He said: “A Scotsman.” For a moment he could say no more, and all the time Eva was realising what a pitiable creature he was, with his torn, dusty face, his empty left sleeve and the other dangling arm. As a matter of fact, this alarming introduction had come as a reassurance to both of them.
At last he spoke: “First of all, if you don’t mind, water. I’ve had none for . . . it’s difficult to remember. The arm was ten days ago. If you can get a little . . . water” (it came out like that) “I can manage. You can put it in my hat.”
Now all her nervousness had gone. The forest, which had been a horror, became suddenly quite friendly. She took his greasy hat and walked away into the darkness; and in one of those poisonous creeks of the swamp she filled it with water that was as thick as coffee. On her return the black mouth greeted her with a smile that was altogether charming.
But it was a terrible thing to see him drink the filthy stuff. “You could feel,” she said, “the dryness of his throat.” He must have seen, for all the darkness, the pity in her eyes, for he hastened to explain that matters weren’t nearly as bad as they might have been. “The arm,” he said, “is nothing, a piece of bad luck. Time will mend it. But unless you are in some way a prodigy it is something of a handicap to have to do without hands.” Although the position had been desperately serious, and he wasn’t much of a hand at joking, he wanted to make a joke of it. He didn’t know much about women . . . that sort of woman at any rate; and this made him unusually anxious to be gentle with her. Besides, a man who is on the point of dying with thirst in the middle of Africa at night does not expect to fall in with a woman walking hatless and unarmed. He knew that something unusual was doing; he knew that she too was in trouble. And obviously he was going to help her. In the middle of Africa people help one another without asking questions: in their relations there appears a certain delicacy which sits particularly well on such a villainous-looking person as Hare was then. So he asked her nothing of herself. In a moment or two, his strength reviving, according to its obstinate wont, like that of a cut flower that had been given water, he sat up in the path. She glowed to see him better; two sick men would have been rather a large order.
“This is the M’ssente Swamp?” he asked at length. She answered: “Yes.”
“And the M’ssente runs into the Ruwu. Yes. . . . We’re about a hundred miles from the railway. Up above there are rubber plantations. Yours, I suppose?”
She told him that they belonged to a German, Godovius.
“Godovius?”
She tried “Sakharani.”
“Now I have it,” he said slowly. “Of course. A Jew. I know all about Mr. Godovius. . . . I’ve heard from the Masai. Sakharani. . . . Yes. And you are living on his estate?”