Front matter (continued 4)

On the left bank, in a space of poor soil, covered with shingle by a freshet, some vultures cowered and sidled about a dead thing. Roger stared stupidly at them. Something of a warning of death moved through the surging of his fever. He said to himself that there was death here. Words spoke in his brain, each word like a fire-flash. "No white man has ever been here before. You are the first. Take care. There is death here." Some vague fear of possible war, so vague that he was not quite certain that it was not a memory of a war-scare at home, made him look to his revolver. He thrust up the catch with his thumb, and stared at the seven dull brass discs pulled slightly forward by the extractor. There were seven, and we are seven, and there were seven planets. The fever made him stare at the opened breech for a full minute.

Out of some tall water-plants, whose long, bluish-grey leaves looked very cool in the glare of heat, came flies. They came to the attack with a whirling fierceness like clegs. They were small, brown, insignificant flies. They were tsetse flies. The boat pulled out into the open to avoid them. After a few more minutes Roger called upon the rowers to stop rowing.

He was in the middle of the broad, looking at the left bank, where a trodden path led to the water's edge. For many centuries men and beasts had watered there. The path had worn a deep rut into the bank. What struck Roger about it was its narrowness. It was the narrow track of savages. The people who made it had used it fearfully, one at a time, full of suspicion, like drinking deer. Their fear had had a kind of idealism about it. It might truly be said of those nervous drinkers that when they drank, they drank to the good health of their State. Even in his fever, the sight of the path shocked Roger with a sense of the danger of life in this place. What was the danger? What was the life?

Beyond the track, at a little distance from the river, was a thick thorn hedge surrounding a village. From the midst of the village a single stream of smoke arose. It went up straight for a foot or two, behind the shelter of the hedge. Then it blew down gustily, in wavering puffs. There was no other sign of life in the village. A few hens were picking food in the open. A cow, standing with drooped head above the corpse of her calf, awaited death. Her bones were coming through her skin, poor beast. There were black patches of flies upon her. Three vultures waited for her. One of them was stretching his wings with the air of a man yawning. Vultures were busy about a dead cow in the middle distance. Dark heaps, further off, had still something of the appearance of cows. The men, looking earnestly about from the tops of the boxes, jabbered excitedly, pointing. Roger unslung his binoculars and stared at the silent place. He could see no one. There were dead cows, a dying cow, and those few clucking hens. He wondered if there could be an ambush. The grass was tall enough, in the clumps, to shelter an enemy; but the wild birds passed from clump to clump without fear. In a bare patch two scarlet-headed birds were even fighting together. Their neck feathers were ruffled erect. They struck and tugged. They rose, flapping, to cuff each other with their wings. Leaping aloft they thrust with their spurs. A hen, less brilliantly coloured, watched the battle. But for these birds the place was peaceful. The wind ruffled the grass; the smoke was gusty; one of the poultry crooned with a long gurgling cluck.

Something made Roger look from the village to the hill like a Roman camp. It glistened grey in the sun-blaze. The dance of the air above it was queer, almost like smoke. He stared at it through his glasses. After a long look he turned to stare into the water to rest his eyes. "I am mad," he said to himself. "I am dreaming this. Presently I shall wake up." He looked again. There could be no doubt of it. The hill was covered with a grey stone wall at least thirty feet high. There, about three-quarters of a mile away, was the ruin of an ancient town, as old, perhaps, as the Pharaohs. There was no doubt that it was old. Parts of it, undermined by burrowing things, or thrust out by growing things, were fallen in heaps. Other parts were overgrown twelve feet thick, with vegetation. Trees grew out of it. A few cacti upon the wall-top were sharply outlined against the sky. On the further end of the wall there was a fire-coloured blaze, where some poisonous weed, having stifled down all weaker life, triumphed in sprawling yellow blossoms, spotted and smeared with drowsy juice. There were dense swarms of flies above it as Roger could guess from the movements of the birds across the path. He watched the ruin. There was no trace of human occupation there. No smoke shewed there. Apparently the place had become a possession for the bittern. Wild beasts of the forests lay there, owls dwelt there, and satyrs danced there. It was as desolate as Babylon at the end of Isaiah xiii.

He looked at the men to see what effect the ruin had upon them. They did not look at it. They had the limited primitive intelligence, which cannot see beyond the facts of physical life. They were looking at the village, jabbering as they looked.

"What are we stopping for?" said Lionel.

"There's a village," said Roger. "It seems to have cattle plague." Lionel struggled weakly to a sitting position, and looked out with vacant eyes.

"There's a ruin on the hill, there," said Roger.

"Plague and ruin are the products of this land," said Lionel. "Don't stand there doddering, Naldrett. Find out what's happening here."

"Look here, you rest," said Roger with an effort. "Just lie back on the blankets here, and rest."

"How the devil am I to rest when you won't keep the gang quiet?"

"You just close your eyes, Lionel," said Roger. "Close them. Keep them closed." He sluiced a rag in the shallow water. "Here's a new compress for you."

He ordered the men to pull in to the watering-place, while he looked about in what he called the toy box for presents for the village chief. He took some copper wire, a few brass cartridge shells, some green beads, some bars of brightly coloured sealing wax, a doll or two, of the kind which say, "Mamma," when stricken on the solar plexus, a doll's mirror, a knife, an empty green bottle, and a tin trumpet. He tilted a white-lined green umbrella over Lionel's head. He slipped over the side as the boat grounded. Merrylegs followed him, carrying the presents. They slopped through shallow water, and climbed the bank.

Merrylegs, clapping his hands loudly, called to the villagers in the Mwiri dialect that a king, a white man, a most glorious person, was advancing to them. Roger asked him if he had heard of this village at their stopping-place the day before. No, he said, he had never heard of this village. It was a poor place, very far away; he had never heard of it. He called again, batting with his hands. No answer came. Roger, looking anxiously about, saw no sign of life. No sign shewed on the city wall. A new vulture, lighting by the dying cow, eyed him gravely, without enthusiasm. One of those already there flapped his wings again as though yawning. "Merrylegs," said Roger, "we must go into the village." He shifted round his revolver holster, so that the weapon lay to hand. They skirted the zareba till they came to the low hole, two feet square, which led through the thorns into the town. The mud of the road was pounded hard by the continual passing of the natives. Fragments of a crudely decorated pottery were trodden in here and there. Lying down flat, Merrylegs could see that the stakes which served as door to the entrance, were not in place inside the stockade. The visitor was free to enter. "Think all gone away," said Merrylegs. "Slave man he catch."

Roger did not now believe in the theory of slave man.

"It is nonsense," he said. "Nonsense. There must be death here." He stood by the gate, breathing heavily, not quite knowing, from time to time, what he was doing, at other times knowing clearly, but not caring. Little things, the crawling of a tick, the cluck of a hen, the noise of his own breath, seemed important to his fever-clogged brain. "I'll go in," he said, at last.

"Not go in," said Merrylegs promptly. "Perhaps inside. Perhaps make him much beer. All drunk him." He called again in Mwiri, but no answer came. A hen, perhaps expecting food, came clucking through the hole, cocking her eyes at the strangers. Roger, finding a bit of biscuit in his pocket, dropped it before her. She worried it away from his presence, and gulped it down gluttonously before the other hens could see.

Roger knelt down. Peering up the tunnel he tried to make out what lay within. He could not see. The entrance passage had been built with a bend in the middle for the greater safety of the tribe. For all that he could know, a warrior might lie beyond the bend, ready to thrust a spear into him. He did not think of this till a long time afterwards. He began to shuffle along the passage on all fours. Nothing lay beyond the bend. He clambered to his feet inside the village. "Come on in, Merrylegs," he called. Merrylegs came. They looked about them.

The village formed an irregular circle about two hundred yards across. Inside the thorn hedge it was strongly palisaded with wooden spikes, nine feet high, bound together with wattle, and plastered with a mud-dab. The huts stood well away from the palisade. They formed a rough avenue, shaped rather like a sickle. There were thirty-five huts still standing. The frames of two or three others stood, waiting completion. One or two more had fallen into disrepair. Several inhabitants were in sight, both men and women.

They were sitting on the ground, propped against the palisades or the walls of their huts, in attitudes which recalled the attitude of the negro, seen long before in the photograph in the Irish hotel. One of the men, rising unsteadily to his feet, walked towards them for some half-dozen paces, paused, seemed to forget, and sank down again, with a nodding head. A child, rising up from a log, crawled towards a hen. The hen, suspecting him, moved off. The child watched it strut away from him as though trying to remember what he had planned to do to it. He stood stupidly, half asleep. Slowly he laid himself down upon the ground, with the movement of an old man careful of the aches of his joints. It seemed to Roger that the child had never really been awake. It was the slow deliberate movement of the child which convinced him, through his fever, that he was in the presence of the enemy. "These people have sleeping sickness," he said. The words seemed to echo along his brain, "sleeping sickness, sickness, sickness." This was what he had come out to see. Here was his work cut out for him. This was sleeping sickness. Here was a village down with it. It was shocking to him. Had he been in health it would have staggered him. These sleepers were never going to awake. All these poor wasting wretches were dying. He had never seen death at work on a large scale before. He checked a half-formed impulse to bolt by stepping forward into the enclosure, into the reek of death. The place was full of death. He drove Merrylegs before him. Merrylegs knew the disease. Merrylegs had no wish to see more of it. He was for bolting. "Go on, Merrylegs," said Roger. "Sing out to them."

