When a man loves one woman, whether she be alive or dead, a deep and fragrant1 memory or a very pleasant reality, he is apt to earn the appellation2 of "woman-hater," a hasty judgment3 which the loose-minded pass upon any man whose loves lack promiscuosity, and who does not diffuse5 his passions. Sanders was described as a woman-hater by such men who knew him sufficiently6 little to analyse his character, but Sanders was not a woman-hater in any sense of the word, for he bore no illwill toward woman kind, and certainly was innocent of any secret love.
There was a young man named Ludley who had been assistant to Sanders for three months, at the end of which time Sanders sent for him--he was stationed at Isisi City.
"I think you can go home," said Sanders.
The young man opened his eyes in astonishment7.
"Why?" he said.
Sanders made no reply, but stared through the open doorway8 at the distant village.
"Why?" demanded the young man again.
"I've heard things," said Sanders shortly--he was rather uncomfortable, but did not show it.
"Things--like what?"
Sanders shifted uneasily in his chair.
"Oh--things," he said vaguely9, and added: "You go home and marry that nice girl you used to rave10 about when you first came out."
Young Ludley went red under his tan.
"Look here, chief!" he said, half angrily, half apologetically, "you're surely not going to take any notice--you know it's the sort of thing that's done in black countries--oh, damn it all, you're not going to act as censor11 over my morals, are you?"
Sanders looked at the youth coldly.
"Your morals aren't worth worrying about," he said truthfully. "You could be the most depraved devil in the world--which I'll admit you aren't--and I should not trouble to reform you. No. It's the morals of my cannibals that worry me. Home you go, my son; get married, crescit sub pondere virtus--you'll find the translation in the foreign phrase department of any respectable dictionary. As to the sort of things that are done in black countries, they don't do them in our black countries--monkey tricks of that sort are good enough for the Belgian Congo, or for Togoland, but they aren't good enough for this little strip of wilderness12."
Ludley went home.
He did not tell anybody the real reason why he had come home, because it would not have sounded nice. He was a fairly decent boy, as boys of his type go, and he said nothing worse about Sanders than that he was a woman-hater.
The scene that followed his departure shows how little the white mind differs from the black in its process of working. For, after seeing his assistant safely embarked13 on a homeward-bound boat, Sanders went up the river to Isisi, and there saw a woman who was called M'Lino.
The average black woman is ugly of face, but beautiful of figure, but M'Lino was no ordinary woman, as you shall learn. The Isisi people, who keep extraordinary records in their heads, the information being handed from father to son, say that M'Lino came from an Arabi family, and certainly if a delicately-chiselled nose, a refinement14 of lip, prove anything, they prove M'Lino came from no pure Bantu stock.
She came to Sanders when he sent for her, alert, suspicious, very much on her guard.
Before he could speak, she asked him a question.
"Lord, where is Lijingii?" This was the nearest the native ever got to the pronunciation of Ludley's name.
"Lijingii has gone across the black water," said Sanders gently, "to his own people."
"You sent him, lord," she said quickly, and Sanders made no reply.
"Lord," she went on, and Sanders wondered at the bitterness in her tone, "it is said that you hate women."
"Then a lie is told," said Sanders. "I do not hate women; rather I greatly honour them, for they go down to the caves of hell when they bear children; also I regard them highly because they are otherwise brave and very loyal."
She said nothing. Her head was sunk till her chin rested on her bare, brown breast, but she looked at him from under her brows, and her eyes were filled with a strange luminosity. Something like a panic awoke in Sanders' heart--had the mischief15 been done? He cursed Ludley, and breathed a fervent16, if malevolent17, prayer that his ship would go down with him. But her words reassured18 him.
"I made Lijingii love me," she said, "though he was a great lord, and I was a slave; I also would have gone down to hell, for some day I hoped I should bear him children, but now that can never be."
"And thank the Lord for it!" said Sanders, under his breath.
He would have given her some words of cheer, but she turned abruptly19 from him and walked away. Sanders watched the graceful20 figure as it receded21 down the straggling street, and went back to his steamer.
