I Believe If I Had Collapsed Too - The Cold Tempted Me To Do So As
Nothing Else Can - They Would Have Lain Down And Died In The Cold
Sleety Rain.
I sight a clump of gnarled sparsely-foliaged trees bedraped heavily
with lichen, growing in a hollow among the rocks; thither I urge the
men for shelter and they go like storm-bewildered sheep.
My bones
are shaking in my skin and my teeth in my head, for after the
experience I had had of the heat here on Monday I dared not clothe
myself heavily.
The men stand helpless under the trees, and I hastily take the load
of blankets Herr Liebert lent us off a boy's back and undo it,
throwing one blanket round each man, and opening my umbrella and
spreading it over the other blankets. Then I give them a tot of rum
apiece, as they sit huddled in their blankets, and tear up a lot of
the brittle, rotten wood from the trees and shrubs, getting horrid
thorns into my hands the while, and set to work getting a fire with
it and the driest of the moss from beneath the rocks. By the aid of
it and Xenia, who soon revived, and a carefully scraped up candle
and a box of matches, the fire soon blazes, Xenia holding a blanket
to shelter it, while I, with a cutlass, chop stakes to fix the
blankets on, so as to make a fire tent.
The other boys now revive, and I hustle them about to make more
fires, no easy work in the drenching rain, but work that has got to
be done. We soon get three well alight, and then I clutch a
blanket - a wringing wet blanket, but a comfort - and wrapping myself
round in it, issue orders for wood to be gathered and stored round
each fire to dry, and then stand over Cook while he makes the men's
already cooked chop hot over our first fire, when this is done
getting him to make me tea, or as it more truly should be called,
soup, for it contains bits of rice and beef, and the general taste
of the affair is wood smoke.
Kefalla by this time is in lecturing form again, so my mind is
relieved about him, although he says, "Oh, ma! It be cold, cold too
much. Too much cold kill we black man, all same for one as too much
sun kill you white man. Oh, ma!. . .," etc. I tell him they have
only got themselves to blame; if they had come up with me on Monday
we should have been hot enough, and missed this storm of rain.
When the boys have had their chop, and are curling themselves up
comfortably round their now blazing fires Xenia must needs start a
theory that there is a better place than this to camp in; he saw it
when he was with an unsuccessful expedition that got as far as this.
Kefalla is fool enough to go off with him to find this place; but
they soon return, chilled through again, and unsuccessful in their
quest.
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