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Chapter I - Murder and Pillage
Hauptmann Fritz Schneider trudged wearily through the somber aisles of the
dark forest. Sweat rolled down his bullet head and stood upon his heavy jowls
and bull neck. His lieutenant marched beside him while Underlieutenant von
Goss brought up the rear, following with a handful of askaris the tired and all but
exhausted porters whom the black soldiers, following the example of their white
officer, encouraged with the sharp points of bayonets and the metal-shod butts of
rifles.
There were no porters within reach of Hauptmann Schneider so he vented his
Prussian spleen upon the askaris nearest at hand, yet with greater
circumspection since these men bore loaded rifles--and the three white men were
alone with them in the heart of Africa.
Ahead of the hauptmann marched half his company, behind him the other half--
thus were the dangers of the savage jungle minimized for the German captain. At
the forefront of the column staggered two naked savages fastened to each other
by a neck chain. These were the native guides impressed into the service of
Kultur and upon their poor, bruised bodies Kultur's brand was revealed in divers
cruel wounds and bruises.
Thus even in darkest Africa was the light of German civilization commencing to
reflect itself upon the undeserving natives just as at the same period, the fall of
1914, it was shedding its glorious effulgence upon benighted Belgium.
It is true that the guides had led the party astray; but this is the way of most
African guides. Nor did it matter that ignorance rather than evil intent had been
the cause of their failure. It was enough for Hauptmann Fritz Schneider to know
that he was lost in the African wilderness and that he had at hand human beings
less powerful than he who could be made to suffer by torture. That he did not kill
them outright was partially due to a faint hope that they might eventually prove
the means of extricating him from his difficulties and partially that so long as
they lived they might still be made to suffer.
The poor creatures, hoping that chance might lead them at last upon the right
trail, insisted that they knew the way and so led on through a dismal forest along
a winding game trail trodden deep by the feet of countless generations of the
savage denizens of the jungle.
Here Tantor, the elephant, took his long way from dust wallow to water. Here
Buto, the rhinoceros, blundered blindly in his solitary majesty, while by night the
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