"Wrong! what do you mean?"
Meredith was already lacing his shoes.
"Not rebellion?" he said curtly, looking towards his firearms.
"No, sir, not that. It"s some mortual sickness. I don"t know what it is.
I"ve been up half the night with them. It"s spreading, too."
"Sickness! what does it seem like? Just give me that jacket. Not that sleeping sickness?"
"No, sir. It"s not that. Missis Marie was telling me about that--awful scourge that, sir. No, the poor chaps are wide-awake enough. Groanin", and off their heads too, mostly."
"Have you called Mr. Oscard?"
"No, sir."
"Call him and Mr. Durnovo."
"Met Mr. Durnovo, sir, goin" out as I came in."
In a few moments Jack joined Durnovo and Oscard, who were talking together on the terrace in front of the house. Guy Oscard was still in his pyjamas, which he had tucked into top-boots. He also wore a sun-helmet, which added a finish to his costume. They got quite accustomed to this get-up during the next three days, for he never had time to change it; and, somehow, it ceased to be humorous long before the end of that time.
"Oh, it"s nothing," Durnovo was saying, with a singular eagerness. "I know these chaps. They have been paid in advance. They are probably shamming, and if they are not they are only suffering from the effects of a farewell glorification. They want to delay our start. That is their little game. It will give them a better chance of deserting."
"At any rate, we had better go and see them," suggested Jack.
"No, don"t!" cried Durnovo eagerly, detaining him with both hands.
"Take my advice, and don"t. Just have breakfast in the ordinary way and pretend there is nothing wrong. Then afterwards you can lounge casually into the camp."
"All right," said Jack, rather unwillingly.
"It has been of some use--this scare," said Durnovo, turning and looking towards the river. "It has reminded me of something. We have not nearly enough quinine. I will just take a quick canoe, and run down to Loango to fetch some."
He turned quite away from them, and stooped to attach the lace of his boot.
"I can travel night and day, and be back here in three days," he added.
"In the meantime you can be getting on with the loading of the canoes, and we will start as soon as I get back."
He stood upright and looked around with weatherwise, furtive eyes.
"Seems to me," he said, "there"s thunder coming. I think I had better be off at once."
In the course of his inspection of the lowering clouds which hung, black as ink, just above the trees, his eyes lighted on Joseph, standing within the door of the cottage, watching him with a singular half-suppressed smile.
"Yes," he said hurriedly, "I will start at once. I can eat some sort of a breakfast when we are under way."
He looked beneath his lashes quickly from Jack to Guy and back again.
Their silent acquiescence was not quite satisfactory. Then he called his own men, and spoke to them in a tongue unknown to the Englishmen.
He hurried forward their preparations with a feverish irritability which made Jack Meredith think of the first time he had ever seen Durnovo--a few miles farther down the river--all palpitating and trembling with climatic nervousness. His face was quite yellow, and there was a line drawn diagonally from the nostrils down each cheek, to lose itself ultimately in the heavy black moustache.
Before he stepped into his canoe the thunder was rumbling in the distance, and the air was still as death. Breathing was an effort; the inhaled air did not satisfy the lungs, and seemed powerless to expand them.
Overhead the clouds, of a blue-black intensity, seemed almost to touch the trees; the river was of ink. The rowers said nothing, but they lingered on the bank and watched Durnovo"s face anxiously. When he took his seat in the canoe they looked protestingly up to the sky. Durnovo said something to them rapidly, and they laid their paddles to the water.
Scarcely had the boat disappeared in the bend of the river before the rain broke. It came with the rush of an express train--the trees bending before the squall like reeds. The face of the river was tormented into a white fury by the drops which splashed up again a foot in height. The lashing of the water on the bare backs of the negroes was distinctly audible to Victor Durnovo.
Then the black clouds split up like a rent cloth, and showed behind them, not Heaven, but the living fire of h.e.l.l. The thunder crashed out in sharp reports like file-firing at a review. With one accord the men ceased rowing and crouched down in the canoe.
Durnovo shouted to them, his face livid with fury. But for some moments his voice was quite lost. The lightning ran over the face of the river like will-o"-the-wisps; the whole heaven was streaked continuously with it.
Suddenly the negroes leaped to their paddles and rowed with bent back, and wild staring eyes, as if possessed. They were covered by the muzzle of Durnovo"s revolver.
Behind the evil-looking barrel of blue steel, the half-caste"s dripping face looked forth, peering into the terrific storm. There was no question of fending off such torrents of rain, nor did he attempt it. Indeed, he seemed to court its downfall. He held out his arms and stretched forth his legs, giving free play to the water which ran off him in a continual stream, washing his thin khaki clothing on his limbs.
He raised his face to the sky, and let the water beat upon his brow and hair.
The roar of the thunder, which could be FELT, so great was the vibration of the laden air, seemed to have no fear for him. The lightning, ever shooting athwart the sky, made him blink as if dazzled, but he looked upon it without emotion.
He knew that behind him he had left a greater danger than this, and he stretched out his limbs to the cleansing torrent with an exulting relief to be washed from the dread infection. Small-pox had laid its hand on the camp at Msala: and from the curse of it Victor Durnovo was flying in a mad chattering panic through all the anger of the tropic elements, holding death over his half-stunned crew, not daring to look behind him or pause in his coward"s flight.
It is still said on the Ogowe river that no man travels like Victor Durnovo. Certain it is that, in twenty-seven hours from the time that he left Msala on the morning of the great storm, he presented himself before Maurice Gordon in his office at the factory at Loango.
"Ah!" cried Gordon, hardly noticing the washed-out, hara.s.sed appearance of the visitor; "here you are again. I heard that the great expedition had started."
"So it has, but I have come back to get one or two things we have forgotten. Got any sherry handy?"
"Of course," replied Gordon, with perfect adhesion to the truth.
He laid aside his pen and, turning in his chair, drew a decanter from a small cupboard which stood on the ground at his side.
"Here you are," he continued, pouring out a full gla.s.s with practised, but slightly unsteady, hand.
Durnovo drank the wine at one gulp and set the gla.s.s down.
"Ah!" he said, "that does a chap good."
"Does it now?" exclaimed Maurice Gordon with mock surprise. "Well, I"ll just try."
The manner in which he emptied his gla.s.s was quite different, with a long, slow drawing-out of the enjoyment, full of significance for the initiated.
"Will you be at home to-night?" asked Durnovo, gently pushing aside the hospitable decanter. "I have got a lot of work to do to-day, but I should like to run in and see you this evening."
"Yes, come and dine."
Durnovo shook his head and looked down at his wrinkled and draggled clothing.
"No, I can"t do that, old man. Not in this trim."
"Bosh? What matter? Jocelyn doesn"t mind."