He told of the Hostage House at Yandjali, and the wretched creatures penned like animals eating their miserable food; he told of M'Bassa and the Hostage House there, with its iron rings and chains; he told how all over that vast country these places were dotted, not by the hundred but by the thousand; he told of the misery of the men who were driven into the dismal forests, slaves of masters worse than tigers, and of a task that would never end as long as rubber grew and Christ was a name in Europe and not a power; he told the awful fact that murder there was used every day as an agricultural implement, that people were operated upon, and suffered amputation of limbs, not because of disease; and that their sex and age--those two last appeals of Nature to brutality--had no voice; he told the whole bitter tale of tears and blood, but he could not tell her all, for she was a girl, and it would be hard to speak even before a man of the crimes against Nature, the crimes against men, against women, and against children, that even if the Congo State were swept away to-morrow, will leave Belgium's name in the world's history more detestable than the names of the unspeakable cities sunk in the Dead Sea.
Maxine listened, entranced, swayed between the terror of the tale and the power of the man who was telling it.
Ah! if he could have spoken to Europe as he spoke to her; if he could have made Europe see as he made her see, what a whirlwind of indignation would have arisen; but he could not.
It was the magnet of her sympathy that marshalled the facts, clad them in burning language, and led them forth in battalions that stormed her mind and made her believe what seemed unbelievable. Without that sympathy, his words would have been cold and lifeless statements bearing little conviction.
When he had finished, she did that which a woman never does unless moved by the very highest excitement. She rose up and paced the floor thrice. Without speaking, she walked the length of the room, then she turned to Adams.
"This shall cease," said he, "if I can only make myself heard. To-day--to-night--just before you came in, I was trying to put the thing on paper--trying to put down what I have seen with my own eyes, and heard with my own ears, but the ink seems ice. What I write seems nothing, nothing beside what I have seen. The mere statement that so many were killed, so many were tortured, conveys nothing of the reality. The thing is too big for me. God made it, I suppose; but I wish to God I had never seen it."