Part 15

"We may not have any at all?" said Roger. Lionel produced a small screw-top bottle from his pocket. It had once contained tabloids of anti-pyrin. It was now about half full of a white powder.

"I've a few doses here," he said. He looked at it carefully. "With luck," he said, "we could cure two or three cases with this."

"But suppose you have a relapse yourself, Lionel? You must keep some, in case you should relapse."

"I shan't relapse," he said carelessly. "Relapses aren't common."

"But you might. And you are more important than a village-full of negroes. More important than all the blacks put together and multiplied by ten."

"I don't see it. Look here. I tell you one thing which is pretty plain to me. We've got to set to work to find an anti-toxin. First, though, we'll go down and grope in the mud for anything which may be left. I don't give up hope of finding some atoxyl even now."

They told each other as they went that they didn't expect to find anything. Really their hearts beat high with expectation. They were sure of finding what they sought.

They went down to the mud so sure that their disappointment almost unmanned them. For they were disappointed. An hour of broiling work only added two cartridges to their store. Out in the river, caught in a snag with other drift, they saw a floating packing-case, marked with a blue stencil. By the manner of its floating they judged it to be empty, or nearly empty. It had probably floated off shortly after being opened. It had been caught in a snag. It had then ducked and sidled to get away. Lastly, it had turned upside down and emptied its contents into the river. So they judged the tragedy, viewing the victim through their glasses, from a distance of a hundred yards.

"That settles it, I think," said Lionel. A projecting snout rose at the box, tilting it over. It fell back, lipping under, so that it filled. In another instant it was gone from sight. The glasses showed a slight swirl in the water. The swirl passed at once, under the drive of the spate. Their last hope of atoxyl was at an end.

"Well," said Roger hopelessly. "It's as well to know the worst. The box was empty, don't you think?"

"I don't know," said Lionel. "I couldn't be sure."

"We might find some things in the water when the river sinks a little further," said Roger, without much conviction. "It'll be drying up very soon now. Then we shall find whatever is in it."

Lionel sat down despondently, resting his chin on one hand. He was letting his disappointment work itself off silently. His heart had been set so long on this first great medical field-day that he could not look Roger in the face. The loss of the atoxyl was less hard to bear than the loss of all the interesting cases over which he would have been bending at that minute had this ghastly thing not happened. And, being an old campaigner, and therefore forethoughtful, it was bitter to him to find himself thwarted unexpectedly by a trick so simple. He had thought that he had guarded against all the known dodges. He had been on his guard all through. In London he had sampled the food, the clothes, the cartridges, rejecting everything which seemed even faulty. He had been surprised at his own strictness. All the way up from the coast he had watched his stores so jealously that he had thought himself safe. He had been vain of his success. He had never lost so little in any previous expedition. Now an attack of fever, a storm, and a bearer's sudden death had let him in for this. He was not forgetting the chemist's share. He cursed himself for having trusted the chemist. Then he decided that it was not the chemist. The fraud had been committed in Africa. He had not been careful enough. He himself was to blame. "Guns and grub I could understand," he cried. "But for them to take drugs! Who would have thought of their taking drugs? Why didn't I see that Africa is getting civilised? Roger, I want to kill somebody."

"It's my turn to lecture now," said Roger. "We'll carry these things up to camp. I've an idea about camp."

"What is your idea?"

"To build a house out of the loose stones of the wall. We could use the wall itself for one wall, build up three others and roof it with the tent. It would be better than having another night like last night."

"It might be done," said Lionel, mechanically filling his pockets with cartridges. "But I don't know what good we're going to do here if we haven't any atoxyl. I wish I knew who it was. If ever I touch at Kwasi Bembo again, I'll have that atoxyl out of his liver."

