A QUESTION OF LATITUDE

By Richard Harding Davis

Of the school of earnest young writers at whom the word muckraker hadbeen thrown in opprobrium, and by whom it had been caught up as a titleof honor, Everett was among the younger and less conspicuous. But, ifin his skirmishes with graft and corruption he had failed to correct theevils he attacked, from the contests he himself had always emerged withcredit. His sincerity and his methods were above suspicion. No onehad caught him in misstatement, or exaggeration. Even those whom heattacked, admitted he fought fair. For these reasons, the editors ofmagazines, with the fear of libel before their eyes, regarded him as a"safe" man, the public, feeling that the evils he exposed were dueto its own indifference, with uncomfortable approval, and those heattacked, with impotent anger. Their anger was impotent because, in thecase of Everett, the weapons used by their class in "striking back"were denied them. They could not say that for money he sold sensations, because it was known that a proud and wealthy parent supplied himwith all the money he wanted. Nor in his private life could they findanything to offset his attacks upon the misconduct of others. Men hadbeen sent to spy upon him, and women to lay traps. But the men reportedthat his evenings were spent at his club, and, from the women, those whosent them learned only that Everett "treats a lady just as though she ISa lady. "

Accordingly, when, with much trumpeting, he departed to investigateconditions in the Congo, there were some who rejoiced. 

The standard of life to which Everett was accustomed was high. In hishome in Boston it had been set for him by a father and mother who, though critics rather than workers in the world, had taught him todespise what was mean and ungenerous, to write the truth and abhor acompromise. At Harvard he had interested himself in municipal reform, and when later he moved to New York, he transferred his interest tothe problems of that city. His attack upon Tammany Hall did not utterlydestroy that organization, but at once brought him to the notice ofthe editors. By them he was invited to tilt his lance at evils inother parts of the United States, at "systems, " trusts, convict camps, municipal misrule. His work had met with a measure of success thatseemed to justify Lowell's Weekly in sending him further afield, andhe now was on his way to tell the truth about the Congo. Personally, Everett was a healthy, clean-minded enthusiast. He possessed all of theadvantages of youth, and all of its intolerance. He was supposed to beengaged to Florence Carey, but he was not. There was, however, betweenthem an "understanding, " which understanding, as Everett understood it, meant that until she was ready to say, "I am ready, " he was to think ofher, dream of her, write love-letters to her, and keep himself only forher. He loved her very dearly, and, having no choice, was content towait. His content was fortunate, as Miss Carey seemed inclined to keephim waiting indefinitely. 

Except in Europe, Everett had never travelled outside the limits ofhis own country. But the new land toward which he was advancing held noterrors. As he understood it, the Congo was at the mercy of a corrupt"ring. " In every part of the United States he had found a city in theclutch of a corrupt ring. The conditions would be the same, the methodshe would use to get at the truth would be the same, the result forreform would be the same. 

The English steamer on which he sailed for Southampton was one leasedby the Independent State of the Congo, and, with a few exceptions, herpassengers were subjects of King Leopold. On board, the language wasFrench, at table the men sat according to the rank they held in theadministration of the jungle, and each in his buttonhole wore the tinysilver star that showed that for three years, to fill the storehousesof the King of the Belgians, he had gathered rubber and ivory. In thesmoking-room Everett soon discovered that passengers not in the serviceof that king, the English and German officers and traders, held alooffrom the Belgians. Their attitude toward them seemed to be one partly ofcontempt, partly of pity. 

"Are your English protectorates on the coast, then, so much betteradministered?" Everett asked. 

The English Coaster, who for ten years in Nigeria had escaped fever andsudden death, laughed evasively. 

"I have never been in the Congo, " he said. "Only know what they tellone. But you'll see for yourself. That is, " he added, "you'll see whatthey want you to see. "

They were leaning on the rail, with their eyes turned toward thecoast of Liberia, a gloomy green line against which the waves castup fountains of foam as high as the cocoanut palms. As a subject ofdiscussion, the coaster seemed anxious to avoid the Congo. 

"It was there, " he said, pointing, "the Three Castles struck on therocks. She was a total loss. So were her passengers, " he added. "Theyate them. "

Everett gazed suspiciously at the unmoved face of the veteran. 

"WHO ate them?" he asked guardedly. "Sharks?"