Merrylegs got no answer. "Only dead men here," he said. "Young men, no catch him, run."

"Come on round the huts then," said Roger. "We'll see how many have run." They went to the hut from which the smoke rose.

An old, old hideous woman was crouched there over a little fire. She was trembling violently, and mumbling with her gums. She cowered away from Roger with a wailing cry, very like the cry of a rabbit caught by a weasel. "Tiri," she said, "tiri," expecting death. Merrylegs asked her questions; Roger tried her. It was useless. She did not understand them. She mumbled something, shaking her poor old head, whimpering between the words. Roger gave her a doll, which she hugged and whimpered over. She was like a child of a few months old in the body of a baboon. They tried another hut.

From the number of food pots stored there, Roger guessed that this hut had once belonged to a chief. Two women lay there, one in the last stages of the sickness, very ill, and scarcely stirring, the other as yet only apathetic. She blinked at them as they entered the hut, without interest, and without alarm, just like an animal. She might once have been a comely woman, but the drowsiness of the sickness had already brought out the animal in her face. Her ornaments of very thin soft gold shewed that she was the wife of an important person; she may perhaps have been the chief's favourite. She did not understand Merrylegs' dialect, nor he hers. Possibly, as sometimes happens in the disease, she had no complete control over her tongue. Roger thought that she might be thirsty. He poured water for her. She did not drink. It occurred to Roger then that she might be welcoming the disease, giving way to it without a struggle, after losing husband and child. He could see that she had had a child, and there was no child there. "Poor woman," he said to himself. "Poor wretch." They went out into the open again.

At the further end of the village Roger found evidence which helped him to make a theory of what had happened. Just outside the palisade were the bones of a few bodies, which, as he supposed, were those who had died, after the first breaking out of the epidemic. If the epidemic had begun two months before, as seemed likely, these men and women must have been dead for about a fortnight. The sickness and mortality had steadily increased since then. The able, uninfected inhabitants, had at last migrated together. They had gone off with their arms and cattle to some healthier place, leaving the infected to die. He could make no other explanation. Many of the huts were deserted. In others, still living sleepers lay among corpses. Three young men, a boy, and an old man were the liveliest of the remaining inhabitants. Roger had only to look at their tongues to see that they, too, were sealed for death. The tongue moved from the root with a helpless tremor. Their lymphatic glands were swollen. They themselves were under no delusions about their state. The cloud was on them. They would not speak unless they were spoken to with some sharpness. They were gloomily waiting until the ailment should blot everything away from them. Merrylegs tried to understand them; but gave it up. "Very poor men," he said. "Know nothing." They were some relic (or outpost) of a strange tribe, speaking an unknown tongue. Perhaps they were the descendants of some little wandering band, separated from its parent tribe, by war, pestilence, or mischance. They had had their laws, their arts, their customs. They had even thriven. The game of life had gone pleasantly there. Life there had been little more than a sitting in the sun, between going to the river for a drink and to the patch for a mealie. The beauties had sleeked themselves with oil, and the strong ones had made themselves fat with butter. They had lived "naturally," like plants or animals, sharing the wild things' immunity from ailments. They were completely adjusted. Now some little change had altered their relations to nature. Something had brought the trypanosome. Now they died like the animals, deserted by their kind.

The first shock of the sight of this harvest of death came upon Roger dully, through the shield of his fever. He did not realise the full horror of it. Nor was he conscious of the passage of time. He stayed in the village for a full hour before he returned to the boat. In that hour he made rough notes of the twenty-nine cases still present there. Sixteen of them, he hoped, might yield to treatment. The others were practically dead already from wasting. The preparation of the notes, brief as they were, was a great drain upon his strength. The fever was gaining on him. He found himself staring vacantly between the writing of two words. His brain was a perpetual surging tumult. His eyes seemed to burn in their sockets. He remembered Lionel with a great start. "Lionel," he repeated. "I must tell Lionel. We shall stop here."

Outside the infected village he looked for tracks. A track led towards the ruin. Another led away across the plain. Both were as narrow as a horse's girth, and beaten as hard as earthenware. The old tracks of cattle crossed them. Merrylegs, looking about upon the ground, cried out that the tribe had gone over the plain with their cattle ten or eleven days before. He pointed to marks on the ground. Roger took his word for it.

He climbed into the stern-sheets of the boat, feeling as though hot metal were being injected into his joints. "How are you now, Lionel?" he asked. "You're looking pretty bad. This is a plague spot. They've got the sickness here. They're dying of it."

"Couldn't you have come and told me before this?" said Lionel. "I've been lying here not knowing whether you were dead or alive."

"I'd a lot of huts to examine," he answered. "What do you think? We had better stop here, eh? We had better make this our station. The first thing I shall do will be to get you into a bed."

"That's like you," said Lionel. "You make plans when I'm sick and can't veto them. My God, if I'd known it was going to be like this! Well, I'll never work with a griff again."

"It's time for your medicine," said Roger stolidly, in order to change the subject. He poured the white powder into a cigarette paper, and handed it to the patient.

"Don't you dare to give me medicine," Lionel answered, knocking the dose away. "I believe you're poisoning me. I've watched you. You're poisoning me."

"Don't say things like that, Lionel," said Roger. "You're awfully tired, I know, but they hurt. I wish I could get you well," he mused. "It's not so easy as you seem to think," he added.

"What isn't?"

"Life here."

"That's because you're such a silly ass. I'm all right. I only want to be left alone. Well. Get the men ashore, can't you? Get some sort of a camp pitched."

"I am going to," said Roger. "I am going to camp on the hill there for to-night, among the ruins." He gave some orders.

Lionel sat up. "Merrylegs," he said, "drop that. I command here."

"Look here, Heseltine," said Roger. "I must do this."

"You shall not wreck the expedition," said Lionel. "You're as ignorant as a cow. You haven't even examined the ruin."

Roger paid no attention to him. He bade the men moor the boat and unload her.

"Naldrett," said Lionel, "if you persist in this—when I'm sick and can't stop you—it's the end of our working together. We part company. Put down that box, Merrylegs. Leave those things in the boat."

Roger had more strength left in him than his companion. The boat was unloaded. The bearers, leaving a pile of boxes by the river, formed an Indian file and marched with their burdens of necessaries towards the hill. Lionel walked, supported by Roger. He did not speak. His face worked with the impotent anger of a sick man. Presently Roger noticed that he was crying from mere nervous weakness. He felt that it would be well to say nothing. Lionel's petulance was the result of fever. If he said anything, the petulant mood would surely twist it into a cause of offence. He said nothing. Lionel, after pausing a minute, said something in a faint voice about the heat. Roger had not noticed the heat. He had a glowing lime-kiln within him. He stopped, and asked if it were very hot. "God!" said Lionel disgustedly. They walked on, following the bearers. Presently Lionel stopped and swore at the heat. Roger waited. Each moment of waiting was torture to him. Each moment of physical effort racked him. He wanted to fling himself down and let the fever run its course.

"God Almighty!" said Lionel, turning on him. "Can't you answer me?"

"I didn't know you spoke to me."

"You don't know anything."

"You were not speaking to me, you were swearing at the heat."

"What if I were."

"If you could manage to keep quiet till we are camped," said Roger, "you'd feel better. I'm doing my best for you."

"You are," said Lionel, "you are. I'm dying to see the sort of rotten camp you'll make when you're left by yourself."

"Shut up," said Roger. "Shut up. I'm too ill to talk." The fever was whirling in him now. He could not trust himself to say more. He was near the delirious stage. He remembered smelling the smell of death, in a foul sultry blast, while Merrylegs said something about the kraal in the hollow. Looking, half-drowsed, to his left, he saw a kraal littered with dead and dying cattle, among which gorged vultures perched. Afterwards, he remembered the ruins of a wall, standing now about three feet high. It was built of good hewn stone, well laid, with one crenellated course just below its present top. He could never remember getting over the wall. There were many sunflowers. Immense orange sunflowers with limp wavy petals. Sunflowers growing out of a litter of neatly wrought stones. Mosquitoes came "pinging" about him, winding their sultry horns. Those little horns seemed to him to be the language of fever. They suggested things to him. The men were a long, long time pitching the tent. Something was wrong with one of the men. The other men were keeping apart from him. The beds with their nettings were ready at last. Fire was burning. Something with a smell of soup was being cooked. In his sick fancy it was the smell of something dead. He told them to take it away. He saw Lionel somewhere, much as a man at the point of death may see the doctor by his bedside. He could not be sure which of the two of them was the living one. Then there came a moment when he could not undo the fastening of his mosquito net. He saw his bed inside. He longed to be in bed. All this torture would be over directly he was in bed, wrapped up. But he could not get in. The bed was shut from him by the mosquito net. He wanted to get in. He would give the world to be in bed. But he did not know how he was to move the netting, everything smelt of death so strongly. It was very red everywhere, a smoky, whirling red, with violent lights. People were crossing the dusk, or rather not people, but streaks of darkness. They were making a great crying out. They were too noisy. Why could they not be quiet? He ceased to fumble at the net. He began to see an endless army of artillery going over a pass. The men were all dark; the guns were all painted black; the horses were black. They were going uphill endlessly, endlessly, endlessly. He cried out to them to stop that driving, to do anything rather than go on and on and on in that ghastly way. Instantly they changed to tsetses, riding on dying cattle. They were giant tsetses, with eyes like cannonballs. An infernal host of trypanosomes wriggled around them. The trypanosomes were wriggling all over him. A giant tsetse was forcing his mouth open with a hairy bill, so that the trypanosomes might wriggle down his throat. A flattened trypanosome, tasting as flabby as jelly, was swarming over his lips.

