Part 12

Ten months later Roger sat swathed in blankets under mosquito netting, steering a boat upstream. He was in the cold fit of a fever. The bows of the boat were heaped with the cages of laboratory animals and with boxes, on the top of which a negro sat, singing a song. The singer clapped gravely with his hands to mark the time. "Marumba is very far away," he sang. "Yes. It is far away, and nobody ever got there." At times, pausing in his song to lift a hand to Roger, he pointed out a snag or shoal. At other times the rowers, lifting their paddles wearily, sang for a few bars in chorus, about the bones on the road to Marumba. Then the chorus died; the paddles splashed; the tholes grunted. The boat lagged on into the unknown, up the red, savage river, which loitered, and steamed, and stank, like a river of a beginning earth.

Lionel, heaped with blankets, lay at Roger's feet. His teeth were chattering. The wet rag round his forehead had slipped over his eyes. The debile motion of the hand which tried to thrust the rag away, so that he might see, told of an intense petulant weakness. By him lay a negro, wasted to a skeleton, who watched Roger with a childish grave intentness out of eyes heavy with death.

The boat ground slowly past a snag. Roger, raising himself upon a box, looked out painfully over the river bank to the immense distance beyond, where, in a dimness, mists hung. To the right, a mile or two from the river, was forest, sloping to an expanse of water, intensely blue. Beyond the water was grass sloping up to forest. The forest jutted out, immense, dark, silent. Nothing lay beyond it but forest, trees towering up, trees fallen, uprooted, rotting, a darkness, a green gloom. Over it was the sky, of hard, bright blue metal, covered with blazing films. Outside it, like captains halted at the head of a horde, were solitary, immense trees, with ruddy boles. To each side of them, the forest stretched, an irregular wilderness of wood, grey, rather than green, in the glare aloft; below, darker. The water at the foot of the slope opened out in bays, ruffled by the wind, shimmering. Reeds grew about the bays. A cluster of tall, orange-blossomed water-plants hid the rest from Roger's sight as the boat loitered on.

To the left it was a sometimes swampy plain-land, reaching on into the mists, with ants' nests for milestones. Little gentle hills rose up, some of them dotted with thorn-trees. They were like the stumps of islands worn away by the river, when, long ago, it had brimmed that plain-land from the forest to the far horizon.

Far ahead, to the left of the river, Roger noticed a slightly larger hill. It held his gaze for a few minutes. It stood up from the plain exactly like a Roman camp which he had visited in England long before, one Christmas Day. He liked to look at it. There was comfort in looking at it. It was like a word from Europe, that hill beyond there, greyish in the blinding light. It was like a Roman camp, like military virtue, order, calm, courage, dignity. He needed some such message. He was in command of a shipload of suffering. He was wandering on into the unknown, in charge of dying men. Smoke was rising from below the hill, a single spire of smoke. He hailed the singer.

"Merrylegs," he cried, "what is the smoke there?"

"Jualapa," said the man, standing up to look. "Jualapa."

"It can't be Jualapa," said Lionel petulantly, struggling to lift his blankets. "Oh, stop that noise, Roger. It shakes my head to pieces."

"Jualapa," cried the rowers excitedly. "Jualapa." They dropped their paddles. Standing on the thwarts they peered under the sharps of their hands at the rising smoke. They rubbed their bellies, thinking of meat. One of them, beating his hands together, broke into a song about Jualapa.

Roger, stumbling forward, shaken by sickness, bade them to give way, quietly. The jabbering died down as the tholes began again to grunt. Merrylegs, still clapping his hands, broke into another song.

Jualapa is near. Yes, Jualapa is near. Not like Marumba. We will eat meat in Jualapa. Much meat. Much meat. The men of Little Belly will eat meat in Jualapa.

"Shut your silly head, Merrylegs," cried Roger angrily. The song broke off. Merrylegs began to tell the bow-oar what meat there would be in Jualapa. He said that there would be cattle, and perhaps a diseased cow among them. The rowing seemed to freshen a little. The boat dragged on a little quicker.

"How are you, Lionel?" Roger asked. It was a foolish question.

"Oh, for God's sake don't ask silly questions," said Lionel very weakly. "Do leave me alone."

For answer, Roger gently renewed the compress round the sick man's head. From the thirst which was torturing him he guessed that his fever's hot fit would soon begin. He prayed that it might keep off until they had reached the smoke. They were probably nearing some village. They might camp at the village. Only he would have to be well when they reached the village. He would have to get Lionel ashore, into some comfortable hut. He would have to feed him there with some strong comforting broth. Before he could do that, he would have to see the village headman. He would have to look after the bearers. The boat would have to be moored. Some of her gear would have to be unloaded.

