Even when one is certain of something terrible, there is still a clinging to hope, a sense of the possibility of hope. Roger sitting there on the bed, staring at the restless body, had still a hope that he might be wrong. He dressed himself carefully, saying over and over again that he must keep a level head. There was still one test to apply. It was necessary to be certain. He got out the microscope, and sterilised a needle. When he was ready he punctured one of Lionel's glands, and blew out the matter on to a slide. Very anxiously, after preparing the slide for observation, he focussed the lens, and looked down onto the new, unsuspected world, bustling below him on the glass.
He was looking down on a strange world of discs, among which little wriggling wavy membranes, something like the tails of tadpoles, waved themselves slowly, and lashed out with a sort of whip-lash snout. Each had a dark little nucleus in his middle, and a minute spot near the anterior end. There was no room for hope in Roger's mind when he saw those little waving membranes, bustling actively, splitting, multiplying, lashing with their whips. They were trypanosomes in high activity. He watched them for a minute or two horrified by the bluntness and lowness of the organism, and by its blind power. It was a trembling membrane a thousandth part of an inch long. It had brought Lionel down to that restless body on the bed. It had reduced all Lionel's knowledge and charm and skill to a little plucking at the skin, a little tossing, a little babbling. It was the visible pestilence, the living seed of death, sown in the blood.
Roger made himself some tea. Having made it, he forced himself to eat, repeating that he must eat to keep strong, lest he should fail Lionel in any way. Food, and the hot diffusive stimulant, made him more cheerful. He told himself that Lionel was only in a fit of the frequently recurring trypanosome fever. After a day or two of fever he would come to again, weak, anæmic, and complaining of headache. A dose of atoxyl would destroy all the symptoms in a few hours. Even if he did not take the atoxyl, there was no certainty that the fever would turn to sleeping sickness. There was a chance of it; but no certainty. A doctor's first duty was to be confident. Well, he was going to be confident. He was going to pull Lionel through. He remembered a conversation between two Americans in a railway carriage. He had overheard them years before, while travelling south from Fleetwood. They were talking of a coming prize fight between two notorious boxers who, while training, spent much energy in contemning each other in the Press, threatening each other with annihilation, of the most final kind. "Them suckers chew the rag fit to beat the band," said one of the men. "Why cain't they give it a rest? Let 'em slug each other good, in der scrap. De hell wid dis chin music."
"Aw git off," said the other. "Them quitters, if they didn't talk hot air till dey believed it, dey'd never git near der ring."
He had always treasured the conversation in his memory. He thought of it now. Perhaps if doctors did not force themselves "to talk hot air" till their patients believed it, very few patients would ever leave their beds. He cleared away the breakfast things and made the house tidy. He gave Lionel an extra pillow. Then he went out into the morning to think of what he should do.
When he got out into the air he remembered the two patients. It was his duty now to dose them and give them food. All that he had to do was to walk to their hut, see that they ate their breakfast, and give them each a blue pill afterwards. The drug would have taken a stronger hold during the night, and the action of atoxyl is magical even in bad cases. He expected to find them alert and lively, changed by the drug's magic to two intelligent merry negroes. It was not too much to hope, perhaps. He prayed that it might be so. There was nothing for which he longed so much as for some strong evidence of the power of atoxyl to arrest the disease. He topped the rise and looked down on his handiwork.
All was quiet in the clumsy hut. The negroes were not stirring. Roger was vaguely perplexed when he saw that they were not about. Even if they were no better than they had been the day before they ought still to be up and sunning. He wondered what had happened. A fear that the drug had failed him mingled with his memory of a book about man-eating lions. He broke into a run.
He had only to push aside the tarpaulin which served for door to see that the two patients had gone. When they had gone, there was no means of knowing; but gone they were. They had gone at a time when there had been light enough for them to see the biscuits and the bucket; for biscuits and bucket were gone with them. He could see no trace of the two men on the wide savannah which rolled away below him. He supposed that some homing instinct had sent them back to the village. He was cheered by the thought. They had been cured within two days. They had been changed from oafish lumps into thinking beings. Now he would cure Lionel in the same way. As he hurried back to "Portobe," he was thankful that some of the drug remained to them. He would have been in a strange quandary had they used all the drug two days before.