"Put him down and beat him!" ordered the lieutenant.

"Impudent answers to this court shall always be soundly punished! Call
the next case while that one is being taught good manners."

A woman was stood in front of the line, fidgety with fear, in doubt
whether to lay her suckling baby on the bench before she faced military
justice. She laid it on the floor at her feet, hesitated, and then
picked it up again and wrapped it in a corner of the red blanket that
constituted her only dress.

"Take that brat away from her!" the lieutenant ordered. "She must pay
attention to me. With that in her arms she will only think of
mothering!"

An askari seized the baby by the arm and leg and gave it with a laugh
to another woman to hold, its mother whimpering with fright until she
saw it safely nestled.

"Quick, now! What about this one?"

It seemed there was no charge against her. The two sergeants searched
through the piles of blue sheets in vain.

"Then what the devil is she here for? What do you want, you?"

The trembling woman pointed to her baby, but was dumb. It needed
courage to answer that lieutenant, and the crack--crack--crack of a
thick kiboko descending at measured intervals on the naked back of the
boy who had answered boldly was no help toward reassurance.

"Speak!" the lieutenant ordered, "or I shall have you compelled to
speak!"

She burst into sudden volubility. The dam once down, she poured forth
a catalogue of wrongs that seemed endless, switching off from one
dialect to another and at intervals inserting, apropos apparently of
nothing, the few words of German she had picked up. The lieutenant
yelled for an interpreter, and a Nyamwezi who knew German rose from the
front bench and came and stood beside her.

"That baby is a white man's," he explained.

"What does she want?"

"She says the white man is the bwana dakitari (the doctor!)."

"Oh! Then I am glad she came here. It is time these loose women were
taught a lesson! They tell the same tale. They say a white man passed
through the village, gave their father a present, and carried them off.
Is that her tale, too?"

"Yes."

"Well--what of it? The father agreed at the time when he accepted the
present, didn't he? The consequence is a baby--not for the first time!
Instead of going back to her village, she comes here and tries to
blackmail the officer! She is young. It's the first time she has been
in this court. This time I w