Multitude and Solitude

by John Masefield

VIII

And here will I, in honour of thy love,
Dwell by thy grave, forgetting all those joys
That former times made precious to mine eyes.
The Faithful Shepherdess.

Ten months later Roger sat swathed in blankets under mosquito netting, steering a boat upstream. He was in the cold fit of a fever. The bows of the boat were heaped with the cages of laboratory animals and with boxes, on the top of which a negro sat, singing a song. The singer clapped gravely with his hands to mark the time. "Marumba is very far away," he sang. "Yes. It is far away, and nobody ever got there." At times, pausing in his song to lift a hand to Roger, he pointed out a snag or shoal. At other times the rowers, lifting their paddles wearily, sang for a few bars in chorus, about the bones on the road to Marumba. Then the chorus died; the paddles splashed; the tholes grunted. The boat lagged on into the unknown, up the red, savage river, which loitered, and steamed, and stank, like a river of a beginning earth.

Lionel, heaped with blankets, lay at Roger's feet. His teeth were chattering. The wet rag round his forehead had slipped over his eyes. The debile motion of the hand which tried to thrust the rag away, so that he might see, told of an intense petulant weakness. By him lay a negro, wasted to a skeleton, who watched Roger with a childish grave intentness out of eyes heavy with death.

The boat ground slowly past a snag. Roger, raising himself upon a box, looked out painfully over the river bank to the immense distance beyond, where, in a dimness, mists hung. To the right, a mile or two from the river, was forest, sloping to an expanse of water, intensely blue. Beyond the water was grass sloping up to forest. The forest jutted out, immense, dark, silent. Nothing lay beyond it but forest, trees towering up, trees fallen, uprooted, rotting, a darkness, a green gloom. Over it was the sky, of hard, bright blue metal, covered with blazing films. Outside it, like captains halted at the head of a horde, were solitary, immense trees, with ruddy boles. To each side of them, the forest stretched, an irregular wilderness of wood, grey, rather than green, in the glare aloft; below, darker. The water at the foot of the slope opened out in bays, ruffled by the wind, shimmering. Reeds grew about the bays. A cluster of tall, orange-blossomed water-plants hid the rest from Roger's sight as the boat loitered on.

To the left it was a sometimes swampy plain-land, reaching on into the mists, with ants' nests for milestones. Little gentle hills rose up, some of them dotted with thorn-trees. They were like the stumps of islands worn away by the river, when, long ago, it had brimmed that plain-land from the forest to the far horizon.

Far ahead, to the left of the river, Roger noticed a slightly larger hill. It held his gaze for a few minutes. It stood up from the plain exactly like a Roman camp which he had visited in England long before, one Christmas Day. He liked to look at it. There was comfort in looking at it. It was like a word from Europe, that hill beyond there, greyish in the blinding light. It was like a Roman camp, like military virtue, order, calm, courage, dignity. He needed some such message. He was in command of a shipload of suffering. He was wandering on into the unknown, in charge of dying men. Smoke was rising from below the hill, a single spire of smoke. He hailed the singer.

"Merrylegs," he cried, "what is the smoke there?"

"Jualapa," said the man, standing up to look. "Jualapa."

"It can't be Jualapa," said Lionel petulantly, struggling to lift his blankets. "Oh, stop that noise, Roger. It shakes my head to pieces."

"Jualapa," cried the rowers excitedly. "Jualapa." They dropped their paddles. Standing on the thwarts they peered under the sharps of their hands at the rising smoke. They rubbed their bellies, thinking of meat. One of them, beating his hands together, broke into a song about Jualapa.

Roger, stumbling forward, shaken by sickness, bade them to give way, quietly. The jabbering died down as the tholes began again to grunt. Merrylegs, still clapping his hands, broke into another song.

Jualapa is near. Yes, Jualapa is near. Not like Marumba.
We will eat meat in Jualapa. Much meat. Much meat.
The men of Little Belly will eat meat in Jualapa.

