Farris welcomed the small practical problem that took his thoughts for a moment away from this frozen, standing horror.
“We can rig a stretcher, from our jackets,” he said. “I’ll cut a couple of poles.”
The two bamboos, through the sleeves of the two jackets, made a makeshift stretcher which they laid upon the ground.
Farris lifted Berreau. The man’s body was rigid, muscles locked in an effort no less strong because it was infinitely slow.
He got the young Frenchman down on the stretcher, and then looked at the girl. “Can you help carry him? Or will you get a native?”
She shook her head. “The tribesmen mustn’t know of this. Andre isn’t heavy.”
He wasn’t. He was light as though wasted by fever, though the sickened Farris knew that it wasn’t any fever that had done it.
Why should a civilized young botanist go out into the forest and partake of a filthy primitive drug of some kind that slowed him down to a frozen stupor? It didn’t make sense.
Lys bore her share of their living burden through the gathering twilight, in stolid silence. Even when they put Berreau down at intervals to rest, she did not speak.
It was not until they reached the dark bungalow and had put him down on his bed, that the girl sank into a chair and buried her face in her hands.