“They’re sayin’ good-by to him,” said Brown, breathing in my ear.  “They’re telling him they won’t forget him!”

The crack of askaris’ whips falling on head and naked shoulders swiftly reduced the crowd to silence.  Then the commandant faced them all, and made a speech with that ash-can voice of his—­first in German, then in the Nyamwezi tongue.  Will translated to us sentence by sentence, the doctor standing on the top step behind us smiling approval.  He seemed to think we would be benefited by the lecture just as much as the natives.

It was awful humbug that the commandant reeled off to his silent audience—­hypocrisy garbed in paternal phrases, and interlarded with buncombe about Germany’s mission to bring happiness to subject peoples.

“Above all,” he repeated again and again, “the law must be enforced impartially—­the good, sound, German law that knows no fear or favor, but governs all alike!”

When he had finished he turned to the culprit.

“Now,” he demanded, “do you know why you are to be hanged?”

There was a moment’s utter silence.  The crowd drew in its breath, seeming to know in advance that some brave answer was forthcoming.  The man on the table with his hands behind him surveyed the crowd again with the gaze of simple dignity, looked down on the commandant, and raised his voice.  It was an unexpected, high, almost falsetto note, that in the silence carried all across the square.

“I am to die,” he said, “because I did right!  My enemy did what German officers do.  He stole my young girl.  I killed him, as I hope all you Germans may be killed!  But hope no longer gathers fruit in this land!”

“Ah-h-h-h!” the crowd sighed in unison.

“Good man!” exploded Fred, and the doctor tried to kick him from behind—­not hard, but enough to call his attention to the proprieties.  His toe struck me instead, and when I looked up angrily he tried to pretend he was not aware of what he had done.

Under the trees the commandant flew into a rage such I have seldom seen.  Each land has a temper of its own, an the white man’s anger varies in inverse ratio with his nearness to the equator.  But furor teutonicus transplanted is the least controllable least dignified, least admirable that there is.  And that man’s passion was the apex of its kind.

His beard spread, as a peacock spreads its tail.  His eyes blazed.  His eyebrows disappeared under the brim of his white helmet, and his clenched fists burst the white cotton gloves.  He half-drew his saber—­thought better of that, and returned it.  There was an askari standing near with kiboko in hand to drive back the crowd should any press too closely.  He snatched the whip and struck the condemned man with it, as high up as he could reach, making a great welt across his bare stomach.  The man neither winced nor complained.

“For those words,” the commandant screamed at him in German, “you shall not die in comfort!  For that insolence, mere hanging is too good!”