rass. He'd got a long way ahead of the rest and thought they meant
mischief, so he wouldn't wait for the others but faced a hundred of them
with a revolver in his hand, and I can tell you things were lively
then. I'd never be able to describe the next few minutes--one man Trent
knocked down with his fist, and you could hear his skull crack, then he
shot the chap who had been threatening me, and cut my bonds, and then
they tried to resist us, and I thought it was all over. They were
horribly afraid of Trent though, and while they were closing round us
the others came up and the natives chucked it at once. They used to be
a very brave race, but since they were able to get rum for their timber
and ivory, they're a lazy and drunken lot. Well, I must tell you what
Trent did then. He went to the priest's house where the gods were
kept--such a beastly hole--and he burned the place before the eyes of
all the natives. I believe they thought every moment that we should be
struck dead, and they stood round in a ring, making an awful row, but
they never dared interfere. He burnt the place to the ground, and then
what do you think he did? From the King downward he made every Jack one
of them come and work on his road. You'll never believe it, but it's
perfectly true. They looked upon him as their conqueror, and they came
like lambs when he ordered it. They think they're slaves you know, and
don't understand their pay, but they get it every week and same as all
the other labourers--and oh, Aunt Ernie, you should see the King work
with a pickaxe! He is fat and so clumsy and so furiously angry, but he's
too scared of Trent to do anything but obey orders, and there he works
hour after hour, groaning, and the perspiration rolls off him as though
he were in a Turkish bath. I could go on telling you odd things that
happen here for hours, but I must finish soon as the chap is starting
with the mail. I am enjoying it. It is something like life I can tell
you, and aren't I lucky? Trent made me take Cathcart's place. I am
getting 800 pounds a year, and only fancy it, he says he'll see that the
directors make me a special grant. Everything looks very different here
now, and I do hope the Company will be a success. There's whole heaps
of mining machinery landed and waiting for the road to be finished to
go up, and people seem to be streaming into the place. I wonder what
Cathcart will say when he knows that the road is as good as done, and
that I'