They passed a broiling afternoon carrying their gear to camp. They became irritable at about four o'clock. After that time they worked apart, avoiding each other. At six Roger made tea, over which they made friends. At seven they set about the building of their house. They laboured by moonlight far into the night, laying the mortarless stones together. When they knocked off for bed it was nearly midnight, and the house was far from perfect. They could not do more to it. They were too tired. After flogging their blankets against the walls to get rid of mud and "bichos," they turned in, bone-weary, and slept the stupid sleep of sailors for nearly eleven hours.

They finished their house in the afternoon. It was not a very good house, but they judged that it would be safer and drier than their tent had proved. After they had finished it, they felt it to be structurally weak. They went at it again. They strengthened the roof with saplings, and laid great stones upon the edges of the canvas cover, so that it should not blow from its place. With great cunning Roger arranged an outer roof of a rough thatch which he himself made from the osiers used by the natives. He thought that a double roof would be cooler. He explained to Lionel an ambitious scheme for a thatched verandah; but this had to be abandoned from want of encouragement. Inside, the house was about twelve feet square. When the two beds, the table, the chairs, and the boxes were all within doors, it seemed very cramped and poky. They were in some doubt about a name for it. Lionel was for "Phoenician Villa," Roger for "The Laurels" or "Oak Drive." Finally they decided on "Portobe," which they smeared over the door in blacking. They had not thought much of Portobe on their way up country. Portobe. Roger going out that night, after supper, to wash the plates in a bucket, sat by the fire for many minutes, "thinking long" about Portobe. Something made him turn his head, and look out into the night north-north-westward,

for there dwelt love, and all love's loving parts, And all the friends.

It was a dim expanse, mothlike and silver in the moonlight, reaching on in forest and river to the desert. To reach Portobe he would have to go beyond the desert, over the sea, over Spain, over France. He paused. He was not sure whether France would be in the direct line. If it were not, then there would only be the sea to cross, past Land's End, past Carnsore, past Braichy, past all the headlands. Then on to the Waters of Moyle, which never cease to call to the heart who hears them. He remembered the poem of the calling of the Waters of Moyle. He knew it by heart. It was a true poem. The vastness and silence of the night were over him. The great stars burned out above. They seemed to wheel and deploy above him, rank upon rank, helm on gleaming helm, an army, a power. There were no birds, no noise of beasts, no lights. Only the earth, strange in the moon; the great continent, measureless in her excess. She was all savage, all untamed, a black and cruel continent, a lustful old queen, smeared with bloody oils. She frightened him. He thought of one night at Portobe three years before, when he had come out "to look at the night" with Ottalie. He could still see some of the stars seen then. He could still, in the sharpened fancy of the home-sick, smell the spray of honeysuckle which had gone trailing and trailing, drenching wet, across the little-used iron gate which led to the beach. He longed to be going up the beach, up the loaning overhung with old willows, as he had gone that night with Ottalie. He longed to be going through the little town, past the fruitman's, past the butcher's, past the R.I.C. barracks, to the little churchyard by the stream. Ottalie lay there. Here he was in Africa, trying to do something for Ottalie's sake. He drew in his breath sharply. It was all useless. It was not going to be done. The atoxyl was lost. They might just as well have stayed in England. He sighed. To do something very difficult, which would tax all his powers, that was his task. When that was done he would feel that he had won his bride. A strange, choking voice came from the house.

"Roger! Roger! Come in. Where are you?" Lionel had been asleep in his chair.

"What is it? What is it?" said Roger.

"Nothing. Nothing," said Lionel. "I dreamed I was fast by the leg. You don't know how beastly it was."

X

A cold shivering, methinks. _Every Man out of his Humour_.

What would you minister upon the sudden? _Monsieur Thomas_.

The next day they walked to the village, prepared for an unpleasant morning. They buried seven bodies and burned eleven huts. Several times, during the day, they noticed tsetse at rest on the framework of the huts.

"They have followed people up from the water," said Lionel. "They don't attack us, because we are wearing white duck. They don't like white."

