he took no notice after
that one first steady gaze.

"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, and 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