We Were Both Very Weak And Ill, And My Knees
Trembled Beneath Me As We Walked Down The Easy Descent.
I, in my
enervated state, endeavoring to assist my wife, we were the "blind
leading the blind;" but had
Life closed on that day we could have died
most happily, for the hard fight through sickness and misery had ended
in victory; and although I looked to home as a paradise never to be
regained, I could have lain down to sleep in contentment on this spot,
with the consolation that, if the body had been vanquished, we died with
the prize in our grasp.
On arrival at the canoes we found everything in readiness, and the
boatmen already in their places. Once in the broad channel of dead water
we steered due east, and made rapid way until the evening. The river as
it now appeared, although devoid of current, was on an average about 500
yards in width. Before we halted for the night I was subjected to a most
severe attack of fever, and upon the boat reaching a certain spot I was
carried on a litter, perfectly unconscious, to a village, attended
carefully by my poor sick wife, who, herself half dead, followed me on
foot through the marches in pitch darkness, and watched over me until
the morning. At daybreak I was too weak to stand, and we were both
carried down to the canoes, and crawling helplessly within our grass
awning we lay down like logs while the canoes continued their voyage.
Many of our men were also suffering from fever.
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