With Edged Tools Part 58

"Shake me! G.o.d! shake me!"

Then Oscard took him in his strong arms, and set him on his feet. He shook him gently at first, but as the dread somnolence crept on he shook harder, until the mutilated inhuman head rolled upon the shoulders.

"It's a sin to let that man live," exclaimed Joseph, turning away in horror.

"It's a sin to let ANY man die," replied Oscard, and with his great strength he shook Durnovo like a garment.

And so Victor Durnovo died. His stained soul left his body in Guy Oscard's hands, and the big Englishman shook the corpse, trying to awake it from that sleep which knows no earthly waking.

So, after all, Heaven stepped in and laid its softening hand on the judgment of men. But there was a strange irony in the mode of death. It was strange that this man, who never could have closed his eyes again, should have been stricken down by the sleeping sickness.

They laid the body on the floor, and covered the face, which was less gruesome in death, for the pity of the eyes had given place to peace.

The morning light, bursting suddenly through the trees as it does in Equatorial Africa, showed the room set in order and Guy Oscard sleeping in his camp-chair. Behind him, on the floor, lay the form of Victor Durnovo. Joseph, less iron-nerved than the great big-game hunter, was awake and astir with the dawn. He, too, was calmer now. He had seen death face to face too often to be appalled by it in broad daylight.

So they buried Victor Durnovo between the two giant palms at Msala, with his feet turned towards the river which he had made his, as if ready to arise when the call comes and undertake one of those marvellous journeys of his which are yet a household word on the West Coast.

The cloth fluttered as they lowered him into his narrow resting-place, and the face they covered had a strange mystic grin, as if he saw something that they could not perceive. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he saw the Simiacine Plateau, and knew that, after all, he had won the last throw; for up there, far above the table-lands of Central Africa, there lay beneath high Heaven a charnel-house. Hounded down the slope by his tormentors, he had left a memento behind him surer than their torturing knives, keener than their sharpest steel--he had left the sleeping sickness behind him.

His last journey had been worthy of his reputation. In twenty days he had covered the distance between the Plateau and Msala, stumbling on alone, blinded, wounded, sore-stricken, through a thousand daily valleys of death. With wonderful endurance he had paddled night and day down the sleek river without rest, with the dread microbe of the sleeping sickness slowly creeping through his veins.

He had lived in dread of this disease, as men do of a sickness which clutches them at last; but when it came he did not recognise it. He was so racked by pain that he never recognised the symptoms; he was so panic-stricken, so paralysed by the nameless fear that lay behind him, that he could only think of pressing forward. In the night hours he would suddenly rise from his precarious bed under the shadow of a fallen tree and stagger on, haunted by a picture of his ruthless foes pressing through the jungle in pursuit. Thus he accomplished his wonderful journey alone through trackless forests; thus he fended off the sickness which gripped him the moment that he laid him down to rest.

He had left it--a grim legacy--to his torturers, and before he reached the river all was still on the Simiacine Plateau.

And so we leave Victor Durnovo. His sins are buried with him, and beneath the giant palms at Msala lies Maurice Gordon's secret.

And so we leave Msala, the accursed camp. Far up the Ogowe river, on the left bank, the giant palms still stand sentry, and beneath their shade the crumbling walls of a cursed house are slowly disappearing beneath luxuriant growths of gra.s.s and brushwood.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX. THE EXTENUATING CIRc.u.mSTANCE

Yet I think at G.o.d's Tribunal Some large answer you shall hear.

In a dimly-lighted room in the bungalow at Loango two women had been astir all night. Now, as dawn approached, one of them, worn out with watching, wearied with that blessed fatigue of anxiety which dulls the senses, had laid her down on the curtain-covered bed to sleep.

While Marie slept Jocelyn Gordon walked softly backwards and forwards with Nestorius in her arms. Nestorius was probably dying. He lay in the Englishwoman's gentle arms--a little brown bundle of flexile limbs and cotton night-shirt. It was terribly hot. All day the rain had been pending; all night it had held off until the whole earth seemed to pulsate with the desire for relief. Jocelyn kept moving, so that the changing air wafted over the little bare limbs might allay the fever. She was in evening dress, having, indeed, been called from the drawing-room by Marie; and the child's woolly black head was pressed against her breast as if to seek relief from the inward pressure on the awakening brain.

A missionary possessing some small knowledge of medicine had been with them until midnight, and, having done his best, had gone away, leaving the child to the two women. Maurice had been in twice, clumsily, on tiptoe, to look with ill-concealed awe at the child, and to whisper hopes to Marie which displayed a ludicrous, if lamentable, ignorance of what he was talking about.

"Little chap's better," he said; "I'm sure of it. See, Marie, his eyes are brighter. Devilish hot, though, isn't he--poor little soul?"

