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Lady Cantourne kept silence, and presently she returned to her letters. Here judge if hell, with all its power to damn, Can add one curse to the foul thing I am There are some places in the world where a curse seems to brood in the atmosphere. Msala was one of these. Perhaps these places are accursed by the deeds that have been done there. Who can tell?
Gordon saw at once that the rumour was true. There was a hunted unwholesome look in Durnovo's eyes. He looked shaken, and failed to convey a suggestion of personal dignity. "Hulloa!" exclaimed the proprietor of the decanter. "You look a bit chippy. I have been told there is small-pox up at Msala." "So have I. I've just heard it from Meredith." "Just heard it is Meredith down here too?"
"He died at Msala of the sleeping sickness. He was a bigger blackguard than we thought. He was a slave-dealer and a slave-owner. Those forty men we picked up at Msala were slaves belonging to him." "Ach!" It was a strange exclamation, as if he had burnt his fingers. "Who knows of this?" he asked immediately. The expediency of the moment had presented itself to his mind again.
They were total strangers; but it is not, one finds, by conversation that men get to know each other. A common danger, a common pleasure, a common pursuit these are the touches of Nature by which men are drawn together into the kinship of mutual esteem. Once they gained the banks of the Ogowe their progress was quicker, and by nine o'clock they reached the camp at Msala.
I thought it was in order that they might share in the Simiacine I told them they could have the whole confounded lot of the stuff. But it was not that; they tricked Durnovo there. They wanted to get him to themselves. In going down the river we had an accident with two of the boats, which necessitated staying at Msala.
"Those forty men leastwise thirty-four men that we brought from Msala Mr. Durnovo's men, that cultivate this 'ere Simiacine as they call it they're different from the rest, sir." "Yes, of course they are. We do not hire them direct we hire them from Mr. Durnovo and pay their wages to him. They are of a different tribe from the others not fighting men but agriculturists." "Ah " Joseph paused.
His lips were apart, his jaw had dropped; he was hanging breathlessly on Guy Oscard's next word. "He died of the sleeping sickness," said Oscard. "We had come down to Msala before him Joseph and I. I broke up the partnership, and we left him in possession of the Simiacine Plateau. But his men turned against him. For some reason his authority over them failed.
They had left behind them with the artifice of civilisation that subtle handicap of a woman's presence; and the little flotilla of canoes that set sail from the terrace at Msala one morning in November, not so many years ago, was essentially masculine in its bearing.
Small-pox had laid its hand on the camp at Msala: and from the curse of it Victor Durnovo was flying in a mad chattering panic through all the anger of the tropic elements, holding death over his half-stunned crew, not daring to look behind him or pause in his coward's flight. It is still said on the Ogowe river that no man travels like Victor Durnovo.
"Stay," he said; "we are going to get to the bottom of this." "Good," muttered Joseph, rubbing his hands slowly together; "this is prime." "Go on," said Oscard to him. "Where's the wages you and Mr. Meredith has paid him for those forty men?" pursued Joseph. "Where's the advance you made him for those men at Msala? Not one ha'penny of it have they fingered. And why? Cos they're slaves!
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