him the opportunity. He stole the boys, and I am merely going to make him give them up again. With a little resolution I believe it can be done. Still, I am sorry to drag you into the thing."
Nares said nothing for a moment or two. He felt that it would be useless, and his companion's quiet cold-blooded daring had its effect on him. After all, check it as he would, there was in him a vague pride and belief in the white man's destiny, and in the land he came from the term white man does not include the Latins. This world, it seems, was made for Americans and Englishmen to rule. A little gleam crept into his eyes.
"Well," he said, "I don't think I'm going to blame you now I am in."
CHAPTER XVI
NEGRO DIPLOMACY
The glare was almost intolerable when Ormsgill and his carriers walked into the space of trampled dust round which straggled the heavily thatched huts of the native village. The afternoon sun flooded it with a pitiless heat and dazzling brilliancy, and there was not a movement in the stagnant atmosphere. Beyond the clustering huts the forest rose impressively still, and there was a deep silence for a few moments after the line of weary men appeared. Then as they came on with a soft patter of naked feet a murmur rose from the groups of half-naked negroes squatting in the dust under the shadow flung by a great tree. It was not articulate, but there was a hint of anger in it, for white men were not regarded with any great favor in that village, which was not astonishing.
They moved quietly forward across the glaring dust, with a guard of dusky men in white cotton marching rifle on shoulder behind them. Indeed, the carriers only stopped when they reached the shadow of the tree under which the Headman and the elders of the village had assembled. Then as Ormsgill raised his hand the men with rifles swung out to left and right, and stood fast, an inconsequent handful of motionless figures with the unarmed carriers clustering behind them. Their white cotton draperies, which they had put on half an hour ago, gleamed in the sun glare dazzlingly.
Ormsgill was quite aware that a good deal depended on his composure and steadiness of bearing, but he had just come out of the shadow of the forest and he blinked as he looked about him. Close in front of him the fat village Headman sat on a carved stool, but there was another older man of somewhat lighter color and dignified presence who was seated a little higher, and this promised to complicate the affair, since Ormsgill recognized him as a man of some importance in those forests, and one who claimed a certain domination over the villages in them. It was known that he bore the white men little good will, but his presence there suggested that he had some complaint against the villagers, or was disposed as their suzerain to listen to their grievances, and Ormsgill realized that he had arrived at a somewhat unfortunate time. Then his eyes rested on another man he had expected to see. He stood among the elders, big and brown-skinned, with loose robes of white and blue flowing about him, smiling maliciously, though Ormsgill fancied that for some not very evident reason he was not quite at ease. Nares, who now stood beside his comrade, recognized him as Domingo, the labor purveyor.
"I'm 'most afraid you are going to find it difficult to get those boys," he said. "One could fancy these people had affairs of their own to discuss, and it's by no means certain that they'll even listen to us in the meanwhile."
Ormsgill, who did not answer him, glanced round at his boys. He fancied that none of them felt exactly comfortable, but they, at least, kept still, and he sent forward two of them with the presents he had brought before he turned to the Headman.