Then he stood about, awkwardly sympathetic.

"Anything I can do for you, Jocelyn?" he asked, and then departed, only too pleased to get away from the impending calamity.

Marie was not emotional. She seemed to have left all emotion behind, in some other phase of her life which was shut off from the present by a thick curtain. She was patient and calm, but she was not so clever with the child as was Jocelyn. Perhaps her greater experience acted as a handicap in her execution of those small offices to the sick which may be rendered useless at any moment. Perhaps she knew that Nestorius was wanted elsewhere. Or it may only have been that Jocelyn was able to soothe him sooner, because there is an unwritten law that those who love us best are not always the best nurses for us.

When, at last, sleep came to the child, it was in Jocelyn's arms that he lay with that utter abandonment of pose which makes a sleeping infant and a sleeping kitten more graceful than any living thing. Marie leant over Nestorius until her dusky cheek almost touched Jocelyn's fair English one.

"He is asleep," she whispered.

And her great dark eyes probed Jocelyn's face as if wondering whether her arms, bearing that burden, told her that this was the last sleep.

Jocelyn nodded gravely, and continued the gentle swaying motion affected by women under such circ.u.mstances.

Nestorius continued to sleep, and at last Marie, overcome by sleep herself, lay down on her bed.

Thus it came about that the dawn found Jocelyn moving softly in the room, with Nestorius asleep in her arms. A pink light came creeping through the trees, presently turning to a golden yellow, and, behold!

it was light. It was a little cooler, for the sea-breeze had set in. The cool air from the surface of the water was rushing inland to supply the place of the heated atmosphere rising towards the sun. With the breeze came the increased murmur of the distant surf. The dull continuous sound seemed to live amidst the summits of the trees far above the low-built house. It rose and fell with a long-drawn, rhythmic swing. Already the sounds of life were mingling with it--the low of a cow--the crowing of the c.o.c.ks--the hum of the noisier daylight insect-life.

Jocelyn moved to the window, and her heart suddenly leapt to her throat.

On the brown turf in front of the house were two men, stretched side by side, as if other hands had laid them there, dead. One man was much bigger than the other. He was of exceptional stature. Jocelyn recognised them almost immediately--Guy Oscard and Joseph. They had arrived during the night, and, not wishing to disturb the sleeping household, had lain them down in the front garden to sleep with a quiet conscience beneath the stars. The action was so startlingly characteristic, so suggestive of the primeval, simple man whom Oscard represented as one born out of time, that Jocelyn laughed suddenly.

While she was still at the window, Marie rose and came to her side.

Nestorius was still sleeping. Following the direction of her mistress's eyes, Marie saw the two men. Joseph was sleeping on his face, after the manner of Thomas Atkins all the world over. Guy Oscard lay on his side, with his head on his arm.

"That is so like Mr. Oscard," said Marie, with her patient smile, "so like--so like. It could be no other man--to do a thing like that."

Jocelyn gave Nestorius back to his mother, and the two women stood for a moment looking out at the sleepers, little knowing what the advent of these two men brought with it for one of them. Then the Englishwoman went to change her dress, awaking her brother as she pa.s.sed his room.

It was not long before Maurice Gordon had hospitably awakened the travellers and brought them in to change their torn and ragged clothes for something more presentable. It would appear that Nestorius was not particular. He did not mind dying on the kitchen table if need be. His mother deposited him on this table on a pillow, while she prepared the breakfast with that patient resignation which seemed to emanate from having tasted of the worst that the world has to give.

Joseph was ready the first, and he promptly repaired to the kitchen, where he set to work to help Marie, with his customary energy.

It was Marie who first perceived a difference in Nestorius. His dusky little face was shining with a sudden, weakening perspiration, his limbs lay lifelessly, with a lack of their usual comfortable-looking grace.

"Go!" she said quickly. "Fetch Miss Gordon!"

Jocelyn came, and Maurice and Guy Oscard; for they had been together in the dining-room when Joseph delivered Marie's message.

Nestorius was wide awake now. When he saw Oscard his small face suddenly expanded into a brilliant grin.

"Bad case!" he said.

It was rather startling, until Marie spoke.

"He thinks you are Mr. Meredith," she said. "Mr. Meredith taught him to say 'Bad case!'"

Nestorius looked from one to the other with gravely speculative eyes, which presently closed.

"He is dying--yes!" said the mother, looking at Jocelyn.

Oscard knew more of this matter than any of them. He went forward and leant over the table. Marie removed a piece of salted bacon that was lying on the table near to the pillow. With the unconsciousness of long habit she swept some crumbs away with her ap.r.o.n. Oscard was trying to find the pulse in the tiny wrist, but there was not much to find.