We've been through all that.
You know it's the only thing that can happen.
Why spoil the last week?”
“You have enjoyed the summer, haven't you.”
“Of course … well, shall we go?”
“Yes.
You needn't bother to see me home.”
“Sure you don't mind?
It is miles out of the way and it's late.”
“There's no knowing what I mind.”
“Brenda, darling, for heaven's sake … It isn't like you to go on like this.”
“I never was one for making myself expensive.”
The Indians returned during the night, while Tony and Dr. Messinger were asleep; without a word spoken the little people crept out of hiding; the women had removed their clothes and left them at a distance so that no twig should betray their movements; their naked bodies moved soundlessly through the undergrowth; the glowing embers of the fire and the storm lantern twenty yards away were their only light; there was no moon.
They collected their wicker baskets and their rations of farine, their bows and arrows, the gun and their broad-bladed knives; they rolled up their hammocks into compact cylinders.
They took nothing with them that was not theirs.
Then they crept back through the shadows, into the darkness.
When Tony and Dr. Messinger awoke it was clear to them what had happened.
“The situation is grave,” said Dr. Messinger. “But not desperate.”
Four
For four days Tony and Dr. Messinger paddled downstream.
They sat, balancing themselves precariously, at the two ends of the canoe; between them they had piled the most essential of their stores; the remainder, with the other canoes, had been left at the camp, to be called for when they had recruited help from the Pie-wies.
Even the minimum which Dr. Messinger had selected overweighted the craft so that it was dangerously low; and movement brought the water to the lip of the gunwale and threatened disaster; it was heavy to steer and they made slow progress, contenting themselves for the most part, with keeping end on, and drifting with the current.
Twice they came to the stretches of cataract, and here they drew in to the bank, unloaded, and waded beside the boat, sometimes plunging waist deep, sometimes clambering over the rocks, guiding it by hand until they reached clear water again.
Then they tied up to the bank and carried their cargo down to it through the bush.
For the rest of the way the river was broad and smooth; a dark surface which reflected in fine detail the walls of forest on either side, towering up from the undergrowth to their flowering crown a hundred or more feet above them.
Sometimes they came to a stretch of water scattered with fallen petals and floated among them, moving scarcely less slowly than they, as though resting in a blossoming meadow.
At night they spread their tarpaulin on stretches of dry beach, and hung their hammocks in the bush.
Only the cabouri fly and rare, immobile alligators menaced the peace of their days.
They kept a constant scrutiny of the banks but saw no sign of human life.
Then Tony developed fever.
It came on him quite suddenly, during the fourth afternoon.
At their midday halt he was in complete health and had shot a small deer that came down to drink on the opposite bank; an hour later he was shivering so violently that he had to lay down his paddle; his head was flaming with heat, his body and limbs frigid; by sunset he was slightly delirious.
Dr. Messinger took his temperature and found that it was a hundred and four degrees, Fahrenheit.
He gave him twenty-five grains of quinine and lit a fire so close to his hammock that by morning it was singed and blacked with smoke.
He told Tony to keep wrapped up in his blanket, but at intervals throughout that night he woke from sleep to find himself running with sweat; he was consumed with thirst and drank mug after mug of river water.
Neither that evening nor next morning was he able to eat anything.
But next morning his temperature was down again.
He felt weak and exhausted but he was able to keep steady in his place and paddle a little.
“It was just a passing attack, wasn't it?” he said.
“I shall be perfectly fit tomorrow, shan't I?”
“I hope so,” said Dr. Messinger.
At midday Tony drank some cocoa and ate a cupful of rice.
“I feel grand,” he said.
“Good.”
That night the fever came on again.
They were camping on a sand bank.
Dr. Messinger heated stones and put them under Tony's feet and in the small of his back.
He was awake most of the night fuelling the fire and refilling Tony's mug with water.
At dawn Tony slept for an hour and woke feeling slightly better; he was taking frequent doses of quinine and his ears were filled with a muffled sound as though he were holding those shells to them in which, he had been told in childhood, one could hear the beat of the sea.
“We've got to go on,” said Dr. Messinger.