Thinking black; 22 years without a break in the long grass of Central ...

"NEMESIS, DAUGHTER OF NIGHT" 303
Congo State in Katanga owes all. After this first
expedition, a pause ; then comes Delcommune, a late
second. He has followed up the Lomami, and striking
Lake Kissale on the 27th August, 1891, arrives at the
capital 6th October. Item: Lost Lieutenant Hankansson
at Kinkondia, killed by the Lubans. Item : Makes over-
tures to Mushidi, and is repelled. No. 3 Expedition is
still from the North, and led by a charming gentleman,
Captain Bia of the Guides—the same explorer this who,
in the following May, died in my arms away South at
Ntenke's. (The same Bia this who executed the murderer
of Major Barttelot, leader of Stanley's rear column.) But
none of these men struck a blow, and it was reserved for
an Englishman to hoist the Congo flag. This was
Stanley's friend Stairs, who was then slowly advancing
from Zanzibar ; a poor man he, daily embarrassed with the
stabbing idea that he, an officer holding the Queen's
commission, was called upon to repel the advance of his
own Union Jack. He it was who intercepted Mushidi's
written command by my hand to recall Sir Alfred Sharpe.
Fancy an officer with a delicate and scrupulous sense of
honour waking up to the piercing realisation that he had
become the tool of a foreigner, drawing Belgian money
to combat English pretensions ! The
truth is, this poor
fellow was trapped into a very delicate position, not of his
own seeking ; and as the days advanced, the monstrous
enigma of his anti-English duties became a nightmare to
him. Dying as he did before leaving Africa, I have sad
reason for believing that this brooding over the dilemma
19