"The natives that live back of that shore-line in the lagoons. "

Everett laughed with the assurance of one for whom a trap had been laidand who had cleverly avoided it. 

"Cannibals, " he mocked. "Cannibals went out of date with pirates. Butperhaps, " he added apologetically, "this happened some years ago?"

"Happened last month, " said the trader. 

"But Liberia is a perfectly good republic, " protested Everett. "Theblacks there may not be as far advanced as in your colonies, but they'renot cannibals. "

"Monrovia is a very small part of Liberia, " said the trader dryly. "Andnone of these protectorates, or crown colonies, on this coast pretendsto control much of the Hinterland. There is Sierra Leone, for instance, about the oldest of them. Last year the governor celebrated thehundredth anniversary of the year the British abolished slavery. Theyhad parades and tea-fights, and all the blacks were in the street instraw hats with cricket ribbons, thanking God they were not as other menare, not slaves like their grandfathers. Well, just at the height of thejubilation, the tribes within twenty miles of the town sent in to saythat they, also, were holding a palaver, and it was to mark the factthat they NEVER had been slaves and never would be, and, if the governordoubted it, to send out his fighting men and they'd prove it. It castquite a gloom over the celebration. "

"Do you mean that only twenty miles from the coast--" began Everett. 

"TEN miles, " said the Coaster, "wait till you see Calabar. That's ourExhibit A. The cleanest, best administered. Everything there is model:hospitals, barracks, golf links. Last year, ten miles from Calabar, Dr. Stewart rode his bicycle into a native village. The king tortured himsix days, cut him up, and sent pieces of him to fifty villages with themessage: 'You eat each other. WE eat white chop. ' That was ten milesfrom our model barracks. "

For some moments the muckraker considered the statement thoughtfully. 

"You mean, " he inquired, "that the atrocities are not all on the side ofthe white men?"

"Atrocities?" exclaimed the trader. "I wasn't talking of atrocities. Areyou looking for them?"

"I'm not running away from them, " laughed Everett. "Lowell's Weekly issending me to the Congo to find out the truth, and to try to help put anend to them. "

In his turn the trader considered the statement carefully. 

"Among the natives, " he explained, painstakingly picking each word, "what you call 'atrocities' are customs of warfare, forms of punishment. When they go to war they EXPECT to be tortured; they KNOW, if they'rekilled, they'll be eaten. The white man comes here and finds thesecustoms have existed for centuries. He adopts them, because--"

"One moment!" interrupted Everett warmly. "That does not excuse HIM. The point is, that with him they have NOT existed. To him they should beagainst his conscience, indecent, horrible! He has a greater knowledge, a much higher intelligence; he should lift the native, not sink to him. "

The Coaster took his pipe from his mouth, and twice opened his lips tospeak. Finally, he blew the smoke into the air, and shook his head. 

"What's the use!" he exclaimed. 

"Try, " laughed Everett. "Maybe I'm not as unintelligent as I talk. "

"You must get this right, " protested the Coaster. "It doesn't mattera damn what a man BRINGS here, what his training WAS, what HE IS. Thething is too strong for him. "

"What thing?"

"That!" said the Coaster. He threw out his arm at the broodingmountains, the dark lagoons, the glaring coast-line against which thewaves shot into the air with the shock and roar of twelve-inch guns. 

"The first white man came to Sierra Leone five hundred years beforeChrist, " said the Coaster. "And, in twenty-two hundred years, he's gotjust twenty miles inland. The native didn't need forts, or a navy, tostop him. He had three allies: those waves, the fever, and the sun. Especially the sun. The black man goes bare-headed, and the sun lets himpass. The white man covers his head with an inch of cork, and the sunstrikes through it and kills him. When Jameson came down the river fromYambuya, the natives fired on his boat. He waved his helmet at them forthree minutes, to show them there was a white man in the canoe. Threeminutes was all the sun wanted. Jameson died in two days. Where you aregoing, the sun does worse things to a man than kill him: it drives himmad. It keeps the fear of death in his heart; and THAT takes away hisnerve and his sense of proportion. He flies into murderous fits, oversilly, imaginary slights; he grows morbid, suspicious, he becomes acoward, and because he is a coward with authority, he becomes a bully. 

