"No, sah: get some one time."[[1]]
He went off into the thicket, and soon returned with a couple of scorched bananas. These Samba devoured ravenously.
"Now I wonder if he could tell us all about it?" said Mr. Martindale. "Ask him, Nando."
Samba told his story. His dialect was different from Nando's, but there is a freemasonry of speech among the tribes of the Congo, and Nando understood. It was not so easy for the others to get at the meaning of Nando's strange jargon as he interpreted, but they listened patiently, and missed little of the narrative. Mr. Martindale sat on an upturned pot, Jack and Barney on charred logs. Nando squatted beside Samba on the ground, and Pat thrust his muzzle contentedly between the boy's knees and seemed to sleep.
The finding of Samba
One night, when the moon was at the full, a messenger had come into Banonga village. The time was at hand when the agent of Bula Matadi would attend to collect the tax—the weight of rubber exacted by the Congo State from every able-bodied man. The messenger reminded the chief that Banonga had several times been in default. Only a few men had hitherto been punished, only a few women carried away as hostages for the diligence of their husbands. But the patience of Bula Matadi was exhausted. If on this occasion the due measure of rubber was not forthcoming, the anger of Bula Matadi would blaze, the soldiers would come, and the men of Banonga would have cause to rue their idleness.
The chief listened in silence. He was old; his body was bowed, his spirit broken. Life in Banonga was no longer the same since the white man came. All the joy of life was gone; the people spent their days in unremitting toil, endeavouring to satisfy the cry of their rulers for rubber, always rubber, more rubber. When the messenger arrived the men were away hunting for rubber, but Mirambo knew that, were they doubled in number, they could not gather the quantity required. The vines in their district were exhausted; the men had not been taught how to tap them; they destroyed as they went, and now the whole district around Banonga would not yield half of what was demanded of them. The poor old chief trembled when he thought of the woe that was coming to Banonga, for he now knew from the fate of other villages on the river what the messenger of Bula Matadi foreshadowed. Unless his men could achieve the impossible, find rubber where there was none, the blow would fall. And when it fell Banonga would be no more. The village a little while ago so happy and prosperous would be destroyed, its people killed or scattered. So it had happened to other villages: how could he hope that Banonga would be spared? The messenger indeed had spoken of the leniency of Bula Matadi, but the chief might have reminded him of the outrages the people had suffered; of the rapacity, the ruthless brutalities, of the forest guards. But he said no word of provocation; only, when the man had gone, Samba heard him mutter the terrible sentence now too often on his lips: "Botofé bo le iwa: rubber is death!"
The day came: the agent of Bula Matadi appeared, with an armed escort. The men of Banonga had not returned. They came dropping in by ones and twos and threes, worn out with their long quest. The rubber was weighed: in many cases it was short; excuses were rejected, entreaties scoffed at. The hapless victims suffered taunts, abuse, the terrible whip. One, less enduring than the rest, resisted. This was the signal. A dozen rifles were raised—a dozen shots rang out, strong forms lay writhing in the agony of death. A brief, sharp struggle; another fusillade; and the terrified survivors, men, women and children, fled helter-skelter to the forest, pursued by the shots of the soldiery, ruthless of age or sex. A raid was made upon their deserted huts: everything that had value for the native levies was seized; then the match was applied, and soon what had once been a prosperous happy village was a heap of smouldering ruins.