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Meeus, frightened now by the pity in the face of the other, horribly frightened by the unknown thing that had happened to him, making him dead from the waist down, moved his lips, but made no sound. "Your back is broken," replied Adams to the question in the other's eyes. Then he turned to Berselius. At midnight the rains broke with a crash of thunder that seemed to shake the universe.
He was a silent man, slow of speech but ready with sympathy, and as he lounged comfortably in his chair, smoking his pipe, his pity for Meeus was profound. The man had been for two years in this benighted solitude; two years without seeing a white face, except on the rare occasion of a District Commissioner's visit.
God had given him a character benign and just, a heart tempered to mercy and kindliness; all these qualities had been outraged and were now under arms. They had given a mandate to the original man to act. The death of Meeus was the first result. He went to the shelf where Meeus had kept his official letters and took Meeus's Mauser pistol from it. It was in a holster attached to a belt.
Berselius, seated at his tent door, looked at his watch. Meeus, seated beside Berselius, was smoking cigarettes. "Give him an hour," said Berselius. "He will be far away enough by that. Besides, the wind is blowing from there." "True," said Meeus. "An hour." And he continued to smoke.
Verily it was a beating to the bitter end, and Meeus, pale, dripping with sweat, his eyes dilated to a rim, ran about laughing, shouting "Two hundred chicotte. Two hundred chicotte." He cried the words like a parrot, not knowing what he said. And Berselius? Berselius, also dripping with sweat, his eyes also dilated to a rim, tottering like a drunken man, gazed, drinking, drinking the sight in.
Even the boy who had been sent to communicate with them had not returned. "No news?" said Berselius, as he stepped from his tent-door and glanced around him. "None," replied Meeus. Adams now appeared, and the servants who had been preparing breakfast laid it on the grass.
He had been through so much of late that he had grown callous and case-hardened; he did not care much whether the place was washed away or not he wanted to sleep, and he slept. Meeus, left alone, lay watching the glimmer of the lamp shining through the cracks of the door, and listening to the thunder of the rain. This was the greatest rain he had experienced.
The Hostage House of Yandjali had started the impression; Meeus in some subtle way had deepened it; and now this. But he fully recognized what difficult people to deal with niggers are. He felt that all this was slavery under a thin disguise, this so-called taxation and "trade," but it was not his affair. All work is slavery more or less pleasant.
With the lamp in his hand he went into the sleeping room to see how Berselius and Meeus were doing. Berselius was still, to judge from the movements of his lips, delirious, and just the same. Meeus was lying with his hands on his breast. He might have been asleep, only for his eyes, wide open and bright, and following every movement of the man with the lamp.
Only Papeete was at liberty, but he kept at a distance. He was seated near the old woman, and he was exploring the interior of an empty tomato tin flung away by the cook. "I will give them two hours more," said Meeus, as he sipped his coffee. "And then?" said Adams. Meeus was about to reply when he caught a glance from Berselius.
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