Then Ormsgill smiled grimly as he tapped the breech of his rifle.
"If homicide is ever justifiable it would have been to-night," he said. "One could hardly have missed that bulge in Domingo's hammock, and the longing to drive a bullet through it was almost too much for me."
Nares made no attempt to rebuke him. "That man," he said, "is permitted to be--one must suppose as part of a great purpose. The mills of the gods grind slowly, but they do their work thoroughly."
"It seems so," and Ormsgill laughed a little bitter laugh. "Anyway, the stones are wet with blood, and a good many of us have passed between them. One wonders now and then how long the downtrodden will endure that terrible grinding."
"It is for a time only. Day and night the cry goes up in many tongues."
"And the gods of the heathen cannot hear; and those of the white men may, it seems, be propitiated by masses in the cathedral and stained windows bought with cocoa and rubber dividends. Well, one must try to believe that Domingo's laborers enlisted for the purpose of being taught agriculture by the white men of their own free will. At least, that is the comfortable assurance usually furnished the civilized powers, and as they have their own little problems to grapple with they complacently shut one eye. I only wonder how many played-out niggers' throats Domingo has cut on the way. In the meanwhile, Lamartine is dying, and we may as well get on again."
He called to the hammock boys, who still seemed afraid, and in another five minutes the little party was once more floundering onwards through the silence of the steamy bush.
Darkness had closed down suddenly on the forest, but it was hotter than ever in the primitively furnished general room of Lamartine's house, where the lamp further raised the already almost insupportable temperature. There was also a deep, impressive silence in the bush that shut the rickety dwelling in, though now and then the sound of a big drop splashing upon a quivering leaf came in through the open window with startling distinctness. Lamartine, the French trader, was dead, and had been buried that afternoon, as was customary, within an hour or two after the breath has left his body. His career, like that of most men in his business, had not been a very exemplary one, but he had, at least, now and then shown that he possessed certain somewhat fantastic and elementary notions of ethics, which he was in the habit of alluding to as his code of honor. It was, as Father Tiebout, who had once or twice given him spiritual advice when he was very sick of fever, admitted, a rather indifferent one, but very few white men in that country had any code at all, and, as the good padre said, it was possible that too much would not be expected from any one who had lived in that forest long.