Several days later.
Out of the seven of us all told Tehei is the only one who has
escaped; but his sufferings from nostalgia are worse than fever.
Nakata, as usual, followed instructions faithfully, so that by the
end of his third attack he could take a two hours' sweat, consume
thirty or forty grains of quinine, and be weak but all right at the
end of twenty-four hours.
Wada and Henry, however, were tougher patients with which to deal.
In the first place, Wada got in a bad funk. He was of the firm
conviction that his star had set and that the Solomons would receive
his bones. He saw that life about him was cheap. At Penduffryn he
saw the ravages of dysentery, and, unfortunately for him, he saw one
victim carried out on a strip of galvanized sheet-iron and dumped
without coffin or funeral into a hole in the ground. Everybody had
fever, everybody had dysentery, everybody had everything. Death was
common. Here to-day and gone to-morrow - and Wada forgot all about
to-day and made up his mind that to-morrow had come.
He was careless of his ulcers, neglected to sublimate them, and by
uncontrolled scratching spread them all over his body. Nor would he
follow instructions with fever, and, as a result, would be down five
days at a time, when a day would have been sufficient.