The fit passed off in the early morning, leaving him weak, but alert. Something was going to happen. The air was as close as a blast from a furnace. He sat up, holding by the tent-pole. He could see a star or two. He wished that the horrible smell would go. It seemed to be everywhere.

"Lionel," he said.

"Yes," said a faint voice.

"Have you slept?"

"Yes. I've had a long sleep. How are you?"

"The fit's gone. But I feel queer. Something's going to happen."

"It's very close. It will pass off before morning. Fever plays the devil with one, doesn't it?"

"Are you quite better now?"

"Yes. I shall be all right now. You'll be all right after some breakfast. It isn't so bad here, is it?"

"No. Not so bad. But there's this smell of death, Lionel."

"That's fever. That will pass away, you'll find."

"Was I delirious?"

"Yes. A little."

"You were pretty bad."

"Yes. I was pretty bad all yesterday," said Lionel. "It's horrible when one gets into that state. One is so ashamed afterwards. It is part of the sickness. You were awfully gentle with me, Roger."

"I saw that you were pretty bad. We shall have to get to work to-morrow, and get things into order. They are in a bad way in the village there. There are twenty-nine cases left. We might save sixteen of them."

"Is there any trace of how they got it? Do they know?"

"They don't talk any language known to Merrylegs."

"I see. What are they like? Are they a good lot?"

"Yes. They are good type negroes. They look as if they might have something better in them than negro blood. Something Arabian. And there's this ruin here."

"It will be fun looking at the ruin. I wonder if it's like the Rhodesian ruins. I've seen those. If it is, there ought to be gold here. Wrought gold as well as crude. But we mustn't think of that."

"No. Let's have no side-issues. I suppose we'd better start an isolation camp to-morrow."

"Yes. Get them all out and burn the village. Then we'll start the treatment."

"It would be rather a feather in our caps if we found a tsetse-cide. A bird would be better than nothing. Or an ichneumon-fly to pierce the pupæ."

"I was young myself once," said Lionel. "I know exactly how it feels." There was a pause after this. Lionel seemed to chuckle.

"Can't you go to sleep again, Lionel?"

"No. It's too close."

"It's jolly looking at the stars. And I can see right out into the wilderness. The moon is wonderful. It is very vast out here. And lonely. It gives one a strange sense of being full of memories. I wonder who built these ruins."

"Phoenicians, I suppose. In Africa one puts everything down to Phoenicians. In the Mediterranean it used to be some other fellows; now it's Iberians. Aryans had a great vogue forty years ago; but they're dead, now. Then there were those sloppy Celts. It'll be the Hittites when we get back."

"Did you see Great Zimbabwe?"

"Yes. But they're all called Zimbabwe. It's a native name for ruins. It's an uncanny place. It lies all open. There's no roof to it. None of them have any roof. Nothing but great high walls, and two hideous cones of stone, and a lot of corpses under the floors. There are ancient gold workings all around it. It is said to be an astronomical temple, as well as the site of a great mining town. Do you know much about astronomy?"

"No. I know Sirius."

"I know Sirius. Can you see him?"

"I can't see it from here. Perhaps it isn't visible."

"It seems to me to be clouding up. Listen."

"Is that a lion roaring?"

"Jump out a minute." Lionel was turned out, standing at the door of the tent.

"What's the matter?" Roger asked.

"A thunderstorm," said Lionel. "Get on your things. I prepared for this. Wrap that tarpaulin round you, and come on out. Don't wait. Come on."

Outside in the night the heavens were fast darkening under a whirling purplish cloud. From time to time the expanse of cloud glimmered into a livid reddish colour with the passage of lightning. It was as though the whole lower heaven lightened. Thunder was rolling. Great burning streaks tore the sky across, loosing thunder and flame. Roger saw the bearers moving from their fire to the shelter of the lee of the ruins. A faint sultry blast fanned against his face, bringing that smell of death to him. He turned away, choking. "Get away from the tent," Lionel shouted in his ear, over the roar of the thunder. "Tie this rope round me. It's going to be bad. Get under the lee of the wall there. Run." They hurried to the shelter, on the tottering legs of those who have just recovered from fever. As they ran, Roger trod on something rope-like and moving, which (squirming round) struck his boot with a sharp tap.

"There's a snake," he cried, giving a jump.

"Did he get you?"

"No. Only my boot."

"Lucky for you. There may be death-adders here. Rattle with your feet. Here we are. This will do."

There came a sharp pattering of heavy rain-drops, which beat the ground like shot falling on to tin. In the glimmer of a long flash, which burnt for a full ten seconds, Roger saw Lionel probing the ground for snakes with an outstretched foot. He was hooded and cowled with tarpaulin from the boat. He was scratching a match, sleepy with heat-damp, to get a light for a cigarette. The match flared, putting the face in strong colour below the shade of the cowl. The sky was being charged by a dark host. There came a sort of elemental sighing, as the obscuring of the vertical stars began. Out of the whole air came the sighing. It was a noise like waterfalls and pine forests. Then with a shattering crash the storm burst. The whole sky broke into a blaze, as though a vast bath of fire had suddenly been hurled over. There was a roaring as of the earth being split. After an instant's pause, there came an explosion so terrific that the two men huddled up together instinctively. It grew colder on the instant. It grew icy cold. The tent stood out clearly, in every detail, for a few bright seconds. Then the rain poured down, as though the bottom of the sky had broken. The next flash shewed only a streaming greyness of water, pouring down, with a weight and force new to Roger. It was a blinding rain, one could not face it. It made the world one grey torrent. It made the earth paste beneath the feet. Brooks were rushing down the hill within half a minute of its beginning. The flashes and thundering never ceased. Crouching up to the wall, Roger could only gulp air that was half water. The force of the storm staggered him. The fury of the thunder daunted him. The splendour of the lightning was so ghastly that at each blast he bent back against the wall. A tree was struck on the wall above him. He expected to be struck at each flash. There was no question of bravery. The racket and the glare were worse than the fiercest shell-fire. The lightning seemed to run across the sky and along the ground, and out of the ground. One smelt it. It had the smell of something burning; some metal.

The next instant he was digging his fingers into the crenellations to save himself from being blown away. The wind came swooping down with a rush which beat the breath out of him. For one second the rain seemed to pause. It was merely changing its direction to the horizontal. The air seemed to be no longer present. There was nothing but a rushing, stinging, blinding torrent of water. After the wind began, Roger was not properly conscious of anything. He stood backed up to the wall, with his eyes and mouth tight shut, his ears buffeted and streaming, his nose wrinkled by the effort to keep his eyes shut. Across his eyelids he sensed the glimmer of the lightning, now blinding, now merely vivid. Everything else was leaping, howling uproar, driving wet, driving cold, dominated by the explosions aloft. All confusion was left loose to feed the fear of death in him. So they stood shoulder to shoulder, for something like an hour, when a change came.

The wind died away, after blowing its fiercest. The rain stopped. The livid glimmering of the lightning passed off into the distance. The stars came out. Roger squelched about in the mud, trying to get some sensation into his freezing feet. Lionel's teeth were chattering. Lionel with numbed fingers was trying to light a sopping match for the sodden cigarette already between his lips.

"Pretty bad one," said Lionel. "The tent's gone."

"It will be dawn soon," said Roger, looking at the wreck of the tent. "It's over now." He shivered.

"Not yet," said Lionel. "That's only half of it. There's the other half to come yet. I wonder how the bearers took it."

"I'll go and see," said Roger.

"Stay where you are," said Lionel. "You won't have time." The moon shewed for a brief moment—a sickly moon already threatened by scud. The clouds were rolling up again.

"This will be in our faces," said Lionel, raising his voice. "These are circular storms." The wind was muttering far off. All the earth was filled with a gloomy murmur. "Let's get into the wreck of the tent," Lionel added in a shout. "Into the wreck of the tent. We may die of cold if we don't." They hove up the heavy canvas so that they might creep within, under the folds. They cowered there close together, waiting, chilled to the bone.

"It's jolly cold," said Roger, with chattering teeth.

"Yes," said Lionel. "I've known a man die in one of these. Hold tight. Here it comes."

