A native was brought in by two askaris and charged before Schubert with hanging about the boma gate after dark.  He was asked the reason.  The Jew, sitting beside me with his book of names and charges, poured cool water over my bandages and translated to me what they all said.  He spoke English very well indeed, but in such low tones that I could scarcely catch the words, drawing in his breath and not moving his lips at all.

The native explained that he had waited to see the bwana makubwa—­the commandant.  He had nowhere to go and no money with which to pay for lodging, so he proposed to wait outside the gate and watch for the coming of the commandant next morning.  He would intercept him on his way down from the white house on the hill.

He was asked why.  To beg a favor.  What favor?  Satisfaction.  For what?  For his daughter.  He was the father of the girl whom the commandant had favored with attentions.  She had been a virgin.  Now she was to have a child.  It would be a half-black, half-white child.  Who would now marry a woman with such a child as that?  Yet nothing bad been given her.  She had been simply sent back home to be a charge on her parents and an already poverty-stricken village.  Therefore he had come to ask that justice be done, and the girl be given at least a present of money.

The sergeants roared with laughter, all except Schubert, who seemed only appalled by the impudence of the request.  He sat back and ordered the story repeated.

“And you dare ask for money from the bwana makubwa!” he demanded.  “You dog of a Nyamwesi!  Is the honor not sufficient that your black brute of a daughter should have a baby by such a great person?  You cattle have no sense of honor!  You must learn!  Put him down!  Beat him till I say stop!”

There was no need to put him down, however.  The motion of the hand, voice inflection, order were all too well understood.  The man lay face-downward on the floor without so much as a murmur of objection, and buried his face in both hands.  The askaris promptly stripped him of the thin cotton loin-cloth that constituted his only garment, tearing it in pieces as they dragged it from him.

“Go on!” ordered Schubert.  “Beat him!”

Both the askaris had kibokos.  The longest of the two was split at the nether end into four fingers.  The shortest was more than a yard long, tapering from an inch and a half where the man’s fist gripped it to half an inch thick at the tip.  They stood one each side of their victim and brought the whips down on his naked skin alternately.

“Slowly!” ordered Schubert.  “Slowly, and with all your strength!  The brute doesn’t feel it when you beat so fast!  Let him wait for the blow!  Don’t let him know when it’s coming!  So—­so is better!”

Not every blow drew blood, for a native’s skin is thick and tough, especially where he sits.  But the blows that fell on the back and thighs all cut the skin, and within two minutes the native’s back was a bloody mass, and there was blood running on the floor, and splashes of blood on the whitewashed wall cast by the whips as they ascended.