They walked along the Strand together.
"Anti-toxins must wait," said Roger, as they stopped before crossing Wellington Street. "The first thing we had better do is to go for a long tramp together, to see how we get along."
"We might charter a boat, and try to get round the north of Ireland," said Lionel. "Dublin to Moville. It would be a thorough eye-opener. Then we might walk on round the coast to Killybegs. Old Hamlin will be back by the end of August. He would prescribe you a course of study. We might do some reading together."
In the Strand, outside Simpson's, a procession of dirty boys followed a dirty drunkard who was being taken to Bow Street by two policemen. Newsboys, with debased, predatory faces, peered with ophthalmic eyes into betting news. Other symptoms of disease passed.
"Plenty of disease here," said Roger.
"All preventable," said Lionel. "Only we're not allowed to prevent it. People here would rather have it by them to reform. Science won't mix with sentiment, thank God!" They entered Simpson's.
VIII
And here will I, in honour of thy love,
Dwell by thy grave, forgetting all those joys
That former times made precious to mine eyes.
The Faithful Shepherdess.
Ten months later Roger sat swathed in blankets under mosquito netting, steering a boat upstream. He was in the cold fit of a fever. The bows of the boat were heaped with the cages of laboratory animals and with boxes, on the top of which a negro sat, singing a song. The singer clapped gravely with his hands to mark the time. "Marumba is very far away," he sang. "Yes. It is far away, and nobody ever got there." At times, pausing in his song to lift a hand to Roger, he pointed out a snag or shoal. At other times the rowers, lifting their paddles wearily, sang for a few bars in chorus, about the bones on the road to Marumba. Then the chorus died; the paddles splashed; the tholes grunted. The boat lagged on into the unknown, up the red, savage river, which loitered, and steamed, and stank, like a river of a beginning earth.