"He is alone, we will suppose, at a station three hundred miles fromany other white man. One morning his house-boy spills a cup of coffee onhim, and in a rage he half kills the boy. He broods over that, until hediscovers, or his crazy mind makes him think he has discovered, thatin revenge the boy is plotting to poison him. So he punishes him again. Only this time he punishes him as the black man has taught him topunish, in the only way the black man seems to understand; that is, hetortures him. From that moment the fall of that man is rapid. The heat, the loneliness, the fever, the fear of the black faces, keep him onedge, rob him of sleep, rob him of his physical strength, of his moralstrength. He loses shame, loses reason; becomes cruel, weak, degenerate. He invents new, bestial tortures; commits new, unspeakable 'atrocities, 'until, one day, the natives turn and kill him, or he sticks his gun inhis mouth and blows the top of his head off. "

The Coaster smiled tolerantly at the wide-eyed eager young man at hisside. 

"And you, " he mocked, "think you can reform that man, and that hellabove ground called the Congo, with an article in Lowell's Weekly?"

Undismayed, Everett grinned cheerfully. 

"That's what I'm here for!" he said. 

By the time Everett reached the mouth of the Congo, he had learned thatin everything he must depend upon himself; that he would be acceptedonly as the kind of man that, at the moment, he showed himself to be. This attitude of independence was not chosen, but forced on him by themen with whom he came in contact. Associations and traditions, that inevery part of the United States had served as letters of introduction, and enabled strangers to identify and label him, were to the white menon the steamer and at the ports of call without meaning or value. Thathe was an Everett of Boston conveyed little to those who had not heardeven of Boston. That he was the correspondent of Lowell's Weekly meantless to those who did not know that Lowell's Weekly existed. And when, in confusion, he proffered his letter of credit, the very fact that itcalled for a thousand pounds was, in the eyes of a "Palm Oil Ruffian, "sufficient evidence that it had been forged or stolen. He soon saw thatsolely as a white man was he accepted and made welcome. That he wasrespectable, few believed, and no one cared. To be taken at his facevalue, to be refused at the start the benefit of the doubt, was a novelsensation; and yet not unpleasant. It was a relief not to be acceptedonly as Everett the Muckraker, as a professional reformer, as one holierthan others. It afforded his soul the same relaxation that his bodyreceived when, in his shirt-sleeves in the sweltering smoking-room, hedrank beer with a chef de poste who had been thrice tried for murder. 

Not only to every one was he a stranger, but to him everything wasstrange; so strange as to appear unreal. This did not prevent him fromat once recognizing those things that were not strange, such as corruptofficials, incompetence, mismanagement. He did not need the missionariesto point out to him that the Independent State of the Congo was nota colony administered for the benefit of many, but a vast rubberplantation worked by slaves to fill the pockets of one man. It was notin his work that Everett found himself confused. It was in his attitudeof mind toward almost every other question. 

At first, when he could not make everything fit his rule of thumb, heexcused the country tolerantly as a "topsy-turvy" land. He wished tomove and act quickly; to make others move quickly. He did not understandthat men who had sentenced themselves to exile for the official termof three years, or for life, measured time only by the date of theirrelease. When he learned that even a cablegram could not reach his homein less than eighteen days, that the missionaries to whom he broughtletters were a three months' journey from the coast and from each other, his impatience was chastened to wonder, and, later, to awe. 

His education began at Matadi, where he waited until the river steamerwas ready to start for Leopoldville. Of the two places he was assuredMatadi was the better, for the reason that if you still were in favorwith the steward of the ship that brought you south, he might sell you apiece of ice. 

Matadi was a great rock, blazing with heat. Its narrow, perpendicularpaths seemed to run with burning lava. Its top, the main square of thesettlement, was of baked clay, beaten hard by thousands of naked feet. Crossing it by day was an adventure. The air that swept it was thebreath of a blast-furnace. 

Everett found a room over the shop of a Portuguese trader. It was cakedwith dirt, and smelled of unnamed diseases and chloride of lime. In itwas a canvas cot, a roll of evil-looking bedding, a wash-basin filledwith the stumps of cigarettes. In a corner was a tin chop-box, whichEverett asked to have removed. It belonged, the landlord told him, tothe man who, two nights before, had occupied the cot and who had diedin it. Everett was anxious to learn of what he had died. Apparentlysurprised at the question, the Portuguese shrugged his shoulders. 

