Part 30 (2/2)

Disco looked earnestly and anxiously into the face of his friend.

”Wot,” asked he, ”does you feel?”

”I can scarcely tell,” replied Harold, with a faint smile. ”Oh, I suppose I'm a little knocked up, that's all. A night's rest will put me all right.”

”So I thought myself, but I wos wrong,” said Disco. ”Let's hear wot your feelin's is, sir; I'm as good as any doctor now, I am, in regard to symptoms.”

”Well, I feel a sort of all-overishness, a kind of la.s.situde and sleepiness, with a slight headache, and a dull pain which appears to be creeping up my spine.”

”You're in for it sir,” said Disco. ”It's lucky you have always carried the physic in your pockets, 'cause you'll need it, an' it's lucky, too, that I am here and well enough to return t.i.t for tat and nurse you, 'cause you'll have that 'ere pain in your spine creep up your back and round your ribs till it lays hold of yer shoulders, where it'll stick as if it had made up its mind to stay there for ever an' a day. Arter that you'll get cold an' s.h.i.+vering like ice--oh! doesn't I know it well--an'

then hot as fire, with heavy head, an' swimming eyes, an' twisted sight, an' confusion of--”

”Hold! hold!” cried Harold, laughing, ”if you go on in that way I shall have more than my fair share of it! Pray stop, and leave me a little to find out for myself.”

”Well, sir, take a purge, and turn in at once, that's my advice. I'll dose you with quinine to-morrow mornin', first thing,” said Disco, rising and proceeding forthwith to arrange a couch in a corner of the hut, which Yambo had a.s.signed them.

Harold knew well enough that his follower was right. He took his advice without delay, and next morning found himself little better than a child, both physically and mentally, for the disease not only prostrated his great strength--as it had that of his equally robust companion--but, at a certain stage, induced delirium, during which he talked the most ineffable nonsense that his tongue could p.r.o.nounce, or his brain conceive.

Poor Disco, who, of course, had been unable to appreciate the extent of his own delirious condition, began to fear that his leader's mind was gone for ever, and Jumbo was so depressed by the unutterably solemn expression of the mariner's once jovial countenance, that he did not once show his teeth for a whole week, save when engaged with meals.

As for Antonio, his nature not being very sympathetic, and his health being good, he rather enjoyed the quiet life and good living which characterised the native village, and secretly hoped that Harold might remain on the sick-list for a considerable time to come.

How long this state of affairs lasted we cannot tell, for both Harold and Disco lost the correct record of time during their respective illnesses.

Up to that period they had remembered the days of the week, in consequence of their habit of refraining from going out to hunt on Sundays, except when a dearth of meat in the larder rendered hunting a necessity. Upon these Sundays Harold's conscience sometimes reproached him for having set out on his journey into Africa without a Bible. He whispered, to himself at first, and afterwards suggested to Disco, the excuse that his Bible had been lost in the wreck of his father's vessel, and that, perhaps, there were no Bibles to be purchased in Zanzibar, but his conscience was a troublesome one, and refused to tolerate such bad reasoning, reminding him, reproachfully, that he had made no effort whatever to obtain a Bible at Zanzibar.

As time had pa.s.sed, and some of the horrors of the slave-trade had been brought under his notice, many of the words of Scripture leaped to his remembrance, and the regret that he had not carried a copy with him increased. That touch of thoughtlessness, so natural to the young and healthy--to whom life has so far been only a garden of roses--was utterly routed by the stern and dreadful realities which had been recently enacted around him, and just in proportion as he was impressed with the lies, tyranny, cruelty, and falsehood of man, so did his thoughtful regard for the truth and the love of G.o.d increase, especially those truths that were most directly opposed to the traffic in human flesh, such as--”love your enemies,” ”seek peace with all men,” ”be kindly affectioned one to another,” ”whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them.” An absolute infidel, he thought, could not fail to perceive that a most blessed change would come over the face of Africa if such principles prevailed among its inhabitants, even in an extremely moderate degree.

But to return, the unfortunate travellers were now ”at sea” altogether in regard to the Sabbath as well as the day of the month. Indeed their minds were not very clear as to the month itself!

”Hows'ever,” said Disco, when this subject afterwards came to be discussed, ”it don't matter much. Wot is it that the Scriptur'

says,--`Six days shalt thou labour an' do all that thou hast to do, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy G.o.d. In it thou shalt do no work.' I wos used always to stick at that pint w'en my poor mother was a-teachin' of me. Never got past it. But it's enough for present use anyhow, for the orders is, work six days an' don't work the seventh.

Werry good, we'll begin to-day an' call it Monday; we'll work for six days, an' w'en the seventh day comes we'll call it Sunday. If it ain't the right day, _we_ can't help it; moreover, wot's the odds? It's the _seventh_ day, so that to us it'll be the Sabbath.”

But we antic.i.p.ate. Harold was still--at the beginning of this digression--in the delirium of fever, though there were symptoms of improvement about him.

One afternoon one of these symptoms was strongly manifested in a long, profound slumber. While he slept Disco sat on a low stool beside him, busily engaged with a clasp-knife on some species of manufacture, the nature of which was not apparent at a glance.

His admirer, Jumbo, was seated on a stool opposite, gazing at him open-mouthed, with a countenance that reflected every pa.s.sing feeling of his dusky bosom.

Both men were so deeply absorbed in their occupation--Disco in his manufacture, and Jumbo in staring at Disco--that they failed for a considerable time to observe that Harold had wakened suddenly, though quietly, and was gazing at them with a look of lazy, easy-going surprise.

The mariner kept up a running commentary on his work, addressed to Jumbo indeed, but in a quiet interjectional manner that seemed to imply that he was merely soliloquising, and did not want or expect a reply.

”It's the most 'stror'nary notion, Jumbo, between you and me and the post, that I ever did see. Now, then, this here bullet-head wants a pair o' eyes an' a nose on it; the mouth'll do, but it's the mouth as is most troublesome, for you n.i.g.g.e.rs have got such wappin' muzzles--it's quite a caution, as the Yankees say,”--(a pause)--”on the whole, however, the nose is very difficult to manage on a flat surface, 'cause w'y?--if I leaves it quite flat, it don't look like a nose, an' if I carves it out ever so little, it's too prominent for a n.i.g.g.e.r nose.

There, ain't that a good head, Jumbo?”

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