"Any more of my people dead?"
"I know not."
"Enough." I looked sympathetically at the Doctor, and he replied,
"I told you so. When you described him to me as a drunken man, I knew he could not live. Men who have been habitual drunkards cannot live in this country, any more than men who have become slaves to other vices. I attribute the deaths that occurred in my expedition on the Zambezi to much the same cause."
"Ah, Doctor, there are two of us gone. I shall be the third, if this fever lasts much longer."
"Oh no, not at all. If you would have died from fever, you would have died at Ujiji when you had that severe attack of remittent. Don't think of it. Your fever now is only the result of exposure to wet. I never travel during the wet season. This time I have travelled because I was anxious, and I did not wish to detain you at Ujiji."
"Well, there is nothing like a good friend at one's back in this country to encourage him, and keep his spirits up. Poor Shaw! I am sorry—very sorry for him. How many times have I not endeavoured to cheer him up! But there was no life in him. And among the last words I said to him, before parting, were, 'Remember, if you return to Unyanyembe, you die!'"
We also obtained news from the chief of Sayd bin Habib's caravan that several packets of letters and newspapers, and boxes, had arrived for me from Zanzibar by my messengers and Arabs; that Selim, the son of Sheikh Hashid of Zanzibar, was amongst the latest arrivals in Unyanyembe. The Doctor also reminded me with the utmost good-nature that, according to his accounts, he had a stock of jellies and crackers, soups, fish, and potted ham, besides cheese, awaiting him in Unyanyembe, and that he would be delighted to share his good things; whereupon I was greatly cheered, and, during the repeated attacks of fever I suffered about this time, my imagination loved to dwell upon the luxuries at Unyanyembe. I pictured myself devouring the hams and crackers and jellies like a madman. I lived on my raving fancies. My poor vexed brain rioted on such homely things as wheaten bread and butter, hams, bacon, caviare, and I would have thought no price too high to pay for them. Though so far away and out of the pale of Europe and America, it was a pleasure to me, during the athumia or despondency into which I was plunged by ever recurring fevers, to dwell upon them. I wondered that people who had access to such luxuries should ever get sick, and become tired of life. I thought that if a wheaten loaf with a nice pat of fresh butter were presented to me, I would be able, though dying, to spring up and dance a wild fandango.
Though we lacked the good things of this life above named, we possessed salted giraffe and pickled zebra tongues; we had ugali made by Halimah herself; we had sweet potatoes, tea, coffee, dampers, or slap jacks; but I was tired of them. My enfeebled stomach, harrowed and irritated with medicinal compounds, with ipecac, colocynth, tartar-emetic, quinine, and such things, protested against the coarse food. "Oh, for a wheaten loaf!" my soul cried in agony. "Five hundred dollars for one loaf of bread!"
The Doctor, somehow or another, despite the incessant rain, the dew, fog, and drizzle, the marching, and sore feet, ate like a hero, and I manfully, sternly, resolved to imitate the persevering attention he paid to the welfare of his gastric powers; but I miserably failed.