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Updated: June 23, 2025
"I will go to the huts and see," said Carlier, striding off. Makola coming up found Kayerts standing alone. "I can hardly believe it," said Kayerts, tearfully. "We took care of them as if they had been our children." "They went with the coast people," said Makola after a moment of hesitation. "What do I care with whom they went the ungrateful brutes!" exclaimed the other.
Makola retired into the bosom of his family; and the tusks, left lying before the store, looked very large and valuable in the sunshine. Carlier came back on the verandah. "They're all gone, hey?" asked Kayerts from the far end of the common room in a muffled voice. "You did not find anybody?"
Then they passed near the grave. "Poor devil!" said Kayerts. "He died of fever, didn't he?" muttered Carlier, stopping short. "Why," retorted Kayerts, with indignation, "I've been told that the fellow exposed himself recklessly to the sun. The climate here, everybody says, is not at all worse than at home, as long as you keep out of the sun. Do you hear that, Carlier?
And through the deep and tremendous noise sudden yells that resembled snatches of songs from a madhouse darted shrill and high in discordant jets of sound which seemed to rush far above the earth and drive all peace from under the stars. Carlier and Kayerts slept badly. They both thought they had heard shots fired during the night but they could not agree as to the direction.
Fine arms, but legs no good below the knee. Couldn't make cavalry men of them." And after glancing down complacently at his own shanks, he always concluded: "Pah! Don't they stink! You, Makola! I'd rather see it full of bone than full of rags." Kayerts approved. "Yes, yes! Go and finish that palaver over there, Mr. Makola. I will come round when you are ready, to weigh the tusk.
The men got them at sunset. When Kayerts and Carlier retired, a big bonfire was flaring before the men's huts. They could hear their shouts and drumming. Some men from Gobila's village had joined the station hands, and the entertainment was a great success. In the middle of the night, Carlier waking suddenly, heard a man shout loudly; then a shot was fired. Only one.
It was the occasion for a national holiday, but Carlier had a fit of rage over it and talked about the necessity of exterminating all the niggers before the country could be made habitable. Kayerts mooned about silently; spent hours looking at the portrait of his Melie. It represented a little girl with long bleached tresses and a rather sour face.
Carlier said one evening, waving his hand about, "In a hundred years, there will be perhaps a town here. Quays, and warehouses, and barracks, and and billiard-rooms. Civilization, my boy, and virtue and all. And then, chaps will read that two good fellows, Kayerts and Carlier, were the first civilized men to live in this very spot!" Kayerts nodded, "Yes, it is a consolation to think of that."
He accompanied the strangers across the ravine at the back of the station-ground, and returned slowly looking very thoughtful. When questioned by the white men he was very strange, seemed not to understand, seemed to have forgotten French seemed to have forgotten how to speak altogether. Kayerts and Carlier agreed that the nigger had had too much palm wine.
They were mustered every morning and told off to different tasks grass-cutting, fence-building, tree-felling, &c., &c., which no power on earth could induce them to execute efficiently. The two whites had practically very little control over them. In the afternoon Makola came over to the big house and found Kayerts watching three heavy columns of smoke rising above the forests.
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