The Pools of Silence. H. De Vere Stacpoole

children of a village, ten miles away south; they were here as “hostages,” because the village had not produced its full tale of cassava. They had been here over a month.

      The soldiers laughed, and struck with the butts of their rifles on the palisading, as if to increase the confusion. Adams noticed that the young girls and women were of all the terrified crowd seemingly the most terrified. He did not know the reason; he could not even guess it. A good man himself, and believing in a God in heaven, he could not guess the truth. He knew nothing of the reason of these women’s terror, and he looked with disgust at the scene before him, not entirely comprehending. Those creatures, so filthy, so animal-like, created in his mind such abhorrence that he forgot to make allowances for the fact that they were penned like swine, and that perchance in their own native state, free in their own villages, they might be cleaner and less revolting. He could not hear the dismal cry of the “Congo niggers,” who of all people on the earth are the most miserable, the most abused, the most sorrow-stricken, the most dumb. He did not know that he was looking at one of the filthy acts in the great drama that a hundred years hence will be read with horror by a more enlightened world.

      They turned from the degrading sight and went back to Verhaeren’s house for dinner.