"Who knows?" he exclaimed. The next morning the English trader acrossthe street assured Everett there was no occasion for alarm. "He didn'tdie of any disease, " he explained. "Somebody got at him from thebalcony, while he was in his cot, and knifed him. "

The English trader was a young man, a cockney, named Upsher. At home hehad been a steward on the Channel steamers. Everett made him his mostintimate friend. He had a black wife, who spent most of her day in afour-post bed, hung with lace curtains and blue ribbon, in which sheresembled a baby hippopotamus wallowing in a bank of white sand. 

At first the black woman was a shock to Everett, but after Upsherdismissed her indifferently as a "good old sort, " and spent one eveningblubbering over a photograph of his wife and "kiddie" at home, Everettaccepted her. His excuse for this was that men who knew they might dieon the morrow must not be judged by what they do to-day. The excuse didnot ring sound, but he dismissed the doubt by deciding that in such heatit was not possible to take serious questions seriously. In the factthat, to those about him, the thought of death was ever present, hefound further excuse for much else that puzzled and shocked him. Athome, death had been a contingency so remote that he had put it aside assomething he need not consider until he was a grandfather. At Matadi, at every moment of the day, in each trifling act, he found death must befaced, conciliated, conquered. At home he might ask himself, "If I eatthis will it give me indigestion?" At Matadi he asked, "If I drink thiswill I die?"

Upsher told him of a feud then existing between the chief of police andan Italian doctor in the State service. Interested in the outcome onlyas a sporting proposition, Upsher declared the odds were unfair, becausethe Belgian was using his black police to act as his body-guard whilefor protection the Italian could depend only upon his sword-cane. Eachnight, with the other white exiles of Matadi, the two adversaries metin the Cafe Franco-Belge. There, with puzzled interest, Everett watchedthem sitting at separate tables, surrounded by mutual friends, excitedlyplaying dominoes. Outside the cafe, Matadi lay smothered and swelteringin a black, living darkness, and, save for the rush of the river, ina silence that continued unbroken across a jungle as wide as Europe. Inside the dominoes clicked, the glasses rang on the iron tables, theoil lamps glared upon the pallid, sweating faces of clerks, upon thetanned, sweating skins of officers; and the Italian doctor and theBelgian lieutenant, each with murder in his heart, laughed, shrugged, gesticulated, waiting for the moment to strike. 

"But why doesn't some one DO something?" demanded Everett. "Arrest them, or reason with them. Everybody knows about it. It seems a pity not to DOsomething. "

Upsher nodded his head. Dimly he recognized a language with which heonce had been familiar. "I know what you mean, " he agreed. "Bind 'emover to keep the peace. And a good job, too! But who?" he demandedvaguely. "That's what I say! Who?" From the confusion into whichEverett's appeal to forgotten memories had thrown it, his mind suddenlyemerged. "But what's the use!" he demanded. "Don't you see, " heexplained triumphantly, "if those two crazy men were fit to listen toSENSE, they'd have sense enough not to kill each other!"

Each succeeding evening Everett watched the two potential murderers withlessening interest. He even made a bet with Upsher, of a bottle of fruitsalt, that the chief of police would be the one to die. 

A few nights later a man, groaning beneath his balcony, disturbed hisslumbers. He cursed the man, and turned his pillow to find the coolerside. But all through the night the groans, though fainter, broke intohis dreams. At intervals some traditions of past conduct tugged atEverett's sleeve, and bade him rise and play the good Samaritan. But, indignantly, he repulsed them. Were there not many others withinhearing? Were there not the police? Was it HIS place to bind the woundsof drunken stokers? The groans were probably a trick, to entice him, unarmed, into the night. And so, just before the dawn, when the mistsrose, and the groans ceased, Everett, still arguing, sank with acontented sigh into forgetfulness. 

When he woke, there was beneath his window much monkey-like chattering, and he looked down into the white face and glazed eyes of theItalian doctor, lying in the gutter and staring up at him. Below hisshoulder-blades a pool of blood shone evilly in the blatant sunlight. 

Across the street, on his balcony, Upsher, in pajamas and mosquitoboots, was shivering with fever and stifling a yawn. "You lose!" hecalled. 