"Shut your silly head, Merrylegs," cried Roger angrily. The song broke off. Merrylegs began to tell the bow-oar what meat there would be in Jualapa. He said that there would be cattle, and perhaps a diseased cow among them. The rowing seemed to freshen a little. The boat dragged on a little quicker.

"How are you, Lionel?" Roger asked. It was a foolish question.

"Oh, for God's sake don't ask silly questions," said Lionel very weakly. "Do leave me alone."

For answer, Roger gently renewed the compress round the sick man's head. From the thirst which was torturing him he guessed that his fever's hot fit would soon begin. He prayed that it might keep off until they had reached the smoke. They were probably nearing some village. They might camp at the village. Only he would have to be well when they reached the village. He would have to get Lionel ashore, into some comfortable hut. He would have to feed him there with some strong comforting broth. Before he could do that, he would have to see the village headman. He would have to look after the bearers. The boat would have to be moored. Some of her gear would have to be unloaded.

There could be no thought of going on, upstream, to Jualapa, in their present state. A native had told them, the day before, that Jualapa, three days' journey upstream, was stricken with sleeping sickness. "All were sleeping," he said. "Men, women, and little children. The cattle were not milked at Jualapa." It was the first time that they had heard of the disease since leaving the coast. They had decided to attempt Jualapa.

They were both suffering from fever. They would have been glad to camp for a few days before pushing on; but Lionel forbade it. The rowers were getting homesick. Three of them had contracted dysentery. He felt that if they called a halt anywhere their men would desert them. The important thing was to push on, he said, to carry the men so far that they would be afraid to run. If the men deserted after the leaders had engaged the disease, well and good, there would be the work to do. But if they deserted before that, the expedition would end before Roger took his first lumbar puncture. It was the last sensible decision Lionel had been able to make. His fever had recurred within the hour. Since then he had been dangerously ill, so ill, and with such violent changes of temperature, that his weakness, now that the fever lifted, frightened Roger.

Roger shook and chattered, trying to think. He was ill; so ill that he could not think clearly. The horrible part of it, to him, was to be just clear enough in his head to fear to change Lionel's decision. He wanted to change for Lionel's sake; but with this fever smouldering in his brain, surging and lifting, like a hot blast withering him, the plan seemed august, like a law of the Medes and Persians. He was afraid of changing. At last, in a momentary clearing of the head, he made up his mind to change. He would anchor. They would halt at the smoke. They would land and camp. Nothing could be done till the leaders were cured. If the men deserted, he would trust to luck to be able to hire new men. He could not go on like this; Lionel might die. The fever closed in upon his mind again, surging and withering. The air seemed strangely thick. Merrylegs wavered and blurred. The boat grounded on a mud-bank, and brushed past some many-shimmering reeds with a long swish. The dying negro, stirred by some memory, which the noise had awakened in him, raised himself faintly, asking something. He fell back faint, closing his eyes, then opening them. He beat with one hand, jabbering the name Mpaka. His teeth clenched. He was in the death agony. One of the stroke-oars, clambering over the boxes in the stern-sheets, beat the dying man upon the chest. He was beating out the devil, he explained. He soon grew tired. He shouted in the sick man's ear, laughed delightedly at his groans, and went forward to explain his prowess. He broke out into a song about it.

Kilemba has a big devil in his belly.
Big devil eat up Kilemba. Eat all up.
But Muafi a strong man. Very strong man. Devil no good.
Not eat Muafi.

They swept round a bend, where crocodiles, like great worm-casts, sunned and nuzzled, with mud caking off their bellies. The boat passed into a broad, above which, the hill like a Roman camp rose up. Pink cranes stood in the shallows. Slowly, one of them rose aloft, heavily flagging. Another rose, then another, then another, till they made a pinkish ribbon against the forest. Following the line of their flight Roger saw a few delicate deer leave their pasture, startled by the starting of the cranes. They moved off daintily, looking uneasily behind them. Soon they broke into a run.

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.