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.
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