He hated himself for the restless impatience which had made him join fortunes with Allan. What had he to do with the rejected lover, he who knew that he was loved?
They crept slowly on. Allan was ailing, and unable to stand the fatigue of a long march through a close and difficult country. That week of watching beside Patrington's sick-bed, and the agony of losing that kindly comrade, had shattered his nerves and reduced his physical strength almost as much as an actual illness could have reduced him. He felt the depressing influence of the climate as the days grew more sultry and the thunderstorms more frequent. All the spirit and all the pleasure seemed to have vanished out of the expedition since the digging of that grave under the sycamore.
Their day's journey dwindled and their halts grew longer. At the rate they were now travelling it would take them a year to reach the Falls. They had left Ujiji more than a month, and they were still a long way to the east of Kassongo, the busy centre of Arab commerce and population, where they could make any purchases they wanted, refit for the rest of their journey, or, perhaps, make a contract with the mighty Tippoo, who would provide them with men and food till the end of the land journey for a lump sum. While Patrington lived they had looked forward to the halt at Kassongo with keen interest; but now zest and pleasurable curiosity were gone, and a dull lassitude weighed like an actual burden upon both travellers. Both were alike spiritless; and even Geoffrey's raids in quest of meat were neither so frequent nor so far afield as they had been, and his men began to lose something of their admiration for him. He was growing over-fond of that kri-kri of his, over-fond of sitting at the door of his tent talking with that curious, tricksy spirit, now drawing forth sobbing cries like funeral dirges, now with frisking, flickering touch that danced and flashed across the strings, with hand as rapid as light, with fingers that flew, and eyes that flashed fire.
These wild dances were grasshoppers, he told them; and when he began the wailing music that thrilled and pained them, his Makololos would lie down at his feet and entreat him to change it to a grasshopper.
"We hate him when he cries," they said of the fiddle. "We love him when he leaps and dances."
"And you would follow him and me anywhere across the land?" Geoffrey asked, laughing down at the brown faces.
"Anywhere, if you promise us your guns at the end of the journey."
Two days later Allan succumbed to the feeling of prostration which had been growing upon him during the last four or five stages of the journey, and confessed himself unable to leave the native hut in which they had camped at sunset.
It was in the freshness of dawn. The mists were creeping off the manioc fields, and the wide stretches of tropical foliage beyond the patch of rude cultivation. The brown figures were moving about in the pearly light, women fetching water, children sprawling on the rich red earth, their plump shining bodies only a little browner than the soil, happy in their nakedness and dirt, placid and unashamed. The porters were shouldering their loads, the lean, long-legged mongrels were yelping, the frogs croaking their morning hymn to the sun.
"I'm afraid it's hopeless," Allan faltered, as he leant against one of the rough supports of the verandah, wiping the moisture from his forehead. "I'm dead beat. I can't go on unless you carry me in a litter; and that's hardly worth while with our small following. You'd better go on to Kassongo, Geoff, and leave me here till I'm able to follow. If I don't turn up within a few days of your arrival, you can get the chief to send some of his men to fetch me, with a donkey, if there's one to be had. The villagers will take care of me in the mean time. It isn't fever, you see," holding out his cold moist hand to his friend. "It's not the mukunguru this time. I'm just dead beat, that's all. There's no good fighting against hard fact, Geoff. Mambu kwa mungu—it is God's trouble! One must submit to the inevitable."