"I remember having fever, and you or somebody messing around with a needle. But, five weeks, man! Five weeks. Come!"
"I tell you, you have. You've been unconscious half the time."
"Well. If I've had sleeping sickness, how comes it that I'm here, talking to you? You say yourself the atoxyl was lost."
"Lionel," said Roger, "I injected you with a dead culture. After that, I shot a couple of koodoos (if they were koodoos), a cow and a fawn. The fawn had nagana or something. I took sera from them, and injected the sera into both of us. Great big doses in both cases. I injected the sera into seven poor devils in the village, and they all swelled up and died. It was awful, Lionel. What makes people swell up?"
"I don't know," said Lionel. "I suppose it might be anthrax. Was there fever?"
"Intense pain, very high fever, and death apparently from exhaustion. And you and I swelled up a little; and I made sure yesterday that we were both going to die too. I wrote letters, and stuck them up on a bar inside there."
"Oh, so that was what the rod was for? I thought it was something funny. And now we are both cured?"
"Yes. My God, Lionel, I'm thankful to hear your voice again. You don't know what it's been."
They shook hands.
"You're a public benefactor," said Lionel. He looked hard at Roger. "I give you best," he added. "I thought you were a griff. But you've found a cure, it seems. Eh? Look at him. It's the first time he's realised it!"