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Updated: July 4, 2025
The educated man who has fallen, the man who can still think. Meeus went to Africa just as a man goes to prison. He hated the idea of going, but he had to go, or stay and starve. He was stationed three months at Boma and then he was moved to a post on the Upper Congo, a small and easily worked post, where he found out the full conditions of his new servitude.
The faintest breathing of air took the place of the strong puffs that had sent the flame of the lamp half up the glass chimney. As Meeus listened, on this faint breath from the forest he heard a sound "Boom boom" very faint, and as if someone were striking a drum in a leisurely manner. "Boom boom." A great man-ape haunted this part of the forest of M'Bonga like an evil spirit.
Then he jumped it on its feet and sent it back to its people with a slap on its behind, and returned to his tent to smoke till Berselius and Meeus returned.
Adams had swung the man aloft and dashed him against the wall with such force, that the wattling gave and the plaster fell in flakes. Meeus lay still as death, staring at his executioner with a face expressionless and white as the plaster flakes around him. "Get up," said Adams. Meeus heard and moved his arms. "Get up." Again the arms moved and the body raised itself, but the legs did not move.
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.
Two soldiers at the yelping orders of Meeus cut the old woman apart from her fellows and flung her on the ground. The two soldiers armed with whips came to her, and she did not speak a word, nor cry out, but lay grinning at the sun. Papeete, seeing his old grandmother treated like this, dropped his tomato tin and screamed, till a soldier put a foot on his chest and held him down.
It was a European voice, shouting and raving and laughing, and Meeus, as he listened, clutched at the table, for the voice was known to him. It was the voice of Berselius! Berselius, who was hundreds of miles away in the elephant country! Meeus heard his own name. It came in to him out of the darkness, followed by a peal of laughter.
"I know," said he; "you come along, and in a few minutes you will see something that will help your memory. Why, man, we camped near here, you and I and Meeus; when you see the spot you'll find yourself on your road again. Come, let's make a start." The collector was standing with the half-full calabash in his hands. He had not dared to drink.
Your morning paper, the new book from the library you have just got to read, the pipe you hope to smoke when you return from work, the very details of your work; a hundred and one petty things that make up the day of an ordinary man, breaking the monotony and breaking the prospect before him into short views. Meeus had none of these.
The hiding and peeping business, the ready laugh followed by bashfulness and self-effacement, the old unalterable impudence, which is not least amidst the prima mobilia of the childish mind. In another moment, he felt, the thing would forget its respect and return his grimaces, so he ignored it and fixed his attention on Meeus and the trembling wretches he was addressing.
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