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At M'Bina great riches were eternally flowing in and flowing out. Wealth in its original wrappings piled itself on the wharf in romantical packets and bales, piled itself on board steamers, floated away down the golden river, and was replaced by more wealth flowing in from the inexhaustible forests. The sight of all this filled Van Laer with an actual physical hunger.
I think the post on the river which we will reach is called M'Bina, it is a hundred miles above Yandjali; we can get a boat from there to Leopoldsville. I have been thinking it all out this morning." "How about a guide?" "These soldiers here know the rubber track, for they often escort the loads." "Good," said Adams. "I will have some sort of litter rigged up and we will carry you.
He walked like a man in his sleep, threading the maze of the trees on, on, on, till before him the day broke in one tremendous splash of light, and the humble frame-roof of M'Bina seemed to him the roofs of some great city, beyond which the river flowed in sheets of burnished gold. District Commissioner De Wiart, chief at M'Bina, was a big man with a blond beard and a good-natured face.
"I have no doubt at all that I will be able to bring these people into line. I do not boast. I only ask you to keep your eye on the returns." Next day Van Laer, escorted by the soldiers, left M'Bina to take up the station at Fort M'Bassa left vacant by the death of Chef de Poste Andreas Meeus.
When the soldiers had lost Berselius and Adams, they struck at once for M'Bina, reaching it in a day's march. Here they told their tale. Chef de Poste Meeus was dead. They had escorted a sick white man and a big white man toward M'Bina. One night three leopards had prowled round the camp and the soldiers had gone in pursuit of them.
He was not equipped with the forty years of steadily growing callousness that had vanished; the fiend who had inspired him with the lust for torture had deserted him, and the sight and the knowledge of himself came as suddenly as a blow in the face. Under that m'bina tree two soldiers, one with the haft of a blood-stained knife between his teeth, had mutilated horribly a living girl.
A hundred million trees acacia and palm, m'bina and cottonwood, thorn and mimosa; in gloom, in shine, in valley and on rise, mist-strewn and sun-stricken, all bending under the deep sweet billows of the wind. At the edge of the forest Berselius and Adams took leave of Meeus. Neither Berselius nor Meeus showed any sign of the past day. They had "slept it off."
Here stood a great ape, six feet and over monstrum horrendum head flung back, mouth open, shouting aloud to the imagination of the gazer in the language that was spoken ere the earliest man lifted his face to the chill mystery of the stars. In the right fist was clutched the branch of a M'bina tree, ready lifted to dash your brains out the whole thing a miracle of the taxidermist's art.
He worked the post at M'Bina with the assistance of a subordinate named Van Laer. De Wiart was a man eminently fitted for his post. He had a genius for organization and overseeing.
A man may disguise his soul, he may disguise his mind, he may disguise his face, but he cannot disguise his thumbs unless he wears gloves. No one wears gloves on the Congo, so Van Laer's thumbs were openly displayed. He had been six months now at M'Bina and he was sick of the place, accounts were of no interest to him. He was a man of action, and he wanted to be doing.
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