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, endeavouring 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. A crowd of natives pushed us over the
shallows, and once in deep water we passed through a broad canal which
led us into the open channel without the labour of towing through the
narrow inlet by which we had arrived. 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 an average of
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 marshes 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. The malaria of
the dense masses of floating vegetation was most poisonous; and upon
looking back to the canoe that followed in our wake, I observed all my
men sitting crouched together sick and dispirited, looking like departed
spirits being ferried across the melancholy Styx. The river now
contracted rapidly to about 250 yards in width about ten miles from
Magungo. We had left the vast flats of rush banks, and entered a channel
between high ground, forming steep forest-covered hills, about 200 feet
on either side, north and south: nevertheless there was no perceptible
stream, although there was no doubt that we were actually in the channel
of a river. The water was clear and exceedingly deep. In the evening we
halted, and slept on a mud bank close to the water. The grass in the
forest was very high and rank; thus we were glad to find an open space
for a bivouac, although a nest of mosquitoes and malaria.
On waking the next morning, I observed that a thick fog covered the
surface of the river; and as I lay upon my back, on my angarep, I amused
myself before I woke my men by watching the fog slowly lifting from the
river.
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