ess which
clutches them at last; but when it came he did not recognise it. He
was so racked by pain that he never recognised the symptoms; he was so
panic-stricken, so paralysed by the nameless fear that lay behind him,
that he could only think of pressing forward. In the night hours he
would suddenly rise from his precarious bed under the shadow of a fallen
tree and stagger on, haunted by a picture of his ruthless foes pressing
through the jungle in pursuit. Thus he accomplished his wonderful
journey alone through trackless forests; thus he fended off the sickness
which gripped him the moment that he laid him down to rest.

He had left it--a grim legacy--to his torturers, and before he reached
the river all was still on the Simiacine Plateau.

And so we leave Victor Durnovo. His sins are buried with him, and
beneath the giant palms at Msala lies Maurice Gordon's secret.

And so we leave Msala, the accursed camp. Far up the Ogowe river, on the
left bank, the giant palms still stand sentry, and beneath their shade
the crumbling walls of a cursed house are slowly disappearing beneath
luxuriant growths of grass and brushwood.

CHAPTER XXXIX. THE EXTENUATING CIRCUMSTANCE

Yet I think at God's Tribunal
Some large answer you shall hear.

In a dimly-lighted room in the bungalow at Loango two women had been
astir all night. Now, as dawn approached, one of them, worn out with
watching, wearied with that blessed fatigue of anxiety which dulls the
senses, had laid her down on the curtain-covered bed to sleep.

While Marie slept Jocelyn Gordon walked softly backwards and forwards
with Nestorius in her arms. Nestorius was probably dying. He lay in the
Englishwoman's gentle arms--a little brown bundle of flexile limbs
and cotton night-shirt. It was terribly hot. All day the rain had been
pending; all night it had held off until the whole earth seemed to
pulsate with the desire for relief. Jocelyn kept moving, so that the
changing air wafted over the little bare limbs might allay the
fever. She was in evening dress, having, indeed, been called from the
drawing-room by Marie; and the child's woolly black head was pressed
against her breast as if to seek relief from the inward pressure on the
awakening brain.

A missionary possessing some small knowledge of medicine had been with
them until midnight, and, having done his best, had gone away, leaving
the child to the two women. Maurice had been in twice, clumsi