To think of Europeans finding time, energy, and occasion to effect this in such a spot, so incredibly remote from their marts and ways and busy haunts! Christians! . . .
Having posted sentries and chosen a spot for rally and defence, he sent out tiny patrols along the few jungle paths that led to the village, and proceeded to see what he could, as there was absolutely no living soul from whom he could learn anything. There was little that the ablest scoutmaster could deduce, save that the place had been visited by a large party of mischievously destructive and brutal ruffians, who wore boots. There was nothing of use or of value that had not been either destroyed or taken. Even papai trees that bore no fruit had been hacked down, and the panga had been laid to the root of tree and shrub and sugar-cane. Not a plantain, lime, mango, or papai was to be seen.
Bertram entered one of the least burnt of the well-made huts of thatch and wattle. There was what had been blood on the earthen floor, blackened walls, charred stools, bed-frames and domestic utensils. He felt sick. . . . In a corner was a child’s bed of woven string plaited over a carved frame. It would make a useful stool or a resting-place for things which should not lie on the muddy floor of his banda. He picked it up. Underneath it was a tiny black hand with pinkish finger-tips. He dropped the bed and was violently sick. Kultur had indeed passed that way. . . .
Hurrying out into the sunlight, as soon as he was able to do so, he completed his tour of inspection. There was little of interest and nothing of importance.
Apparently the hamlet had boasted an artist, a sculptor, some village Rodin, before the Germans came to freeze the genial current of his soul. . . . As Bertram studied the handiwork of the absent one, his admiration diminished, however, and he withdrew the “Rodin.” The man was an arrant, shameless plagiarist, a scoundrelly pick-brain imitator, a mere copying ape, for, seen from the proper end, as it lay on its back, the clay statue of a woman, without form and void, boneless, wiggly, semi-deliquescent, was an absolutely faithful and shameless reproduction of the justly world-famous Eppstein Venus.
“The man ought to be prosecuted for infringement of copyright,” thought Bertram, “if there is any copyright in statues. . . .”
The patrols having returned with nothing to report, Bertram marched back to Butindi and reported it.
CHAPTER XX
Stein-Brücker Meets Bertram Greene—and Death
And so passed the days at Butindi, with a wearisome monotony of Stand-to, visiting the pickets, going out on patrol, improving the defences of the boma, foraging, gathering information, reconnoitring, trying to waylay and scupper enemy patrols, communicating with the other British outposts, surveying and map-making, beating off half-hearted attacks by strong raiding-patrols—all to the accompaniment of fever, dysentery, and growing weakness due to malnutrition and the terrible climate.
To Bertram it all soon became so familiar and normal that it seemed strange to think that he had ever known any other kind of life. His chief pleasure was to talk to Wavell, that most uncommon type of soldier, who was also philosopher, linguist, student, traveller, explorer and ethnologist.