"Put down that tin and hold the gla.s.s for me. You have eaten three biscuits already, and this is no time for feasting! I'm going to start with chlorodyne. We found it good in South America when we could give it to them quick enough; but these fellows have an irritating trick of crawling away into some lair to die quietly. There. Give this to the first two poor devils, half each by measure."

Maxwell went swiftly, and returned very grim in face.

"Too late," he reported. "One is cold already; the other testified that there is but one Allah as I bent over him, and ended in a gurgle. Hallo!

What is this?"

Preceded by a negro carrying a torch, Rideau, smoking sedulously, approached the tent, and halted well clear of it. The man was not, as his partners had cause to know, unduly timid, but now fear was plainly stamped on his face, which the red glare of the torch forced up against the gloom.

"I have great fear of this sick, and make proposition," he said. "I go take all the boy of me back a league into the forest, and make other camp. If any he is fall ill, I with all possible expedition send him you."

Both of the listeners found heart to smile at the latter sentence before Dane's resentment mastered him.

"It is particularly considerate of him, but his proposition has some sense in it," said Maxwell aside. "You are acting surgeon-major, Hilton.

What do you suggest?"

"You can go straight to perdition, or anywhere else that pleases you, so long as you don't waste our time!" thundered Dane; and with a salute which expressed no resentment, but only relief, Rideau withdrew.

"How long does this thing generally last?" asked Dane.

"Sometimes it clears a village out in a fortnight, more often it hangs round a month, or even longer, picking out odd victims; and before that time has gone we shall have the rains."

"Which will prevent any further mining, probably cut off our road to the coast, and render life here almost impossible," Dane said hoa.r.s.ely.

"Exactly. There can be no more mining now."

As the two men's eyes met, each knew just what his comrade was thinking.

"We must see them through," said Dane, and Maxwell answered, as though this decision had never been in doubt: "Of course!"

With that they fell to work again, for there was much to do, which was fortunate, because, otherwise, the thought of what both would certainly lose and what one was risking for the sake of naked heathen, many of whom were little higher in intelligence than dumb cattle, might have maddened them. Still, even the most stupid had trusted the white men, and, in their own fashion, served them well.

CHAPTER XIV

AN EVENTFUL DECISION

The weeks that followed left only a hazy impression of hurry, effort, fatigue that was almost overwhelming, and anxiety which spurred wornout mind and body to further action, with the two white men who lived through them. Some of the sick they cured, and though it is possible their lack of knowledge hastened the end of others, their intentions at least were benevolent, and while they often went hungry the convalescent were always fed. They put heart into the hopeless and buried the dead, stormed, exhorted, and jested by turn all day long, and sat watching the worst cases when the hot night fell. Dane was never afterward able to recollect the exact mixtures he dispensed, which Maxwell said was probably fortunate; but as a result of their labors, while all would otherwise have perished, part at least of their followers escaped. They had also capable a.s.sistants. Amadu, Maxwell's man, had fought under a great Emir who had made his name a terror in the Soudan; and Monday, so Dane gathered, had carried the standard of a successful robber chieftain somewhere far up in the land of the brown men who swear by the Prophet; but both had the full courage of their fatalist convictions, and what their masters bade them that they did. The rank and file of the orderlies were thick-headed heathen who grinned each time their leader stormed at them.

One day when the sick were recovering, and a little hope was springing up again, Dane, staggering half asleep behind his bearer detachment, halted when Maxwell beckoned him.

"Get on, you dusky angels, and try to carry that poor devil right-side-up," Dane said. "Monday, tell them hopeless idiots if they handle the other fellow that way they'll pull his head off. You would tempt the most patient man to murder some of you."

The bearers beamed upon him with mouths extended, and Maxwell laughed.

"They take your abuse as a compliment, Hilton; and your capabilities become apparent by degrees. Still, after the success which has attended your daring pharmaceutical experiments, one could hardly be astonished at your licking even yonder most unpromising raw material into shape."

"The credit is to necessity," replied Dane, surveying his a.s.sistants with a certain air of pride. "Those are the most wooden-headed n.i.g.g.e.rs in Africa, and the more I swear at them the wider they grin; but if I wanted sulphur from the pit, and told them, the beggars would go--and get it."

"I wish we were both fresher," Maxwell said; "because there is another worry to grapple with. The man I sent over to Rideau found the camp empty, and this pinned to the tree his tent had been pitched beneath."