He was ten miles down the river before he remembered that the reproof22 he had framed for the girl had been undelivered.
"That is very extraordinary," said Sanders, with some annoyance23, "I must be losing my memory."
Three months later young Penson came out from England to take the place of the returned Ludley. He was a fresh-faced youth, bubbling over with enthusiasm, and, what is more important, he had served a two-years' apprenticeship24 at Sierra Leone.
"You are to go up to Isisi," said Sanders, "and I want to tell you that you've got to be jolly careful."
"What's the racket?" demanded the youth eagerly. "Are the beggars rising?"
"So far as I know," said Sanders, putting his feet up on the rail of the verandah, "they are not--it is not bloodshed, but love that you've got to guard against."
And he told the story of M'Lino, even though it was no creditable story to British administration.
"You can trust me," said young Penson, when he had finished.
"I trust you all right," said Sanders, "but I don't trust the woman--let me hear from you from time to time; if you don't write about her I shall get suspicious, and I'll come along in a very unpleasant mood."
"You can trust me," said young Penson again; for he was at the age when a man is very sure of himself.
Remarkable25 as it may read, from the moment he left to take up his new post until he returned to headquarters, in disgrace, a few months later, he wrote no word of the straight, slim girl, with her wonderful eyes. Other communications came to hand, official reports, terse26 and to the point, but no mention of M'Lino, and Sanders began to worry.
The stories came filtering through, extraordinary stories of people who had been punished unjustly, of savage27 floggings administered by order of the sub-commissioner28, and Sanders took boat and travelled up the river hec dum.
He landed short of the town, and walked along the river bank. It was not an easy walk, because the country hereabouts is a riot of vegetation. Then he came upon an African idyll--a young man, who sat playing on a squeaky violin, for the pleasure of M'Lino, lying face downwards29 on the grass, her chin in her hands.
"In the name of a thousand devils!" said Sanders wrathfully; and the boy got up from the fallen tree on which he sat, and looked at him calmly, and with no apparent embarrassment31. Sanders looked down at the girl and pointed32.
"Go back to the village, my woman," he said softly, for he was in a rage.
"Now, you magnificent specimen33 of a white man," he said, when the girl had gone--slowly and reluctantly--"what is this story I hear about your flogging O'Sako?"
The youth took his pipe from his pocket and lit it coolly.
"He beat M'Lino," he said, in the tone of one who offered full justification34.
"From which fact I gather that he is the unfortunate husband of that attractive nigger lady you were charming just now when I arrived?"
"Don't be beastly," said the other, scowling35. "I know she's a native and all that sort of thing, but my people at home will get used to her colour----"
"Go on board my boat," said Sanders quietly. "Regard yourself as my prisoner."
Sanders brought him down to headquarters without troubling to investigate the flogging of O'Sako, and no word passed concerning M'Lino till they were back again at headquarters.
"Of course I shall send you home," said Sanders.
"I supposed you would," said the other listlessly. He had lost all his self-assurance on the journey down river, and was a very depressed36 young man indeed.
"I must have been mad," he admitted, the day before the mail boat called en route for England; "from the very first I loved her--good heavens, what an ass4 I am!"
"You are," agreed Sanders, and saw him off to the ship with a cheerful heart.
"I will have no more sub-commissioners at Isisi," he wrote acidly to the Administration. "I find my work sufficiently entertaining without the additional amusement of having to act as chaperon to British officials."
He made a special journey to Isisi to straighten matters out, and M'Lino came unbidden to see him.
"Lord, is he gone, too?" she asked.
"When I want you, M'Lino," said Sanders, "I will send for you."
"I loved him," she said, with more feeling than Sanders thought was possible for a native to show.
"You are an easy lover," said Sanders.
She nodded.
"That is the way with some women," she said. "When I love, I love with terrible strength; when I hate, I hate for ever and ever--I hate you, master!"
She said it very simply.
"If you were a man," said the exasperated37 Commissioner, "I would tie you up and whip you."
"F--f--b!" said the girl contemptuously, and left him staring.
