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Updated: June 18, 2025
It was a magnificent exhibition of daring and self-restraint and cool assurance. At twenty-five yards or a little under, the cordite rang out. The brute seemed to trip, just as the other had done, over some invisible taut-stretched wire, and skidding with its own impetus, squealing, striking out and tearing up the grass, it came right up to Berselius's feet before stiffening in death.
Then he went on to tell of Berselius's accident, but he said nothing of his brain injury, for a physician does not speak of his patient's condition to strangers, except in the vaguest and most general terms. "And how did you like the Belgians?" asked the old man, when Adams had finished. "The Belgians!"
She had met them at the railway station on the day of their arrival. La Joconde had been cabled for from Leopoldsville, and the great yacht had brought them to Marseilles. Nothing had been cabled as to Berselius's accident or illness, and Madame Berselius had departed for Trouville, quite unconscious of anything having happened to her husband.
Other denominations being of such little power in France, Adams determined to leave the attempt to rouse them till he reached England, whither he determined to go as soon as Berselius's health would permit him. One evening, a fortnight after his visit to Pugin, on his return to the Avenue Malakoff, Maxine met him in the hall. He saw at once from her face that something had happened.
Verhaeren brought out some excellent cigars and a bottle of Vanderhum, and the three men smoked and talked. He had acted as Berselius's agent for the expedition, and had collected all the gun-bearers and porters necessary, and a guide. It was Berselius's intention to strike a hundred miles west up river almost parallel to the Congo, and then south into the heart of the elephant country.
He had not to wait long for the appearance of the lawyer, a fat, pale-faced gentleman, wearing gold-rimmed spectacles, tightly buttoned up in a frock-coat, the buttonhole of which was adorned with the red rosette of the Legion of Honour. Cambon had known Berselius for years. The two men were friends, and even more, for Cambon was the depository of Berselius's most confidential affairs.
La Joconde, Berselius's yacht, lay moored at the wharf of Matadi; warpling against the starboard plates, whimpering, wimpling, here smooth as glass, here eddied and frosted, a sea of golden light, a gliding mirror, went the Congo.
Guest at a table surrounded by sixty of the wealthiest and most powerful officers of a military nation, Berselius did not forget his companion, but introduced him with painstaking care to the chief men present, included him in his speech of thanks, and made him feel that though he was taking Berselius's pay, he was his friend and on a perfect social equality with him. Adams felt this keenly.
The case of Berselius stirs one to ask the question, which is more especially interesting as it is prompted by a case not unique but almost typical. The interesting point in Berselius's case lay in the question as to whether his change of mind was initiated by the injury received in the elephant country or by the shock at the Silent Pools.
They had only a moment of time, but he who knows the elephant folk knows well the rapidity with which their minds can reason, and from their action it would seem that the arbiters of Berselius's fate reasoned thus: "The enemy were behind; they are now in front. So be it. Let us charge."
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