"If Mr. Rideau desires to repeat his opinion that we should set them all to work it is as well he does it in writing. I could hardly keep my hands off the brute the last time he made the suggestion in person,"

answered Dane.

"Read, and see," said Maxwell, holding out the note; and because Dane's head was swimming he translated the indifferent French with difficulty.

The message might have appeared ambiguous to a more accomplished linguist. Nevertheless, he gathered from it that their partner, who professed a total ignorance of physics and a fear of contagion, regretted his inability to render them any a.s.sistance, and had decided to visit a headman he had dealings with who dwelt at a considerable distance. He stated that none of his boys could be induced to carry a message to the stricken camp.

"He might have expressed himself more plainly, but it is plausible. Do you attach a different meaning?" Dane asked.

Maxwell, instead of answering, asked another question.

"You feel tolerably certain that we have seen the worst of this epidemic?"

"Yes," was the answer. "I did not, however, tell our estimable partner so. It seemed a pity to relieve him prematurely of what he called his fear of the sick. Perhaps I was wrong in this."

"Pshaw!" exclaimed Maxwell. "It is not the plague he fears the most. In fact, considering that he must have lived through one or two outbreaks already, part, at least, of his fear must have been simulated. If you expect to see Rideau here again on the old terms, Hilton, you are mistaken."

"His absence would not leave me disconsolate," said Dane. "In that case, one wonders what he is afraid of, and why he came? Isn't it also surprising that he should abandon his share of the gold?"

"In reply to the first query, I don't know--but we shall doubtless discover in good time. There is no difficulty in answering the rest. He came to see if the river was worth exploitation, and to pick up a practical knowledge of the necessary operations. His share of what we have obtained is, after all, but trifling for an avaricious man who cherishes a grudge against you, and desires the whole. Two men alone at present prevent him from obtaining it, and the life of any white man is very uncertain in this country."

"A grudge against me?" Dane queried.

Maxwell nodded.

"Have you forgotten Miss Castro? Your powers of attraction may prove a dangerous gift, Hilton."

Dane flushed with sudden anger, for this appeared to him ill-timed levity; but Maxwell continued unheeding:

"The whole complication resembles a mosaic puzzle, and I have fitted most of it together. One or two pieces, however, are missing, and we must wait until accident supplies them. Meanwhile, every effort to expedite our sick men's recovery would be advisable."

Maxwell left his comrade startled and uneasy. Dane could see that he was anxious, and they already had sufficient to try their endurance without the addition of a haunting fear. There was, however, no remedy, and they continued to tend the sick, setting those who had recovered to work as the pestilence slackened its grip. So, while groups of naked tribesmen whose tongue n.o.body therein could understand traveled southward past the camp, the days went by until Maxwell was supplied with one missing portion of his mosaic. One morning a seaboard negro, whose leg had been rendered useless by the horrible Guinea worm which had burrowed from knee to ankle, crawled into camp, and told a story which roused both listeners to suppressed fury. Rideau had left him behind crippled, to starve, but with many sufferings he had managed to drag himself to their camp.

"I be missionary boy, sah, and savvy them JuJu palaver be all dam fraud," he stated in the coast English. "When them low white n.i.g.g.e.r Rideau lib for them first river by the Leopards' country he send one man two day into the bush."

"What was the man like? How that boy he look?" asked Maxwell.

"Yellow man with mark on front of him head, sah. He be fit to make fetich palaver."

"Oh," commented Maxwell. "This is going to be very interesting, Hilton."

"Two night go," continued the negro. "Then I look them white man he wait for somebody sitting with a pistol outside him tent. I lib for behind a cottonwood, where he not done see me. Bimeby, two leopard come soffly, soffly, and stand up when he see them. The white man light a lamp before him say: 'Why you done play them fool trick with me?'"

"You were too frightened to crawl away?" Maxwell asked; and though the negro evidently trembled at the mere recollection, he answered boldly:

"I be missionary boy, and savvy all them JuJu palaver humbug, sah. One leopard done throw off him skin and sit down by the tent. I know him for the man with the mark on him. 'How much you want for let me lib for your country and come back again,' the white man say, and they all talk plenty. Then the white man say: 'I leave them cloth and bead and gun in the bush, and when I lib for come back safe you get two time as much, but you see them other white men done get lost or sick too much in your country.' Rideau talk more plenty, and them leopard go away. I not know how. I see him one lil' minute, then there be no more leopard, sah. I lib for say nothing. Suppose Rideau guess I look him he shoot me, sah.