Page:Harris Dickson--Old Reliable in Africa.djvu/187

 with a detachment and proceed to the frontier, two days' journey. Yambio made no protest; Allah had willed it so. He went with me, but kept very silent. Four days later we returned. His girl wife was not in Yambio's hut. Yambio heard the grewsome story, how she had been carried, screaming, to the officers' quarters. His blacks told him all, in their own tongue. Yambio rushed straight to headquarters. There they sat, Vinizzi and his cronies, around a table, reckless with wine. Yambio demanded his wife. Vinizzi pointed to an inner room—'She is there,' he said. That was all. She was there, lying on the floor, not yet dead, but worse than dead. Yambio gathered the limp creature in his arms and strode out to the jungle. She died that night—sometimes God may be merciful, even in Africa. Yambio buried her, and went back to Vinizzi. Blood of Christ! How he looked, blocking that door with arms folded, glaring at those men who sneered at him. Yambio spoke, very, very slowly: 'Allah is just, and Allah sees the sorrow you have put upon his servant.' That is all he said; I remember every syllable. He went about his duties and the post was quiet. One sultry night two weeks afterwards, I was awakened by a hand that closed my mouth—'Be still,' a voice whispered, 'you shall meet no harm.' It was Yambio himself who bound and gagged me,