"
"Let us have these men here--we will hear what they have to say,"
said Oscard in the same dull tone that frightened Victor Durnovo.
"Not you!" he went on, laying his hand on Durnovo's shoulder again;
"Joseph will fetch them, thank you."
So the forty--or the thirty-seven survivors, for one had died on the
journey up and two had been murdered--were brought. They were
peaceful, timorous men, whose manhood seemed to have been crushed
out of them; and slowly, word by word, their grim story was got out
of them. Joseph knew a little of their language, and one of the
head fighting men knew a little more, and spoke a dialect known to
Oscard. They were slaves they said at once, but only on Oscard's
promise that Durnovo should not be allowed to shoot them. They had
been brought from the north by a victorious chief, who in turn had
handed them over to Victor Durnovo in payment of an outstanding debt
for ammunition supplied.
The great African moon rose into the heavens and shone her yellow
light upon this group of men. Overhead all was peace: on earth
there was no peace. And yet it was one of Heaven's laws that Victor
Durnovo had broken.
Guy Oscard went patiently through to the end of it. He found out
all that there was to find; and he found out something which
surprised him.
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