Achmed Abdullah

“ Rub-rub-rub-rumbeddy-rub-rub-bannng!—the song of the drum droned up, in the Morse code of all Africa.
Rub-rumbeddy-rub!—sobbing into the hinterland with the tale of the new chief from across the bitter waters—the chief at whose feet the German umlino had cowered like a dog, well beaten with thorn sticks. ”

“ The professor's mare had fallen and broken her neck, and so he trudged along on foot, suffering, yet uncomplaining.
For his mind was busy with sanely constructive, philosophic thoughts, and he observed steadily his Galla porters as well as the inhabitants of the occasional villages through which they passed; making copious notes for either the refutation or the proof of the Spencerian theory that species, under the influence or the absence of higher civilization, will not remain uniform. ”

“ The great umlino of the Germans cowered before him like a dog. Like a dog, well beaten with thorn sticks! He is a cat in climbing, a deer in running, a snake in twisting, a hawk in pouncing, a jackal in scenting! ”

“ Force incarnate, sprawling naked and unashamed. And he studied him, fascinated, just a little frightened, rather nervous of being observed by him.
The German was massively, resplendently drunk—and the alcohol, plus the tropics, plus the news from Europe that had come by cable a few hours earlier, had fanned his aggressive, grotesque Teuton patriotism into burning flame.
At a corner table a handful of Englishmen and Frenchmen, traders from the Kongo and the Bight of Benin who had come to Kamerun in search of bargains in orchilla-root and gum-copal, were peacefully sipping their rum-shrub. ”

“ Rub-rub-bannng!—the farther drums took up the message and sent it on; while back in the port of Kamerun, a hectic German colonel was unsuccessfully trying to bully the American consul; while the cables from Europe to New York zummed with the incredible, intolerable news that the imperial Hohenzollern beast was running amuck; while sober, stern men of the free nations met in solemn conclave with their household gods falling about them in pieces ”

“ Great is he indeed. His hand is heavy and pitiless. He is a wild-cat devouring his own young!”
Thus, daily, nightly, ran the message of the drums, clear back to a far bush station, on the British side of the border, where Subaltern St. George Leslie of the Second Haussa Gunners was cursing his luck and the orders from the war office which kept him from taking part in the big European mixup—until, one night, a Haussa sergeant, familiar with the drum code, picked up a tail end of the message that came thumping out of the southeast, from across Kamerun, and spoke of it to St. George Leslie. ”

“ Namely—the Spencerian commonwealth!
“'Right-o'—or something like it—replies the professor. 'You slipped that gun among my things when I wasn't looking, after I told you that I was a man of peace and wanted nothing to do with your international complications.'
“'There's gratitude for you!' the skipper sings out. 'I warned you how the tropics affect the Germans. I told you that war was just about due, and that it wouldn't improve the temper of these Colonial Prussians a dashed bit! I slipped that gun among your clothes to save your life, and—by Jupiter!—I did save it! ”

“ You are a Spencerian scholar. Therefore you believe in logic, don't you?”
“Logic is next to godliness. According to Herbert Spencer it is a persistent attempt to frame natural perceptions into—”
“That 'll do, old chap,” cut in the Scotsman. “You believe in logic. That's all I want to know. Then tell me. That six-gun—you must admit—”
Just then he noticed St. George Leslie's eyes resting upon him with eager curiosity, and so he checked himself in the midst of his sentence and led his brother-in-law away. ”

“ Sullivan, he could not have had the revolver in his possession when he left New York and his Columbia chair of philosophy, six weeks earlier, on a trip to the African West Coast to find out there, among the primitive Gallas, if Herbert Spencer had been right in his dictum that civilization increases heterogeneity and that thus the white man departs more widely from the mammalian archetype than does the savage. ”

“ I mean what the blacks call him—'the wildcat which devours his own young'—rather gory, what? But, in spite of it, according to the drum messages, he rules by a sort of peaceful, glorified rule-of-three, five-plied and brought on a modern business basis.”
“One of those constructive, efficient Germans, eh?”
“I fancy so, skipper. And they're the most dangerous of all the square-head species. He's only been up there about three months, but the chiefs flock to him, even from our side of the line, and jolly well squat at his heels and do what he tells 'em. ”

“ But a lean, saturnine countenance detached itself from behind a month-old Detroit News, lengthened into six-foot of lanky, Middle-Western humanity, drawled that his countryman had acted in self-defense and that—by gosh—he was the American consul, as they knew, and if anybody wanted to monkey with the buzz-saw, he personally would have to be shown a whole lot, because his ancestral grandmother was a native of Pike County, Missouri! ”

“ But we must do the best we can. We must carry through. Now—about German Kamerun.”
IV.
Meanwhile, far from the beaten tracks where scattered German colonial troops were converging toward the coast to meet the expected shock of the British, the fetid hinterland was swallowing Professor Lowell Cabot Day.
A sort of path led through an impenetrable mass of bush and thorn and creepers covered with exaggerated, tortured tropical blossoms. A continuous, hot, moist wind came from beyond the frayed edge of the forest. ”

“ Consensus facit legem'—or some other such Latin poppycock he drawls out, and then he makes the whole thing shipshape with another long-winded quotation that leaves Sir Hector speechless and raging.
“And so every day and every day. And when I go down with Blackwater fever—by this time the professor had run up an impromptu American flag on the cinnamon tree beneath which he jawed with his Galla chiefs, and Sir Hector the Union Jack on a toddy palm the other side of the kraal—the two were still jabberin' about six-gun and reason and basic claims and logic and Herbert Spencer—”
Subaltern St. ”