The supper we provided in haste from our tinned store was greatly appreciated. Hands dived into the apricot or sardine tin as their choice selected—and when they left hours later, volleys were fired from the mainland, which, as I had gone to bed and was fast asleep, woke me up with a bewildering start.
September, 1921. In Camp. Mexico.
The strange Anglo-French-Dutch-American anarchist whom we sent, sullen and protesting from our camp, must have cursed us, as he went. He is the seventh child of a seventh child, and what he knows—he knows.
I think he cursed the Canadian, who sent him back. Cursed me for getting him sent. Cursed Dick for being mine. The very next day after his departure the Canadian had fever, and a temperature of 104. Dick had a suppurating bloodshot eye and could not see, and I went to bed with some mysterious poisoning which may be of an insect or of a weed, but cannot be identified.
That was seven days ago. I am still in bed, suffering as if I had been scalded. A cradle over me, of reeds, protects me from the unbearable touch even of the sheet.
The Canadian for whose life we feared at one moment, wanders about, still with a high temperature, lies restlessly on the river bank, gasping for air and praying for ice.
Dick is able to go out today, but with a bandage. It is a dreadful anti-climax, this last week of our camping days. For a month everything has been so perfect. One had not reckoned on the snake in Paradise.
A doctor came 20 kilometers on mule-back. He stayed the night and doctored us all, but without any apparent result.
I feel as though I were on fire, and I am nearly mad. At first I could drag myself to the river and plunge in and get temporary relief, but for two days now the river has been in flood; muddy, opaque, and raging; two nights of thunder-storms achieved this result. Storms, which relieved for me the endless monotony of a sleepless night.
I have my bed close up to the open tent flap, and I could see the land lit up by lightning flashes that lasted sometimes a minute at a time. The thunder was stupendous; if it could have been linked to music it would have been super-Wagnerian; it rethundered from mountain-side to mountain-side, followed by a death-like lull.