To appreciate the position, you have to realise that Sanders was lord of all this district; that he had the power of life and death, and no man dared question or disobey his word. Had M'Lino been a man, as he said, she would have suffered for her treason--there is no better word for her offence--but she was a woman, and a seriously gifted woman, and, moreover, sure of whatever powers she had.
He did not see her again during the three days he was in the city, nor (this is the extraordinary circumstance) did he discuss her with the chief. He learned that she had become the favourite wife of O'Sako; that she had many lovers and scorned her husband, but he sought no news of her. Once he saw her walking towards him, and went out of his way to avoid her. It was horribly weak and he knew it, but he had no power to resist the impulse that came over him to give her a wide berth38.
Following this visit, Sanders was coming down stream at a leisurely39 pace, he himself at the steering40 wheel, and his eyes searching the treacherous41 river for sand banks. His mind was filled with the problem of M'Lino, when suddenly in the bush that fringes the Isisi river, something went "woof," and the air was filled with flying potlegs. One struck his cabin, and splintered a panel to shreds42, many fell upon the water, one missed Sergeant43 Abiboo's head and sent his tarbosh flying.
Sanders rang his engines astern, being curious to discover what induced the would-be assassin to fire a blunderbuss in his direction, and Abiboo, bare-headed, went pattering forward and slipped the canvas cover from the gleaming little Maxim44.
Then four Houssa soldiers jumped into the water and waded45 ashore46, holding their rifles above their heads with the one hand and their ammunition47 in the other, and Sanders stood by the rail of the boat, balancing a sporting Lee-Enfield in the crook48 of his arm.
Whoever fired the shot had chosen the place of killing49 very well. The bush was very thick, the approach to land lay through coarse grass that sprang from the swamp, vegetation ran rank, and a tangle50 of creeper formed a screen that would have been impenetrable to a white man.
But the Houssas had a way--they found the man with his smoking gun, waiting calmly.
He was of the Isisi people--a nation of philosophers--and he surrendered his weapon without embarrassment.
"I think," he said to Sergeant Abiboo, as they hurried down the bank to the river-side, "this means death."
"Death and the torments51 of hell to follow," said Abiboo, who was embittered52 by the loss of his tarbosh, which had cost him five francs in the French territory.
Sanders put up his rifle when he saw the prisoner. He held an informal court in the shattered deck cabin.
"Did you shoot at me?" he asked.
"I did, master," said the man.
"Why?"
"Because," the prisoner replied, "you are a devil and exercise witchcraft53."
Sanders was puzzled a little.
"In what particular section of the devil department have I been busy?" he asked in the vernacular54.
The prisoner was gazing at him steadily55.
"Master," he replied, "it is not my business to understand these things. It is said to me, 'kill'--and I kill."
Sanders wasted no more time in vain questions. The man was put in irons, the nose of the steamer turned again down stream, and the Commissioner resumed his vigil.
Midway between B'Fani and Lakaloli he came to a tying-up place. Here there were dead trees for the chopping, and he put his men to replenish56 his stock of fuel.
He was annoyed, not because a man had attempted to take his life, nor even because his neat little cabin forward was a litter of splinters and broken glass where the potleg had struck, but because he nosed trouble where he thought all was peace and harmony.
He had control of some sixteen distinct and separate nations, each isolated57 and separated from the other by custom and language. They were distinct, not as the French are from the Italian, but as the Slav is from the Turk.
In the good old times before the English came there were many wars, tribe against tribe, people against people. There were battles, murders, raidings, and wholesale58 crucifixions, but the British changed all that. There was peace in the land.
Sanders selected with care a long, thin cigar from his case, nibbled59 at the end and lit it.
The prisoner sat on the steel deck of the Zaire near the men's quarters. He was chained by the leg-iron to a staple60, and did not seem depressed to any extent. When Sanders made his appearance, a camp stool in his hand, the Commissioner seated himself, and began his inquisition.
"How do they call you, my man?"
"Bofabi of Isisi."
"Who told you to kill me?"
"Lord, I forget."
"A man or a woman?"
"Lord, it may have been either."
