Jan felt totally wretched. In all the twenty-six nights he had not had one good night’s sleep. Terrible, those mosquitoes. Now he always wrapped cloths around his head at night so as not to hear the humming and he would put his head in a hollow in the ground with his kit on top. His arms and legs were covered with infected boils. Every time he had been bitten by an insect he had scratched at the bite, and due to his dirty fingernails everything had festered. Worst of all was the pain in his groin. Mites had bitten him there. He had scratched away and everything had become infected and had festered. His uniform, dirty, stinking, wet from the rain, then dry, then wet again, made it even worse. Every step he took was torture. No, he had not imagined it like this. How dreadful! Hell itself could not be as awful as this.
At night everything was pitch black. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face and every sound could be a poisonous snake waiting to give you a fatal bite or a tiger lurking, ready to tear you to bits. All the men were more or less in the same state as he. All except the native porters, who appeared to have no trouble with all the insects and who seemed to be able to walk on their bare soles much more easily than the soldiers with their swollen feet in heavy boots.
There came a whisper that it was suspected that a group of Boni-negroes would be encountered. They would have to make as little noise as possible in order to surprise the negroes and capture them. If a group of negroes was captured, they would have to be shot straightaway. From each one a hand would be hacked off as proof back in town. The soldier would get a bonus for each hand. Should a chieftain be captured, his head would be cut off for display in the town.
Suddenly, shots rang out, and before the soldiers could prepare their weapons for firing, four of them lay bleeding on the ground. The porters had suddenly disappeared. More shots, noise, commotion. “Flee, flee, run for your life, get out of here!” Soldiers ran in all directions. No-one worried about anyone else, each of them just tried to save his own skin. Jan, too, ran, and ran, forcing his way through thorny bushes, scratching his face open, losing his hat, but going on. There lay a fallen tree trunk. He must get over it. He tried to jump, but caught his foot on something. A sharp pain, searing. He could go no further! With a cry he fell to the ground, piercing one hand on a pointed stick that protruded from the earth. Freeing his hand and looking with dread at the blood now pouring from it, he tried to stand up. He could not. His leg, what was wrong with his leg? With a shiver he looked at his left leg, which that lay under him at a strange angle. He began to realize that he would not be able to walk any further.
Trying with the one hand to compress the wound in the other, he called out loudly, “Help, help!” No reply. Everyone had disappeared. Again Jan screamed, “Help, help me, over here!” Nothing! Again he tried to stand and again he immediately collapsed onto the ground. He shuffled a little on his bottom so as to be able to lean with his back against a tree trunk. His hand was still bleeding. Dizzy, Jan closed his eyes. So this was it! He would remain here and die from loss of blood and from starvation. Perhaps torn apart by wild beasts. How stupid he had been when he had thought back there in Holland that he would come to this land, catch a few negroes and then still find gold. How stupid!
When Jan opened his eyes again he saw a large negro clad in only a loincloth standing about ten metres away from him. O God, a Maroon! His gun, where was his gun? But he had dropped his gun, and it lay on the ground close to the man. He would now pick up the gun and shoot him.
“Lord God in Heaven,” Jan prayed with closed eyes, “Let me die straightaway. Let him shoot me in the heart or straight through my head. Don’t let me suffer. Let me die instantly.”
It was two, at the most three, minutes, but to Jan it was an eternity. Every moment he expected the shot. In a flash his village, his sisters, his parents, his grandma passed before his eyes. He heard grandma asking, “Where is it?” and his sisters replying, “When he comes back from Suurvename.” Everything recalled in a flash. The shot, why no shot? He open his eyes briefly and saw that the man was now standing near him. Perhaps he wanted to shoot him from close by, to make sure he would die. But now Jan saw that the man had no weapon in his hands. The gun was propped up against a tree. The man leaned towards him. Perhaps he would rather strangle him or hack him to pieces with his machete? Jan raised his hands in defence. Still the one hand was bleeding.
“No,” he cried, both hands in front of his face.
But the man said, “What’s the matter? Get up, get up.”178
Jan looked at his leg. Perhaps the man wanted to fight him. Then the man looked at the leg, too. He bent down and began carefully to undo Jan’s boot. Jan groaned from the pain. When the boot was removed, Jan looked at the leg, which now had a large swelling at the site of the fracture. Now the man shook his head gently, saying something while trying cautiously to lay the leg in a better position. Then he went to a bush, cut off several branches with his machete and, after having stripped them, lay them on each side of Jan’s leg. He said something again, but Jan could not understand what he meant.