There could be no thought of going on, upstream, to Jualapa, in their present state. A native had told them, the day before, that Jualapa, three days' journey upstream, was stricken with sleeping sickness. "All were sleeping," he said. "Men, women, and little children. The cattle were not milked at Jualapa." It was the first time that they had heard of the disease since leaving the coast. They had decided to attempt Jualapa.

They were both suffering from fever. They would have been glad to camp for a few days before pushing on; but Lionel forbade it. The rowers were getting homesick. Three of them had contracted dysentery. He felt that if they called a halt anywhere their men would desert them. The important thing was to push on, he said, to carry the men so far that they would be afraid to run. If the men deserted after the leaders had engaged the disease, well and good, there would be the work to do. But if they deserted before that, the expedition would end before Roger took his first lumbar puncture. It was the last sensible decision Lionel had been able to make. His fever had recurred within the hour. Since then he had been dangerously ill, so ill, and with such violent changes of temperature, that his weakness, now that the fever lifted, frightened Roger.

Roger shook and chattered, trying to think. He was ill; so ill that he could not think clearly. The horrible part of it, to him, was to be just clear enough in his head to fear to change Lionel's decision. He wanted to change for Lionel's sake; but with this fever smouldering in his brain, surging and lifting, like a hot blast withering him, the plan seemed august, like a law of the Medes and Persians. He was afraid of changing. At last, in a momentary clearing of the head, he made up his mind to change. He would anchor. They would halt at the smoke. They would land and camp. Nothing could be done till the leaders were cured. If the men deserted, he would trust to luck to be able to hire new men. He could not go on like this; Lionel might die. The fever closed in upon his mind again, surging and withering. The air seemed strangely thick. Merrylegs wavered and blurred. The boat grounded on a mud-bank, and brushed past some many-shimmering reeds with a long swish. The dying negro, stirred by some memory, which the noise had awakened in him, raised himself faintly, asking something. He fell back faint, closing his eyes, then opening them. He beat with one hand, jabbering the name Mpaka. His teeth clenched. He was in the death agony. One of the stroke-oars, clambering over the boxes in the stern-sheets, beat the dying man upon the chest. He was beating out the devil, he explained. He soon grew tired. He shouted in the sick man's ear, laughed delightedly at his groans, and went forward to explain his prowess. He broke out into a song about it.

Kilemba has a big devil in his belly. Big devil eat up Kilemba. Eat all up. But Muafi a strong man. Very strong man. Devil no good. Not eat Muafi.

They swept round a bend, where crocodiles, like great worm-casts, sunned and nuzzled, with mud caking off their bellies. The boat passed into a broad, above which, the hill like a Roman camp rose up. Pink cranes stood in the shallows. Slowly, one of them rose aloft, heavily flagging. Another rose, then another, then another, till they made a pinkish ribbon against the forest. Following the line of their flight Roger saw a few delicate deer leave their pasture, startled by the starting of the cranes. They moved off daintily, looking uneasily behind them. Soon they broke into a run.

On the left bank, in a space of poor soil, covered with shingle by a freshet, some vultures cowered and sidled about a dead thing. Roger stared stupidly at them. Something of a warning of death moved through the surging of his fever. He said to himself that there was death here. Words spoke in his brain, each word like a fire-flash. "No white man has ever been here before. You are the first. Take care. There is death here." Some vague fear of possible war, so vague that he was not quite certain that it was not a memory of a war-scare at home, made him look to his revolver. He thrust up the catch with his thumb, and stared at the seven dull brass discs pulled slightly forward by the extractor. There were seven, and we are seven, and there were seven planets. The fever made him stare at the opened breech for a full minute.

Out of some tall water-plants, whose long, bluish-grey leaves looked very cool in the glare of heat, came flies. They came to the attack with a whirling fierceness like clegs. They were small, brown, insignificant flies. They were tsetse flies. The boat pulled out into the open to avoid them. After a few more minutes Roger called upon the rowers to stop rowing.

He was in the middle of the broad, looking at the left bank, where a trodden path led to the water's edge. For many centuries men and beasts had watered there. The path had worn a deep rut into the bank. What struck Roger about it was its narrowness. It was the narrow track of savages. The people who made it had used it fearfully, one at a time, full of suspicion, like drinking deer. Their fear had had a kind of idealism about it. It might truly be said of those nervous drinkers that when they drank, they drank to the good health of their State. Even in his fever, the sight of the path shocked Roger with a sense of the danger of life in this place. What was the danger? What was the life?

