"I come from Mpatu," he said. "It is not my village: my village is Ilola. I passed through Mpatu on my way home. It is no longer a village. Why? The servants of the Great White Chief had come up the river. They told the people that the lords of the world, the sons of heaven, had given all the land to the Great White Chief. Mpatu belonged no more to the chief Lualu: it belonged to the Great White Chief. But the Great White Chief was a good chief; he would be a father to his people. Would he take their huts, their gardens, their fowls, their children? No, he was a good chief. Everything that was theirs should be left to them; and the Great White Chief would keep peace in the land, and men should live together as brothers. Only one thing the Great White Chief required of them. In the forest grew a vine that yielded a milky sap. This stuff when hardened with acid from another plant would be of use to the Great White Chief, and he wished them to collect it for him, and bring to his servants every fourteenth day so many baskets full. Every man of Mpatu must bring his share. And they said too that the Great White Chief was just: for all this rubber they collected he would pay, in brass rods, or cloth, or salt; and seeing the Great White Chief was so kind and good, only a bad man would fail in the task set him, and such bad men must be punished. And two servants of the Great White Chief would be left in Mpatu to instruct the people as to the furnishing of the rubber; and these kind teachers the men of Mpatu would surely provide with food and shelter.
"The men of Mpatu laughed at first. Well they knew the vine! Was there not enough of it and to spare in the forest? How easily they could collect what was demanded! How soon would they become rich! And they set the women and children to weave new baskets for the rubber, and made ready new and well-built huts for the men who were to teach them their duty to the Great White Chief.
"But as time went on, woe came to Mpatu. The two servants of the Great White Chief were bad men, selfish, cruel. They stalked about the village, treating the people as their slaves; they seized the plumpest fowls and the choicest fruits; if any man resisted, they whipped him with a long whip of hippopotamus hide.