Later in the day, Everett analyzed his conduct of the night previous. "At home, " he told Upsher, "I would have been telephoning for anambulance, or been out in the street giving the man the 'first-aid'drill. But living as we do here, so close to death, we see things moreclearly. Death loses its importance. It's a bromide, " he added. "Buttravel certainly broadens one. Every day I have been in the Congo, Ihave been assimilating new ideas. " Upsher nodded vigorously in assent. An older man could have told Everett that he was assimilating just asmuch of the Congo as the rabbit assimilates of the boa-constrictor, thatfirst smothers it with saliva and then swallows it. 

Everett started up the Congo in a small steamer open on all sides to thesun and rain, and with a paddle-wheel astern that kicked her forward atthe rate of four miles an hour. Once every day, the boat tied up to atree and took on wood to feed her furnace, and Everett talked to thewhite man in charge of the wood post, or, if, as it generally happened, the white man was on his back with fever, dosed him with quinine. Onboard, except for her captain, and a Finn who acted as engineer, Everettwas the only other white man. The black crew and "wood-boys" he soondisliked intensely. At first, when Nansen, the Danish captain, and theFinn struck them, because they were in the way, or because they werenot, Everett winced, and made a note of it. But later he decided theblacks were insolent, sullen, ungrateful; that a blow did them no harm. 

According to the unprejudiced testimony of those who, before the war, inhis own country, had owned slaves, those of the "Southland" werealways content, always happy. When not singing close harmony in thecotton-fields, they danced upon the levee, they twanged the old banjo. But these slaves of the Upper Congo were not happy. They did not dance. They did not sing. At times their eyes, dull, gloomy, despairing, lighted with a sudden sombre fire, and searched the eyes of the whiteman. They seemed to beg of him the answer to a terrible question. It wasalways the same question. It had been asked of Pharaoh. They asked it ofLeopold. For hours, squatting on the iron deck-plates, humped on theirnaked haunches, crowding close together, they muttered apparentlyinterminable criticisms of Everett. Their eyes never left him. Heresented this unceasing scrutiny. It got upon his nerves. He was surethey were evolving some scheme to rob him of his tinned sausages, or, possibly, to kill him. It was then he began to dislike them. In reality, they were discussing the watch strapped to his wrist. They believed itwas a powerful juju, to ward off evil spirits. They were afraid of it. 

One day, to pay the chief wood-boy for a carved paddle, Everett wasmeasuring a bras of cloth. As he had been taught, he held the cloth inhis teeth and stretched it to the ends of his finger-tips. The wood-boythought the white man was giving him short measure. White men always HADgiven him short measure, and, at a glance, he could not recognize thatthis one was an Everett of Boston. 

So he opened Everett's fingers. 

All the blood in Everett's body leaped to his head. That he, a whiteman, an Everett, who had come so far to set these people free, should beaccused by one of them of petty theft!

He caught up a log of fire wood and laid open the scalp of the blackboy, from the eye to the crown of his head. The boy dropped, andEverett, seeing the blood creeping through his kinky wool, turned illwith nausea. Drunkenly, through a red cloud of mist, he heard himselfshouting, "The BLACK nigger! The BLACK NIGGER! He touched me! I TELLyou, he touched me!" Captain Nansen led Everett to his cot and gave himfizzy salts, but it was not until sundown that the trembling and nauseaceased. 

Then, partly in shame, partly as a bribe, he sought out the injured boyand gave him the entire roll of cloth. It had cost Everett ten francs. To the wood-boy it meant a year's wages. The boy hugged it in his arms, as he might a baby, and crooned over it. From under the blood-stainedbandage, humbly, without resentment, he lifted his tired eyes to thoseof the white man. Still, dumbly, they begged the answer to the samequestion. 

During the five months Everett spent up the river he stopped at manymissions, stations, one-man wood posts. He talked to Jesuit fathers, to inspecteurs, to collectors for the State of rubber, taxes, elephanttusks, in time, even in Bangalese, to chiefs of the native villages. According to the point of view, he was told tales of oppression, ofavarice, of hideous crimes, of cruelties committed in the name of tradethat were abnormal, unthinkable. The note never was of hope, never ofcheer, never inspiring. There was always the grievance, the spirit ofunrest, of rebellion that ranged from dislike to a primitive, hot hate. Of his own land and life he heard nothing, not even when his face wasagain turned toward the east. Nor did he think of it. As now he sawthem, the rules and principles and standards of his former existencewere petty and credulous. But he assured himself he had not abandonedthose standards. He had only temporarily laid them aside, as he had leftbehind him in London his frock-coat and silk hat. Not because he wouldnot use them again, but because in the Congo they were ridiculous. 

