The Ivory Trail by Talbot Mundy

Author:Talbot Mundy
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pronoun

CHAPTER EIGHT

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IPSOS CUSTODES

We were an ignorant people. Out of a gloom we came

Hungering, striving, feasting—vanishing into the same.

Came to us your foreloopers, told us the gloom was bad,

Spoke of the Light that might be—simply it could be had—

Knowledge and wealth and freedom, plenty and peace and play,

And at all the price of obedience. “Listen and learn and obey,”

We were told, “and the gloom shall be lifted. Ignorance surely

is shame.”

We listened to your foreloopersy till presently Cadis* came.

We were an ignorant people. Our law was “an eye for an eye,”

And he who wronged should right the wrong, and he who stole should die—

Bad law the Cadis told us, based on the fall of man;

And they set us to building law-courts on the Pangermanic plan—

Courts where the gloom of ages should be pierced, said they, with Light

And scientific theory displace wrong views of Right.

The Cadis’ law was writ in books that only they could read,

But what should we know of the strings to that? ‘Twas gloom when

we agreed.

We were an ignorant people. The Offizieren came

To lend to law eye, tooth, and claw and so enforce the same.

Now nought are the tribal customs; free speech is under ban;

Displaced are misconceptions that were based on fallen man,

And our gloom has gone in darkness of the risen German’s night,

Nor is there salt of mercy lest it sap the hold of Might.

They strike—we may not answer, nor dare we ask them why.

We sold ourselves to supermen. If we rebel, we die.

————————- * Cadi—judge. ————————-

I sat down once more on the hospital steps, and listened while Fred and Will relieved themselves of their opinions about German manners. Nothing seemed likely to relieve me. I had marched a hundred miles, endured the sickening pain, and waited an extra night at the end of it all simply on the strength of anticipation. Now that the surgeon would not see me, hope seemed gone. I could think of nothing but to go and hide somewhere, like a wounded animal.

But there were two more swift shocks in store, and no hiding-place. The path to the water-front led past us directly along the southern boma wall. Before Fred and Will had come to an end of swearing they saw something that struck them silent so suddenly that I looked up and saw, too. Not that I cared very much. To me it seemed merely one last super-added piece of evidence that life was not worth while.

Plainly the launch had come from British East, of which Schubert had spoken. Hand in hand from the water-front, followed by the obsequious Schubert, all smiles and long black whip (for the chain-gang trailed after with the luggage, and needed to be overawed), walked Professor Schillingschen and Lady Isobel Saffren Waldon. They seemed in love—or at any rate the professor did, for he ogled and smirked like a bearded gargoyle; and she made such play of being charmed by his grimaces that the Syrian maid fell behind to hide her face.

None of us spoke. We watched them. Personally I did not mind the feeling that the worst had happened at last.

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