nemy whom he had hated,
just from premonition, even before his appearance. There was true
madness in that look, arising from the long privation, the interminable
jealousy, the consequent monomania of revenge. "He will die," he
reflected, gloating with half-shut eyes, his face, that had once been
puerile, now dignified by triumph. "He will never leave this forest,"
he sang to himself, curling up his mouse-colored mustaches as if at a
mirror before sallying out to some pleasure in which there was no
sting. But suddenly he remembered that this prostrate rival was still
his conqueror, had won what he had not been able to win, would recall,
no doubt, in his last moment of consciousness, that love in all its
details.

Out of the silent night the spirit of Africa crept into the dim tent,
completing his madness.

To one of the little fires came softly Lawrence Teck's tent boy, a
turbaned Persian, lemon-hued, with the beak of a parrot and the mouth
of a cruel woman. He sat down close beside a Swahili gun bearer, who
was frying a mess of white ants.

"Our Bwana has fallen asleep," he uttered in a voice that would have
been inaudible to white men. "The other Bwana is sitting by the bed."
He waited till the ants were cooked to a turn, then murmured, in a tone
like aeolian harp strings caressed by the faintest zephyr, "If our
Bwana does not die of the fever the other Bwana will kill him."

The brown Swahili, his pan half raised, turned his face which seemed to
have been smashed flat, and gave the speaker a slow, fierce look of
inquiry. The Persian breathed:

"With our Bwana's own pistol. As if he had killed himself. I peeped
through the curtain. The pistol was hanging from the tent-pole. When
he looked at it, and then at our Bwana, I read everything in his mind.
But if this also is the will of God it will not happen until some hour
when the camp is still--when we are all asleep."

CHAPTER LVIII

The safari that was seeking him marched and camped, marched and camped,
marched and camped.

Every afternoon the northeastern monsoon wafted in its sticky moisture,
releasing in the jungles the nauseating sweetness of incredible
flowers. Smoky-brown flies were seen on the necks of the sheep. The
beasts began to sicken and die. The porters ate fresh meat.

But the porters no longer sang. The Wasena, who bore the hammock,
muttered to one another dolefully as they shuffled along. All knew by
this time that they