s, darted into the forest.

But Meeus had counted on this, and had detached seven of his men to crawl
round and post themselves at the back of the huts amidst the trees.

A great hullaballoo broke out, and almost immediately the soldiers
appeared, driving the seven villagers before them with their rifle-butts.

They were not hurting them, just pushing them along, for this was, up to
the present, not a punitive expedition but a fatherly visitation to point
out the evils of laziness and insubordination, and to get, if possible,
these poor wretches to communicate with the disaffected ones and make them
return to their work.

Adams nearly laughed outright at the faces of the villagers; black
countenances drawn into all the contortions of fright, but the contortions
of their bodies were more laughable still, as they came forward like
naughty children, driven by the soldiers, putting their hands out behind
to evade the prods of the gun-butts.

Berselius had ordered the tents to be raised on the sunlit grass, for the
edge of the forest, though shady, was infested by clouds of tiny black
midges--midges whose bite was as bad, almost, as the bite of a mosquito.

Meeus spoke to the people in their own tongue, telling them not to be
afraid, and when the tents were erected he and Berselius and Adams,
sitting in the shelter of the biggest tent, faced the seven villagers, all
drawn up in a row and backed by the eleven soldiers in their red fez
caps.

The villagers, backed by the soldiers and fronted by Meeus, formed a
picture which was the whole Congo administration in a nutshell. In a
sentence, underscored by the line of blood-red fezzes.

These seven undersized, downtrodden, hideously frightened creatures, with
eyeballs rolling and the marks of old chain scars on their necks, were the
representatives of all the humble and meek tribes of the Congo, the people
who for thousands of years had lived a lowly life, humble as the coneys of
Scripture; people who had cultivated the art of agriculture and had
carried civilization as far as their weak hands would carry it in that
benighted land. Literally the salt of that dark earth. Very poor salt, it
is true, but the best they could make of themselves.

These eleven red-tipped devils, gun-butting the others to make them stand
erect and keep in line, were the representatives of the warlike tribes who
for thousands of years had preyed on each other and made the land a hell.
Cannibals m