It came with such a shock of thunder and fire of lightning that they both started. They felt the folds of the tent surge and lift above them as the wind beat upon it. Some flap had blown loose. It flogged at Roger like a bar of hard wood. He understood then what sailors meant by wind. He felt a sort of exultation for a moment. Then one terrible blast flung him on his side, and rolled a great weight of wet canvas on him. He felt it quiver and hesitate. The wind seemed to be heaving and heaving, with multitudinous little howling devils. They were heaving up and heaving under. The whole mass hesitated. He was moved, he was swayed. He felt the fabric pause and totter upward and sink down. "We're going," he muttered, gulping. Afterwards, he maintained that nothing but the weight of the rain kept him from being blown away. Water was gurgling in the ground beneath him. Water was running up his sleeves, and down his neck. Water spouted on him as he beat away the folds to get air. A grand and ghastly fire was running across heaven. Shocks were striking the earth all around him. Another tree was blasted. Thunder broke out above in a long rippling crescendo of splitting cracks. That, and the pouring of a cataract into his face made him draw back the fold. He cowered. He had lost touch with Lionel. He did not know where Lionel was. His foot struck something hard. Groping down, hungry for companionship, he found that it was the broken tent-pole. Another gust lifted him. It gathered strength. It swept the folds from his hands and sent the edge flogging, flogging, flogging, with its lashes of rope and tent-pegs. The full fury of the storm was on him. The tent was bundling itself up into ruin against the boxes. He was sitting in wet mud assailed by every devil of bad weather. Lionel was by his side shouting into his ear. "Don't stand," came the far-away voice. "Get struck." He nodded when next the flames ran round. It seemed likely that he would be struck. It was a quick death, so people said. He found himself saying aloud that it would be terrible if Lionel were struck. What then? What would he do then? He craned round into the beating rain to try to get a glimpse of the bearers. He could see nothing but rain and that reddish running glimmer of living light.

He did not feel much. He was too cold, too weak, too frightened. If he had been able to define his feelings he would have said that he was thinking it impossible that he could ever have been dry, or warm, or happy. His old life was a far-off inconceivable dream. That he had ever sat by a fire seemed inconceivable. That there was such a thing as a sun seemed inconceivable. That life could be dignified, tender, or heroic seemed inconceivable. "If this isn't misery," he muttered, shaking, "I don't know what is. I don't know what is." He felt suddenly that water was running under him in a good strong stream, several inches deep. Putting his hand down, it slopped up to the wrist in a current. He groped with his hand. As he put it down some beetle in the water pinched him briskly, turning him sick for a moment with the memory of the snake which had struck his boot. Standing up hurriedly, the water rose above his boots. Looking up, an opening in the clouds shewed him the moon, a beaten swimmer in a mill-race. The storm was breaking.

Not long after that it broke. The stars came out. The wind ceased from her whirling about continually. She blew steady, in a brisk fresh gale, bringing up the clearing showers. The showers would have seemed torrents at other times, but to Roger, now, they were little drizzles. Lionel and he found a sort of cave in the tent. Part of the canvas had wedged itself under the pole. The rest had been blown across a pile of boxes on to the wall. Being supported now by those two uprights it roofed in a narrow shelter about five feet long. They crept into this shelter, dead beat from the cold. For a while they sat crouched close together, with chattering teeth. Then they drew a few folds of the canvas over them and lay still, trying to get warmth and sleep. They were not very sure that they would live to see the dawn. Roger thought vaguely of the bearers. He wondered what they had done, prompted by their knowledge of these storms. A dull, heavy, steady roaring noise seemed to be coming from the river. He wondered if the water had risen much, after all that torrential rain. Thinking vaguely of a flood, he wondered if the boat were safe. It seemed a long, long time since they had left the boat. He must have left the boat in some other life. The sun had been shining, he had been hot, he had passed through a glorious landscape. He had seen the peacocks of the Queen of Sheba jetting among flowers which were like burning precious stones. That was long ago. That was over forever. But yet he wondered vaguely about the boat. Was it safe, there in the broad?

"Lionel," he said gently. "Can you sleep?"

"No. We shall get warm presently."

"It's jolly wretched."

"It'll be all right when we get warm. Don't let's talk."

"Is the boat all right, do you think? The water is roaring in the river."

"The boat? I can't think about the boat. She was moored or something." Their teeth chattered again for some little time. Presently, as they lay there shivering, they felt the uneasy aching warmth which sometimes comes to those who sleep in wet clothes. It is much such an unpleasant heat as wet grass generates in a rick. There is cramp and pain in it. The muscles rise up into little knots and bunch themselves. Still, it is heat of a kind. They lay awake, rubbing their contorted muscles, until, a little before the dawn, they were warm enough to doze. They dozed off, then, waking up, from time to time, generally once in ten minutes, to turn uneasily, so that the aching muscles might cease to twist into little knots and bunches.

IX

Where be these cannibals, these varlets? The Shoemaker's Holiday.

The rain ceased before dawn. When the two friends felt strong enough to turn out, the sun was already burning. It was after half-past seven o'clock. The brooks which had washed past them and over them, only three or four hours before, were no longer running. Their tracks were marked on the hillside, in broad, shallow, muddy ruts, and in paths of plastered grass. The river had been over its banks not long before. It was swirling along now, brimful, as red as water from an ironworks. Roger remembered the water running by a road near Portobe, from some ironworks up the hill. It was just that savage colour. He felt a qualm of home-sickness. He turned to blink at the sun for the pleasure of the warmth upon his face.

The camp was a quag of mud. Red splashes plastered the boxes. The tent was half-buried in it. His clothes, and the covering tarpaulin, were smeared with it. He felt that it had been worked, not only into his skin, but into his nature. He had never before known what it is to be really dirty, nor what continued dirt may mean to the character. The site of the camp was trodden and spattered and beslimed, yet the brightness of morning made it hard for him to believe that such a storm had passed over him only a little while before. He noticed the trees which had been blasted by the lightning. It had not all been nightmare.

Up the hill, beyond three small circling walls, no taller than the wall beside him, rose up the great central walls. They stood out clearly in the strong light. They were good, well-built walls, with crenellated courses near the top, in the right artistic place, in the inevitable place. The crenellations shewed Roger that he was not widely removed from the builders, in spirit. They talked the universal language of art. But they were more than talkers, these old men. Their work was splendid. It had style. It had the impress of will upon it. The idea had been thought out to its simplest terms. The walls were solid with that simple strength which the efficient nations of antiquity, not yet corrupted by sentiment, affected, in public building. Though they were not like Roman work, they reminded Roger of walls at Richborough and Caerwent. There was something of the same pagan spirit in them, something strong, and fine, and uncanny. Even with the flowering shrubs and grass clumps on them, these walls were uncanny. He shivered a little. The lonely hill had once been a city, where strong, fine, uncanny brains had lived.

Lionel crawled out. "Where's Merrylegs?" he asked. "Why haven't they brought our tea?"

Roger started. Where were the bearers? He had not seen them since he had noticed them go to cover before the bursting of the storm. They had gone. They had not come back. They had not even lighted a fire. "I don't know where they are," he said. "Where can they be?"

"Haven't you seen them?" said Lionel.

"No," he answered. "They're not here. Merrylegs!" he shouted. "Merrylegs!" No answer came.

Lionel's face changed slightly. He jumped on to the low wall, and looked downhill towards the village. The view over that waste of pale grass, through which the river ran, was very splendid; but Lionel was not looking for landscape. "Give me the glasses," he said. He stared through them for several minutes, sweeping the plain. "Run up into the ruins, Roger," said Lionel. "They may be there."

"Wait one minute," said Roger. "There is smoke in the village. That is too big a fire for the people whom I saw there to have made."

"Wet wood," said Lionel promptly. "Come on. We must get these boys into order."

They hurried up the hill, calling for Merrylegs. After a couple of minutes Roger stopped. "Lionel," he said. "During the storm, or just before it, I saw them go to shelter under the lee of the wall there. Their tracks will be in the mud. We could follow them up in that way."

"Yes," said Lionel. "They're not up here, anyhow."

After some little search, they found where the bearers had sheltered before the storm threatened. A vulture shewed them the exact place. Two other vultures were there already. The storm had killed one of the men.

"It's Eukwo, the lazy one," said Lionel. "I noticed last night that there was something the matter with him. Perhaps you saw how the others fought shy of him. These fellows are like animals, aren't they, in the way they leave their sick?" He looked at the body. "Dysentery and the cold, I suppose," he said. "With Kilemba dead last night, the village full of dead down below us, the storm, then this fellow dying, it has been too much for them. I'm afraid, Roger, that the men have deserted us."

"Gone?" said Roger blankly. It had not occurred to him before as a possibility.

"I'm afraid," said Lionel, moving away. "Here is where they sheltered for the storm. There are their tracks leading downhill. You see? Here. See? Still half full of water. They cleared out in the night during the showers. They've got three or four hours' start of us."

"Well," said Roger. "Come on. We'd better eat as we go. Otherwise we may never catch them up."

"They'll have gone in the boat," said Lionel. "With this flood they'll be a day's march downstream. There's no trace of the boat in the lagoon there."

"She may have been swept away," said Roger, after a glance through the glasses. "The stores are there still." By this time they were hurrying downhill towards the village. Both were thinking how fiercely they would thrash Merrylegs and how little chance there was of finding any Merrylegs to thrash. Anger burned up in hot bursts, and the cold water of despair put it out again. Roger felt it more keenly than Lionel. He was less used to the shocks of travel. He wondered, as he hurried, what stores had been left in the boat, and what had been piled on the bank to be carried up next day. He had been ill; he had never noticed. The men had done as they pleased. He reproached himself so bitterly that he hardly dared look at his friend. He wondered whether the men had taken anything of supreme importance. He feared the worst. If they had taken anything important he would be to blame. It was his fault. He ought to have guarded against this. He ought to have taken the paddles. He ought to have ordered the men to bring everything up to camp, where it would have been under his own eyes. Lionel looked at him quizzically.

