"You are," said Lionel, "you are. I'm dying to see the sort of rotten camp you'll make when you're left by yourself."
"Shut up," said Roger. "Shut up. I'm too ill to talk." The fever was whirling in him now. He could not trust himself to say more. He was near the delirious stage. He remembered smelling the smell of death, in a foul sultry blast, while Merrylegs said something about the kraal in the hollow. Looking, half-drowsed, to his left, he saw a kraal littered with dead and dying cattle, among which gorged vultures perched. Afterwards, he remembered the ruins of a wall, standing now about three feet high. It was built of good hewn stone, well laid, with one crenellated course just below its present top. He could never remember getting over the wall. There were many sunflowers. Immense orange sunflowers with limp wavy petals. Sunflowers growing out of a litter of neatly wrought stones. Mosquitoes came "pinging" about him, winding their sultry horns. Those little horns seemed to him to be the language of fever. They suggested things to him. The men were a long, long time pitching the tent. Something was wrong with one of the men. The other men were keeping apart from him. The beds with their nettings were ready at last. Fire was burning. Something with a smell of soup was being cooked. In his sick fancy it was the smell of something dead. He told them to take it away. He saw Lionel somewhere, much as a man at the point of death may see the doctor by his bedside. He could not be sure which of the two of them was the living one. Then there came a moment when he could not undo the fastening of his mosquito net. He saw his bed inside. He longed to be in bed. All this torture would be over directly he was in bed, wrapped up. But he could not get in. The bed was shut from him by the mosquito net. He wanted to get in. He would give the world to be in bed. But he did not know how he was to move the netting, everything smelt of death so strongly. It was very red everywhere, a smoky, whirling red, with violent lights. People were crossing the dusk, or rather not people, but streaks of darkness. They were making a great crying out. They were too noisy. Why could they not be quiet? He ceased to fumble at the net. He began to see an endless army of artillery going over a pass. The men were all dark; the guns were all painted black; the horses were black. They were going uphill endlessly, endlessly, endlessly. He cried out to them to stop that driving, to do anything rather than go on and on and on in that ghastly way. Instantly they changed to tsetses, riding on dying cattle. They were giant tsetses, with eyes like cannonballs. An infernal host of trypanosomes wriggled around them. The trypanosomes were wriggling all over him. A giant tsetse was forcing his mouth open with a hairy bill, so that the trypanosomes might wriggle down his throat. A flattened trypanosome, tasting as flabby as jelly, was swarming over his lips.
The fit passed off in the early morning, leaving him weak, but alert. Something was going to happen. The air was as close as a blast from a furnace. He sat up, holding by the tent-pole. He could see a star or two. He wished that the horrible smell would go. It seemed to be everywhere.
"Lionel," he said.
"Yes," said a faint voice.
"Have you slept?"
"Yes. I've had a long sleep. How are you?"
"The fit's gone. But I feel queer. Something's going to happen."
"It's very close. It will pass off before morning. Fever plays the devil with one, doesn't it?"
"Are you quite better now?"