During the afternoon a woman had arrived with a dead, monkey-like infant in her arms and a dilapidated little family clinging to her skirts, only herself to curl up and die in the heartbreaking fashion common to the stricken native, haplessly, silently, without struggle or protest. Before dawn the demon let loose among a weakened multitude had begun to pick off victims, here in a triangle, there in a semicircle, again in a neat zigzag, as if with mathematical malice and caprice....
Flint, roused at daybreak by the fatal news, worked for hours in conjunction with the medical officer, dosing, segregating, attending to the removal of the dead, striving to stem the panic that might drive the people to scatter over the countryside, spreading the disease. Then, after a hasty breakfast, he rode off to Miss Abigail's camp with the intention of urging Miss Baker to seek some other field of activity in view of the present danger. He encountered Laban, the Bible teacher, nervous and voluble, outside the principal tent, and was informed by him that the two ladies had gone forth the previous morning to visit a small outpost in connection with the Mission some few miles distant, having arranged to remain there for the night. They had not yet returned.
"This is a very bad sickness!" added Laban. "How shall we all escape with our lives—and my grandmother dying in Cawnpur, calling, and calling for my presence!"
"Meantime," suggested Philip, left cold in regard to the grandmother, "hadn't you better go and help with the children whose parents are dying or dead? There's a good supply of tinned milk, and it's got to be served out quickly."
The teacher's flabby brown face paled to a sickly hue. He swallowed hard, and his lips moved. Philip fancied he caught the word "photograph." Probably the wretched Laban, unable to divest himself of the fear that a portion of his spirit had already gone from him with the taking of his picture, felt he was doomed unless he could flee to his home.
"Look here, old chap," went on Flint, prompted by sympathetic understanding, "aren't you a soldier of Christ, ready to fight for your own people?"
He asked the question with a certain grim amusement at his own recourse to missionary diction; but presently the amusement turned to respectful admiration as Laban shivered, hesitated, then, without further ado or explanation, marched off in the direction of the camp.
Inwardly Flint salaamed to the shambling figure of this "soldier of Christ." He said to himself: "By Jove, that's a feather in the missionary cap!"
He had turned his horse's head, when the sight of a little cloud of dust in the distance caused him to halt, and out of the dust-cloud appeared a hooded bullock cart, crawling, bumping over the rough ground at a snail's pace. He waited, wondering how the energetic Miss Baker could bear with such leisurely travel, since patience was hardly one of her gifts. The bullocks must have taken hours covering the distance. When at last the vehicle pulled up at the camp a flushed and fuming young person scrambled from beneath the hood.