Beyond the track, at a little distance from the river, was a thick thorn hedge surrounding a village. From the midst of the village a single stream of smoke arose. It went up straight for a foot or two, behind the shelter of the hedge. Then it blew down gustily, in wavering puffs. There was no other sign of life in the village. A few hens were picking food in the open. A cow, standing with drooped head above the corpse of her calf, awaited death. Her bones were coming through her skin, poor beast. There were black patches of flies upon her. Three vultures waited for her. One of them was stretching his wings with the air of a man yawning. Vultures were busy about a dead cow in the middle distance. Dark heaps, further off, had still something of the appearance of cows. The men, looking earnestly about from the tops of the boxes, jabbered excitedly, pointing. Roger unslung his binoculars and stared at the silent place. He could see no one. There were dead cows, a dying cow, and those few clucking hens. He wondered if there could be an ambush. The grass was tall enough, in the clumps, to shelter an enemy; but the wild birds passed from clump to clump without fear. In a bare patch two scarlet-headed birds were even fighting together. Their neck feathers were ruffled erect. They struck and tugged. They rose, flapping, to cuff each other with their wings. Leaping aloft they thrust with their spurs. A hen, less brilliantly coloured, watched the battle. But for these birds the place was peaceful. The wind ruffled the grass; the smoke was gusty; one of the poultry crooned with a long gurgling cluck.

Something made Roger look from the village to the hill like a Roman camp. It glistened grey in the sun-blaze. The dance of the air above it was queer, almost like smoke. He stared at it through his glasses. After a long look he turned to stare into the water to rest his eyes. "I am mad," he said to himself. "I am dreaming this. Presently I shall wake up." He looked again. There could be no doubt of it. The hill was covered with a grey stone wall at least thirty feet high. There, about three-quarters of a mile away, was the ruin of an ancient town, as old, perhaps, as the Pharaohs. There was no doubt that it was old. Parts of it, undermined by burrowing things, or thrust out by growing things, were fallen in heaps. Other parts were overgrown twelve feet thick, with vegetation. Trees grew out of it. A few cacti upon the wall-top were sharply outlined against the sky. On the further end of the wall there was a fire-coloured blaze, where some poisonous weed, having stifled down all weaker life, triumphed in sprawling yellow blossoms, spotted and smeared with drowsy juice. There were dense swarms of flies above it as Roger could guess from the movements of the birds across the path. He watched the ruin. There was no trace of human occupation there. No smoke shewed there. Apparently the place had become a possession for the bittern. Wild beasts of the forests lay there, owls dwelt there, and satyrs danced there. It was as desolate as Babylon at the end of Isaiah xiii.

He looked at the men to see what effect the ruin had upon them. They did not look at it. They had the limited primitive intelligence, which cannot see beyond the facts of physical life. They were looking at the village, jabbering as they looked.

"What are we stopping for?" said Lionel.

"There's a village," said Roger. "It seems to have cattle plague." Lionel struggled weakly to a sitting position, and looked out with vacant eyes.

"There's a ruin on the hill, there," said Roger.

"Plague and ruin are the products of this land," said Lionel. "Don't stand there doddering, Naldrett. Find out what's happening here."

"Look here, you rest," said Roger with an effort. "Just lie back on the blankets here, and rest."

"How the devil am I to rest when you won't keep the gang quiet?"

"You just close your eyes, Lionel," said Roger. "Close them. Keep them closed." He sluiced a rag in the shallow water. "Here's a new compress for you."

He ordered the men to pull in to the watering-place, while he looked about in what he called the toy box for presents for the village chief. He took some copper wire, a few brass cartridge shells, some green beads, some bars of brightly coloured sealing wax, a doll or two, of the kind which say, "Mamma," when stricken on the solar plexus, a doll's mirror, a knife, an empty green bottle, and a tin trumpet. He tilted a white-lined green umbrella over Lionel's head. He slipped over the side as the boat grounded. Merrylegs followed him, carrying the presents. They slopped through shallow water, and climbed the bank.

Merrylegs, clapping his hands loudly, called to the villagers in the Mwiri dialect that a king, a white man, a most glorious person, was advancing to them. Roger asked him if he had heard of this village at their stopping-place the day before. No, he said, he had never heard of this village. It was a poor place, very far away; he had never heard of it. He called again, batting with his hands. No answer came. Roger, looking anxiously about, saw no sign of life. No sign shewed on the city wall. A new vulture, lighting by the dying cow, eyed him gravely, without enthusiasm. One of those already there flapped his wings again as though yawning. "Merrylegs," said Roger, "we must go into the village." He shifted round his revolver holster, so that the weapon lay to hand. They skirted the zareba till they came to the low hole, two feet square, which led through the thorns into the town. The mud of the road was pounded hard by the continual passing of the natives. Fragments of a crudely decorated pottery were trodden in here and there. Lying down flat, Merrylegs could see that the stakes which served as door to the entrance, were not in place inside the stockade. The visitor was free to enter. "Think all gone away," said Merrylegs. "Slave man he catch."