More than that Sanders could not learn, and the subsequent examination at Isisi taught Sanders nothing, for, when confronted with M'Lino, the man said that he did not know her.
Sanders went back to his base in a puzzled frame of mind, and Bofabi of Isisi was sent to the convict establishment at the river's mouth. There matters stood for three months, and all that Sanders learnt of the girl was that she had a new lover whose name was Tebeki, and who was chief of the Akasava.
There were three months of peace and calm, and then Tebeki, coveting61 his neighbour's wife, took three hundred spears down into the Isisi country, burnt the village that sheltered her, crucified her husband, and carried her back with him.
In honour of this achievement Tebeki gave a feast and a beer dance. There were great and shameless orgies that lasted five days, and the strip of forest that fringes the river between the Isisi and the lower river became a little inferno62.
At the end of the five days Tebeki sat down to consider his position. He was in the act of inventing justification for his crime, when Sanders came on the scene. More ominous63 were the ten Houssas and the Maxim which accompanied the brown-faced little man.
Sanders walked to Tebeki's hut and called him out, and Tebeki, blear-eyed and shaky, stepped forth64 into the hot sunshine, blinking.
"Tebeki," said Sanders, "what of O'Sako and his village?"
"Master," said Tebeki, slowly, "he put shame upon me----"
"Spare me your lies," said Sanders coldly, and signed to the Houssas.
Then he looked round for a suitable tree. There was one behind the hut--a great copal-gum.
"In half an hour I shall hang you," said Sanders, looking at his watch.
Tebeki said nothing; only his bare feet fidgeted in the dust.
There came out of the hut a tall girl, who stood eyeing the group with curiosity; then she came forward, and laid her hand on Tebeki's bare shoulder.
"What will you do with my man?" she asked. "I am M'Lino, the wife of O'Sako."
Sanders was not horrified65, he showed his teeth in a mirthless grin and looked at her.
"You will find another man, M'Lino," he said, "as readily as you found this one." Then he turned away to give directions for the hanging. But the woman followed him, and boldly laid her hand on his arm.
"Master," she said, "if any was wronged by O'Sako's death, was it not I, his wife? Yet I say let Tebeki go free, for I love him."
"You may go to the devil," said Sanders politely; "I am getting tired of you and your lovers."
He hanged Tebeki, expeditiously66 and with science, and the man died immediately, because Sanders was very thorough in this sort of business. Then he and the Houssa corps67 marched away, and the death song of the woman sounded fainter and fainter as the forest enveloped68 him. He camped that night on the Hill of Trees, overlooking the sweeping69 bend of the river, and in the morning his orderly came to tell him that the wife of O'Sako desired to see him.
Sanders cursed the wife of O'Sako, but saw her.
She opened her mission without preliminary.
"Because of the death I brought to O'Sako, my husband, and Tebeki, my lover, the people have cast me forth," she said. "Every hand is against me, and if I stay in this country I shall die."
"Well?" said Sanders.
"So I will go with you, until you reach the Sangar River, which leads to the Congo. I have brothers there."
"All this may be true," said Sanders dispassionately; "on the other hand, I know that your heart is filled with hate because I have taken two men from you, and hanged a third. Nevertheless, you shall come with us as far as the Sangar River, but you shall not touch the 'chop' of my men, nor shall you speak with them."
She nodded and left him, and Sanders issued orders for her treatment.
In the middle of the night Abiboo, who, in addition to being Sanders' servant, was a sergeant of the Houssas, came to Sanders' tent, and the Commissioner jumped out of bed and mechanically reached for his Express.
"Leopards70?" he asked briefly71.
"Master," said Sergeant Abiboo, "it is the woman M'Lino--she is a witch."
"Sergeant," said the exasperated Sanders, "if you wake me up in the middle of the night with that sort of talk, I will break your infernal head."
"Be that as it may, master," said the sergeant stolidly72, "she is a witch, for she has talked with my men and done many wonderful things--such as causing them to behold73 their children and far-away scenes."