"Flies have an uncanny knowledge," said Roger. "How do they get their knowledge? Is it mere inherited instinct? I notice that they always attack in the least protected spots. How do they know that a man cannot easily drive them from between his shoulders? They do know. I notice they nearly always attack between the shoulders."

"Yes. And dogs on the head, cattle on the shoulders, and horses on the belly and forelegs. They're subtle little devils."

"And they have apparently no place in the scheme of the world, except to transplant the trypanosome from where he is harmless to where he is deadly."

"Lots of men are like that," said Lionel. "You can go along any London street and see thousands of them outside those disgusting pot-houses. Men with no place in the scheme of the world, except to transplant intoxicants from the casks, where they are harmless, to their insides, where they become deadly, both to themselves and to society. Any self-respecting State would drown the brutes in their own beer. Yet the brutes don't get drowned. And as they do not, there must be a scientific reason. Either the State must be so rotten that the germs are neutralised by other germs, or the germs must have some dim sort of efficiency for life, just as the tsetses have. They have the tenacity of the very low organism. It is one of the mysteries of life to me that a man tends to lose that tenacity and efficiency for life as soon as he becomes sufficiently subtle and fine to be really worth having in the world. I like Shakespeare because he is one of the very few men who realise that. He is harping on it again and again. He is at it in Hamlet, in Richard the Second, in Brutus, Othello. Oh, in lots of the plays, in the minor characters, too, like Malvolio; even in Aguecheek. And people call that disgusting, beefy brute, Prince Henry, 'Shakespeare's one hero,' a 'vision of ideal English manhood.' Shakespeare's one hero! Shakespeare wrote him with his tongue in his cheek, and used an ounce of civet afterwards."

They turned again to their work. After changing their clothes, bathing antiseptically, and anointing their hands with corrosive sublimate solution and alcohol, they began solemnly to distil some water for their tiny store of atoxyl.

"Lionel," said Roger, "we've got enough drug to cure two, or perhaps three of these people. We ought not to use it all. We are away in the wilds here. Save one dose at least for yourself in case you should get a relapse. You know how very virulent a relapsed case is."

"I know," said Lionel. "But that is part of the day's work. Our only chance of doing good here is to find an anti-toxin. I want this spare atoxyl for that."

"But," said Roger, "you cannot make an effective serum from the blood of a man in whom atoxyl is at work. Surely atoxyl only stimulates the phagocytes to eat the trypanosome."

"Quite so," said Lionel. "You're a serumite, I'm not. I am not at all keen on the use of serum for this complaint. I believe that the cure (if there is one) will be got by injecting the patient with dead trypanosomes or very, very weak ones. I'm going to make a special artificial culture of trypanosomes in culture tubes. I shall then weaken the germs with atoxyl. When they are all bloated and paralysed, I shall inject them. I believe that that injection, or the injection of quite dead trypanosomes, will have permanent good effects."

"And I," rejoined Roger, "believe that your methods will be useless. I believe that the cure (if there be a cure) will be obtained by the use of sera obtained from naturally or artificially immunised animals."

"That's just the taking kind of fairy story you would believe. You're a sentimentalist."

"Very well. But listen. It is said that when the dogs of the bushmen are reared entirely on the meat of immune game, they become immune like the game; but that if they are not used to wild meat they develop nagana from eating it casually."

"I don't believe the first part of that," said Lionel. "It sounds too like a yarn. The dogs which are reared entirely on wild game are probably naturally immune native dogs, bred originally from some wild strain, like the wild hunting-dogs."

"But there is no doubt that wild game, like wildebeests, koodoos, hyenas, and quaggas, are immune?"

"None whatever."

"Then could not some preparation be made from the blood of the wild game? Surely one could extract the immunising principle from the immune creature, and use that as a serum?"

"We don't even know what the 'immunising principle' may be; so how can we extract it?"

"Well, then. Use the blood serum by itself."

"But, my dear man, the blood of these beasts is the favourite haunt of the trypanosome."