For weeks, with a missionary as a guide, he walked through forests intowhich the sun never penetrated, or, on the river, moved between bankswhere no white man had placed his foot; where, at night, the elephantscame trooping to the water, and, seeing the lights of the boat, fledcrashing through the jungle; where the great hippos, puffing andblowing, rose so close to his elbow that he could have tossed hiscigarette and hit them. The vastness of the Congo, toward which hehad so jauntily set forth, now weighed upon his soul. The immeasurabledistances; the slumbering disregard of time; the brooding, interminablesilences; the efforts to conquer the land that were so futile, sopuny, and so cruel, at first appalled and, later, left him unnerved, rebellious, childishly defiant. 

What health was there, he demanded hotly, in holding in a drippingjungle to morals, to etiquette, to fashions of conduct? Was he, thewhite man, intelligent, trained, disciplined in mind and body, to bejudged by naked cannibals, by chattering monkeys, by mammoth primevalbeasts? His code of conduct was his own. He was a law unto himself. 

He came down the river on one of the larger steamers of the State, and, on this voyage, with many fellow-passengers. He was now on his way home, but in the fact he felt no elation. Each day the fever ran tinglingthrough his veins, and left him listless, frightened, or choleric. Onenight at dinner, in one of these moods of irritation, he took offenceat the act of a lieutenant who, in lack of vegetables, drank fromthe vinegar bottle. Everett protested that such table manners wereunbecoming an officer, even an officer of the Congo; and on thelieutenant resenting his criticism, Everett drew his revolver. Theothers at the table took it from him, and locked him in his cabin. In the morning, when he tried to recall what had occurred, he couldremember only that, for some excellent reason, he had hated some onewith a hatred that could be served only with death. He knew it could nothave been drink, as each day the State allowed him but one half-bottleof claret. That but for the interference of strangers he might have shota man, did not interest him. In the outcome of what he regardedmerely as an incident, he saw cause neither for congratulation orself-reproach. For his conduct he laid the blame upon the sun, anddoubled his dose of fruit salts. 

Everett was again at Matadi, waiting for the Nigeria to take on cargobefore returning to Liverpool. During the few days that must intervenebefore she sailed, he lived on board. Although now actually bound north, the thought afforded him no satisfaction. His spirits were depressed, his mind gloomy; a feeling of rebellion, of outlawry, filled him withunrest. 

While the ship lay at the wharf, Hardy, her English captain, Cuthbert, the purser, and Everett ate on deck under the awning, assailed byelectric fans. Each was clad in nothing more intricate than pajamas. 

"To-night, " announced Hardy, with a sigh, "we got to dress ship. Mr. Ducret and his wife are coming on board. We carry his trade goods, and Igot to stand him a dinner and champagne. You boys, " he commanded, "mustwear 'whites, ' and talk French. "

"I'll dine on shore, " growled Everett. 

"Better meet them, " advised Cuthbert. The purser was a pink-cheeked, clear-eyed young man, who spoke the many languages of the coast glibly, and his own in the soft, detached voice of a well-bred Englishman. Hewas in training to enter the consular service. Something in his poise, in the assured manner in which he handled his white stewards and theblack Kroo boys, seemed to Everett a constant reproach, and he resentedhim. 

"They're a picturesque couple, " explained Cuthbert. "Ducret wasoriginally a wrestler. Used to challenge all comers from the front ofa booth. He served his time in the army in Senegal, and when he wasmustered out moved to the French Congo and began to trade, in a smallway, in ivory. Now he's the biggest merchant, physically and every otherway, from Stanley Pool to Lake Chad. He has a house at Brazzaville builtof mahogany, and a grand piano, and his own ice-plant. His wife was asupper-girl at Maxim's. He brought her down here and married her. Everyrainy season they go back to Paris and run race-horses, and they say thebest table in every all-night restaurant is reserved for him. In Paristhey call her the Ivory Queen. She's killed seventeen elephants with herown rifle. "

In the Upper Congo, Everett had seen four white women. They were pallid, washed-out, bloodless; even the youngest looked past middle-age. Forhim women of any other type had ceased to exist. He had come to think ofevery white woman as past middle-age, with a face wrinkled by the sun, with hair bleached white by the sun, with eyes from which, throughgazing at the sun, all light and lustre had departed. He thought of themas always wearing boots to protect their ankles from mosquitoes, andarmy helmets. 

