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Updated: May 8, 2025
"We want to know," he said quietly, "if you will organise and lead the fighting men." Guy Oscard drew a deep breath. There are some Englishmen left, thank Heaven! who love fighting for its own sake, and not only for the gain of it.
"I suppose," said Oscard, folding the letter and putting it in his pocket, "that he thinks it is my duty to do what is best for Msala. That is why I asked you to speak to me." Mario did not seem to be listening. She was looking over his head up the river, in the direction from whence the message had come, and there was a singular hopelessness in her eyes.
"I cannot leave until he tells me to," she said doggedly. Guy Oscard took the pipe from his lips and examined the bowl of it attentively for a moment. "Excuse me," he said gently, "but I insist on your leaving with the children to-morrow. I will send two men down with you, and will give you a letter to Miss Gordon, who will see to your wants at Loango." She looked at him with a sort of wonder.
"All right," said Oscard soothingly; "all right. We'll look after you." He fell back on the bed. In the flickering light his eyeballs gleamed. Then quite suddenly he rose to a sitting position again with a wild effort. "I've got it! I've got it!" he cried. "Got what?" "The sleeping sickness!" The two listeners knew of this strange disease.
"That describes Meredith. He is not the man I took him for. He is so wonderfully polite and gentle and pleasant. Not the qualities that make a good leader for an African exploring expedition eh?" Jocelyn gave a strange little laugh, which included, among other things, a subtle intimation that she rather liked Guy Oscard.
When he saw Oscard his small face suddenly expanded into a brilliant grin. "Bad case!" he said. It was rather startling, until Marie spoke. "He thinks you are Mr. Meredith," she said. "Mr. Meredith taught him to say 'Bad case!" Nestorius looked from one to the other with gravely speculative eyes, which presently closed. "He is dying yes!" said the mother, looking at Jocelyn.
The men of his division had all preceded him, and no one except his own boatmen knew that Msala was to be abandoned. There was in Guy Oscard a dogged sense of justice which sometimes amounted to a cruel mercilessness. When he reached the camp he deliberately withheld from Durnovo the news that the Msala household had left the river station.
Piled up in neat square cases, such as could be carried in pairs by a man of ordinary strength, was the crop of Simiacine, roughly valued by Victor Durnovo at forty thousand pounds. Ten men could carry the whole of it, and the twenty cases set close together on the ground made a bed for Guy Oscard.
It was distinctly an effort to him to tear the paper. Jocelyn and I are off home for two months' change of air. I have been a bit seedy. I leave this at the Bungalow, and we shall feel hurt if you do not make the house your home whenever you happen to come down to Loango. I have left a similar note for Oscard, in whose expedition to your relief I have all faith. Yours ever,
And it is a story that might easily be discredited." So the "eccentric Oscard" finished his earthly career in the intellectual atmosphere of a coroner's jury. And the world rather liked it than otherwise. The world, one finds, does like novelty, even in death. Some day an American will invent a new funeral, and if he can only get the patent, will make a fortune.
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