They argued it to and fro with the pertinacity of enthusiasts improperly equipped with knowledge. Roger fought for his "fairy story," Lionel for his dead and dying cultures. At last Lionel finished the preparation of the mixture.

"Look here," he said. "This atoxyl, you say, is to be kept? Well. If I get a relapse before it is used, you will please remember that it is to be used to paralyse artificially-raised trypanosomes, which will afterwards be injected into me. You will try none of your sera on me, my friend. If you like to go getting sera from dying, dirty, anthraxy wild beasts, do so; but don't put any of the poison, so got, into me. I see you so plainly strangling a deer in a mud-wallow, and drawing off the blood into a methylated spirits can. Here's the mixture ready. And now that our water of life is ready for use, comes the great question: Which of all these sleepers is to live? Here are twenty-nine men, women, and children. They are all condemned to die within a few weeks. Now then, Roger. You are a writer, that is to say a law-giver, a disposer and settler of moral issues. Which of these is to live? We can say thumbs down to any we choose. If we live to be a hundred we shall probably never have to make such a solemn choice again."

"It isn't certain life," said Roger, hesitating for a moment, staggered by the responsibility. "Atoxyl isn't a certain cure, even of moderate cases."

"It's a practically certain cure if the patient is all right in other ways; that is, of course, if the case has not gone too far."

"What is the percentage of deaths?" said Roger.

"With atoxyl?"

"Yes."

"Eight per cent. for slight cases, and twenty-two per cent. for bad ones. Without atoxyl, it's a certain hundred per cent."

"I see."

"It's a good drug."

"Yes," said Roger. "It's a good drug. But look at them, Lionel. To stand here and choose them out."

"We are doing now what the scientist will one day do for every human race," said Lionel. "We are choosing for the future. As it happens we are choosing for the future of a fraction of a wretched little African tribe. The scientist will one day choose, just as finally, for the future of man. I didn't think you'd baulk, Roger. This is the beginning of the golden age. 'The golden age begins anew.' Here are the wise men choosing who are to inherit the earth."

A sleepy negro came unsteadily from a hut. He walked, as though not quite in control of his actions, towards the wise men. He was a fine, supple creature, dressed in crocodile's teeth. Parts of him shone with an anointment of oil. He drew up, dully staring. His jaw was hanging. Flies settled on his body. A tsetse with fierce, dancing flight, flew round him, and settled on his shoulders. He stood vacantly, gazing at the wise men. His mind could not be sure of anything; but there was something which he wanted to say; something which had to be said. He waited, vacantly, for the message to come back to him, and then drove slowly forward again, and again stopped. His lips mumbled something. His eyes drooped. One trembling hand weakly groped in the air for support. It rested on a hut. He slowly and very wearily collapsed upon the hut, and sat down. His head nodded and nodded. Another tsetse flew down. Roger noticed that the man was cicatrised about the body with old scars. He had been a warrior. He had lived the savage life to the full. He had killed. He had rushed screaming to death, under his tossing Colobus plumes, first of his tribe to stab, before the shields rattled on each other. He had been lithe, swift, and bloody as the panther. Now he was this trembling, fumbling thing, a log, a driveller, a perch for flies.

"Lionel," said Roger, "it will be awful if we lose our cases."

"Why? They will die in any case."

"But after choosing them like this. If we give them their chance, and they lose the chance. I should feel that perhaps one of the others might have lived."

"We shall choose carefully. We can do no more than that. There's that hideous old crone coming out again. Poor old thing. I dare say she has seen more of the world than either of us. She may be a king's wife and the mother of kings. How merciless these savages are to the old!"

"They're like children. Children have no mercy on the old."

"I wonder what good life is to her?"

"I dare say she remembers the good days. She can't feel very much."

"No," said Lionel. "But I notice that old people feel intensely. They don't feel much. They may feel only one single thing in all the world; but they feel about that with all their strength. It's perfectly ghastly how they feel. We are all islands apart. We do not know each other. We cannot know that woman's mind, nor have we any data by which we can imagine it. That old animal may be like Blake's bird: 'A whole world of delight closed to your senses five.'"

