第 24 页

But a stop was put to this reporting. Mes sengers came from the King, bearing the usual present of introduction in the shape of a skinny sheep. What they had to say was weighty matter enough, and whilst they spoke the sheep bleated outside the door in the throes of execution. A force headed by Belgians, it seems, was coming up out of the Congo territory, and the King wanted the help of his two European guests and their trained fighting men to aid him in repelling the invasion.

The message was spelled out in laborious phrases and gestures by the interpreter, and Moriarty's eye lit as he listened. But Schwartz was stolidly contemptuous. " What for do you come again with this tale?" asked Schwartz, when they had finished their say. " Yesterday you ask me the same, und I say, dis your king's palaver; dis not our palaver; und we shall not help his fight." He flung a hand towards the door of the hut "Go," he said. We are traders; we do not mix in dose matters."

The interpreter turned and explained, but the envoys did not at once depart. They looked meaningly at Moriarty, as though they expected him to join in the answer.

Moriarty whistled thoughtfully. " It would be a mess," he said, after a pause, " if these blessed Belgians did come and smash up the army of His Wickedness, and collar the town."

"What would it matter to you?" grunted Schwartz.

"Well, if they were here, and in possession, our fellows could not very well take it."

"Zo. But still I do not see how you would be hurt."

"Hang it all, man, supposing there was a German army working up the river, and they'd got Egypt, and they'd got the Lakes, and the Cape, and all the country down there, and they were just wanting this bit of ground here for their through telegraph wire, what would you do?"

"Nothing. Chermany can betam. I am cosmopolite."

"Well, I'm not," said Moriarty. By God, no! Civis Romanus sum (though I never shouted it out like that before), and if I can help the old shop to hoe her row, I'm on for doing it. I'm kicked out of course, but, by the Lord, I'd rather be a kicked-out Britisher than a full-blown citi zen of well a continental country I could name."

"Chermany? Quite so. Chermany is a swine country, if you like. I do not mind. I am cos mopolite. But why should you interfere here? If you keep back dose Belgians till dze Inklish can come, do you think dey will thank you? Ach, no!"

"I should say they will shoot me if they can catch me within gunshot. The British Army doesn't recognise the unauthorised help of civil ians, and I'm a civilian now; and moreover, you know, Mr. Schwartz, there's a prejudice against slave-traders, especially white slave-traders. No, my man, I've absolutely nothing definite to gain out of interfering except the satisfaction of upsetting those beastly Belgians but, at the same time, I'm going to do it."

"But I say no. Und we are partners. Und so I haf my say."

"Partners we may be in trade. But I'm the man that's bossed our soldiers, and there's small doubt as to whose orders they'll obey if you try to set up against me."

"You are breaking der deed of partnership," said the German, violently.

"Very well," said Moriarty, "when you get down to the nearest consulate, put your com plaint in writing. It would make a fine heading for a newspaper article: ' The injured Slave-trader.' '

"You are dishonest to me."

"Who are either of us that we should set about measuring honour or honesty? Now look here, my man. You'd better give way civilly, and make the best of it. For good or evil I always have my way, and you know it, and I'm going to help His Wickedness here against these Belgians, and that's flat. But look now, we'll have an eye to business over the matter, too, if that'll suit you. I don't know that Congo niggers make any worse slaves than Somalis. They'll buy most anything with four black limbs to it in those South Arabian ports."

"Dot vas so. I hadn't thought of dose."

"Well, don't you talk any more about my breaking the partnership agreement. The thing turns out to be a sound, honest, business speculation (though, 'faith, neither of us seemed to have guessed it before), and I ought to draw an extra percentage of the profits for making you chip in. My aunt, but I will decorate Zanzibar if this comes off. And pull that British Consul's leg."

"You look too far ahead. Dere was bad risk, I tell you."

"Always is over a soft thing. But if this has got to be gone through with, I must get His Wicked ness's local army together, and put it through its Autumn Manoeuvres before any more time's lost." He turned to the waiting envoys, and the interpreter bowed expectantly. " Look here, Mr. Linguister, go and tell the king that we'll help defend his hearth and home, but that he must give me command of his rabble as well as my own. You don't quite savvy? Well, by Jove, I'll come with you and see the old rip now this minute. If we're going to pull this thing off, there's no time left to waste over diplomatic approaches."

