It was a hot night up at the fort, a night eloquent of the coming rains. The door of the guest house stood open and the light of the paraffin lamp lay upon the veranda and the ground of the yard, forming a parallelogram of topaz across which were flitting continually great moth shadows big as birds.

Andreas Meeus was seated at the white-wood table of the sitting room before a big blue sheet of paper. He held a pen in his hand, but he was not writing just at present; he was reading what he had written.

He was, in fact, making up his three-monthly report for headquarters, and he found it difficult, because the last three months had brought in little rubber and less ivory. A lot of things had conspired to make trade bad. Sickness had swept two villages entirely away; one village, as we know, had revolted; then, vines had died from some mysterious disease in two of the very best patches of the forest. All these explanations Meeus was now putting on paper for the edification of the Congo Government. He was devoting a special paragraph to the revolt of the village by the Silent Pools, and the punishment he had dealt out to the natives. Not a word was said of torture and slaughtering. “Drastic Measures” was the term he used, a term perfectly well understood by the people to whom he was writing.

On the wall behind him the leopard-skin still hung, looking now shrivelled at the edges in this extreme heat. On the wall in front of him the Congo bows and poisoned arrows looked more venomous and deadly than by the light of day. A scorpion twice the size of a penny was making a circuit of the walls just below the ceiling; you could hear a faint scratch from it as it travelled along, a scratch that seemed an echo of Meeus’s pen as it travelled across the paper.

He held between his lips the everlasting cigarette.

Sitting thus, meditating, pen in hand, he heard sounds: the sound of the night wind, the sound of one of the soldiers singing as he cleaned his rifle—the men always sang over this business, as if to propitiate the gun god—the scratch of the scorpion and the “creak, creak” of a joist warping and twisting to the heat.

But the sound of the wind was the most arresting. It would come over the forest and up the slope and round the guest house with a long-drawn, sweeping “Ha-a-a-r,” and sob once or twice, and then die away down the slope and over the forest and away and beyond to the east, where Kilimanjaro was waiting for it, crowned with snow on his throne beneath the stars.

But the wind was almost dead now—the heat of the night had stifled it. The faintest breathing of air took the place of the strong puffs that had sent the flame of the lamp half up the glass chimney. As Meeus listened, on this faint breath from the forest he heard a sound—

“Boom—boom”—very faint, and as if someone were striking a drum in a leisurely manner.

“Boom—boom.”

A great man-ape haunted this part of the forest of M’Bonga like an evil spirit. He had wandered here, perhaps from the west coast forests. Driven away from his species—who knows?—for some crime. The natives of the fort had caught glimpses of him now and then; he was huge and old and gray, and now in the darkness of the forest was striking himself on the chest, standing there in the gloom of the leaves, trampling the plantains under foot, taller than the tallest man, smiting himself in the pride of his strength.

“Boom—boom.”

It is a hair-lifting sound when you know the cause, but it left Meeus unmoved. His mind was too full of the business of writing his report to draw images or listen to imagination; all the same, this sinister drum-beat acted upon his subconscious self and, scarcely knowing why he did so, he got up from the table and came outside to the fort wall and looked over away into the dark.

There was not a star in the sky. A dense pall of cloud stretched from horizon to horizon, and the wind, as Meeus stepped from the veranda into the darkness, died away utterly.

He stood looking into the dark. He could make out the forest, a blackness humped and crouching in the surrounding blackness. There was not a ray of light from the sky, and now and again came the drum—

“Boom—boom.”

Then it ceased, and a bat passed so close that the wind of it stirred his hair. He spat the taint of it from his mouth, and returning to the house, seated himself at the table and continued his work.

But the night was to be fateful in sounds and surprises. He had not been sitting five minutes when a voice from the blackness outside made him drop his pen and listen.

It was a European voice, shouting and raving and laughing, and Meeus, as he listened, clutched at the table, for the voice was known to him. It was the voice of Berselius!

Berselius, who was hundreds of miles away in the elephant country!

Meeus heard his own name. It came in to him out of the darkness, followed by a peal of laughter. Rapid steps sounded coming across the courtyard, and the sweat ran from Meeus’s face and his stomach crawled as, with a bound across the veranda, a huge man framed himself in the doorway and stood motionless as a statue.

For the first moment Meeus did not recognize Adams. He was filthy and tattered, he wore no coat, and his hunting shirt was open at the neck, and the arms of it rolled up above the elbows.

Adams, for the space of ten seconds, stood staring at Meeus from under his pith helmet. The face under the helmet seemed cast from bronze.

Then he came in and shut the door behind him, walked to the table, took Meeus by the coat at the back of the neck, and lifted him up as a man lifts a dog by the scruff.

For a moment it seemed as if he were going to kill the wretched man without word or explanation, but he mastered himself with a supreme effort, put him down, took the vacant seat at the table and cried:

“Stand before me there.”

Meeus stood. He held on to the table with his left hand and with his right he made pawing movements in the air.

The big man seated at the table did not notice. He sat for a few seconds with both hands clasped together, one making a cup for the other, just as a man might sit about to make a speech and carefully considering his opening words.

Then he spoke.

“Did you kill those people by the Silent Pools?”

Meeus made no reply, but drew a step back and put out his hand, as if fending the question off, as if asking for a moment in which to explain. He had so many things to say, so many reasons to give, but he could say nothing, for his tongue was paralyzed and his lips were dry.

“Did you kill those people by the Silent Pools?”

The awful man at the table was beginning to work himself up. He had risen at the second question, and at the third time of asking he seized Meeus by the shoulders. “Did you kill those people——?”

“Punishment,” stuttered Meeus.