"Have I an escort of babies?" asked Sanders despairingly. "I wish," he went on, with quiet savageness74, "I had chosen Kroomen or Bushmen"--the sergeant winced--"or the mad people of the Isisi River, before I took a half-company of the King's Houssas."
The sergeant gulped75 down the insult, saying nothing.
"Bring the woman to me," said Sanders. He scrambled76 into his clothing, and lit his tent lantern.
After a while he heard the pattering of bare feet, and the girl came into his tent, and regarded him quietly.
"M'Lino," said Sanders, "I told you that you were not to speak with my men."
"Lord," she said, "they spoke77 with me first."
"Is this true?"
The sergeant at the tent door nodded. "Tembeli, the son of Sekambano, spoke with her, thus disobeying orders, and the other men followed," he said.
"Bushmen by gad78!" fumed79 Sanders. "You will take Tembeli, the son of Sekambano, tie him to a tree, and give him twenty lashes80."
The sergeant saluted81, produced a tawdry little notebook, all brass82 binding83 and gold edges, and made a laborious84 note.
"As for you," said Sanders to the woman, "you drop your damned bush-mesmerism, or I'll treat you in the same way--alaki?"
"Yes, lord," she said meekly85, and departed.
Two Houssas tied Tembeli to a tree, and the sergeant gave him twenty-one with a pliable86 hippo-hide--the extra one being the sergeant's perquisite87.
In the morning the sergeant reported that Tembeli had died in the night, and Sanders worried horribly.
"It isn't the flogging," he said; "he has had the chicotte before."
"It is the woman," said the sergeant wisely. "She is a witch; I foresaw this when she joined the column."
They buried Tembeli, the son of Sekambano, and Sanders wrote three reports of the circumstances of the death, each of which he tore up.
Then he marched on.
That night the column halted near a village, and Sanders sent the woman, under escort, to the chief, with orders to see her safely to the Sangar River. In half an hour she returned, with the escort, and Sergeant Abiboo explained the circumstances.
"The chief will not take her in, being afraid."
"Afraid?" Sanders spluttered in his wrath30; "Afraid? What is he afraid of?"
"Her devilry," said the sergeant; "the lo-koli has told him the story of Tebeki, and he will not have her."
Sanders swore volubly for five minutes; then he went off to interview the chief of the village.
The interview was short and to the point. Sanders knew this native very well, and made no mistakes.
"Chief," he said at the end of the palaver88, "two things I may do; one is to punish you for your disobedience, and the other is to go on my way."
"Master," said the other earnestly, "if you give my village to the fire, yet I would not take the woman M'Lino."
"So much I realise," said Sanders; "therefore I will go on my way."
He marched at dawn on the following day, the woman a little ahead of the column, and under his eye. Halting for a "chop" and rest at mid-day, a man of the Houssas came to him and said there was a dead man hanging from a tree in the wood. Sanders went immediately with the man to the place of the hanging, for he was responsible for the peace of the district.
"Where?" he asked, and the man pointed to a straight gum-tree that stood by itself in a clearing.
"Where?" asked Sanders again, for there was no evidence of tragedy. The man still pointed at the tree, and Sanders frowned.
"Go forward and touch his foot," said the Commissioner, and, after a little hesitation89, the soldier walked slowly to the tree and put out his hand. But he touched nothing but air, as far as Sanders could see.
"You are mad," he said, and whistled for the sergeant.
"What do you see there?" asked Sanders, and the sergeant replied instantly:
"Beyond the hanging man----"
"There is no hanging man," said Sanders coolly--for he began to appreciate the need for calm reasoning--"nothing but a tree and some shadows."
The Houssa looked puzzled, and turned a grave face to his.
"Master, there is a man hanging," he said.
"That is so," said Sanders quietly; "we must investigate this matter." And he signed for the party to return to the camp.
On the way he asked carelessly if the sergeant had spoken with the woman M'Lino.
"I saw her, but she did not speak, except with her eyes."
Sanders nodded. "Tell me," he said, "where did you bury Tembeli, the son of Sekambano?"
"Master, we left him, in accordance with our custom, on the ground at the foot of a tree."
