CHAPTER LVII
Lawrence Teck was not in the gorges of the waterfalls.
While marching in through the lowlands he had been seized with a fever that he had failed to shake off on the plateaux. Every day he had grown a little worse, indeed, till finally the choice had seemed to lie between resignation of his work and serious illness. Turning back toward the coast, he had now regained the forests of the Mambava. Here, in his second night's camp, he had suffered a collapse.
He lay abed in his tent. On the waterproof floor cloth squatted a Mambava warrior, a messenger from King Muene-Motapa.
"Give the word, Bangana. Give the word, Brother of the King. We will carry you to the King's town on a litter as soft as the clouds. The wizards shall work their charms to make you well. The Dances of the Moon are about to begin: it is the time of answered prayers. Your medicines have failed; now try ours. One word, Bangana! Gladden the heart of the King!"
The messenger's almost Semitic visage, upturned in the lamplight, was smeared with ambassadorial signs in yellow paint. On his head he wore a bonnet of marabout feathers that floated like a tiara of gossamer; his arms and legs were armored with copper bangles. In his voice there throbbed a tenderness and pathos, as if he were making vocal the very essence of the king's desire. His eyes even swam in moisture, as he repeated the conjuration:
"Speak! Speak the word!"
Lawrence Teck returned:
"Say this to Muene-Motapa. The medicine that might cure me is far beyond the sea. I thought I might do without it; but see what the lack of it has brought me to. A little chill, a headache—the strong man rejoicing in the world shakes his shoulders and they are gone. But death in one of its multitude of forms stands at the door of the heart that has ceased to take pleasure in life."
His voice was feeble. His bearded face, bending forward under the net, was blank from exhaustion and unnaturally flushed. His teeth clashed together, as he concluded: