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Andreas Meeus was exactly the type of man this Government required, and still requires, and still uses and must continue to use as long as the infernal machine which it has invented for the extraction of gold from niggers continues to work. A man, that is to say, who has eaten orange-peel picked up in the market-place; a man who has worn out his friends and his clothes. A man without hope.
Meeus, who had been silent since his death sentence had been read to him, cried out at the thunder, but Berselius did not heed he was hunting elephants under a burning sun in a country even vaster than the elephant country. Adams rose up and came to the door; not a drop of rain had fallen yet. He crossed the yard and stood at the fort wall looking into blackness.
This was the man for them very different from the pale-faced Meeus this was a man they felt who would lead them to more unspeakable butchery than Meeus had ever done. Therefore they shouted, piled their arms in the office and returned to the rebuilding of their huts with verve. They were not physiognomists, these gentlemen.
A lot of things had conspired to make trade bad. Sickness had swept two villages entirely away; one village, as we know, had revolted; then, vines had died from some mysterious disease in two of the very best patches of the forest. All these explanations Meeus was now putting on paper for the edification of the Congo Government.
Not a word about the past did he say, not a question did he ask, and what surprised Adams especially, not a question did he put about Meeus, till one day in the middle of the fifth week. Berselius was seated in one of the arm chairs of the sitting room when he suddenly raised his head. "By the way," said he, "where is the Chef de Poste?" "He is dead," replied Adams.
Meeus was the white man who, urged by the black lust of money, had armed and drilled and brought under good pay all the warlike tribes of the Congo State and set them as task-masters over the humble tribes. By extension, Berselius and Adams were the nations of Europe looking on, one fully knowing, the other not quite comprehending the tragedy enacted before their eyes.
He was playing now with the old tomato tin, out of which he had scraped and licked every vestige of the contents. Suddenly Meeus began crying out to the soldiers in a hard, sharp voice like the yelping of a dog. The time was up, and the soldiers knew.
Drink will not "bite" in this heat, and a stiff glass of brandy affects the head almost as little as a glass of water. "It is over there," said Meeus, pointing to the southeast, "that we are going to-morrow to interview those beasts." Adams started at the intensity of loathing expressed by Meeus in that sentence.
They came back in about half an hour, and Berselius, after speaking a few words to Félix, turned to Adams. "I must ask you to return to Fort M'Bassa and get everything in readiness for our departure. Félix will accompany you. I will follow in a couple of hours with M. Meeus. I am afraid we will have to pull these people's houses down. It's a painful duty, but it has to be performed.
Rapid steps sounded coming across the courtyard, and the sweat ran from Meeus's face and his stomach crawled as, with a bound across the veranda, a huge man framed himself in the doorway and stood motionless as a statue. For the first moment Meeus did not recognize Adams.
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