Never before had this land and its phenomena appeared so cruel, so perfectly the manifestation of a superhuman force that clothed its malignancy in a primordial splendor. Here, she reflected, was the quintessence of earthly beauty inextricable from the quintessence of horror; here was the source of all that she had trusted elsewhere in countless perfidious disguises and refinements.
Poisonous in some subtle element behind its visible vapors, it corrupted not only the flesh, but also the souls that had emerged elsewhere into forms of affection and compassion. Two nights ago even she had greeted the crack of the whips with the furious thought, "Strike again!"—and now there stole into her brain, together with the light hallucinations of fever, a hatred of these cringing black men who for a moment had dared to stand before her as antagonists. The evening breeze brought to her, from the porters' fires, the odor of savage bodies that had labored and been beaten for the cause of love; and her disgust was tinctured with the fierce intolerance of all those impressionable beings from what is called civilization, whom Africa had debased—or else, made "natural" again.
Through the buzz of insects there came from the forest, gradually blending over wide distances, a gentle throbbing. The porters lifted their round heads beyond the fires. The sharp profiles of the askaris were motionless. A wail floated over the camp:
"The drums of the Mambava!"
The throbbing died away. But soon it began again in the north, then in the south, and swelled to a continuous rumbling.
On the edge of the sky the moon appeared, blood red, nearly full.
There was a rush of feet, a scuffle in the bushes, and two askaris advanced into the firelight, dragging between them a creature that they seemed to have plucked out of some grotesque dream.
He was an albino. His gray skin, because of its lack of pigmentation, was splotched with eczema; his wool was a dirty, yellowish white; his features were permanently distorted because of his lifelong efforts to keep the light from paining his pink eyes. The askaris threw this monstrosity upon his face before Lilla's chair. He lay moaning and feebly moving his hands, as if he were caressing the earth.
Suddenly he sat up on his haunches. His body jumped from the beating of his heart. He fixed on Lilla a look that was the utmost caricature of terror and entreaty.
An askari let out a neighing laugh: