He looked on the ground. He felt in all his pockets. He looked at the boy, who said nothing. He therefore dismissed the patient without mentioning his loss.
Whilst washing the greasy gold stuff off his hands, Warner was conscious of a hum of excitement rising from the spot where his natives had made their midday shelter. Trick No. 10 was evidently a success. The hospital orderly was right; he had surprised the natives.
That night all his boys, and a score of strange natives besides, came to Warner complaining of pains. Each one had a strip of bark tied tightly round his forehead, a second round his chest, and a third round his stomach. They lingered as if dissatisfied when he gave pills to each—one or more as ordered by the physician—taken at random from his many little pill boxes.
Iodine.
Warner was sitting under a tree on the south bank of the Zambesi, watching the local natives floating his waggon across the stream. He was wondering how long, at the present rate of progression, it would take to get the whole of his stuff across. Two days, three, perhaps more.
"Sir, my felicitations upon the indefectibility of the climatology."
The startled Warner looked round and saw a black man very stout and short, in European clothes and perspiring freely. He carried his large elastic-sided boots in his hand and a black alpaca coat over his arm.
As Warner turned towards him, this strange creature politely lifted his ridiculously small sun helmet. It could not be said that he bowed to the white man, but the braces which he wore over his waistcoat sagged slightly in front and became taut behind, whilst the crease which represented the highest contour of his stomach deepened a little. Warner gaped stupidly at the man. He made mental note of the large gold spectacles astride the fat, flat nose; the collar, once white and starched, now grubby and collapsed; the heavy brass watchchain stretched tightly across the ample space between pocket and pocket; the badly creased loud check trousers, and the dirty white socks; the large green umbrella which, held to shield the back, framed face and form.
Warner forgot the man's ridiculous speech in his more ridiculous appearance.
"As I ventured to remark, sir, although the orb of day smiles down with radiance from the firmament, the temperamental calidity is not unendurable."