"I've had a bad night," he confessed; "the kind of night that lets one know one has a head belonging to one. But the men can carry me in a litter. I shall be all right to-morrow. I'd much rather we jogged along. This is a vile, feverish hole."
There was no question of jogging along for this hardy traveller. The oppressive drowsiness, which is sometimes the first stage of malarial fever, held him like a spell. He looked at his companions dimly, with eyes that sparkled and yet were cloudy with involuntary tears. He could hardly see their anxious faces.
"I'm afraid I'm in for it," he faltered. "I thought I was fever-proof."
He sank upon the narrow camp-bed in a shivering fit, and Geoffrey and Allan spread their blankets over him. They heaped every woollen covering they possessed over those shaking limbs, but could not quiet the ague fit or bring warmth to the icecold form.
Dreary days, dreadful nights, followed the sad waking of that sultry morning. The two young men nursed their guide and captain with unceasing watchfulness and devotion. Geoffrey developed a feminine tenderness and carefulness which was touching in so wild and fitful a nature. But they could do so little! And he whom they watched and cared for knew not, or only knew in rare brief intervals, of their loving care.
They tried to sustain each other's courage. They told each other that malarial fever was only a phase of African travel; an unpleasant phase, but not to be avoided. They knew all about the fever from bitter experience; and here was Geoffrey but just recovered, and doubtless Patrington would mend in a day or two, as he had mended.
"I don't suppose he's any worse than I was," said Geoffrey.
Allan shook his head sadly.
"I don't know that he's worse, but the symptoms seem different somehow. He doesn't answer to the medicines as you did."
The symptoms developed unmistakably after this, and the fever showed itself as typhus in the most deadly form. Swift on this revelation came the end; and in the solemn stillness of the forest midnight they knelt beside the unconscious form, and watched the parched, quivering lips from which the breath was faintly ebbing. One last sobbing sigh, and between them and the captain of their little company there stretched a distance wider than the breadth of Africa, further than from the Zambesi to the Congo. A land more mysterious than the Dark Continent parted them from him who was last week their jovial, hardy comrade, sharing the fortunes of the day, thinking of death as of a shadowy something waiting for him far off, at the end of innumerable journeys and long years of adventurous activity—a quiet haven, into which his bark would drift when the timbers were worn thin with long usage, and the arms of the rower were weary of plying the oar.