Then the other side of the picture stood out sharply to his mental view. He saw the fleeing crowds of the enemy; the jammed gateway; the camp enclosure strewn with dead and wounded. Once or twice, even, his marching column came upon wounded men, too weak to crawl away into the bush, and he could do nothing for them. This terrible loss of life, this misery—was not this too due to the evil government of a monarch who, far away, in wealth and luxury and ease, spoke with two voices—one the voice of beneficence, benignity, zeal for peace and good order; the other the voice of greed, avarice, the callous demand for riches even at the price of blood? "Botofé bo le iwa! Rubber is death!"—the woful proverb haunted him like a knell: death to the dwellers in this well-favoured land, death to the minions of the power that oppressed them, death to those who, like his uncle, dared to make a stand for freedom and found themselves engulfed in the whirlpool of injustice and wrong.
As Jack approached the river, these gloomy thoughts gave way to the necessities of the moment. Lepoko, leading the column, announced that the river was very near. Then Jack ordered the torches to be put out, and the men to creep forward even more silently than they had already done. Had news of the storming of the camp been carried, he wondered, by fugitives to the flotilla? Since they had left the direct path to the river and struck obliquely towards it there had been no sign of fugitives. He supposed that the scared enemy had kept to the route they knew, and would follow the river bank until they reached the canoes. This involved many extra miles through the winding of the stream, unless the flotilla had come farther up than he thought was likely.
The principal danger was that some of Elbel's scouts, knowing the country better than the majority of the garrison, might already have taken the short cut Jack was now taking and would reach the flotilla before him. There were two white officers in charge; they might set off at once to the relief of their superior and reach the fort while Jack was still absent. Would Barney be strong enough to hold out against them?
The march was continued with brief rests throughout the night. Shortly after dawn a man sprang panting out of the thicket to the right of the path, and hurried to Jack's litter.
"O Lokolobolo!" he cried, "I have news!"
Jack saw that it was Lofundo, sub-chief of Akumbi.
"It was in the smoke and the flame, Lokolobolo. I saw Elobela, with fear in his face, climb over the fence and rush out into the night. After him I sprang—I, and Bolumbu, and Iloko, and others. It was Elobela, the cruel, the pitiless! After him, into the night! but first Iloko tired, then Bolumbu, then the others. I, Lofundo, I did not tire; no; was it not Elobela whose men ill-used and slew my people and burnt my village, and who with his own hands flogged my son? I ran and ran, hot on his trail, and in the morning light I came up with him, and saw him with fear in his face; and I had my knife; and now Elobela is dead, yonder, in the forest."
"Is it far, Lofundo?"
"A little march in the forest, Lokolobolo."
Jack had himself carried to the spot. There, beneath a tree, covered with felled branches and leaves to protect it from beasts, lay the stark body of Guillaume Elbel. Jack could not help pitying the wretch whose zeal in an evil cause had brought him to so miserable an end. But as he thought of the misery this man had caused—the ruined homes, the desolated lives: as he remembered his uncle, lying in his lonely grave, and Samba, lacerated by this man's cruel whip, pity froze within him.