rther argument, he
seemed to be sinking in upon himself. His face drooped forward.

From the horde of porters came scattered shouts:

"Enough! The shauri is over! In the morning we return!"

"What do they say, Hamoud?"

"They say that in the morning they will return to the coast."

She sat stunned.

The orator from Tete moved with a kind of spasmodic dancing gait toward
Parr. Never thus had the white man's genius lain prostrate before him.
He was the symbol of a race abruptly exalted from inferiority to
dominance. There came over him a frenzy of pride and malice; it was
the realization of the dreams that burn the brains of all the dark
people of the earth. "Do you hear?" he howled, and brandished his
fists as though about to strike that lowered head.

An askari glided forward reversing his rifle. There was a cracking
sound as the gun butt struck the orator from Tete in the middle of the
forehead. With a drowsy look the smitten man sank down as gently as if
falling into a mound of feathers, and deliberately composed himself in
sleep, his brown face against the brown earth.

In all that throng there was suddenly not the slightest movement, and
no sound was to be heard except the trill of the insects.

She was standing, staring from the prostrate body to the mass of
porters, whose eyes were fixed upon the victim with one look, of
mournful awakening. Then they saw her whom they had forgotten, or, in
their transport, considered negligible. But when they had read her
face it was they who were frightened.

"You! You! To stop me!"

And a homicidal gesture completed her appearance of fury.

"Wallahi!" the askaris called out to one another. "She has given the
order!"

They spread out to right and left with a clicking of their rifle locks;
they drove the porters together, close to the fire. A soft moan arose
from the huddled crowd. They had seen the whips of hippopotamus hide,
long and flexible, translucent in the firelight like streams of amber.

As the lash described a flourish above the first outstretched back she
turned away to her tent. Hamoud was before her, raising the curtain.
He said:

"They will speak no more about the coast when we are through with them."

CHAPTER LIX

At dawn he came to tell her that Parr had the black-water fever.

The sick man was unconscious when they sent him off, in the machilla,
toward Fort Pero d'Anhaya, with three of the askaris and fifteen of the
po