"Don't cross the river till you reach the water," he said. "We may catch them. They may not have gone."

On their way they looked through the village. The bearers were not there. Lionel tried to make the villagers understand him by signs; but they were too strongly infected to understand a difficult thing. He had to give them up. He bade Roger fill his pockets with some bruised corn which they found in one of the pots of an empty hut. They munched this as they went. Their next task was to run out the trail.

By the village drinking-place the river had overflowed the bank. It had torn up a couple of trees, which now lay branches downward in the water, arresting wreckage. It had surged strongly against the boxes, driving them from their place, but not destroying them. It had heaped them with drift, and coloured them a yellowish red. The footmarks of the bearers were thickly printed in the mud there. They must have arrived there in the early morning, when the waters were beginning to fall.

"They've been busy," said Roger. All the boxes had been broken open. Their contents were tumbled in the mud in all directions.

"Look here," said Lionel. "What do you make of these marks?" In one place the mud had been planed smooth in a long plastering smear, ending in a notch or narrow groove.

"That was made by the boat," said Roger.

"Yes," said Lionel. "That was the boat. You can see the puncture in the mud there. That was made by the projecting screw in the false nose. You remember the screw we put in at Malakoto? They shoved off here."

"Yes. No doubt. That is the screw. So they've sampled the goods and gone."

"That is so. They've robbed us and run away."

"And we are stranded in the heart of the wilderness?"

"We are alone, three hundred miles from any white man."

"Yes. Then we are alone," said Roger. "We are alone here." The words thrilled him. They were meaning words.

"We can't go after them," said Lionel. "They've got too big a start."

"We've got no boat to go in."

"I wish," said Lionel, "I wish these riverine negroes used canoes."

"They don't."

"No," said Lionel. "They don't. Well. It's no good moping."

"We could follow downstream," said Roger, "and perhaps catch them at Malakoto."

Lionel shook his head. "There are the swamps," he said. "And we've both got fever on us. I doubt if we could get through. We might."

"We shall have to try it in the end, if we are to get away at all."

"I was thinking that," said Lionel. "But when we try it, it will be the end of the dry season, when the swamps will be passable. The swamps now are as bad as they can be. Honestly, Roger, I don't think we could make Malakoto, carrying our own stores. It's ten days; and those others wouldn't stay at Malakoto, remember. They'd make for Kisa. No. Best give in. They've won the trick."

"And we're to lose all these stores; about a hundred pounds' worth of stores?"

"That's the minimum, I'm afraid."

"It's a bad beginning," said Roger. He walked to and fro, fretting. "Doesn't it make your blood boil?" he continued. "Look at the way the brutes have tossed the things about. I'd give a good deal to have a few of them here."

Lionel sat down on a box and stared meditatively at the wreck. "Roger," he said at length. "Have you any idea what stores were brought up the hill last night?"

"Mostly the bow-stores, I suppose; provisions, bedding, and camp gear."

"That's what I was afraid," said Lionel.

"What are you afraid of?"

"Come on. Let's face it," said Lionel, springing from his perch. "We must get these things out of the mud. We must see how we stand."

"You mean we may be— What do you mean?"

"We must see what stores are left to us."

They set to work together to pick up the wreck. They began with cartridges, which had been scattered broadcast in wantonness. Many were spoiled; many missing. Marks on the grass shewed that others had been carefully emptied, so that the thieves might have the brass shells enclosing the charges. Still, a good many were to be found. The two men recovered about fifty rounds of Winchester, and eighty rounds of revolver ammunition. With what they wore in their belts this amount was reassuring.

"Look here," said Roger. "Here's a box of slides. They're all smashed."

"Was the microscope not brought up?"

"I don't know," said Roger. "It was in a box with a blue stencil."

"I know," said Lionel. "I've been looking out for it. I thought it wasn't here. Look. Over there. There's part of a lid with a blue stencil. Is that the lid for the microscope?"

"No, that's a drugs lid."

"They can't have taken it with them. Surely they wouldn't take a microscope."

"It might be up in the camp all this time."

"Yes. True. Wait. We'll get these things out of the mud, and then we'll go up the hill, and make a list of what is missing. Here's our stationery ruined. All our nice clean temperature charts that I set such store by. I told you life was wasteful out here. All your pressed plants are done for."

"Here are clothes, of sorts. Jaeger underwear."

"Fish them out. We'll wash them afterwards."

They quartered the expanse of red slime. It was a sort of Tom Tiddler's ground, littered with European goods. They worked quickly, racing the sun. From time to time there came hails of "The tool-chest's gone. Here's the lid." "Your small stores won't be much good, the soap's melted or something." "Look at what these brutes have done to the sugar."

Presently Lionel hailed.

"I say. I say. Have you come across any drugs?"

"No. Only the lid of a drugs box."

"Well. It's getting serious. There's no other box here. We must go on back to camp and find out if they are there."

"We shall be done, without drugs," said Roger.

"Don't talk about it, my dear man," said Lionel. "Don't talk about it."

"It would be worth while making a raft," said Roger. "There are a couple of axes in camp. If we worked hard all morning, we could get a sort of a raft built. We could use the tent-ropes for lashings. Then we could easily rig up a sail. We should catch them up by dusk, perhaps."

"There are points about the raft theory," said Lionel, as they set out for camp. "But there are so many creeks and gullies where they could hide, and then there are the crocks."

"We could build a sort of bulwark of boxes."

"We'll find out about the drugs first. No. If we go working hard in the sun we shall get fever again." He wrinkled his brows. He was anxious. "I hope those drugs are all right," he said. "I don't mind the guns; but our drugs are portable life."

Roger glanced uneasily at Lionel. He had got to know him pretty well during the last few months. He had come to know that though he was sometimes irritable, he was very seldom given to despondent speech. Now he was talking anxiously, from the selfish standpoint of "I." Roger thought of the precious bottles of atoxyl, worth a good deal more than a guinea an ounce. Lionel's remark was true. They were portable life. And if the atoxyl were gone, their mission was at an end. No. It was worse than that. If the atoxyl were gone, Lionel was in danger. For suppose the trypanosomes recurred in him, as they might, in this hot climate? Suppose Lionel developed sleeping sickness and died, as the people in the village were dying, before they could win to civilisation? He did not find any answer to the problem. Hoping to distract Lionel, he began gallantly to talk of the Phoenicians, about whom he was sufficiently ignorant to escape attention.

In the camp things were as they had been, except that they were drier. They turned over the boxes, looking eagerly for blue stencil.

"Here's the microscope," said Roger. "Or I think it is." He prized the case open with the jemmy on the end of the peg-maul. "Yes. The microscope's all right. Some of our test-tube things are smashed. Some of the media. There are plenty of those, though, down in the mud. That's one thing to the good. What's in the case there?"

"Anti-scorbutics here."

"And in the long box?"

"Grub of different kinds."

"Here you are, then. Here's a drugs case."

"Saved!"

"Shall I open it?"

"Yes, open it. We did a very foolish thing, Roger. We ought to have packed each box as a miniature equipment, so as to minimise the importance of any losses. It's in my mind that all our atoxyl is in one case."

"No," said Roger. "It was in three cases. One of them, I know, was in the boat. I was sitting on it most of yesterday."

"Well. Open that one, and let's see where we stand."

The well-fixed screws were drawn. The box lay open to the sun, exuding a faint, cleanly smell of camphor.

Lionel looked over the drug pots, muttering the names: "Mercury bi-chlor, sodium carb, sodium chlor, sodium cit, corrosive sublimate, quinine, quinine, quinine, potassium bromide—we shan't want much of that—absolute alcohol, carbolic, first-aid dressings, chlorodyne, morphia, camphorated chalk for the teeth, what's this?—digitalis. What the devil did they send that for? There's no atoxyl here."

"Nor that other stuff, the dye, trypanroth?"

"No. We didn't order any. It wasn't altogether a success with me, and it wasn't being so well spoken of."

"That's unfortunate. But wait a minute. I see another drug case. Over there, against the wall. Isn't that a drug case?"

"It is. Chuck the jemmy over." He did not wait to draw the screws. He prized the lid off with two quick wrenches of the jemmy. He looked inside.

"A quaker," he said grimly, after one look. "It's a quaker case."

"What's a quaker?"

"This case here is what we call a quaker. Why? Because it makes one quake. Look at these bottles. They're full of paper and sawdust. Look at this one. Old rags. Here's a 2-lb. atoxyl bottle, for which we paid twenty-eight pounds, not to speak of the duty. It's full of dust like the rest."

"But, good Lord, Lionel! Where could it have been done? Who could have done it? We got these direct from the very best London house."

"There were rats on the way," said Lionel. "You remember we stopped off a day at that place Kwasi Bembo, where we hired Merrylegs? Well. This was probably done at Kwasi Bembo by one of those foreign storekeepers. An easy way of making money for them."

"I don't see how he did it."

"Oh, he could have done it easily enough, while we were having our siestas. It doesn't matter much, though, where it was done, does it?"

