The Fire-Gods Part 7

Crouch was utterly silent. Then some one coughed. The cough was followed by a groan. De Costa sat up in bed. Crouch was just able to see him.

The little half-caste, resting his elbows on his knees, took his head between his hands, and rocked from side to side. He talked aloud in Portuguese. Crouch knew enough of that language to understand.

"Oh, my head!" he groaned. "My head! My head!" He was silent for no longer than a minute; then he went on: "Will I never be quit of this accursed country! The fever is in my bones, my blood, my brain!"

He turned over on his side, and, stretching out an arm, laid hold upon a match-box. They were wooden matches, and they rattled in the box.

Then he struck a light and lit a candle, which was glued by its own grease to a saucer. When he had done that he looked up, and down the barrel of Captain Crouch's revolver.

CHAPTER VII--THE WHITE MAN'S BURDEN

Before de Costa had time to cry out--which he had certainly intended to do--Crouch's hand had closed upon his mouth, and he was held in a grip of iron.

"Keep still!" said Crouch, in a quick whisper. "Struggle, and you die."

The man was terrified. He was racked by fever, nerve-shattered and weak. At the best he was a coward. But now he was in no state of health to offer resistance to any man; and in the candle-light Crouch, with his single eye and his great chin, looked too ferocious to describe.

For all that the little sea-captain's voice was quiet, and even soothing.

"You have nothing to fear," said he. "I don't intend to harm you. I have only one thing to say: if you cry out, or call for a.s.sistance, I'll not hesitate to shoot. On the other hand, if you lie quiet and silent, I promise, on my word of honour, that you have nothing whatsoever to fear. I merely wish to ask you a few questions. You need not answer them unless you wish to. Now, may I take my hand from your mouth?"

De Costa nodded his head, and Crouch drew away his hand. The half-caste lay quite still. It was obvious that he had been frightened out of his life, which had served to some extent to heighten the fever which so raged within him.

"Come," said Crouch; "I'll doctor you. Your nerves are all shaken. Have you any bromide?"

"Yes," said de Costa; "over there."

He pointed in the direction of a shelf upon the wall, which had been constructed of a piece of a packing-case. On this shelf was a mult.i.tude of bottles. Crouch examined these, and at last laid hands upon one containing a colourless fluid, like water, and handed it to the patient to drink. De Costa drained it at a gulp, and then sank back with a sigh of relief.

Crouch felt his pulse.

"You're weak," said he, "terribly weak. If you don't get out of this country soon you'll die. Do you know that?"

"I do," said de Costa; "I think of it every day."

"You don't wish to die?" said Crouch.

"I wish to live."

There was something pitiful in the way he said that. He almost whined.

Here was a man who was paying the debt that the white man owes to Africa. In this great continent, which even to-day is half unknown, King Death rules from the Sahara to the veld. A thousand pestilences rage in the heart of the great steaming forests, that strike down their victims with prompt.i.tude, and which are merciless as they are swift. It seems as if a curse is on this country. It is as if before the advance of civilization a Power, greater by far than the combined resources of men, arises from out of the darkness of the jungle and the miasma of the mangrove swamp, and strikes down the white man, as a pole-axe fells an ox.

De Costa, though he was but half a European, was loaded with the white man's burden, with the heart of only a half-caste to see him through.

Crouch, despite the roughness of his manner, attended at his bedside with the precision of a practised nurse. There was something even tender in the way he smoothed the man's pillow; and when he spoke, there was a wealth of sympathy in his voice.

"You are better now?" he asked.

"Yes," said de Costa; "I am better."

"Lie still and rest," said Crouch. "Perhaps you are glad enough to have some one to talk to you. I want you to listen to what I have to say."

Crouch seated himself at the end of the bed, and folded his thin, muscular hands upon his knee.

"I am not a doctor by profession," he began, "but, in the course of my life, I've had a good deal of experience of the various diseases which are met with in these parts of the world. I know enough to see that your whole const.i.tution is so undermined that it is absolutely necessary for you to get out of the country. Now I want to ask you a question."

"What is it?" said de Costa. His voice was very weak.

"Which do you value most, life or wealth?"

The little half-caste smiled.

"I can see no good in wealth," said he, "when you're dead."

"That is true," said Crouch. "No one would dispute it--except yourself."

"But I admit it!" said de Costa.

"You admit it in words," said the other, "but you deny it in your life."

"I am too ill to understand. Please explain."

Crouch leaned forward and tapped the palm of his left hand with the forefinger of his right.

"You say," said he, "that you know that you'll die if you remain here.

Yet you remain here in order to pile up a great fortune to take back with you to Jamaica or Portugal, wherever you intend to go. But you will take nothing back, because you will die. You are therefore courting death. I repeat your own words: what will be the use of all this wealth to you after you are dead?"

De Costa sat up in his bed.

"It's true!" he cried in a kind of groan.

"H'sh!" said Crouch. "Be quiet! Don't raise your voice."

De Costa rocked his head between his knees.

"It's true--true--true!" he whined. "I know it. I shall die. I don't want this money. I want to live. I--I fear to die." His voice trembled. He was pitiful to see.

"You shall not die," said Crouch; "I'll make it my business to see that you live. I can't cure you, but I can keep you alive till we reach the coast. There, one week on the sea will restore your health."

"That's what I want," said de Costa, "the sea air. Oh, for a breath of the sea!"

"I'll take you down with us," Crouch ran on. "I'll doctor you on the way. Max Harden is a young man of science. He has studied these things, and with his knowledge and my experience we'll pull you through.

In three months from now, I promise you, you shall set eyes upon the ocean."

"How glorious!" the poor man cried. He looked into Crouch's face, and there were large tears in his eyes.