XII
Let 'em be happy, and rest so contented,
They pay the tribute of their hearts and knees.
Thiery and Theodoret.
After passing some of his cultures through the filter, he injected subcutaneously the filtrate, composed of dead organisms and their toxins, into Lionel's arms and into his own. Taking one of the black-faced monkeys, which they had brought with them for the purpose, he shaved and cleansed a part of its neck, and injected a weak culture into the space prepared, after exposing the culture to a heat slightly below the heat necessary to kill the organisms. Into another monkey he injected a culture, weakened by a slight addition of carbolic. He had no great hope that the measure which he was preparing would be of use; he meant to try them all. "If I had had more time," he thought bitterly, "I might have succeeded." He had lost so much time in getting the culture to grow. As he sealed up the punctures with collodion, he said to himself that he had tried Lionel's cure, and that now he was free to try his own personal theories. He would kill some animal naturally immune, such as a wildebeest or a koodoo, and obtain serum from it direct, in as cleanly a manner as he could. Lionel had said that such a serum, so collected, would be useless and probably septic; but who cared for possible blood-poisoning when the alternative was certain death? Personally he would prefer a death by glanders to this drowsy dying. If he could disable an antelope, he might be able to obtain the blood by formal antiseptic methods in sterilised pots. It would be worth trying. He had taken serum from a horse in England. He knew the process. Unfortunately the heart of Africa is not like England, nor is a kicking, horned, wild beast, tearing the earth to tatters in the death-agony, like a staid and glossy horse neatly arranged to be tapped. "Besides," he thought, "the beast may be suffering from all manner of diseases, or it may hold germs in toleration which the blood of man could not tolerate. And how was he to go hunting with an equipment of sterile pots and pipes on his back?"
He liked the notion too well to be frightened by the difficulties. It offered the possibility of success; it gave him hope, and it kept his mind busily engaged. Even if he saw no wild game, the hunt would be a change to him. He was a moderately good rifle-shot. The foil was the only weapon at which he was really clever. As he looked to his rifle, he felt contempt for the unreality of his life in London. It had been a life presupposing an immense external artificiality. How little a thing upset it! How helpless he was when it had been upset. And what would happen to England when something upset London, and scattered its constituent poisons broadcast? He went out to the hunt.
The wind blew steadily from the direction of the forest. There was no chance of doing anything from that side. He could never approach game downwind. He would have to cross the river. He had never tried to cross the river. He did not even know if it were possible. The thought of the crocodiles and the mere sight of the swirling flood had kept him from examining the river. He had not been near it since he had sought with Lionel for the atoxyl bottles. What it looked like upstream he did not know. He went upstream to look for a ford.
At a little distance beyond the hill he came upon something which made him pause. The earth there had been torn into tracks by the waters of a recent thunder-storm. The cleanness of the cuttings reminded Roger of the little bog-bursts which he had seen in Ireland after excessive rains. In one of the tracks the rushing water had swept bare the paving of an ancient road, leaving it clear to the sky for about twenty yards. The road was of a hard even surface, like the flooring of a Zimbabwe. To the touch the surface was that of a very good cycling road in the best condition. The ruts of carts were faintly marked upon it in dents. The road seemed to have been made of hewn stones, covered over and bound with the powdered pounded granite used for the floors of the ruins. It was five of Roger's paces in breadth. The edges were channelled with gutters. Beyond the gutters were borders of small hewn blocks neatly arranged, so that the growths near the road might not spread over it. Judging by the direction of the uncovered part, the road entered the Zimbabwe through a gate in the west wall. In the other direction, away from the Zimbabwe, it led slantingly towards the river, keeping to the top of a ridge (possibly artificial), so as to avoid a low-lying tract still boggy from the flood. The river made a sharp bend at the point where the road impinged upon it. Below the bend the lie of the bank had an odd look, which recalled human endeavour even now, after the lapse of so many centuries. Greatly excited, Roger hurried up to look at the place.
It had been the port of the Zimbabwe. The bank had been cut away, so as to form a kind of dock. The stumps of the piles were still in the mud in places. They were strong, well-burnt wooden piles, such as are used for jetties everywhere. By the feel of the ground on the jetty top there was paved-work not far below it. A dig or two with a knife blade shewed that this was the case. The bank was paved like the road. Looking back towards the ruin, Roger could mark the track of the road running up to the wall. Even where it was overgrown he could tell its whereabouts by the comparative lightness of the colour of the grass upon it. Beyond the ruin, running almost straight to the south-east, he noticed a similar ribbon of light grass, marking another road. So this was a port, this Zimbabwe, a port at the terminus of a road. The road might lead direct to Ophir, whence Solomon obtained his ivory and apes and peacocks. Probably there were gold mines near at hand. This place, so quiet now, had once seen a gold-rush. The wharf there had been thronged by jostlers hurrying to the fields. The basin of ill-smelling red mud had once been full of ships. And what ships? What people? And when? "A brachycephalic people of clever gold-workers of unknown antiquity."
Just above the "port" the river was extremely narrow. Sticking out of the water in the narrow part were masses of masonry, which may at one time have served as the piers of a bridge. They were so close together that Roger crossed the river by them without difficulty. On the other side, as he had expected, the mark of the road was ruled in a dim line in the direction of the forest. The country was rougher on that side. The line of the road was marked less plainly.
Late that afternoon, after an exhausting stalk, he got two shots at what he took to be a koodoo[*] cow. He went forward out of heart, believing that both had missed. Bright blood on the grass shewed him that he had hit her. A little further on he found the cow down, with her hindquarters paralysed. She struggled to get up to face him, poor brute; but she was too hard hit; she was dying. When she had struggled a little, he was able to close with her, avoiding the great horns. He was even able to prepare the throat in some measure for the operation. Lastly, avoiding a final struggle, he contrived to sterilise his hands with a solution from one of the pots slung about him. The sight of his hands even after this made him despair of getting an uncontaminated serum. But there was no help for it. He took out the knife, made the incision in the throat, and inserted the sterilised tube.