But the cause of the trouble—the propinquity of civilized man—was also the way out of it. Shouldering what they could of the things most necessary to life, and striking the downward course of the Ray River—here a baby stream, shallow and fordable,—they headed toward civilization.
Toward the end of the second day they came upon the sun-dried bodies of six natives planted head-downwards in the soil: their withered limbs trained upright on stakes, their dark leathery trunks still showing the scores of stripes borne by the flesh.
Davidina had been, for over a year, so far removed from civilization, that she did not know the latest things that civilization in its military necessities had been doing; nor had she at that time any clue for connecting this unsightly object-lesson with the pacific and missionary efforts of her brother Jonathan. But that night, coming into a white camp, well fenced and armed—offshoot of the larger expedition now actively out to impose peace by reprisals—she got the situation fully explained.
On the same spot where she had seen the impaled natives, a lay-missioner a few weeks earlier had been found dead from the same causes.
‘This time we only managed to catch six,’ explained the commandant; ‘our regulation number is twenty.’
‘Regulation number is good,’ was her tart comment. ‘It suggests order and discipline. Do you reduce the number as you go on; or do you increase it?’
‘Increasing isn’t much good,’ replied her informant. ‘These beggars can only count up to ten. We chose twenty as a good working average: it’s the number we can generally manage to bag if we butt in quick enough.’
‘But a higher scale,’ said Davidina, ‘would give you a better clearance: rid you of more dangerous characters.’
‘Not necessarily. The dangerous ones can run. We only get what’s left.’
‘You are acting strictly to order, I suppose? Whose?’