"London, Jack - Adventure" - читать интересную книгу автора (London Jack)

pestilence. From the direction they were going arose a wild
clamour, as of lost souls wailing and of men in torment. A long,
low shed showed ahead, grass-walled and grass-thatched, and it was
from here that the noise proceeded. There were shrieks and
screams, some unmistakably of grief, others unmistakably of
unendurable pain. As the white man drew closer he could hear a low
and continuous moaning and groaning. He shuddered at the thought
of entering, and for a moment was quite certain that he was going
to faint. For that most dreaded of Solomon Island scourges,
dysentery, had struck Berande plantation, and he was all alone to
cope with it. Also, he was afflicted himself.

By stooping close, still on man-back, he managed to pass through
the low doorway. He took a small bottle from his follower, and
sniffed strong ammonia to clear his senses for the ordeal. Then he
shouted, "Shut up!" and the clamour stilled. A raised platform of
forest slabs, six feet wide, with a slight pitch, extended the full
length of the shed. Alongside of it was a yard-wide run-way.
Stretched on the platform, side by side and crowded close, lay a
score of blacks. That they were low in the order of human life was
apparent at a glance. They were man-eaters. Their faces were
asymmetrical, bestial; their bodies were ugly and ape-like. They
wore nose-rings of clam-shell and turtle-shell, and from the ends
of their noses which were also pierced, projected horns of beads
strung on stiff wire. Their ears were pierced and distended to
accommodate wooden plugs and sticks, pipes, and all manner of
barbaric ornaments. Their faces and bodies were tattooed or
scarred in hideous designs. In their sickness they wore no
clothing, not even loin-cloths, though they retained their shell
armlets, their bead necklaces, and their leather belts, between
which and the skin were thrust naked knives. The bodies of many
were covered with horrible sores. Swarms of flies rose and
settled, or flew back and forth in clouds.

The white man went down the line, dosing each man with medicine.
To some he gave chlorodyne. He was forced to concentrate with all
his will in order to remember which of them could stand
ipecacuanha, and which of them were constitutionally unable to
retain that powerful drug. One who lay dead he ordered to be
carried out. He spoke in the sharp, peremptory manner of a man who
would take no nonsense, and the well men who obeyed his orders
scowled malignantly. One muttered deep in his chest as he took the
corpse by the feet. The white man exploded in speech and action.
It cost him a painful effort, but his arm shot out, landing a back-
hand blow on the black's mouth.

"What name you, Angara?" he shouted. "What for talk 'long you, eh?
I knock seven bells out of you, too much, quick!"

With the automatic swiftness of a wild animal the black gathered