Part 47

"By the bye," says Roger, "you never told me, either of you, about the Flamingo outrage. There are many things I could forgive, but not that. It was one of my great pleasures out here, going to see the Stotts and watching the flamingoes on the lake shore. If I'd been here at the time I should certainly have followed up the brute and shot him..."

"We didn't tell you because we wanted you to get well, and feared you might do something violent before your leg was healed."

"Well, now that I know, I shall certainly lodge a strong complaint with the German Commandant at Kondoa...."

"Ann Anderson has solemnly cursed him for his cruelty," said Mrs. Stott. "She said so in the letter she sent him by the poor Masai whose hand he chopped off. I think that, by the bye, is better worth taking up with the authorities than the flamingo massacre. I'm afraid you won't find many of the Germans sympathize with you there, though I must admit they are a great loss to the scenery. But Ann said in the letter: 'If man doesn't punish you, God will.'"

"Of course," said Roger, "it is a scandal the way the Germans tolerate this monster, just because, like Patterne--I suppose he hasn't turned up again?..."

"Don't know."

"... Just because he lives on the outskirts of civilization in no man's land. I shall try a ride on one of the Basuto ponies next week, go first of all and see your old station of Mwada, interview Ann, remind her of the parable of the Mote and the Beam, ask her to go slow ... with these denunciations of moral frailty; and get some idea of the damage done to the flamingoes. I expect my complaints may draw down on me counter remonstrances from the Germans. I heard a growl the other day from a Herr Inspektor of Native schools that you taught no German" (addressing Mrs. Stott), "only Swahili and a little English. What could you do in that respect? I should not like them to have any excuse for interference with you...."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Stott, her face paling at the very thought, "after all the time, labour, money--much of it your money--that we've put into Mission work in the Happy Valley. Oh, why wasn't it taken over by the English? ... I think it would break my heart to leave it and begin our work over again. We've got so fond of the people ..."

"Don't be down-hearted," said Roger, "I shall always stand up for them as long as I'm here, and I have no intention of going--except for a holiday--for ever so long.... What a strange noise...?!..."

A prolonged, distant rumble, like the sound a big avalanche makes in the Alps: and before they could speculate on its meaning, the ground trembled under their feet, the two-storied house seemed to sway this way and that, and then settle itself with a jarring thud. Fine dust fell from the ceiling; trophies of shields and spears came clattering down, the glass and china on the table tinkled, the finger-bowls giving forth a prolonged musical note. Outside, after a moment's hush, cocks crowed, hens whooped, geese raised grating screams, peacocks honked and yelled, turkeys gobbled and crowned cranes threw back their golden-crested heads and uttered their resounding call.

"An earth tremor," said Roger in an even voice, for Lucy looked like fainting. "A very small earthquake; nothing to be alarmed at, though it turns one a bit sick inside. They don't often happen. This is only the second I've experienced in ten years. You see, we live on the border of a volcanic region. Here, Lucy! Pull yourself together. Have a nip of brandy?...

"Better? Let's get out into the air, on the verandah, and see if any damage has been done.... I hope it won't affect our mining galleries...."

But no reports of damage from the earthquake came to hand. The natives said that these shocks were sometimes followed by outbursts of gases, smoke, steam from one or other of the craters in the north.

A week after Mrs. Stott's visit, Roger, accompanied by Maud to look after him and see he did not overstrain himself, rode down into the Happy Valley to Mwada station. Here they interviewed the redoubtable Ann, now a square-built grey-haired matron of middle age and practically no sexual charm. She had black eyes, glowering under black eyebrows, a sallow complexion, and a thin-lipped mouth, with down-turned corners, like the mouth of Queen Victoria when she was displeased. Ann listened in grim silence to Major Brentham's hesitating remonstrances. When he had finished she replied that it was more than flesh and blood could stand that she should be spending her time and the Mission money training up native girls to be Christian wives for Christian natives, and as soon as they had learnt some civilization they were sought out and snapped up by Germans, inside and outside the Concession. It wasn't for that she had come out to Africa....

"I do feel for you and will see what can be done," said Brentham; "but at the same time we must remember we are not on British territory, where they stand a good deal from the missionaries, but in German Africa. The Germans have made a handsome acknowledgment of what Mr. Stott has done in the way of industrial teaching. Don't go and spoil it all by being too ready to denounce these--these--irregularities! Things may right themselves in time. It would be such a dreadful blow to the Stotts if they were told to go, to leave the work of so many years...."

Ann would promise nothing, however. She would speak as the Spirit bade her.... For the present her time was taken up with mission work among the Wambugwe, who were quite the worst heathens she had met with. "Not only terribly depraved--they eat the corpses of their dead!!!--but the dirtiest Negroes I have ever seen, and wholly lacking in spirituality."

"Well then," said Roger, "there you've got your work cut out, for several years. Meantime I will talk to our German friends...."

"Friends, indeed?" said Ann. "They're no friends of mine!"