Sanders nodded again, for this is not the custom of the Houssas.
"We will go back on our tracks to the camping place where the woman came to us," he said.
They marched until sundown, and whilst two men pitched his tent Sanders strolled round the little camp. The men were sitting about their cooking-pots, but the woman M'Lino sat apart, her elbows on her knees, her face between her hands.
"M'Lino," he said to her, halting suddenly before her, "how many men have you killed in your life?"
She looked at him long and fixedly90, and he returned the stare; then she dropped her eyes. "Many men," she said.
"So I think," said Sanders.
He was eating his dinner when Abiboo came slowly toward him.
"Master, the man has died," he said.
Sanders looked at him narrowly.
"Which man?"
"The man you chicotted with your own hand," said Abiboo.
Now, the Commissioner had neither chicotted a man, nor had he ordered punishment, but he replied in a matter-of-fact tone, "I will see him."
On the edge of the camp there was a little group about a prostrate91 figure. The Houssas fell apart with black looks as Sanders came near, and there was some muttering. Though Sanders did not see it, M'Lino looked strangely at Ahmid, a Houssa, who took up his rifle and went stealthily into the bush.
The Commissioner bent92 over the man who lay there, felt his breast, and detected no beat of heart.
"Get me my medicine chest," he said, but none obeyed him.
"Sergeant," he repeated, "bring my medicine chest!"
Abiboo saluted slowly, and, with every appearance of reluctance93, went.
He came back with the case of undressed skin, and Sanders opened it, took out the ammonia bottle, and applied94 it to the man's nose. He made no sign.
"We shall see," was all that Sanders said when the experiment failed. He took a hypodermic syringe and filled the little tube with a solution of strychnine. This he jabbed unceremoniously into the patient's back. In a minute the corpse95 sat up, jerkily.
"Ha!" said Sanders, cheerfully; "I am evidently a great magician!"
He rose to his feet, dusted his knees, and beckoned96 the sergeant.
"Take four men and return to the place where you left Tembeli. If the leopards have not taken him, you will meet him on the road, because by this time he will have waked up."
He saw the party march off, then turned his attention to M'Lino.
"My woman," he said, "it is evident to me that you are a witch, although I have met your like before"--it was observed that the face of Sanders was very white. "I cannot flog you, because you are a woman, but I can kill you."
She laughed.
Their eyes met in a struggle for mastery, and so they stared at one another for a space of time which seemed to Sanders a thousand years, but which was in all probability less than a minute.
"It would be better if you killed yourself," she said.
"I think so," said Sanders dully, and fumbled97 for his revolver.
It was half drawn98, his thumb on the hammer, when a rifle banged in the bushes and the woman fell forward without a word.
Ahmid, the Houssa, was ever a bad shot.
* * * * *
"I believe," said Sanders, later, "that you took your rifle to kill me, being under the influence of M'Lino, so I will make no bad report against you."
"Master," said the Houssa simply, "I know nothing of the matter."
"That I can well believe," said Sanders, and gave the order to march.