A cry like the cry of a woman and a crash that shook the plaster from the ceiling, followed the fatal word. Adams had swung the man aloft and dashed him against the wall with such force, that the wattling gave and the plaster fell in flakes.

Meeus lay still as death, staring at his executioner with a face expressionless and white as the plaster flakes around him.

“Get up,” said Adams.

Meeus heard and moved his arms.

“Get up.”

Again the arms moved and the body raised itself, but the legs did not move. “I cannot,” said Meeus.

Adams came to him and bending down pinched his right thigh hard.

“Do you feel me touching you?”

“No.”

Adams did the same to the other thigh.

“Do you feel that?”

“No.”

“Lie there,” said Adams.

He opened the door and went out into the night. A moment later he returned; after him came the two porters bearing Berselius between them.

Berselius was quiet now; the brain fever that had stricken him had passed into a muttering stage, and he let himself be carried, passive as a bag of meal, whilst Adams went before with the lamp leading the way into the bedroom. Here, on one of the beds, the porters laid their burden down. Then they came back, and under the directions of Adams lifted Meeus and carried him into the bedroom and placed him on the second bed.

Adams, with the lamp in his hand, stood for a moment looking at Meeus. His rage had spent itself; he had avenged the people at the Silent Pools. With his naked hands he had inflicted on the criminal before him an injury worse than the injury of fire or sword.

Meeus, frightened now by the pity in the face of the other, horribly frightened by the unknown thing that had happened to him, making him dead from the waist down, moved his lips, but made no sound.

“Your back is broken,” replied Adams to the question in the other’s eyes.

Then he turned to Berselius.

At midnight the rains broke with a crash of thunder that seemed to shake the universe.

Adams, worn out, was seated at the table in the living room smoking some tobacco he had found in a tin on the shelf, and listening to the rambling of Berselius, when the thunder-clap came, making the lamp shiver on the table.

Meeus, who had been silent since his death sentence had been read to him, cried out at the thunder, but Berselius did not heed—he was hunting elephants under a burning sun in a country even vaster than the elephant country.

Adams rose up and came to the door; not a drop of rain had fallen yet. He crossed the yard and stood at the fort wall looking into blackness. It was solid as ebony, and he could hear the soldiers, whose huts were outside the wall, calling to one another.

A great splash of light lit up the whole roof of the forest clear as day, and the darkness shut down again with a bang that hit the ear like a blow, and the echoes of it roared and rumbled and muttered, and died, and Silence wrapped herself again in her robe and sat to wait.

Now, there was a faint stirring of the air, increasing to a breeze, and far away a sound like the spinning of a top came on the breeze. It was the rain, miles away, coming over the forest in a solid sheet, the sound of it increasing on the great drum of the forest’s roof to a roar.

Another flash lit the world, and Adams saw the rain.

He saw what it is given to very few men to see. From horizon to horizon, as if built by plumb, line and square, stretched a glittering wall, reaching from the forest to the sky. The base of this wall was lost in snow-white billows of spray and mist.

Never was there so tremendous a sight as this infinite wall and the Niagara clouds of spray, roaring, living, and lit by the great flash one second, drowned out by the darkness and the thunder the next.

Adams, terrified, ran back to the house, shut the door, and waited.

The house was solidly built and had withstood many rains, but there were times when it seemed to him that the whole place must be washed away bodily. Nothing could be heard but the rain, and the sound of such rain is far more terrifying than the sound of thunder or the rumble of the earthquake.

There were times when he said to himself, “This cannot last,” yet it lasted. With the lamp in his hand he went into the sleeping room to see how Berselius and Meeus were doing. Berselius was still, to judge from the movements of his lips, delirious, and just the same. Meeus was lying with his hands on his breast. He might have been asleep, only for his eyes, wide open and bright, and following every movement of the man with the lamp.

Meeus, catching the other’s eye, motioned to him to come near. Then he tried to speak, but the roar outside made it impossible to hear him. Adams pointed to the roof, as if to say, “Wait till it is over,” then he came back to the sitting room, tore the leopard skin down from the wall, rolled it up for a pillow, and lay down with his head on it.

He had been through so much of late that he had grown callous and case-hardened; he did not care much whether the place was washed away or not—he wanted to sleep, and he slept.

Meeus, left alone, lay watching the glimmer of the lamp shining through the cracks of the door, and listening to the thunder of the rain.

This was the greatest rain he had experienced. He wondered if it would flood the go-down and get at the rubber stored there; he wondered if the soldiers had deserted their huts and taken refuge in the office. These thoughts were of not the slightest interest to him; they just came and strayed across his mind, which was still half-paralyzed by the great calamity that had befallen him.

For the last half-hour an iron hand seemed round his body just on a level with the diaphragm; this seemed growing tighter, and the tighter it grew the more difficult it was to breathe. The fracture had been very high up, but he knew nothing of this; he knew that his back was broken, and that men with broken backs die, but he did not fully realize that he was going to die till—all at once—his breathing stopped dead of its own accord, and then of its own accord went on rapidly and shallowly. Then he recognized that his breathing was entirely under the control of something over which he had no control.

This is the most terrible thing a man can know, for it is a thing that no man ever knows till he is in the hands of death.

It was daylight when Adams awoke, and the rain had ceased.

He went to the door and opened it. It was after sunrise, but the sun was not to be seen. The whole world was a vapour, but through which the forest was dimly visible. The soldiers were in the courtyard; they had just come out of the office where they had taken refuge during the night. Their huts had been washed away, but they did not seem to mind a bit; they showed their teeth in a grin, and shouted something when they saw the white man, and pointed to the rainswept yard and the sky.

Adams nodded, 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.