The League of the Leopard by Harold Bindloss

Nature, untrammeled by human inventions, takes her own way swiftly in the fever land, and the sun had hardly cleared the cottonwoods when Dane found himself mechanically following a tattered hammock borne high on the heads of dusky men. Though there was somber cloud above, dazzling brightness beat into their set faces, and flashed on glistening blade and long gun-barrel borne by those who marched behind. There was no word spoken. Only the patter of naked feet and the jingle of steel broke through the impressive hush, for that morning every leaf hung limp and still. It was with all solemnity that Carsluith Maxwell set out on his last journey.

Dane halted by the eastern gate of the stockade, watching the black men swing past him file by file; they were as strange a company as ever followed a British gentleman to his grave -- Moslem bandit, woolly haired bush thief, stalwart, heathen Kroo, brown desperadoes who had fought the French under the banner of the great Sultan, and two-legged beasts of burden from the steaming swamps. Still, unstable and unreasoning, with the light-heartedness of a child and the cruelty of a devil, as many were, it gave the watcher a mournful pleasure to see that one and all had come to pay respect to their dead leader; and he showed his wonder when Amadu cried aloud, and the glinting flintlocks swung together, with muzzles to the rear. Dane guessed that the dusky adventurer had not learned to reverse arms in the service of any hinterland Emir.