When he came on deck for dinner, he saw a woman who looked as though shewas posing for a photograph by Reutlinger. She appeared to have steppedto the deck directly from her electric victoria, and the Rue de la Paix. She was tall, lithe, gracefully erect, with eyes of great loveliness, and her hair brilliantly black, drawn, a la Merode, across a broad, fairforehead. She wore a gown and long coat of white lace, as delicate asa bridal veil, and a hat with a flapping brim from which, in a curtain, hung more lace. When she was pleased, she lifted her head and thecurtain rose, unmasking her lovely eyes. Around the white, bare throatwas a string of pearls. They had cost the lives of many elephants. 

Cuthbert, only a month from home, saw Madame Ducret just as she was--aParisienne, elegant, smart, soigne. He knew that on any night at Madridor d'Armenonville he might look upon twenty women of the samecharming type. They might lack that something this girl from Maxim'spossessed--the spirit that had caused her to follow her husband into thedepths of darkness. But outwardly, for show purposes, they were even asshe. 

But to Everett she was no messenger from another world. She was unique. To his famished eyes, starved senses, and fever-driven brain, she washer entire sex personified. She was the one woman for whom he had alwayssought, alluring, soothing, maddening; if need be, to be fought for; theone thing to be desired. Opposite, across the table, her husband, theex-wrestler, chasseur d'Afrique, elephant poacher, bulked large as anox. Men felt as well as saw his bigness. Captain Hardy deferred tohim on matters of trade. The purser deferred to him on questions ofadministration. He answered them in his big way, with big thoughts, inbig figures. He was fifty years ahead of his time. He beheld the Congoopen to the world; in the forests where he had hunted elephants heforesaw great "factories, " mining camps, railroads, feeding gold andcopper ore to the trunk line, from the Cape to Cairo. His ideas were theideas of an empire-builder. But, while the others listened, fascinated, hypnotized, Everett saw only the woman, her eyes fixed on her husband, her fingers turning and twisting her diamond rings. Every now and againshe raised her eyes to Everett almost reproachfully, as though to say, "Why do you not listen to him? It is much better for you than to look atme. "

When they had gone, all through the sultry night, until the sun drovehim to his cabin, like a caged animal Everett paced and repaced thedeck. The woman possessed his mind and he could not drive her out. Hedid not wish to drive her out. What the consequences might be he did notcare. So long as he might see her again, he jeered at the consequences. Of one thing he was positive. He could not now leave the Congo. He wouldfollow her to Brazzaville. If he were discreet, Ducret might invitehim to make himself their guest. Once established in her home, she MUSTlisten to him. No man ever before had felt for any woman the need hefelt for her. It was too big for him to conquer. It would be too big forher to resist. 

In the morning a note from Ducret invited Everett and Cuthbert to joinhim in an all-day excursion to the water-fall beyond Matadi. Everettanswered the note in person. The thought of seeing the woman calmedand steadied him like a dose of morphine. So much more violent than thefever in his veins was the fever in his brain that, when again he waswith her, he laughed happily, and was grandly at peace. So different washe from the man they had met the night before, that the Frenchman andhis wife glanced at each other in surprise and approval. They foundhim witty, eager, a most charming companion; and when he announced hisintention of visiting Brazzaville, they insisted he should make theirhome his own. 

His admiration, as outwardly it appeared to be, for Madame Ducret, wasevident to the others, but her husband accepted it. It was her due. And, on the Congo, to grudge to another man the sight of a pretty woman wasas cruel as to withhold the few grains of quinine that might save hisreason. But before the day passed, Madame Ducret was aware that theAmerican could not be lightly dismissed as an admirer. The factneither flattered nor offended. For her it was no novel or disturbingexperience. Other men, whipped on by loneliness, by fever, by primitivesavage instincts, had told her what she meant to them. She did nothold them responsible. Some, worth curing, she had nursed through theillness. Others, who refused to be cured, she had turned over, with ashrug, to her husband. This one was more difficult. Of men of Everett'straditions and education she had known but few; but she recognized thetype. This young man was no failure in life, no derelict, no outcastflying the law, or a scandal, to hide in the jungle. He was what, in herMaxim days, she had laughed at as an aristocrat. He knew her Paris asshe did not know it: its history, its art. Even her language he spokemore correctly than her husband or herself. She knew that at his homethere must be many women infinitely more attractive, more suited to him, than herself: women of birth, of position; young girls and great ladiesof the other world. And she knew, also, that, in his present state, ata nod from her he would cast these behind him and carry her into thewilderness. More quickly than she anticipated, Everett proved she didnot overrate the forces that compelled him. 

