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The Judgement of Dungara
by
‘Ah!’ said Gallio calmly, ‘I thought so.’
‘What is it?’ said Justus.
‘I should call it the Shirt of Nessus, but–Where did you get the fibre of this cloth from?’
‘Athon Daze,’ said Justus. ‘He showed the boys how it should manufactured be.’
‘The old fox! Do you know that he has given you the Nilgiri Nettle–scorpion–Girardenia heterophylla–to work up? No wonder they squirmed! Why, it stings even when they make bridge-ropes of it, unless it’s soaked for six weeks. The cunning brute! It would take about half an hour to burn through their thick hides, and then–!’
Gallio burst into laughter, but Lotta was weeping in the arms of the Collector’s wife, and Justus had covered his face with his hands.
‘Girardenia heterophylla!’ repeated Gallio. ‘Krenk, why didn’t you tell me? I could have saved you this. Woven fire! Anybody but a naked Kol would have known it, and, if I’m a judge of their ways, you’ll never get them back.’
He looked across the river to where the converts were still wallowing and wailing in the shallows, and the laughter died out of his eyes, for he saw that the Tubingen Mission to the Buria Kol was dead.
Never again, though they hung mournfully round the deserted school for three months, could Lotta or Justus coax back even the most promising of their flock. No! The end of conversion was the fire of the Bad Place–fire that ran through the limbs and gnawed into the bones. Who dare a second time tempt the anger of Dungara? Let the little man and his wife go elsewhere. The Buria Kol would have none of them. An unofficial message to Athon Daze that if a hair of their heads were touched, Athon Daze and the priests of Dungara would be hanged by Gallio at the temple shrine, protected Justus and Lotta from the stumpy poisoned arrows of the Buria Kol, but neither fish nor fowl, honeycomb, salt nor young pig were brought to their doors any more. And, alas! man cannot live by grace alone if meat be wanting.
‘Let us go, mine wife,’ said Justus; ‘there is no good here, and the Lord has willed that some other man shall the work take–in good time–in His own good time. We will go away, and I will–yes–some botany bestudy.’
If any one is anxious to convert the Buria Kol afresh, there lies at least the core of a mission-house under the hill of Panth. But the chapel and school have long since fallen back into jungle.