In spite of her fierceness of denunciation, she made both Roger and Maud as comfortable as she could at her rather Spartan station, and became so happy, friendly and even tearful during the evening with Maud, talking over the little world of Reading and Basingstoke, Aldermaston and Englefield, that evening prayers for once were intermitted. Her husband sat mostly silent, listening respectfully. It was evident that he worked very hard at material things during the day, that he stood much in awe of his wife, and had completely lost his gift of extempore prayer. Their one daughter was a thin, sickly, wistful little girl of ten, very shy, and fonder of her father than of her mother. But according to Ann she was already a good needlewoman, and helped in the sewing classes. Kind Maud proposed she should be fetched one day and taken to Magara for a week's stay. The air was so good there. Ann consented a little reluctantly.

They rode their Basuto ponies to see if there were traces of Stolzenberg's slaughter of the flamingoes. But the bodies had evidently been carried away from the lake to be skinned and because the bones were valuable; and the sole visible result of the raid was the absence of adult birds in pink plumage. There only remained of the former serried ranks a thin broken line of ugly immature flamingoes, dirty-white in plumage, streaked with brown. They were dibbling timidly in the thick waters of the lake; and this had also lost much of its former beauty--though Stolzenberg was not responsible for the slow desiccation of East Africa. The lake just now was no longer a uniform sheet of cobalt, bordered with a grey-white fringe of salt and guano mixed; it was reduced to two large areas of deep water with grey mud in between. How different from what Roger had seen in the glamour of 1888!

Away from the lake shore, in a detour through the foot-hills, they met a few wandering Masai on their way to trade at the Mission station. They greeted Roger with acclamations of friendship and much spitting. Without an interpreter he could not understand them, but they kept pointing to the north-west and evidently referring to the wicked Stolzenberg under their name of Oleduria ("The Terror"); and at the same time to "God"--Engai. They talked with the satisfied tone of a thing now settled, and went on their way to interview the Woman-chief who was their medical adviser, and would-be converter.

"They may have heard of Ann's letter," said Roger, "and believe her curse is coming off. Do you see where they were pointing? ... That curious cloud that seems to be rising high in the air, rising and falling, as though one of the craters were showing signs of activity?"

As soon as he returned to Magara, Roger drew up a formal complaint against Stolzenberg, addressed to the officer commanding in Irangi. He set forth the long tale of misdeeds on the part of "The Terror" during the past ten years and urged the German authority for the good name of the Empire to arrest and try this bandit. If this were not done, he would be compelled to place all the facts before the German directors of the Concessionaire Company whose employes' people and property suffered so much from Stolzenberg's raids and violence. The maiming of the Masai messenger was a concrete case, whatever might be thought of the offence in slaughtering the flamingoes, birds whose guano was one of the Concession's assets.

A fortnight later a military force of one hundred Askari and two twelve-pounder mountain guns arrived at Wilhelmshoehe--as the entire scattered settlement of the Concession in the Iraku Hills was called (at the request of the Schraeders: the Stotts never got nearer the pronunciation than "Williamshoe"). The force was commanded by two smart-looking German lieutenants and a white Feldwebel. The lieutenants, who saluted Brentham as Herr Major, said they were to act under his orders. He was commissioned as a magistrate to proceed to the Red Crater and arrest Adolf Stolzenberg, but not supposed to take any part in the fighting, if force was to be used. That was their business. The Herr Oberst who had sent them remembered that Major Brentham had been wounded in the South African War, and hoped he would take care of himself; if his health was not equal to the journey, then the nearest German district commissioner would go instead. But Roger, in spite of his wife's pleadings and Maud's warnings, was keen to see the thing through. Besides, he could serve as guide. So in course of time the expedition found itself drawn up on the grassy plateau and facing the heavy wooden door and stone wall. A summons to open in the name of the law was shouted by the Feldwebel, who had an immense voice. There was no response. Then the guns, put into position, came into play and shattered the door to fragments. One of the lieutenants and half the force marched in.... Half an hour elapsed.... Then the lieutenant reappeared with rather a scared face.

"We can only suppose either that Stolzenberg fled some time ago, or that his settlement has simply been engulfed by some appalling volcanic action. Come in and see!"

Roger and the rest of the force followed. Inside the Red Crater, which enclosed a space about a mile in diameter, very little could at first be seen but clouds of sulphurous vapours, which when wafted in their direction nearly stifled them; and clouds of steam where the little stream from the hidden pool at the further end of the crater fell into some gulf of heat----

They advanced cautiously; the wind took a different turn, and at last the rashest pioneers among them discerned the ground falling away abruptly over a sharp-cut edge into Hell--as a Dante might have deemed it. The sulphurous fumes drove them back. The inevitable conclusion--confirmed in time--was that the crater had reopened immediately beneath Stolzenberg's settlement. Houses, people, cattle had all been plunged into the bowels of the earth, hundreds of feet below to a fiery furnace. Those humans and cattle who were nearer the crater walls at the time had possibly been choked and killed by the gases. Indeed, on their way out, they saw here and there, at the bases of the red walls, dead cattle lying stiff, all four legs in the air. Evidently, inquisitive Masai, after the earthquake, had climbed the crater-rim from the outside and seen enough to guess that the white Woman-chief's curse had come home, and the great enemy of the Masai and his murderous band of raiders had gone suddenly to an awful doom.

*CHAPTER XXII*