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.
He awoke in the early morning, feeling as though his bones had been taken out. His mouth had a taste as though brown paper had been burnt in it. Wafts of foul smell passed over him as each fresh gust blew in at the doorway. Something was the matter with his eyes. He had an obscurity of vision. He could not see properly. Things changed and merged into each other. He lifted a hand to brush away the distorting film. He was thirsty. He was too weak to define more clearly what he wanted; it was not water; it was not food; it was not odour; but a bitter, pungent, astringent something which would be all three to him. He wanted something which would cleanse his mouth, supplant this foulness in his nostrils, and nerve the jelly of his marrow. Weakly desiring this potion, he fell asleep from exhaustion. He woke much refreshed after a sleep of about eight hours.
When he looked about him, he saw that Lionel was still unconscious. He was lying there uneasily, muttering and restless, with a much-flushed face. His hands were plucking and scratching at his chest. There was that about him which suggested high fever. Roger hurriedly brought a thermometer and took the sick man's temperature. It had sunk to less than 100°. He thrust aside the pyjama coat, and felt the heart with his finger. The pulse was beating with something of the batting motion of a guttering electric light. The chest was inflamed, with a slight reddish rash.
Roger sat down upon his bed and took a few deep breaths to steady himself. Afterwards he remembered telling himself in a loud, clear voice that he would have to go into this with a clear head, a very clear head. He swilled his head with water from the bucket. When he felt competent he remembered another and more certain symptom. He advanced to the sick man and looked anxiously at his throat glands. He had braced himself for the shock; but it was none the less severe when it came. The glands were visibly swollen. They were also very tender to the touch. Lionel had relapsed. He was suffering from trypanosomiasis. The disease was on him.
Roger passed the next few minutes biting his lips. From time to time he went back to the bed to look at the well-known symptoms. He was sure, only too sure, but each time he went he prayed to God that he might be mistaken. He went over these symptoms in his mind. High temperature, a rapid pulse, the glands of the neck swollen, a rash on the chest, hands, or shoulders, a flushed face, and feeble movements. There was no doubting the symptoms. Lionel was in a severe relapse.
Even when one is certain of something terrible, there is still a clinging to hope, a sense of the possibility of hope. Roger sitting there on the bed, staring at the restless body, had still a hope that he might be wrong. He dressed himself carefully, saying over and over again that he must keep a level head. There was still one test to apply. It was necessary to be certain. He got out the microscope, and sterilised a needle. When he was ready he punctured one of Lionel's glands, and blew out the matter on to a slide. Very anxiously, after preparing the slide for observation, he focussed the lens, and looked down onto the new, unsuspected world, bustling below him on the glass.
He was looking down on a strange world of discs, among which little wriggling wavy membranes, something like the tails of tadpoles, waved themselves slowly, and lashed out with a sort of whip-lash snout. Each had a dark little nucleus in his middle, and a minute spot near the anterior end. There was no room for hope in Roger's mind when he saw those little waving membranes, bustling actively, splitting, multiplying, lashing with their whips. They were trypanosomes in high activity. He watched them for a minute or two horrified by the bluntness and lowness of the organism, and by its blind power. It was a trembling membrane a thousandth part of an inch long. It had brought Lionel down to that restless body on the bed. It had reduced all Lionel's knowledge and charm and skill to a little plucking at the skin, a little tossing, a little babbling. It was the visible pestilence, the living seed of death, sown in the blood.
Roger made himself some tea. Having made it, he forced himself to eat, repeating that he must eat to keep strong, lest he should fail Lionel in any way. Food, and the hot diffusive stimulant, made him more cheerful. He told himself that Lionel was only in a fit of the frequently recurring trypanosome fever. After a day or two of fever he would come to again, weak, anæmic, and complaining of headache. A dose of atoxyl would destroy all the symptoms in a few hours. Even if he did not take the atoxyl, there was no certainty that the fever would turn to sleeping sickness. There was a chance of it; but no certainty. A doctor's first duty was to be confident. Well, he was going to be confident. He was going to pull Lionel through. He remembered a conversation between two Americans in a railway carriage. He had overheard them years before, while travelling south from Fleetwood. They were talking of a coming prize fight between two notorious boxers who, while training, spent much energy in contemning each other in the Press, threatening each other with annihilation, of the most final kind. "Them suckers chew the rag fit to beat the band," said one of the men. "Why cain't they give it a rest? Let 'em slug each other good, in der scrap. De hell wid dis chin music."
"Aw git off," said the other. "Them quitters, if they didn't talk hot air till dey believed it, dey'd never git near der ring."
He had always treasured the conversation in his memory. He thought of it now. Perhaps if doctors did not force themselves "to talk hot air" till their patients believed it, very few patients would ever leave their beds. He cleared away the breakfast things and made the house tidy. He gave Lionel an extra pillow. Then he went out into the morning to think of what he should do.
When he got out into the air he remembered the two patients. It was his duty now to dose them and give them food. All that he had to do was to walk to their hut, see that they ate their breakfast, and give them each a blue pill afterwards. The drug would have taken a stronger hold during the night, and the action of atoxyl is magical even in bad cases. He expected to find them alert and lively, changed by the drug's magic to two intelligent merry negroes. It was not too much to hope, perhaps. He prayed that it might be so. There was nothing for which he longed so much as for some strong evidence of the power of atoxyl to arrest the disease. He topped the rise and looked down on his handiwork.
All was quiet in the clumsy hut. The negroes were not stirring. Roger was vaguely perplexed when he saw that they were not about. Even if they were no better than they had been the day before they ought still to be up and sunning. He wondered what had happened. A fear that the drug had failed him mingled with his memory of a book about man-eating lions. He broke into a run.
He had only to push aside the tarpaulin which served for door to see that the two patients had gone. When they had gone, there was no means of knowing; but gone they were. They had gone at a time when there had been light enough for them to see the biscuits and the bucket; for biscuits and bucket were gone with them. He could see no trace of the two men on the wide savannah which rolled away below him. He supposed that some homing instinct had sent them back to the village. He was cheered by the thought. They had been cured within two days. They had been changed from oafish lumps into thinking beings. Now he would cure Lionel in the same way. As he hurried back to "Portobe," he was thankful that some of the drug remained to them. He would have been in a strange quandary had they used all the drug two days before.