There is, perhaps, nothing on earth more flattering to the white man, until use has made the compliment stale, than the black man's blind acknowledgment of his superiority in the arts of both war and peace. There seems something instinctive about this, just as there is for the young monkey to climb, or for the unfledged thrush to open its mouth for worms. And so when it became known that the red-headed white man Moriarty, assisted by the dirty white man in spectacles, was to superintend the fighting of the king's troops, the backs of those worthies stiffened forthwith, and the series of nightly desertions came to an end. The African may resent executions, and mutilations, and confiscations if these are carried on too long, though, truth to say, he is very long-suffering in the matter; but he is a perfect glutton for a fight if he is sure that he will be competently led, and on a well-arranged field of battle he will die as stubbornly and lightheartedly as any commander could desire.

Now in the days before the Fall, when Moriarty served the Queen, his superior officers had many a time shaken their heads over him, and none of them had ever seen fit to predict that he would rise unreasonably high in his profession. But for this other kind of leadership he was exactly fitted. His early military education had given him a rude notion of strategy and the handling of troops, and his recent experiences had taught him nicely the limitations of the African. He knew to a nicety how much to lead, how much to taunt, how much to praise, how much to drive, and he never fell into the blunder of giving his under officers orders so complicated that the thickness of their heads would prevent those orders being carried out. He erected an iron discipline tempered with unexpected kindnesses, and he let his troops clearly understand that if they did not crumple up the Belgians, they would suffer very heavily under the vengeance of Mr. Moriarty. As an after thought, he explained his wish to capture alive as many of the Belgians' black soldiers as might be, having need for them in the ranks of his slave-caravan.

Schwartz was his incubus. Schwartz openly quavered for his skin, and repeated daily that he had come up-country for trade and not for political meddling, and he refused to be comforted even by the promise of whole regiments prospective regiments of valuable black ivory.

Schwartz was a great nuisance, and his partner was often tempted to shoot him out of mischief's way. And on his part, Herr Schwartz was ponderously searching for an opportunity to shoot the meddlesome Mr. Moriarty, so that the inheritance already collected might be his, and he could leave the district ere worse befell. It was the nearness of those teufel English which got on Schwartz' nerves. He did not look upon them as adding sport to the situation. He looked upon them merely as the enemies to a very lucrative trade. And so the situation in the army of defence was not without its straining elements.

II

Now in the English camp, by the White Nileside, some fifty miles lower down the river, there was an Intelligence Department that was reported in native quarters to be in league with dijinns and afrits; and certainly many of its perform ances (when the propelling machinery was left unexplained) bordered on the marvellous. At the same time, because something must always be allowed for the imagination of the African, its utterances were not always to be relied on as being exclusively composed of fact. This limitation was quite understood, and as a rule caused no special inconvenience.

The General in command of the camp however was on one occasion led, solely through the In telligence Department, to give order for a white man's execution, when he might very reasonably have let the poor fellow continue to live had his information been a little more detailed and accurate. It was true that the white man was beyond the pale of society, and also that he was that odious thing, a collector and a trafficker in negro slaves; but he deliberately (in the course of his other employment) gave the Empire a helping lift onwards in her career, and on this account, if for no other, he deserved to be fired at with a crooked gun, and given a hint to hurry away and escape.

For various reasons it was a delicate affair, and one for which the order could not be given in anything like openness; but the General knew his officers, and after thought singled out a certain subaltern with ambition. It was not a matter over which an order could be given in writing; indeed, it was one of those things which the senior would repudiate if anything went wrong, and for which the subordinate would have to bear the blame; and this the General pointed out with easy frankness, and the subaltern heard with a thumping heart because he saw that here was indicated promotion.

