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Updated: May 19, 2025
Then, a marabout with fore-slanting legs and domed-out wings, came sailing silently down to the feast, and another vulture, and yet another. When Berselius and Meeus returned to Fort M'Bassa Adams, who met them, came to the conclusion that Berselius had been drinking. The man's face looked stiff and bloated, just as a man's face looks after a terrible debauch.
"M'Bassa," said Adams, touching the porter, pointing to the collector, and then away into the forest in the direction he fancied Fort M'Bassa to be. The porter understood. He said a few words to the collector, who nodded his head furiously and struck himself on the breast with his open hand. Then the porter turned again to Adams.
Every now and then a puff of hot wind blew through the open doorway, hot and damp as though a great panther were breathing into the room. The nights in the forest were chill, but up here at Fort M'Bassa they were stewing in a heat wave. Adams, with his coat off, pipe in mouth, was leaning back in a basket chair with his feet on a sugar box.
Turning, he walked round the west wall till he came to the wall on the north, which was higher than the others. Here, against the north wall, was a sheltered cover like an immense sty, indescribably filthy and evil-smelling; about thirty rings were fastened to the wall, and from each ring depended a big rusty chain ending in a collar. It was the Hostage House of Fort M'Bassa.
The fort of M'Bassa was quite small; the surrounding walls had gone to decay, but the "guest house" and the office, and the great go-down where the rubber was stored, were in good repair and well thatched.
One might have fancied that all the wealth of the elephant country, all the teeming riches of the forest, flowing by a thousand streams and disdaining to wait for the alchemy of trade, had joined in one Pactolian flood flowing toward Leopoldsville and the sea. De Wiart was not thinking this. He dismissed the soldiers and told them to hold themselves in readiness to return to M'Bassa on the morrow.
They only carried what was barely needful, and was even less than needful, to take them to Fort M'Bassa, ten days, journey in Berselius's condition. Four water bottles that had been left intact they filled with water; they took the tent, and the pole that Félix had spliced. Cassava cakes and tinned meat and a few pounds of chocolate made up the provisions.
He took his stand before the great ape and contemplated it for a moment. "I shot him near M'Bassa on the West Coast two years ago. The natives at the village where we were camping said there was a big monkey in a tree near by. They seemed very much frightened, but they led me to the tree. He knew what a gun was; he knew what a man was, too.
That evening he called Van Laer into the office. "Chef de Poste Meeus of Fort M'Bassa is dead," said De Wiart; "you will go there and take command. You will start to-morrow." Van Laer flushed. "It is a difficult post," said De Wiart, "wild country, and the natives are the laziest to be found in the whole of the state.
His mind during his sojourn at Fort M'Bassa had, in fact, grown childlike in this particular; nothing but little things appealed to him. Whilst the expedition was getting ready Adams strolled about outside the fort walls.
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