ark, and we all wended our
way back to the canoe. I do not know whether it was deliberate
intention, or merely the result of accident, but I could not help
noticing that during the short journey from our camping-place to the
spot where the canoe had been left, there were always three or four
savages quite close to me, who appeared to be keeping a very careful
watch upon my movements, as though they more than half suspected me of a
desire to give them the slip; but I was by this time suffering such
excruciating agony that, for the time being at least, all thoughts of
escape were completely banished from my mind. I had become quite
convinced that the bite was going to prove fatal, and my only subject of
speculation was how many more hours of torture I was doomed to endure
before merciful death would come to my relief. But after we had been
afloat for about half an hour, and were once more speeding up the river
as fast as the sturdy arms of the paddlers could urge us, I suddenly
became violently sick, the paroxysm lasting for nearly ten minutes; and
when I had in some degree recovered from the exhaustion attendant upon
this attack, I was equally surprised and delighted to find that the pain
and throbbing in my arm were distinctly less acute; and from that
moment, as much to the astonishment of the savages as of myself, my
symptoms rapidly improved, until by evening I was so far free from pain
as to be able to sleep for several hours, although the swelling did not
entirely subside until nearly forty-eight hours later. But meanwhile my
fellow-sufferer, the savage who had also been bitten, and who had
resorted to the heroic method of cauterising his wound, had been all day
steadily developing symptoms similar to my own before the curative
attack of sickness, his foot and leg, right up to the hip, had swollen
to an enormous size and become so stiff that when the moment arrived for
us to disembark for the night he was unable to move, and begged most
piteously--as I interpreted the tones of his voice and his actions--to
be left in the canoe all night, to fight out the battle between life and
death alone and undisturbed.

The next morning, when we went down to the canoe, the poor fellow was
not only dead, but his whole body was swollen almost out of human
semblance, presenting in that and other respects a most shocking and
revolting spectacle. We took the corpse with us until we had reached
the main channel of the river, and