Roger did not now believe in the theory of slave man.

"It is nonsense," he said. "Nonsense. There must be death here." He stood by the gate, breathing heavily, not quite knowing, from time to time, what he was doing, at other times knowing clearly, but not caring. Little things, the crawling of a tick, the cluck of a hen, the noise of his own breath, seemed important to his fever-clogged brain. "I'll go in," he said, at last.

"Not go in," said Merrylegs promptly. "Perhaps inside. Perhaps make him much beer. All drunk him." He called again in Mwiri, but no answer came. A hen, perhaps expecting food, came clucking through the hole, cocking her eyes at the strangers. Roger, finding a bit of biscuit in his pocket, dropped it before her. She worried it away from his presence, and gulped it down gluttonously before the other hens could see.

Roger knelt down. Peering up the tunnel he tried to make out what lay within. He could not see. The entrance passage had been built with a bend in the middle for the greater safety of the tribe. For all that he could know, a warrior might lie beyond the bend, ready to thrust a spear into him. He did not think of this till a long time afterwards. He began to shuffle along the passage on all fours. Nothing lay beyond the bend. He clambered to his feet inside the village. "Come on in, Merrylegs," he called. Merrylegs came. They looked about them.

The village formed an irregular circle about two hundred yards across. Inside the thorn hedge it was strongly palisaded with wooden spikes, nine feet high, bound together with wattle, and plastered with a mud-dab. The huts stood well away from the palisade. They formed a rough avenue, shaped rather like a sickle. There were thirty-five huts still standing. The frames of two or three others stood, waiting completion. One or two more had fallen into disrepair. Several inhabitants were in sight, both men and women.

They were sitting on the ground, propped against the palisades or the walls of their huts, in attitudes which recalled the attitude of the negro, seen long before in the photograph in the Irish hotel. One of the men, rising unsteadily to his feet, walked towards them for some half-dozen paces, paused, seemed to forget, and sank down again, with a nodding head. A child, rising up from a log, crawled towards a hen. The hen, suspecting him, moved off. The child watched it strut away from him as though trying to remember what he had planned to do to it. He stood stupidly, half asleep. Slowly he laid himself down upon the ground, with the movement of an old man careful of the aches of his joints. It seemed to Roger that the child had never really been awake. It was the slow deliberate movement of the child which convinced him, through his fever, that he was in the presence of the enemy. "These people have sleeping sickness," he said. The words seemed to echo along his brain, "sleeping sickness, sickness, sickness." This was what he had come out to see. Here was his work cut out for him. This was sleeping sickness. Here was a village down with it. It was shocking to him. Had he been in health it would have staggered him. These sleepers were never going to awake. All these poor wasting wretches were dying. He had never seen death at work on a large scale before. He checked a half-formed impulse to bolt by stepping forward into the enclosure, into the reek of death. The place was full of death. He drove Merrylegs before him. Merrylegs knew the disease. Merrylegs had no wish to see more of it. He was for bolting. "Go on, Merrylegs," said Roger. "Sing out to them."

Merrylegs got no answer. "Only dead men here," he said. "Young men, no catch him, run."

"Come on round the huts then," said Roger. "We'll see how many have run." They went to the hut from which the smoke rose.

An old, old hideous woman was crouched there over a little fire. She was trembling violently, and mumbling with her gums. She cowered away from Roger with a wailing cry, very like the cry of a rabbit caught by a weasel. "Tiri," she said, "tiri," expecting death. Merrylegs asked her questions; Roger tried her. It was useless. She did not understand them. She mumbled something, shaking her poor old head, whimpering between the words. Roger gave her a doll, which she hugged and whimpered over. She was like a child of a few months old in the body of a baboon. They tried another hut.

From the number of food pots stored there, Roger guessed that this hut had once belonged to a chief. Two women lay there, one in the last stages of the sickness, very ill, and scarcely stirring, the other as yet only apathetic. She blinked at them as they entered the hut, without interest, and without alarm, just like an animal. She might once have been a comely woman, but the drowsiness of the sickness had already brought out the animal in her face. Her ornaments of very thin soft gold shewed that she was the wife of an important person; she may perhaps have been the chief's favourite. She did not understand Merrylegs' dialect, nor he hers. Possibly, as sometimes happens in the disease, she had no complete control over her tongue. Roger thought that she might be thirsty. He poured water for her. She did not drink. It occurred to Roger then that she might be welcoming the disease, giving way to it without a struggle, after losing husband and child. He could see that she had had a child, and there was no child there. "Poor woman," he said to himself. "Poor wretch." They went out into the open again.