There's a lean fellow beats all conquerors.
Old Fortunatus.
When he began to prepare to give the injection, he could not find the atoxyl bottle. He searched anxiously through the hut for it, but could not find it. It was an unmistakable glass bottle, half-full of distilled water, at the bottom of which lay some of the white sediment as yet undissolved. The bottle bore a square white label, marked ATOXYL in big capitals, printed by Lionel with a blue pencil. Roger could not see it anywhere. He looked in all the boxes, one after the other. He looked in the gun-cases, under the folds of the tent, in the chinks and crannies, everywhere. It was not there. When he had searched the hut twice from end to end, in different directions, he decided that it was not there. His next thought was that it must have been left in the hut with the two patients, and that the patients must have carried it off as treasure trove. In that case, perhaps, it would be gone forever. He would have noticed it that morning had it been still in the hut. Then he thought that it might still be in the hut. It might have been put behind a box. He might have failed to see it. It was necessary to make certain. He hurried to the hut and searched it through. A couple of minutes of searching shewed him that the bottle was not there.
He racked his brains, trying to think what had become of it. When had he last seen it? Lionel and he had been at the hut during the preceding afternoon. They had staked in the uprights of the shelter; and had then knocked off for a rest, as Lionel was not feeling well. During the rest he (Roger) had brought the atoxyl from "Portobe," and had given the second injection to the two patients. So much was clear. What had happened then? He tried to remember. After that he had gone on with the building, while Lionel had rested. He distinctly remembered Lionel sitting down on the wall-top with the atoxyl bottle in his hands. What had he done with it after that? Surely he had taken it back with him to "Portobe"? In any case there could be no doubt that Lionel had been the last to touch it. Lionel had taken the bottle to put it away; and it seemed now only too likely that he had put it away in a place where no one else could find it.
Roger tried to remember exactly how ill Lionel had been when he had gone back to "Portobe." He remembered that he had been flushed and peevish, but he could not remember any symptoms of light-headedness. He had crept off alone while Roger was fixing a roof-ridge. Roger, suddenly noticing that he had gone, had followed him to "Portobe," and had found him sitting vacantly on the floor, staring with unseeing eyes. It was certain that the atoxyl bottle was not with him then.
"If that were so," said Roger to himself, "he must have dropped it or put it down between 'Portobe' and this. Here is where he was sitting. This is the path by which he walked. Is the bottle anywhere on the path, or near it?" It was not. Careful search showed that it was not. "Well," said Roger to himself, "he must have thrown it away. The fever made him desperate or peevish for a moment, and he has thrown it away. Where could he have thrown it?"
Unfortunately there was a wide expanse over which he might have thrown it. If he had thrown it downhill it might have rolled far, after hitting the ground. If he had thrown it uphill, it might have got hidden or smashed among the loose stones from the ruins. Having satisfied himself that Lionel for the moment was not appreciably worse, Roger started down the village to find his two patients. He thought that if they could be made to understand what was missing, the search for the bottle might be made by three pairs of eyes instead of by one. Some possibility, or, to be more exact, some hope of a possibility, of the bottle being in the possession of the patients, occurred to him. The thought that perhaps Lionel's life depended on the caprice of two cheerful negro-boys made him tremble.
There was no trace of the patients in the village. They were not there, nor was Roger enough skilled in tracking to know whether they had been there. As they were not there, he could only suppose that, on finding themselves whole, among the wreck of their tribe, they had set out to follow their fellows by the tracks left by the cattle. He thought it possible that they might return soon, in a day or two, if not that very day. But there was not much chance of their returning with the atoxyl bottle, even if they had set out with it. He figured to himself the progression of a bottle in the emotional estimation of a negro who had never before seen one. First, it would appear as a rich treasure, something to be boldly stolen, but fearfully prized. Then it would appear as something with cubic capacity, possibly containing potables. Then, after sampling of the potable, in this case unpleasant, it would be emptied. Its final position ranged between the personal ornament and the cock-shy. Meanwhile, Roger had the sick to feed.
After that he returned to Lionel. Lionel's temperature had dropped slightly, but he was hardly conscious yet. Roger left him while he began the weary, fruitless search over a space of Africa a hundred yards long by eighty broad. He measured a space forty yards on each side of the track between the hut and "Portobe." If the bottle had been thrown away, it had been thrown away within that space. It was unlikely to have fallen more than forty yards from the track. A squat short-necked bottle is not an easy thing to throw. If it were not there, then he would have to conclude that the patients had taken it. It was a long, exhausting search. It was as wearisome as the search for lost ball at cricket. But in this case the seeker knew that his comrade's life depended on his success. He paced to and fro, treading over every inch of the measured ground, beating it beneath his feet, stamping to scare the snakes, feeling his blood leap whenever he struck a stone. The sun filled earth and sky with wrinklings of brass and glass at white, tremulous heat, oozing in discs from his vortex of spilling glare. Many times in the agony of that search Roger had to break off to look to Lionel, and to drink from the canvas bucket of boiled water. He prayed that Lionel might recover consciousness, if only for a minute, so that he might tell him in which direction the bottle had been flung. But Lionel did not recover consciousness. He lay in his bed, muttering to himself, talking nonsense in a little, low, indifferent voice. The most that Roger could say for him was that he was quieter. His hands were quieter; his voice was quieter. It was nothing to be thankful for. It meant merely that the patient was weaker.
After it was over, Roger thought that his search for the lost bottle was the best thing he had ever done. He had trampled carefully over every inch of the measured ground. He had taken no chances, he had neglected no possible hole nor tussock. A wide space of trodden grass and battered shrub testified to the thoroughness of his painful hunt. And all was useless. The bottle was not there. The atoxyl was lost.
Once before, several years past, Roger had watched the approaching death of one intimately known. He had seen his drunken father dying. He had not loved his father; he had felt little grief for him. But the sight of him dying woke in him a blind pity for all poor groping human souls, "who work themselves such wrong" in a world so beautiful given for so short a time. He had looked on that death as though it were a natural force, grave and pitiless as wisdom, hiding some erring thing which had been at variance from it. He had thought of Ottalie's death, down in the cabin, among the wreck of the supper-tables. In his mind he had seen Ottalie, so often, flung down on to the rank of revolving chairs, and struggling up with wild eyes, but with noble courage even then, to meet the flood shocking in to end her. That death seemed a monstrous, useless horror to him. Now a link which bound him to Ottalie was about to snap. He was watching the sick-bed of a man who had often talked with her, a man, who had known her intimately. Lionel, with the simple, charming spirit, so like in so many ways what Ottalie would have been had she been born a man, was mortally sick. The sight of him lying there unconscious struck him to the heart. That mumbling body on the bed was his friend, his dear comrade, a link binding him to everything which he cherished. A veil was being drawn across his friend's mind. He was watching it come closer and closer, and the house within grow dark. In a little while it would be drawn down close, shutting in the life forever. If he did not act at once it would be too late; Lionel would die. If Lionel were to die, he would be alone in Africa, with that thing on the bed.