rest of the tent was a litter of broken
cases, bottles, cans and papers.

Ten yards away under the thorn shrub, lay Birnier, and near to him were
Mungongo and the others. Mungongo's regard shuttled between this scene in
the tent and the white man with a mingled expression of terror and
amazement: terror at the temerity of the corporal in treating a white in
such a manner and incredulous bewilderment that the white did not
immediately strike them all dead. But the others, more sophisticated to
the white man's ways, were solely occupied in envying the corporal's
debauch.

The mauve shadows turned to blue as they lengthened. The clouds of small
flies thinned and their ranks began to be refilled by the mosquitoes.
Birnier lay with his back to the tent with a fly switch of grass, but he
watched the doings of the corporal covertly. The corporal and his women
had been drinking a good deal of the brandy and now he was supplying
generous quantities to his men. Once he had come out to jeer. Birnier had
taken no notice, nor even of the kick implanted by one of his own field
boots on the foot of the woman. Already there was a bloodshot glint in the
corporal's yellow eyes and a pronounced uncertainty in his movements.
Whether the man had had any particular instructions regarding the manner
of his death Birnier did not know until he became loquacious and took to
shouting insults at his white prisoner. The great white chief had given
the white man to him as a slave, he yelled, and now he was going to take
him home with him. This idea seemed to tickle him vastly and also his
women, who giggled and applauded as the corporal began to describe what
obscene acts they would make their white dog perform every day, what they
would give him to eat, how he should be made to dance.

They grew noisier and the women began to sing lewd songs. The soldiers too
revealed signs of their frequent potations. Soon the whole crowd would go
mad, Birnier knew, and sooner or later collapse, which would give him a
chance to escape, unless they chained him, or, what was far more probable,
they decided to bait him to death during an orgy. What they would probably
do to him was unthinkable. Somehow he must find a way out by
self-destruction. Even should he escape, he would be unarmed and without
food, and there was every possibility that they would trail and overtake
him in the morning. He was lame and footsore; also he was weak from want
of food. Once, when de