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Updated: May 25, 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.
Kayerts shut his eyes. Everything was going round. He found life more terrible and difficult than death. He had shot an unarmed man. After meditating for a while, Makola said softly, pointing at the dead man who lay there with his right eye blown out "He died of fever." Kayerts looked at him with a stony stare.
In the morning Carlier came out, very sleepy, and pulled at the cord of the big bell. The station hands mustered every morning to the sound of the bell. That morning nobody came. Kayerts turned out also, yawning. Across the yard they saw Makola come out of his hut, a tin basin of soapy water in his hand. Makola, a civilized nigger, was very neat in his person.
Then with sudden suspicion, and looking hard at Makola, he added: "What do you know about it?" Makola moved his shoulders, looking down on the ground. "What do I know? I think only. Will you come and look at the ivory I've got there? It is a fine lot. You never saw such." He moved towards the store. Kayerts followed him mechanically, thinking about the incredible desertion of the men.
Suddenly Carlier said: "Catch hold of the other end, Makola you beast!" and together they swung the tusk up. Kayerts trembled in every limb. He muttered, "I say! O! I say!" and putting his hand in his pocket found there a dirty bit of paper and the stump of a pencil.
Perhaps Mrs. Price will understand. They are perhaps bad men." The leader, after waiting for a while, said something sharply to Makola, who shook his head. Then the man, after looking round, noticed Makola's hut and walked over there. The next moment Mrs. Makola was heard speaking with great volubility.
Those warriors would squat in long rows, four or more deep, before the verandah, while their chiefs bargained for hours with Makola over an elephant tusk. Kayerts sat on his chair and looked down on the proceedings, understanding nothing. He stared at them with his round blue eyes, called out to Carlier, "Here, look! look at that fellow there and that other one, to the left.
On the ground before the door of the fetish lay six splendid tusks. "What did you give for it?" asked Kayerts, after surveying the lot with satisfaction. "No regular trade," said Makola. "They brought the ivory and gave it to me. I told them to take what they most wanted in the station. It is a beautiful lot. No station can show such tusks.
We talk with indignation or enthusiasm; we talk about oppression, cruelty, crime, devotion, self-sacrifice, virtue, and we know nothing real beyond the words. Nobody knows what suffering or sacrifice mean except, perhaps the victims of the mysterious purpose of these illusions. Next morning they saw Makola very busy setting up in the yard the big scales used for weighing ivory.
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.
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