They crossed the swift and turbid Luama river, and encamped for a night upon its shores. And then came the harassing march in single file through the dense jungle—a hopeless monotony of rank foliage taller than the tallest of the travellers, a coarse and monstrous vegetation which lashed their faces and rent their clothing and caught their feet like wire snares set for poachers. Vain was it to put the porters with their loads in the forefront of the procession. The rank inexorable jungle closed behind them as they passed; and a four-hours' march through this pitiless scrub was worse than a ten-hours' tramp in the open.
The days were sultry. The travellers deemed themselves lucky if the evening closed without a thunderstorm; and the storms in those regions were deadly. A fired roof and a blackened corpse in a hut next that occupied by the three friends testified to the awfulness of an African thunderstorm. The thatch blazed, the neighbours looked on, and the husband of the victim sat beside the disfigured form in a curious indifference, which might mean either bewilderment or want of feeling.
"Twenty years ago the catastrophe next door would have been assuredly put down to our account," said Patrington, as they sat at supper after the storm, "and we should have had to pay for that poor lady with our persons or our goods—our goods, for choice, so much merikani, or so many strings of sami sami. But since the advent of the Arabs, reason has begun to prevail over unreason. The influence of Islam makes for civilization."
They found the people of Manyema, the reputed man-eaters, friendly, and willing to deal. Provisions were cheap. Fowls, eggs, maize, and sweet potatoes were to be had in abundance. The natives were civil, but curious and intrusive; and the sound of Geoffrey's amati was the signal for a crowd round the camping-place, a crowd that could only be dispersed by the sight of a revolver, the nature of which weapon seemed very clearly understood by these warriors of the lance and the knife. When the admiring throng waxed intrusive, and the black faces and filthy figures crowded the verandah, Cecil Patrington took out his pistols, and gave them a little lecture in their native tongue, with the promise of an illustration or two if they should refuse to depart.
Or, were Geoffrey in the humour, he would push his way, playing, through that savage throng, and, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, would lead those human rats away towards hill or stream, jungle or plain, playing, playing some diabolical strain of Tartini's, or some still wilder war-song of the new Sclavonic school—Stojowski, Moszkowski, Wienianwowski—something thrilling, plaintive, frightening, appealing, which set those savage breasts on fire, and turned those savage heads like strong drink.
"One shall be taken and the other left." That text would flash across Geoffrey Wornock's thoughts at the unlikeliest moments. It might have been a fiery scroll projected on the dark cloud-line of the thunderous eventide. It might have been the sharp shrill cry of some bird crossing the blue above his head, so unexpectedly, so strangely did the words recur to him. So far, in all the vicissitudes of the journey, the little band had held firmly on, with less than the average amount of suffering and inconvenience. There had been desertion, there had been death among their men; but on the Unyamwesi route it had been easy to repair all such losses, and their Wanyamwesis were in most respects the superiors of the Wangana they had lost by the way.
So far, despite of some baddish bouts of fever, the dark, inexorable Shadow had held aloof. The dread of death had not been beside their camp-fires or about their bed.
But now, in this region of tropical fertility, amidst a paradise of luxuriant verdure, sheltered by the vast mountain citadel that rises like a titanic wall above the western border of the Tanganyika, they came upon a spot where the fever-fiend, the impalpable, invisible, inexorable enemy reigned supreme. Geoffrey was the first to feel the poisonous influence of the atmosphere. He laid down his fiddle, and flung himself upon his bed, with aching back and weary limbs, one evening, after a day of casual roaming along the banks of a tributary stream.
"I've been walking about too long," he said. "That's all that there is the matter with me."