They had gone out into the desert after the humble picnic known as mess, these two, and they walked under the violent moonshine where none could overhear them. Behind them was the hum and glow of the camp, and the bustle of men being embarked on a couple of sternwheel steamers; and before them was the great sand waste, with its scattered furni ture of bones and thorn bushes. Men say and think things quite as matter of fact in these regions of danger and discomfort that they would barely dare to dream about in civilised homely England. There is a balance in these affairs.

"Now," said the General, "those steamboats are going up river, crammed with as many men as they'll hold, and an hour before dawn they're to attack and take a town that's just fifty miles from here. All this you know, but I'm just recapitulating for the sake of clearness. Give me a match. Thanks. There'll be fighting, bad fighting; and if there were more steamers, I'd much like to send more men. But those two are all there are, and they're packed as tight as they'll hold, and so the fellows who'll go will have to fight all the harder, eh?"

"They won't mind," commented the subaltern, thinking he was expected to say something. " All the more promotion, sir."

"You'd like a step, eh?"

"I'm to be married, sir, when I get my company."

"Humph, well, I can perhaps put you in the way of it. But if you do get it, and don't contrive to be knocked on the head in the process, you'd perhaps better not tell the lady the details afterwards. It's a Service matter."

"Quite understand, sir."

"Very well, then. Now look here: this is the situation. The reason I can't afford to wait whilst another steamer is pushed up river so that I could send a stronger force, is because that old King up there has got some white blackguard to drill his troops. The fellow, according to our intelligence, once wore the same coat you've got on now, more shame to him, and he's quite up to his work; and if we give him enough time to knock the niggers into shape, he'll get a force together in that town which will take a lot of licking. So you see that's why I'm pushing forward the attack at once. Follow?"

"Perfectly."

"Good. Then here's your work cut out for you. Never mind the general scuffle. Keep your eye on the white man, and bottle him. You needn't have any sentimental notions of pity; he's a most pernicious renegade, anyway; and he's far too capable and mischievous to be let run wild about Africa any longer. You quite grasp?"

"I think so. You want this Englishman brought "

"Confound you, no, I want him brought nowhere. To begin with, he isn't an Englishman at all, if they report rightly from Zanzibar. He's Irish and well, I'm an Irishman too, me lad, and I know my countrymen. If you brought him into camp here I couldn't very well hang him, and he'd talk, and talk, and there'd be no knowing where he'd stop once he got his tongue well started. There was a blackguard I knew once, called Moriarty, who got broke for card-sharping well, never mind that. But understand quite clearly that whatever happens, I don't want that man taken prisoner. Have you got it all now? My faith, there goes the bugle! Be off with you, or the boats will start whilst you are on the bank."

Presumably the General merely wished the interview to end, because after the subaltern raced off, he too followed at more leisurely pace, and after he had passed through the camp and come to the river's bank, the two steamers were still waiting (as though by order) to receive his final word. He proceeded to give this in those sharp, telling phrases which sound so finely at the time, though they always savour of melodrama afterwards, and then the steamers wheeled off into the black and silver of the night, and those who were left behind cheered, and began to reckon what coming casualties might bring them. There is always the chance on active service of waking up one morning famous through receipt of an acting commission.

Now the period of waiting for a coup of this sort to develop itself one way or another is never a time of undiluted joy. The General in com mand was in especial eaten up with the unpleasantest anxiety, and officers who came in contact with him said that his temper verged on the diabolic. He had done his best, but that does not count for much. There were bound to be so many chances which he could not foresee. If all went off rightly, well, he wrote his dispatches with a free hand, and a little later on would step into a knighthood, which, he told himself, he thoroughly deserved. But if the renegade white man up country had drilled the negroes into too formidable shape, and the English troops had to retire (which is the polite word for run away) a good deal cut up, well then he would have to take the consequences, and own up to the disaster in formal black and white. There are too many newspaper correspondents about nowadays for a commanding officer to gloss over defeat very delicately. He would be told that he had been rash if the defeat was small, criminally rash if the beating was a bad one, and an official black mark would be put against his name that would take a lot of rub bing out. But the event was now out of his hands, and the only thing left him was to pray for luck, which is an irritating species of sup plication, as his fellow-officers found.