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

330 THINKING BLACK
with never a twinge of fear. The Devil's matins these
became, my morning hymn drowned by their morning
curses. Glad was I when, one day, far up the hills I
heard the bugle of the retreating column, and in an hour
they filed past to relieve me of corroding care.
But here, as elsewhere, the loyal law of compensation
avails. Distasteful business this soldiering was for a
Missionary, yet even here I get my royal revenge. For
years afterwards I. was permitted to chaplain these
troops, many of whom were my old soldiers. A wild
lot they were : cannibals, hundreds of them, who
subsequently revolted and murdered their white ofl&cers.
When Baron Dhanis, the Belgian Commandant (an old
Greenock boy, like myself) broke the back of the Arab
domination, he little dreamed what a defeat he organised
out of his victory, by permitting the crass crime of
"converting" these cannibals into the soldiers of a
civilised state. In delusion and confusion he caused
these old Arab cut-throats to be enrolled en masse,
the veneer of the barracks, smart uniform and deadly
Albinis only helping to hide the horrible man-eater
wrapped up in this official envelope. Conversion, for-
sooth, this was called, as though the wolf in sheep's
clothing has lost the old appetite for mutton. No
wonder the march of events soon swept dozens of
young Belgians into the cannibal pots : Leroy, Inver
Mellen, Andriane, Louis Dhanis, and many others.^
* The subsequent rcigiine by Governor Wangernu'e aiul his successor
was a true triumph of eaue, solid methods. Bravo ! Belgium.