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The Wasena, who bore the hammock, muttered to one another dolefully as they shuffled along. All knew by this time that they were not headed for Fort Pero d'Anhaya. Avoiding that last outpost of civilization, they were approaching the country of the Mambava, which lay behind the steamy sunshine, below the blue and lavender battlements of granite, in the uplands covered with forests.
Then, in a monotonous, dull tone he began again to express his various objections. Mr. Teck had gone in from a northern port a month ago. He had passed by Fort Pero d'Anhaya, telling the commandant there that he was bound back for the region in which his principals might presently seek a concession. He was, no doubt, at present in the gorges beyond the forests of the Mambava.
"My angel!" breathed the poor commandant of Fort Pero d'Anhaya, sleeping for the first time in many a night with an infantile smile on his countenance that suggested a half-deflated balloon.
The sick man was unconscious when they sent him off, in the machilla, toward Fort Pero d'Anhaya, with three of the askaris and fifteen of the porters. They soon disappeared into a jungle of spear grass, above which the sunrise was spreading its bands of smoky gold and rose. The chosen porters forgot their lacerated bodies; a song floated back from them to those who must still press onward.
Other voices joined the leader's; a minor refrain swept up and down the line; and abruptly the climax swelled out in a diapason descending far into the bass. So that every one could sing, the improvisor had phrased his thoughts in Swahili, the inter-tribal language of Africa. He sang of the Bibi from afar, her skin like a bowl of milk, who was traveling as a bride to Fort Pero d'Anhaya.
"I have never been so strong," she retorted. "She dares everything, and no doubt all the while she fears terribly what she dares. She is sublime! Who am I, a lump of sick flesh in this fever trap, to interfere so strictly with this thing of white flame?" He said to her: "Listen. I will give you permission to travel on safari as far as Fort Pero d'Anhaya.
"I wish now that I hadn't shown it to him," said the commandant of Fort Pero d'Anhaya, the district judge, the chief of the public works, the receiver of taxes, the collector of revenues, the postmaster, the poor exile prematurely aged by the African sun, the sorry "hero on the outposts of civilization."
"No, I will telegraph to Fort Pero d'Anhaya; the commandant there will send messengers to the border of the Mambava country; the Mambava will telephone your message through their forests by drum beat, and in one night every village will have the news. They will find him and tell him, and he will come here to you." "Too much time has passed already. Even now I may be too late.
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