There was some talk about keeping a watch in turn, but in the evening everything seemed so quiet and peaceful that they retired as usual.  All night they were disturbed by a lot of drumming in the villages.  A deep, rapid roll near by would be followed by another far off—­then all ceased.  Soon short appeals would rattle out here and there, then all mingle together, increase, become vigorous and sustained, would spread out over the forest, roll through the night, unbroken and ceaseless, near and far, as if the whole land had been one immense drum booming out steadily an appeal to heaven.  And through the deep and tremendous noise sudden yells that resembled snatches of songs from a madhouse darted shrill and high in discordant jets of sound which seemed to rush far above the earth and drive all peace from under the stars.

Carlier and Kayerts slept badly.  They both thought they had heard shots fired during the night—­but they could not agree as to the direction.  In the morning Makola was gone somewhere.  He returned about noon with one of yesterday’s strangers, and eluded all Kayerts’ attempts to close with him:  had become deaf apparently.  Kayerts wondered.  Carlier, who had been fishing off the bank, came back and remarked while he showed his catch, “The niggers seem to be in a deuce of a stir; I wonder what’s up.  I saw about fifteen canoes cross the river during the two hours I was there fishing.”  Kayerts, worried, said, “Isn’t this Makola very queer to-day?” Carlier advised, “Keep all our men together in case of some trouble.”

II

There were ten station men who had been left by the Director.  Those fellows, having engaged themselves to the Company for six months (without having any idea of a month in particular and only a very faint notion of time in general), had been serving the cause of progress for upwards of two years.  Belonging to a tribe from a very distant part of the land of darkness and sorrow, they did not run away, naturally supposing that as wandering strangers they would be killed by the inhabitants of the country; in which they were right.  They lived in straw huts on the slope of a ravine overgrown with reedy grass, just behind the station buildings.  They were not happy, regretting the festive incantations, the sorceries, the human sacrifices of their own land; where they also had parents, brothers, sisters, admired chiefs, respected magicians, loved friends, and other ties supposed generally to be human.  Besides, the rice rations served out by the Company did not agree with them, being a food unknown to their land, and to which they could not get used.  Consequently they were unhealthy and miserable.  Had they been of any other tribe they would have made up their minds to die—­for nothing is easier to certain savages than suicide—­and so have escaped from the puzzling difficulties of existence.  But belonging, as they did, to a warlike tribe with filed