"Don't despair yet," said Roger. "There must be another box somewhere. Here. Open this one. The stencil is ground off. What's inside this one?"

"It looks promising," said Lionel. "It's screwed; it isn't nailed. Off, now." He thrust the lid away with a violent heave. Roger peered in anxiously.

"Nothing but stones in this one," said Lionel. "Not even our bottles left. We'd better open all our cases, and find out what else has been taken. I suppose that's our last box of chemicals?"

"It's the last here."

"Never mind," said Roger. "We won't despair. Let's see what is left to us." They examined the other cases. They made out an inventory of their possessions. They learned that they were left in the heart of Africa with provisions for three months, forty pounds' weight of anti-scorbutics, a quantity of clothing, a moderate supply of ammunition, two rifles, two revolvers, a shotgun, many disinfectants, an assortment of choice drugs, some medical instruments, and a microscope. Of medical comforts they had sparklets, tobacco, soap, matches, and two bottles of brandy. Of quaker cases they found, in all, five, all of them purporting to be either chemicals or cartridges. Of utensils they had a tin basin, plates, and pannikins. For shelter they had a tent with a broken pole.

"Lionel," said Roger, when they had checked their list. "Look here. We've been up here a good hour and a half. The water will have fallen a foot or more. By the time we have cooked and eaten breakfast it will have fallen another foot. It is quite possible that by that time there will be some more goods, perhaps, even, some more cases, left high and dry on the bank. We won't worry about our loss till we know it. If we breakfast now we shall be strong enough to bear whatever may be coming to us. Let's get a fire started. We'll brew some tea and sacrifice a tin of soup. Let's be extravagant and enjoy ourselves."

They were sufficiently extravagant over breakfast, but they got little enjoyment out of it. They had rankling anger in them, against their enemies, known and unknown. When their anger gave them leave, they felt, low down, a chilling, sinking fear that their plans for the saving of life would come to nothing, that, in short, their expedition was a failure.

"Lionel," said Roger. "Do you think that the fraud of the atoxyl was done in London? Surely Morris and Henslow wouldn't do a thing like that?"

"Who knows what they won't do?" said Lionel gloomily. "I know that some contractor or other always supplies shoddy of some kind to an expedition to one of the Poles. Why not to us? There is always the chance that the expedition won't return. And even if it does return, the fraud is quite likely not to become known to the public. And even if the case comes on in a law court, who can prove it? There are too many loopholes. It is almost impossible to bring the guilt really home. The contractor practically never gets found out. As for a contractor being punished, I don't suppose it has ever happened. It makes one believe in hell."

"It's not the crime itself," said Roger. "Not knowing the criminal, I cannot judge the crime; but it's the state of mind which sickens me. The state of mind which could prompt such a thing."

"It's a common enough state of mind," said Lionel. "In business it's common enough. Business men, even of good standing, will do queer things when the shoe begins to pinch. You may say what you like about war. Business is the real curse of a nation. Business, and the business brain, and, oh, my God, the business man! Swine. Fatted, vulpine swine."

"Well," said Roger. "It is very important not to take these things into the mind, even to condemn them."

"And I say it is nothing of the sort," said Lionel. "I believe in strangling ideas as I believe in strangling people. You writers, when you are really good at your job, don't condemn half enough."

"Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner."

"Intellectually, not morally. Come on. We are not going to argue. We are going to work. We've got to bury that bearer. Where's the spade?"

They dug a grave for Kukwo, and buried him, and heaped a cairn of stones from the wall on top of him. It was burning midday when they had finished. They had leisure then to think again of the loss of their atoxyl.

"We may not have any at all?" said Roger. Lionel produced a small screw-top bottle from his pocket. It had once contained tabloids of anti-pyrin. It was now about half full of a white powder.

"I've a few doses here," he said. He looked at it carefully. "With luck," he said, "we could cure two or three cases with this."

"But suppose you have a relapse yourself, Lionel? You must keep some, in case you should relapse."

"I shan't relapse," he said carelessly. "Relapses aren't common."

"But you might. And you are more important than a village-full of negroes. More important than all the blacks put together and multiplied by ten."

"I don't see it. Look here. I tell you one thing which is pretty plain to me. We've got to set to work to find an anti-toxin. First, though, we'll go down and grope in the mud for anything which may be left. I don't give up hope of finding some atoxyl even now."

They told each other as they went that they didn't expect to find anything. Really their hearts beat high with expectation. They were sure of finding what they sought.

They went down to the mud so sure that their disappointment almost unmanned them. For they were disappointed. An hour of broiling work only added two cartridges to their store. Out in the river, caught in a snag with other drift, they saw a floating packing-case, marked with a blue stencil. By the manner of its floating they judged it to be empty, or nearly empty. It had probably floated off shortly after being opened. It had been caught in a snag. It had then ducked and sidled to get away. Lastly, it had turned upside down and emptied its contents into the river. So they judged the tragedy, viewing the victim through their glasses, from a distance of a hundred yards.

"That settles it, I think," said Lionel. A projecting snout rose at the box, tilting it over. It fell back, lipping under, so that it filled. In another instant it was gone from sight. The glasses showed a slight swirl in the water. The swirl passed at once, under the drive of the spate. Their last hope of atoxyl was at an end.

"Well," said Roger hopelessly. "It's as well to know the worst. The box was empty, don't you think?"

"I don't know," said Lionel. "I couldn't be sure."

"We might find some things in the water when the river sinks a little further," said Roger, without much conviction. "It'll be drying up very soon now. Then we shall find whatever is in it."

Lionel sat down despondently, resting his chin on one hand. He was letting his disappointment work itself off silently. His heart had been set so long on this first great medical field-day that he could not look Roger in the face. The loss of the atoxyl was less hard to bear than the loss of all the interesting cases over which he would have been bending at that minute had this ghastly thing not happened. And, being an old campaigner, and therefore forethoughtful, it was bitter to him to find himself thwarted unexpectedly by a trick so simple. He had thought that he had guarded against all the known dodges. He had been on his guard all through. In London he had sampled the food, the clothes, the cartridges, rejecting everything which seemed even faulty. He had been surprised at his own strictness. All the way up from the coast he had watched his stores so jealously that he had thought himself safe. He had been vain of his success. He had never lost so little in any previous expedition. Now an attack of fever, a storm, and a bearer's sudden death had let him in for this. He was not forgetting the chemist's share. He cursed himself for having trusted the chemist. Then he decided that it was not the chemist. The fraud had been committed in Africa. He had not been careful enough. He himself was to blame. "Guns and grub I could understand," he cried. "But for them to take drugs! Who would have thought of their taking drugs? Why didn't I see that Africa is getting civilised? Roger, I want to kill somebody."

"It's my turn to lecture now," said Roger. "We'll carry these things up to camp. I've an idea about camp."

"What is your idea?"

"To build a house out of the loose stones of the wall. We could use the wall itself for one wall, build up three others and roof it with the tent. It would be better than having another night like last night."

"It might be done," said Lionel, mechanically filling his pockets with cartridges. "But I don't know what good we're going to do here if we haven't any atoxyl. I wish I knew who it was. If ever I touch at Kwasi Bembo again, I'll have that atoxyl out of his liver."

They passed a broiling afternoon carrying their gear to camp. They became irritable at about four o'clock. After that time they worked apart, avoiding each other. At six Roger made tea, over which they made friends. At seven they set about the building of their house. They laboured by moonlight far into the night, laying the mortarless stones together. When they knocked off for bed it was nearly midnight, and the house was far from perfect. They could not do more to it. They were too tired. After flogging their blankets against the walls to get rid of mud and "bichos," they turned in, bone-weary, and slept the stupid sleep of sailors for nearly eleven hours.

They finished their house in the afternoon. It was not a very good house, but they judged that it would be safer and drier than their tent had proved. After they had finished it, they felt it to be structurally weak. They went at it again. They strengthened the roof with saplings, and laid great stones upon the edges of the canvas cover, so that it should not blow from its place. With great cunning Roger arranged an outer roof of a rough thatch which he himself made from the osiers used by the natives. He thought that a double roof would be cooler. He explained to Lionel an ambitious scheme for a thatched verandah; but this had to be abandoned from want of encouragement. Inside, the house was about twelve feet square. When the two beds, the table, the chairs, and the boxes were all within doors, it seemed very cramped and poky. They were in some doubt about a name for it. Lionel was for "Phoenician Villa," Roger for "The Laurels" or "Oak Drive." Finally they decided on "Portobe," which they smeared over the door in blacking. They had not thought much of Portobe on their way up country. Portobe. Roger going out that night, after supper, to wash the plates in a bucket, sat by the fire for many minutes, "thinking long" about Portobe. Something made him turn his head, and look out into the night north-north-westward,

It was a dim expanse, mothlike and silver in the moonlight, reaching on in forest and river to the desert. To reach Portobe he would have to go beyond the desert, over the sea, over Spain, over France. He paused. He was not sure whether France would be in the direct line. If it were not, then there would only be the sea to cross, past Land's End, past Carnsore, past Braichy, past all the headlands. Then on to the Waters of Moyle, which never cease to call to the heart who hears them. He remembered the poem of the calling of the Waters of Moyle. He knew it by heart. It was a true poem. The vastness and silence of the night were over him. The great stars burned out above. They seemed to wheel and deploy above him, rank upon rank, helm on gleaming helm, an army, a power. There were no birds, no noise of beasts, no lights. Only the earth, strange in the moon; the great continent, measureless in her excess. She was all savage, all untamed, a black and cruel continent, a lustful old queen, smeared with bloody oils. She frightened him. He thought of one night at Portobe three years before, when he had come out "to look at the night" with Ottalie. He could still see some of the stars seen then. He could still, in the sharpened fancy of the home-sick, smell the spray of honeysuckle which had gone trailing and trailing, drenching wet, across the little-used iron gate which led to the beach. He longed to be going up the beach, up the loaning overhung with old willows, as he had gone that night with Ottalie. He longed to be going through the little town, past the fruitman's, past the butcher's, past the R.I.C. barracks, to the little churchyard by the stream. Ottalie lay there. Here he was in Africa, trying to do something for Ottalie's sake. He drew in his breath sharply. It was all useless. It was not going to be done. The atoxyl was lost. They might just as well have stayed in England. He sighed. To do something very difficult, which would tax all his powers, that was his task. When that was done he would feel that he had won his bride. A strange, choking voice came from the house.

