Recalling the words which the heavy soul heareth
No more.
"Ah, but love's blossom can ne'er bloom again, love,
Withered and brown it lies dead in my heart,
There let it faded and broken remain, love,
We must live ever while years wax and wane, love,
Apart."
At the entrance to a tent a man sat silent, watching the setting sun. A wild scene, truly, far beyond the bounds of civilization, where the foot of the white man had never trodden before, where the savage tribes had lived since the first of Time in primeval simplicity, where Nature, with lavish hand, spread her uncultured luxuriance in forest, in mountain, and in plain, under a burning, tropical sky. It was a scene far in the interior of Africa, that mysterious continent, which has yet to yield up her secrets to the dogged curiosity of European races.
The man was reading a letter, a letter that had come through swamp, through jungle, over mountains, across plains, by the hands of savage carriers, the last letter he would receive before plunging still deeper into the unknown lands beyond, the last link that bound him to civilization--a letter from home.
Inside the tent, another man was also reading letters, from friends and club companions, which gave him all the latest gossip of that London, now so far away, but he read them lightly, and tossed them aside with a careless hand. The man outside, however, had only one letter, and, as he read it, his eyes grew moist, blinding him so much that he could not see the writing, and looking up, gazed at the scene before him through a blurred mist of tears.