"Ah, we know not, we know not! There is compensation, perhaps. We shall see and know our friends in heaven, and look back and know that we were children groping in the dark. Try to believe, Geoffrey. Belief is best."
"Belief. The pious mourner's anodyne, the Christian's patent pain-killer. Yes, belief is best; but, you see, some people can't believe. I can't. And I see only the hideous side of death—the dull horror of annihilation. A week ago we had a man with us, the manliest of men—all nerve, and fire, and brain-power, brave as a lion, ready to do and endure—and now we have only—that," with a look of heart-sickness, "which we are impatient to put out of sight for ever. Put it in the ground, Allan; fill in the grave; trample it down; let us forget that there was ever such a man."
He flung himself upon the ground and sobbed out his grief. There had been something in the blunt, dogged straightforwardness of Cecil Patrington's character which had attached this wayward nature to him with hooks of steel.
"I loved him," he muttered, getting up, calm and grave even to sullenness. "And now you and I are alone."
He stood beside the grave where native hands had gently lowered the rough coffin, and where Allan had scattered flowers and herbs, whose aromatic odours hung heavy on the still sultriness of the atmosphere. He looked at Allan, and not with looks of love.
"Only we two," he muttered, "and these black beasts of burden."
CHAPTER VII.
MAMBU KWA MUNGU.[2]
One had been taken. That which seemed to Geoffrey Wornock inevitable in the history of African travel had been accomplished. The Dark Continent had claimed its tribute of human life. Africa had chosen her victim. Not the expected sacrifice. She had chosen her prey in him who had dared the worst she could do—not in one pilgrimage, but in long years of travel—who had looked her full in the face and laughed at her dangers, and had wooed her with a masterful spirit, telling her that she was fair, stepping with light, careless foot over her traps and pitfalls, lying down within sound of her lions, drenched with her torrential rains, tossed on her chopping seas, blinded with the fierce glare of her lightnings—always her lover, her master, her champion.
"There is no land like Africa. There is nothing in life so good as the wild, free day of the wanderer," he had said again and again.