"Roger! Roger! Come in. Where are you?" Lionel had been asleep in his chair.

"What is it? What is it?" said Roger.

"Nothing. Nothing," said Lionel. "I dreamed I was fast by the leg. You don't know how beastly it was."

X

A cold shivering, methinks. Every Man out of his Humour.

What would you minister upon the sudden? Monsieur Thomas.

The next day they walked to the village, prepared for an unpleasant morning. They buried seven bodies and burned eleven huts. Several times, during the day, they noticed tsetse at rest on the framework of the huts.

"They have followed people up from the water," said Lionel. "They don't attack us, because we are wearing white duck. They don't like white."

"Flies have an uncanny knowledge," said Roger. "How do they get their knowledge? Is it mere inherited instinct? I notice that they always attack in the least protected spots. How do they know that a man cannot easily drive them from between his shoulders? They do know. I notice they nearly always attack between the shoulders."

"Yes. And dogs on the head, cattle on the shoulders, and horses on the belly and forelegs. They're subtle little devils."

"And they have apparently no place in the scheme of the world, except to transplant the trypanosome from where he is harmless to where he is deadly."

"Lots of men are like that," said Lionel. "You can go along any London street and see thousands of them outside those disgusting pot-houses. Men with no place in the scheme of the world, except to transplant intoxicants from the casks, where they are harmless, to their insides, where they become deadly, both to themselves and to society. Any self-respecting State would drown the brutes in their own beer. Yet the brutes don't get drowned. And as they do not, there must be a scientific reason. Either the State must be so rotten that the germs are neutralised by other germs, or the germs must have some dim sort of efficiency for life, just as the tsetses have. They have the tenacity of the very low organism. It is one of the mysteries of life to me that a man tends to lose that tenacity and efficiency for life as soon as he becomes sufficiently subtle and fine to be really worth having in the world. I like Shakespeare because he is one of the very few men who realise that. He is harping on it again and again. He is at it in Hamlet, in Richard the Second, in Brutus, Othello. Oh, in lots of the plays, in the minor characters, too, like Malvolio; even in Aguecheek. And people call that disgusting, beefy brute, Prince Henry, 'Shakespeare's one hero,' a 'vision of ideal English manhood.' Shakespeare's one hero! Shakespeare wrote him with his tongue in his cheek, and used an ounce of civet afterwards."

They turned again to their work. After changing their clothes, bathing antiseptically, and anointing their hands with corrosive sublimate solution and alcohol, they began solemnly to distil some water for their tiny store of atoxyl.

"Lionel," said Roger, "we've got enough drug to cure two, or perhaps three of these people. We ought not to use it all. We are away in the wilds here. Save one dose at least for yourself in case you should get a relapse. You know how very virulent a relapsed case is."

"I know," said Lionel. "But that is part of the day's work. Our only chance of doing good here is to find an anti-toxin. I want this spare atoxyl for that."

"But," said Roger, "you cannot make an effective serum from the blood of a man in whom atoxyl is at work. Surely atoxyl only stimulates the phagocytes to eat the trypanosome."

"Quite so," said Lionel. "You're a serumite, I'm not. I am not at all keen on the use of serum for this complaint. I believe that the cure (if there is one) will be got by injecting the patient with dead trypanosomes or very, very weak ones. I'm going to make a special artificial culture of trypanosomes in culture tubes. I shall then weaken the germs with atoxyl. When they are all bloated and paralysed, I shall inject them. I believe that that injection, or the injection of quite dead trypanosomes, will have permanent good effects."

"And I," rejoined Roger, "believe that your methods will be useless. I believe that the cure (if there be a cure) will be obtained by the use of sera obtained from naturally or artificially immunised animals."

"That's just the taking kind of fairy story you would believe. You're a sentimentalist."

"Very well. But listen. It is said that when the dogs of the bushmen are reared entirely on the meat of immune game, they become immune like the game; but that if they are not used to wild meat they develop nagana from eating it casually."

"I don't believe the first part of that," said Lionel. "It sounds too like a yarn. The dogs which are reared entirely on wild game are probably naturally immune native dogs, bred originally from some wild strain, like the wild hunting-dogs."

"But there is no doubt that wild game, like wildebeests, koodoos, hyenas, and quaggas, are immune?"

"None whatever."

"Then could not some preparation be made from the blood of the wild game? Surely one could extract the immunising principle from the immune creature, and use that as a serum?"

"We don't even know what the 'immunising principle' may be; so how can we extract it?"

"Well, then. Use the blood serum by itself."

"But, my dear man, the blood of these beasts is the favourite haunt of the trypanosome."

They argued it to and fro with the pertinacity of enthusiasts improperly equipped with knowledge. Roger fought for his "fairy story," Lionel for his dead and dying cultures. At last Lionel finished the preparation of the mixture.

"Look here," he said. "This atoxyl, you say, is to be kept? Well. If I get a relapse before it is used, you will please remember that it is to be used to paralyse artificially-raised trypanosomes, which will afterwards be injected into me. You will try none of your sera on me, my friend. If you like to go getting sera from dying, dirty, anthraxy wild beasts, do so; but don't put any of the poison, so got, into me. I see you so plainly strangling a deer in a mud-wallow, and drawing off the blood into a methylated spirits can. Here's the mixture ready. And now that our water of life is ready for use, comes the great question: Which of all these sleepers is to live? Here are twenty-nine men, women, and children. They are all condemned to die within a few weeks. Now then, Roger. You are a writer, that is to say a law-giver, a disposer and settler of moral issues. Which of these is to live? We can say thumbs down to any we choose. If we live to be a hundred we shall probably never have to make such a solemn choice again."

"It isn't certain life," said Roger, hesitating for a moment, staggered by the responsibility. "Atoxyl isn't a certain cure, even of moderate cases."

"It's a practically certain cure if the patient is all right in other ways; that is, of course, if the case has not gone too far."

"What is the percentage of deaths?" said Roger.

"With atoxyl?"

"Yes."

"Eight per cent. for slight cases, and twenty-two per cent. for bad ones. Without atoxyl, it's a certain hundred per cent."

"I see."

"It's a good drug."

"Yes," said Roger. "It's a good drug. But look at them, Lionel. To stand here and choose them out."

"We are doing now what the scientist will one day do for every human race," said Lionel. "We are choosing for the future. As it happens we are choosing for the future of a fraction of a wretched little African tribe. The scientist will one day choose, just as finally, for the future of man. I didn't think you'd baulk, Roger. This is the beginning of the golden age. 'The golden age begins anew.' Here are the wise men choosing who are to inherit the earth."

A sleepy negro came unsteadily from a hut. He walked, as though not quite in control of his actions, towards the wise men. He was a fine, supple creature, dressed in crocodile's teeth. Parts of him shone with an anointment of oil. He drew up, dully staring. His jaw was hanging. Flies settled on his body. A tsetse with fierce, dancing flight, flew round him, and settled on his shoulders. He stood vacantly, gazing at the wise men. His mind could not be sure of anything; but there was something which he wanted to say; something which had to be said. He waited, vacantly, for the message to come back to him, and then drove slowly forward again, and again stopped. His lips mumbled something. His eyes drooped. One trembling hand weakly groped in the air for support. It rested on a hut. He slowly and very wearily collapsed upon the hut, and sat down. His head nodded and nodded. Another tsetse flew down. Roger noticed that the man was cicatrised about the body with old scars. He had been a warrior. He had lived the savage life to the full. He had killed. He had rushed screaming to death, under his tossing Colobus plumes, first of his tribe to stab, before the shields rattled on each other. He had been lithe, swift, and bloody as the panther. Now he was this trembling, fumbling thing, a log, a driveller, a perch for flies.

"Lionel," said Roger, "it will be awful if we lose our cases."

"Why? They will die in any case."

"But after choosing them like this. If we give them their chance, and they lose the chance. I should feel that perhaps one of the others might have lived."

"We shall choose carefully. We can do no more than that. There's that hideous old crone coming out again. Poor old thing. I dare say she has seen more of the world than either of us. She may be a king's wife and the mother of kings. How merciless these savages are to the old!"

