“We followed, but we could not gain on him. It was like the dreams of fever. Pedro and I seemed to be struggling through the silence of Herares as if it were something heavy and resistant, and Scott reeled from side to side, but always kept the same distance ahead. We were still behind when we turned into Henkel’s garden, and the scent of the flowers beat in our faces like heat. At the foot of the verandah steps we met the man who had admitted Scott.
“The man was running away. He was a cripple. He came down the steps doubled up, bundled past us, and was gone. Somewhere a door clashed open. There was no other sound. But in a moment the garden seemed full of stampeding servants, all maimed, or ill, or aged. They melted silently into the bushes as rats melt into brushwood, and they took no notice of us. I heard Pedro catch his breath quickly. But when a light flared up in one of the rooms, it showed no more than Scott talking with Henkel.
“They showed like moving pictures in a frame, and the frame was dark leaves about the window, which was open. I leaned against the side of it, and Pedro squatted at my feet, his head thrust forward as if he were at a cockfight. I did not know just why I was there. Henkel sat at a table, wagging his head backwards and forwards. Scott was sitting opposite him; and he looked as Lazarus might have looked when first he heard the Voice, and stirred . . . .
“Henkel was saying, ‘Dear me, dear me, but why should this have happened?’ And Scott answered him as he had answered me, in that strange, patient voice,
“ ‘The clocks wouldn’t tick.’
“ ‘But they were good clocks,’ cried Henkel.
“Scott shook his head. ‘No, they were not good clocks, he explained gently, ‘they were too cheap. They would not go at all in the jungle. An Indian of the Mazzaron does not care what time his clock tells, but he likes it to tick. These were no good. And the food was not good. The things in the tins were bad when we opened them.’
“ ‘Mismanagement, mismanagement,’ said Henkel, but Scott went on as if he had not heard.
“ ‘We followed the river for two days and then turned east. In a week after that, two of your men were dead. They died of fever. No, the quinine was no good. There was a lot of flour in it. Two days more, and another man died, but he would have died anyhow. It was very hard to see them die and to be able to do nothing.
“ ‘The men who were left went so slowly that nearly all our food was gone when we reached the country of the Indios. We made our camp, and I shot a pig. That made us stronger, but Louis was very bad then with the fever.