And this man—the mighty warrior whose name was as good as an army in Central Africa—went down on his knees one night to Guy Oscard, imploring him to abandon the Simiacine Plateau, or at all events to allow him to go down to Loango with Meredith and Joseph.
“No,” said Oscard; “Meredith held this place for us when he could have left it safely. He has held it for a year. It is our turn now. We will hold it for him. I am going to stay, and you have to stay with me.”
For Jack Meredith, life was at this time nothing but a constant, never-ceasing fatigue. When Oscard helped him into the rough litter they had constructed for his comfort, he laid his head on the pillow, overcome with a dead sleep.
“Good-bye, old chap,” said Oscard, patting him on the shoulder.
“G'bye;” and Jack Meredith turned over on his side as if he were in bed, drew up the blanket, and closed his eyes. He did not seem to know where he was, and, what was worse, he did not seem to care. Oscard gave the signal to the bearers, and the march began. There is something in the spring of human muscles unlike any other motive power; the power of thought may be felt even on the pole of a litter, and one thing that modern invention can never equal is the comfort of being carried on the human shoulder. The slow swinging movement came to be a part of Jack Meredith's life—indeed, life itself seemed to be nothing but a huge journey thus peacefully accomplished. Through the flapping curtains an endless procession of trees passed before his half-closed eyes. The unintelligible gabble of the light-hearted bearers of his litter was all that reached his ears. And ever at his side was Joseph—cheerful, indefatigable, resourceful. There was in his mind one of the greatest happinesses of life—the sense of something satisfactorily accomplished—the peacefulness that comes when the necessity for effort is past and left behind—that lying down to rest which must surely be something like Death in its kindest form.
The awe inspired by Victor Durnovo's name went before the little caravan like a moral convoy and cleared their path. Thus guarded by the name of a man whom he hated, Jack Meredith was enabled to pass through a savage country literally cast upon a bed of sickness.
In due course the river was reached, and the gentle swing of the litter was changed for the smoother motion of the canoe. And it was at this period of the journey—in the forced restfulness of body entailed—that Joseph's mind soared to higher things, and he determined to write a letter to Sir John.
He was, he admitted even to himself, no great penman, and his epistolary style tended, perhaps, more to the forcible than to the finished.
“Somethin',” he reflected, “that'll just curl his back hair for 'im; that's what I'll write 'im.”
Msala had been devastated, and it was within the roofless walls of Durnovo's house that Joseph finally wrote out laboriously the projected capillary invigorator.