"They're like children. Children have no mercy on the old."

"I wonder what good life is to her?"

"I dare say she remembers the good days. She can't feel very much."

"No," said Lionel. "But I notice that old people feel intensely. They don't feel much. They may feel only one single thing in all the world; but they feel about that with all their strength. It's perfectly ghastly how they feel. We are all islands apart. We do not know each other. We cannot know that woman's mind, nor have we any data by which we can imagine it. That old animal may be like Blake's bird: 'A whole world of delight closed to your senses five.'"

"Very well. Would you cure her? She's not infected as it happens; but would you, if she were?"

"No. She has had her life. I wonder, by the way, if extreme old age is immune from sleeping sickness. I dare say it is. But old age is not common in savage societies. I wish I knew that old woman's story. She has seen a lot, Roger. That is a wonderful face. Now we must choose. Shall we choose a woman?"

"No. Not a woman. We must think of the creature's future. What would become of a woman left alone here? Even if she followed up her tribe, they would probably not admit her. You know that these people do not believe in the possibility of a cure for sleeping sickness. They would only drive her out, or kill her."

"Yes, or let her drift among white men. No. Not a woman. Not an old man, I say. The old have had their lives. Besides, the life of an old savage is generally wretched. There would be nothing for him to do, either here or anywhere else. So we won't have an old man."

"Nor a warrior," said Roger.

"I'm not sure about a warrior," said Lionel. "He would be able to fend for himself. He would be worth taking in by some other tribe short of males. There are points to the warrior."

"He would probably rise up one night and jab us with a shovel-headed spear."

"And then we should shoot him. Yes, that might happen. That narrows it down to the boys."

They looked at the boys, noting their teeth, skulls, and physiognomies. Several shewed signs of congenital malignant disease; others were brutish and loutish looking; but they were, on the whole, a much nicer-looking lot than the boys who sell papers in London. They narrowed the choice to four. One of them shewed signs of pneumonia. He was rejected. The others were examined carefully. Their prefrontal areas were measured. They were sounded and felt and summed up. The matter was doubtful for a time. The lad with the best head was more drowsy than the other two. The question arose, should the doubtful cure of a genius be preferred to the less doubtful cure of a dunce. "Nature has made an effort for this one," said Lionel, "at the expense of the type. This fellow has got a better head than the others, but he is not quite so fine a specimen. That means that he will be less happy. Nature would probably prefer the other fellows."

"We have nothing to do with Nature," said Roger. "We are out to fight her wherever we can find her. Nature is a collection of vegetables, many of them human. Let us thwart her. Nature's mind is the mind of the flock of sheep. Nature's order is the order of the primeval swamp. Never mind what she would prefer. Sacrifice both the dunces, and let the other have a double chance. I know the dunce-mind, or 'natural' mind, only too well. It would sacrifice any original mind, and brutally, like the beast it is, rather than see its doltish sheep-pen rules infringed."

"Genius is excess," said Lionel. "Genius in a savage means an excess of savagery. This fellow may be a most turbulent, bloodthirsty ruffian. The others, though they will probably be bloodthirsty ruffians, may not be so turbulent."

"If he be turbulent," said Roger, "it will be in a more intellectual manner than is usual with his tribe. Turbulence in a savage is a sign of life. It is only in a civilised man that it is a sign of failure."

"Very well," said Lionel. "We will have the genius. He may disappoint us. I think he is the best type here. Who is to be the other? What do you say to that nice-looking boy, whom we spun some time ago for itch? I like that lad's face."

"You think he would be a good one to save?"

"Well, itch apart, he looked a nice lad. He would be exceptional, socially, just as the other would be exceptional intellectually. He would be to some extent unnatural, which is what you seem to want. Why are you so down on the natural?"

"I've heard some old women of both sexes praising the natural, ever since I was a child. The natural. The born natural. The undeveloped sheep in us, which makes common head to butt the wolf-scarer."

"We'll give them a dose to-day and a dose to-morrow, and a last dose in two and a half weeks' time," said Lionel. "And then they'll either be fit to butt anything in the wide world, or they'll be on their way to Marumba."

"The genius first," said Roger, bringing up the patient. The needle was sterilised. A little prick between the shoulderblades drove the dose home. The other boy followed. Lionel eyed them carefully.

"They must come out of here, now," he said. "They must live with us for to-night. We can't do more now. We've done enough for one day. To-morrow we must rig them up a shanty up on the hill. They'll be pretty well by to-morrow night."

They were doing finely by the next night, as Lionel had foretold. Their second dose was followed up with a preparation of mercury, which the wise men trusted to complete the cure. The patients were pretty well. But the work and excitement of settling them into quarters near "Portobe" made the doctors very far from pretty well. Though the sick-quarters were little more than a roofed-in wind-screen of tarpaulin, the strain of making it was too much for two over-wrought Europeans, not yet used to the heat. Lionel, complaining peevishly of headache, knocked off work before tea. Roger, feeling the boisterous good spirits which so often precede a fit of recurrent fever, helped Lionel into bed, and cheerfully did the sick man's share of building. After this he gave the two patients their supper of biscuit and bully beef (which they ate with very good appetites), and, when they had eaten, put them to bed under their wind-screen. As he worked, he hoped fervently that Lionel was not going to be ill again. He had been peevish, with a slight, irritable fever all the way up the river from Malakoto. If he fell ill again now, all the work would be delayed. Roger wanted to get to work. All their plans had been upset by the bearers' desertion. Any further upsetting of plans might ruin the expedition. The days were passing. Every day brought those poor drowsy devils in the village nearer to their deaths. Soon they would be too ill to cure. He wanted Lionel well and strong, working beside him towards the discovery of a serum. That was the crying need. With Lionel ill, he could do nothing, or nearly nothing. He had so little scientific knowledge. And besides that, he would have Lionel to watch, and the cleansing and feeding of all those twenty-seven sick. He did not see how things were going to get done.

He told himself that things would have to get done, and that he would have to do them. The resolution cheered him, but the prospect was not made brighter by his discovery soon afterwards that Lionel's temperature had shot up with a sudden leaping bound to 103°. That frightened him. Lionel was not going to be ill, he was ill, and very dangerously ill already. His temperature had risen four or five degrees in about half an hour. The discovery gave Roger a momentary feeling of panic. With a fever like that, Lionel might die, and if Lionel died, what then? He would be there alone, alone in the wilds, with drowsed, half-dead savages. He would be alone there with death, in the heart of a continent. He would go mad there, at the sight of his own shadow, like the Australian in the cheerful story. But for Lionel to die, to lose Lionel, the friend of all these days, the comrade of all these adventures, that was the desolating thought. It would not matter much what happened to himself if Lionel were to die.

It was borne in upon him that Lionel's life would depend on his exertions. He would be doctor, nurse, and chemist. Let him look to it. On the morrow, perhaps, there would be two vigorous natives to look to the sick in the village. Meanwhile, there was the night to win through; and that burning temperature to lower.

He managed to administer a dose of quinine. There was nothing more that he could do. Crouching down by the sick man's side made him feel queer. He remembered that he had left neither food nor water in the patients' hut. They ought to have food by them in case they woke hungry, as they probably would, after their long, irregular fast. He carried them some biscuit, and a bucket half full of water. They were sleeping heavily. Nature was resting in them. While coming back from the hut, he noticed that the night struck cold. He shivered. His teeth began to chatter. He felt that the cold had stricken to his liver. He wished that he had not gone out. Coming into the house, he felt the need of a fire; but he did not dare to light one, on account of Lionel. Lionel lay tossing deliriously, babbling the halves of words. Roger gave him more quinine, and took a strong dose himself. There was something very strange about the quinine. It seemed to come to his mouth from a hand immensely distant. There was a long, long arm, like a crooked railway, tied to the hand. It seemed to Roger that it could not possibly crook itself sufficiently to let the hand reach his mouth. After the strangeness of the hand had faded, he felt horribly cold. He longed to have fire all round him, and inside him. He regarded Lionel stupidly. He could do nothing more. He would lie down. If Lionel wanted anything, he would get up to fetch it. He could not sit up with Lionel. He was in for a fever. He got into his bed, and heaped the blankets round him, trembling. Almost at once the real world began to blur and change. It was still the real world, but he was seeing much in it which he had not suspected. Many queer things were happening before his eyes. He lay shuddering, with chattering teeth, listening, as he thought, to the noise made by the world as it revolved. It was a crashing, booming, resolute noise, which droned down and anon piped up high. It went on and on.

In the middle of all the noise he had the strange fancy that his body was not in bed at all, but poised in air. His bed lay somewhere below him. Sitting up he could see part of it, infinitely distant, below his outstretched feet. The ceiling was swelling and swelling just above him. It seemed as vast as heaven. All the time it swelled he seemed to shrink. He was lying chained somewhere, while his body was shrinking to the vanishing point. He could feel himself dwindling, while the blackness above grew vaster. He heard something far below him—or was it at his side?—something or somebody speaking very rapidly. He tried to call out to Lionel, but all that he could say was something about an oyster tree. There was a great deal of chattering. Somebody was trying to get in, or somebody was trying to get out. Something or somebody was in great danger, and, do what he could, he could not help growing smaller, smaller, smaller. At last the blackness fell in upon his littleness and blotted it out.