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The ridge gave a big view of the country. "I can remember all that," said he, "keenly, right up to the skyline." "And at the skyline?" "Stands the mist," replied Berselius. "But it will lift before me as I go on. Now I know it is only the sight of the things I have seen that is needful to recall the memory of them and of myself in connection with them." Adams said nothing.
Berselius had ordered the tents to be raised on the sunlit grass, for the edge of the forest, though shady, was infested by clouds of tiny black midges midges whose bite was as bad, almost, as the bite of a mosquito.
Berselius did not have any hand in the matter, thus the feeling of employer and employed was reduced to vanishing point and the position rendered more equal. "You know," said Adams, "I have always been glad to do anything I can for you, and I always shall be, but since I have come back to Paris I have been filled with unrest. You complain of sleeplessness well, that is my disease." "Yes?"
Berselius, seated at his tent door, looked at his watch. Meeus, seated beside Berselius, was smoking cigarettes. "Give him an hour," said Berselius. "He will be far away enough by that. Besides, the wind is blowing from there." "True," said Meeus. "An hour." And he continued to smoke.
They came back in about half an hour, and Berselius, after speaking a few words to Félix, turned to Adams. "I must ask you to return to Fort M'Bassa and get everything in readiness for our departure. Félix will accompany you. I will follow in a couple of hours with M. Meeus. I am afraid we will have to pull these people's houses down. It's a painful duty, but it has to be performed.
It was as if the sight of Leopold, so triumphantly alive, had shown him fully his own change and his weakness had demonstrated to him clearly that he was but the wraith of what he had been. The day after that on which Berselius had seen Leopold, Madame Berselius, moved by one of those fits of caprice common to women of her type, came back suddenly from Trouville.
This puzzled him, and what puzzles a savage frightens him. His nose told him that here were elephants in sight of his eyes; his eyes told him that there were none. All at once the column came to a dead halt. Porters flung down their loads and cried out in fright. Even Berselius stood stock-still in astonishment.
"Well," said Adams, "the idea is not a bad one, but just for the present I am fixed. I am going on a big-game shooting expedition to the Congo." "As doctor?" "Yes, and the salary is not bad two thousand francs a month and everything found, to say nothing of the fun." "And the malaria?" "Oh, one has to run risks." "Whom are you going with?" "A man called Berselius."
"Was Bauchardy driven into these swamps you speak of, and made to hunt against his will treated cruelly, in fact or did Berselius take his own share of the hardships?" "His own share! Why, from what I can understand, he did all the hunting. A man of iron with the ferocity of a tiger a very devil, who made others follow him as poor Bauchardy did, to his death "
They descended into the river bed, passed up the other bank, and went on, Berselius leading and Adams walking by his side. "Do you know," said Adams, "I was beginning to think you were out of the track." Berselius smiled. Adams, who was glancing at his face, thought that he had never seen an expression like that on the man's face before.
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