ded, and then went back into the house and into the bedroom,
where he found Meeus hanging head downward out of his bed.

Rubber would trouble Andreas Meeus no more; his soul had gone to join the
great army of souls in the Beyond.

It is strange enough to look upon the body of a man you have killed. But
Adams had no more pity or compunction in his mind than if Meeus had been a
stoat.

He turned to Berselius, who was sleeping. The delirium had passed, and he
was breathing evenly and well. There was hope for him yet--hope for his
body if not for his mind.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE VOICE OF THE FOREST BY NIGHT

The first thing to be done was to bury Meeus. And now came the question,
How would the soldiers take the death of the _Chef de Poste_? They knew
nothing of it yet. Would they revolt, or would they seek to revenge him,
guessing him to have been killed.

Adams did not know and he did not care. He half hoped there would be
trouble. The Congo had burst upon his view, stripped of shams, in all its
ferocity, just as the great scene of the killing had burst upon Berselius.
All sorts of things--from the Hostage House of Yandjali to the Hostage
House of M'Bassa, from Mass to Papeete's skull--connected themselves up
and made a skeleton, from which he constructed that great and ferocious
monster, the Congo State. The soldiers, with their filed teeth, were part
of the monster, and, such was the depth of fury in his heart, he would
have welcomed a fight, so that he might express with his arms what his
tongue ached to say.

The original man loomed large in Adams. God had given him a character
benign and just, a heart tempered to mercy and kindliness; all these
qualities had been outraged and were now under arms. They had given a
mandate to the original man to act. The death of Meeus was the first
result.

He went to the shelf where Meeus had kept his official letters and took
Meeus's Mauser pistol from it. It was in a holster attached to a belt. He
strapped the belt round his waist, drew the pistol from the holster and
examined it. It was loaded, and in an old cigar-box he found a dozen clips
of cartridges. He put three of these in his pocket and with the pistol at
his side came out into the courtyard.

Huge billows of white cloud filled the sky, broken here and there by a
patch of watery blue. The whole earth was steaming and the forest was
absolutely smoking. One could have sworn it was on fire in a dozen places
wh