"Very well. Would you cure her? She's not infected as it happens; but would you, if she were?"

"No. She has had her life. I wonder, by the way, if extreme old age is immune from sleeping sickness. I dare say it is. But old age is not common in savage societies. I wish I knew that old woman's story. She has seen a lot, Roger. That is a wonderful face. Now we must choose. Shall we choose a woman?"

"No. Not a woman. We must think of the creature's future. What would become of a woman left alone here? Even if she followed up her tribe, they would probably not admit her. You know that these people do not believe in the possibility of a cure for sleeping sickness. They would only drive her out, or kill her."

"Yes, or let her drift among white men. No. Not a woman. Not an old man, I say. The old have had their lives. Besides, the life of an old savage is generally wretched. There would be nothing for him to do, either here or anywhere else. So we won't have an old man."

"Nor a warrior," said Roger.

"I'm not sure about a warrior," said Lionel. "He would be able to fend for himself. He would be worth taking in by some other tribe short of males. There are points to the warrior."

"He would probably rise up one night and jab us with a shovel-headed spear."

"And then we should shoot him. Yes, that might happen. That narrows it down to the boys."

They looked at the boys, noting their teeth, skulls, and physiognomies. Several shewed signs of congenital malignant disease; others were brutish and loutish looking; but they were, on the whole, a much nicer-looking lot than the boys who sell papers in London. They narrowed the choice to four. One of them shewed signs of pneumonia. He was rejected. The others were examined carefully. Their prefrontal areas were measured. They were sounded and felt and summed up. The matter was doubtful for a time. The lad with the best head was more drowsy than the other two. The question arose, should the doubtful cure of a genius be preferred to the less doubtful cure of a dunce. "Nature has made an effort for this one," said Lionel, "at the expense of the type. This fellow has got a better head than the others, but he is not quite so fine a specimen. That means that he will be less happy. Nature would probably prefer the other fellows."

"We have nothing to do with Nature," said Roger. "We are out to fight her wherever we can find her. Nature is a collection of vegetables, many of them human. Let us thwart her. Nature's mind is the mind of the flock of sheep. Nature's order is the order of the primeval swamp. Never mind what she would prefer. Sacrifice both the dunces, and let the other have a double chance. I know the dunce-mind, or 'natural' mind, only too well. It would sacrifice any original mind, and brutally, like the beast it is, rather than see its doltish sheep-pen rules infringed."

"Genius is excess," said Lionel. "Genius in a savage means an excess of savagery. This fellow may be a most turbulent, bloodthirsty ruffian. The others, though they will probably be bloodthirsty ruffians, may not be so turbulent."

"If he be turbulent," said Roger, "it will be in a more intellectual manner than is usual with his tribe. Turbulence in a savage is a sign of life. It is only in a civilised man that it is a sign of failure."

"Very well," said Lionel. "We will have the genius. He may disappoint us. I think he is the best type here. Who is to be the other? What do you say to that nice-looking boy, whom we spun some time ago for itch? I like that lad's face."

"You think he would be a good one to save?"

"Well, itch apart, he looked a nice lad. He would be exceptional, socially, just as the other would be exceptional intellectually. He would be to some extent unnatural, which is what you seem to want. Why are you so down on the natural?"

"I've heard some old women of both sexes praising the natural, ever since I was a child. The natural. The born natural. The undeveloped sheep in us, which makes common head to butt the wolf-scarer."

"We'll give them a dose to-day and a dose to-morrow, and a last dose in two and a half weeks' time," said Lionel. "And then they'll either be fit to butt anything in the wide world, or they'll be on their way to Marumba."

"The genius first," said Roger, bringing up the patient. The needle was sterilised. A little prick between the shoulderblades drove the dose home. The other boy followed. Lionel eyed them carefully.