收听单词发音 |
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fragrant
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| adj.芬香的，馥郁的，愉快的 | |
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appellation
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| n.名称，称呼 | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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ass
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| n.驴；傻瓜，蠢笨的人 | |
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diffuse
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| v.扩散；传播；adj.冗长的；四散的，弥漫的 | |
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sufficiently
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astonishment
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doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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vaguely
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rave
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censor
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| n./vt.审查，审查员；删改 | |
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wilderness
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embarked
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refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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mischief
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fervent
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| adj.热的，热烈的，热情的 | |
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malevolent
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reassured
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| adj.使消除疑虑的；使放心的v.再保证，恢复信心( reassure的过去式和过去分词) | |
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abruptly
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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receded
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的过去式和过去分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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22
reproof
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| n.斥责，责备 | |
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23
annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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apprenticeship
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| n.学徒身份；学徒期 | |
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remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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terse
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| adj.(说话，文笔)精炼的，简明的 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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commissioner
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| n.（政府厅、局、处等部门）专员，长官，委员 | |
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downwards
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| adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地） | |
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30
wrath
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| n.愤怒，愤慨，暴怒 | |
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embarrassment
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| n.尴尬；使人为难的人(事物)；障碍；窘迫 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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specimen
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| n.样本，标本 | |
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justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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35
scowling
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| 怒视，生气地皱眉( scowl的现在分词 ) | |
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depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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exasperated
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| adj.恼怒的 | |
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berth
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| n.卧铺，停泊地，锚位；v.使停泊 | |
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leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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steering
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| n.操舵装置 | |
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41
treacherous
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| adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的 | |
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shreds
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| v.撕碎，切碎( shred的第三人称单数 )；用撕毁机撕毁（文件） | |
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43
sergeant
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| n.警官，中士 | |
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maxim
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| n.格言，箴言 | |
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waded
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| （从水、泥等）蹚，走过，跋( wade的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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ammunition
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| n.军火，弹药 | |
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crook
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| v.使弯曲；n.小偷，骗子，贼；弯曲(处) | |
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killing
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| n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财 | |
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tangle
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| n.纠缠；缠结；混乱；v.(使)缠绕；变乱 | |
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torments
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| （肉体或精神上的）折磨，痛苦( torment的名词复数 )； 造成痛苦的事物[人] | |
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embittered
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| v.使怨恨，激怒( embitter的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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witchcraft
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| n.魔法，巫术 | |
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vernacular
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| adj.地方的，用地方语写成的；n.白话；行话；本国语；动植物的俗名 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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replenish
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| vt.补充；(把…)装满；(再)填满 | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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wholesale
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| n.批发；adv.以批发方式；vt.批发，成批出售 | |
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nibbled
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| v.啃，一点一点地咬（吃）( nibble的过去式和过去分词 )；啃出（洞），一点一点咬出（洞）；慢慢减少；小口咬 | |
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staple
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| n.主要产物，常用品，主要要素，原料，订书钉，钩环；adj.主要的，重要的；vt.分类 | |
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coveting
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| v.贪求，觊觎( covet的现在分词 ) | |
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inferno
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| n.火海；地狱般的场所 | |
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ominous
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| adj.不祥的，不吉的，预兆的，预示的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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horrified
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| a.(表现出)恐惧的 | |
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expeditiously
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| adv.迅速地，敏捷地 | |
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corps
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| n.(通信等兵种的)部队；(同类作的)一组 | |
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enveloped
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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leopards
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| n.豹( leopard的名词复数 )；本性难移 | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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stolidly
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| adv.迟钝地，神经麻木地 | |
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behold
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| v.看，注视，看到 | |
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savageness
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| 天然，野蛮 | |
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gulped
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| v.狼吞虎咽地吃，吞咽( gulp的过去式和过去分词 )；大口地吸（气）；哽住 | |
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scrambled
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的过去式和过去分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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gad
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| n.闲逛；v.闲逛 | |
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79
fumed
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| 愤怒( fume的过去式和过去分词 )； 大怒； 发怒； 冒烟 | |
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lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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saluted
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| v.欢迎，致敬( salute的过去式和过去分词 )；赞扬，赞颂 | |
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82
brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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83
binding
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| 有约束力的，有效的，应遵守的 | |
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84
laborious
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| adj.吃力的，努力的，不流畅 | |
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85
meekly
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| adv.温顺地，逆来顺受地 | |
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86
pliable
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| adj.易受影响的；易弯的；柔顺的，易驾驭的 | |
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87
perquisite
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| n.固定津贴，福利 | |
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88
palaver
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| adj.壮丽堂皇的；n.废话，空话 | |
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89
hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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fixedly
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| adv.固定地；不屈地，坚定不移地 | |
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prostrate
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| v.拜倒，平卧，衰竭；adj.拜倒的，平卧的，衰竭的 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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reluctance
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| n.厌恶，讨厌，勉强，不情愿 | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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96
beckoned
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| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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fumbled
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| （笨拙地）摸索或处理（某事物）( fumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 乱摸，笨拙地弄； 使落下 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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