The excursion to the rapids was followed by a second dinner on boardthe Nigeria. But now, as on the previous night, Everett fell into sullensilence. He ate nothing, drank continually, and with his eyes devouredthe woman. When coffee had been served, he left the others at table, and with Madame Ducret slowly paced the deck. As they passed out of thereach of the lights, he drew her to the rail, and stood in front of her. 

"I am not quite mad, " he said, "but you have got to come with me. "

To Everett all he added to this sounded sane and final. He told her thatthis was one of those miracles when the one woman and the one man whowere predestined to meet had met. He told her he had wished to marrya girl at home, but that he now saw that the desire was the fancy ofa school-boy. He told her he was rich, and offered her the choice ofreturning to the Paris she loved, or of going deeper into the jungle. There he would set up for her a principality, a state within the State. He would defend her against all comers. He would make her the Queen ofthe Congo. 

"I have waited for you thousands of years!" he told her. His voice washoarse, shaken, and thick. "I love you as men loved women in the StoneAge--fiercely, entirely. I will not be denied. Down here we are cavepeople; if you fight me, I will club you and drag you to my cave. Ifothers fight for you, I will KILL them. I love you, " he panted, "withall my soul, my mind, my body, I love you! I will not let you go!"

Madame Ducret did not say she was insulted, because she did not feelinsulted. She did not call to her husband for help, because she did notneed his help, and because she knew that the ex-wrestler could breakEverett across his knee. She did not even withdraw her hands, althoughEverett drove the diamonds deep into her fingers. 

"You frighten me!" she pleaded. She was not in the least frightened. Sheonly was sorry that this one must be discarded among the incurables. 

In apparent agitation, she whispered, "To-morrow! To-morrow I will giveyou your answer. "

Everett did not trust her, did not release her. He regarded herjealously, with quick suspicion. To warn her that he knew she could notescape from Matadi, or from him, he said, "The train to Leopoldvilledoes not leave for two days!"

"I know!" whispered Madame Ducret soothingly. "I will give you youranswer to-morrow at ten. " She emphasized the hour, because she knewat sunrise a special train would carry her husband and herself toLeopoldville, and that there one of her husband's steamers would bearthem across the Pool to French Congo. 

"To-morrow, then!" whispered Everett, grudgingly. "But I must kiss younow!"

Only an instant did Madame Ducret hesitate. Then she turned her cheek. "Yes, " she assented. "You must kiss me now. "

Everett did not rejoin the others. He led her back into the circle oflight, and locked himself in his cabin. 

At ten the next morning, when Ducret and his wife were well advancedtoward Stanley Pool, Cuthbert handed Everett a note. Having been toldwhat it contained, he did not move away, but, with his back turned, leaned upon the rail. 

Everett, his eyes on fire with triumph, his fingers trembling, tore openthe envelope. 

Madame Ducret wrote that her husband and herself felt that Mr. Everettwas suffering more severely from the climate than he knew. With regretthey cancelled their invitation to visit them, and urged him, for hishealth's sake, to continue as he had planned, to northern latitudes. They hoped to meet in Paris. They extended assurances of theirdistinguished consideration. 

Slowly, savagely, as though wreaking his suffering on some human thing, Everett tore the note into minute fragments. Moving unsteadily to theship's side, he flung them into the river, and then hung limply upon therail. 

Above him, from a sky of brass, the sun stabbed at his eyeballs. Belowhim, the rush of the Congo, churning in muddy whirlpools, echoed againstthe hills of naked rock that met the naked sky. 

To Everett, the roar of the great river, and the echoes from the land hehad set out to reform, carried the sound of gigantic, hideous laughter.