But end it did. The world became more real about me day by day, until I emerged into the true truth of my surroundings. And then I would rather have returned to my dreams and my fevers.
I saw myself in a room with earthen floor and an earthen roof, an underground chamber, pierced at top by a circular skyhole that admitted a wan beam of light. My furniture was only a miserable pile of straw and a bucket of slops beside it, and there was a palisade of stout poles barring my door, with a chain across it, so that I was not sure whether I was in a hospital or a dungeon, or some of both. Which latter I soon discovered to be the case.
I was weak as a puppy. I could not rise. I touched my face with a quivering hand and felt my cheek all stony and hollow, like a skull’s, and rough uncouth beard sprouting everywhere. My eyes were blear, but I could see well enough my naked body before me, fleshless, the hip-bones rising to view like scimitars, my skin loose and slack and yellowish, my manhood shriveled and shrunken like that of a man of ninety years, limp and sad against my thigh. So I was not dead, but I was far from being alive.
The gate was let back and a woman entered my cell. I could see her but dimly, but she was slender and seemingly young, with a bodice and robe of some dark velvety stuff, and a kind of surplice over her shoulders woven like a net out of fine fibers, and a veil on her face. I took her to be a nun, though I was puzzled to see gold chains around her neck, and that she had a cap of black velvet trimmed with jewels. This did not seem nun’s garb to me.
“Are you awake, then?” she asked in Portuguese.
“Aye.”
“And in your right mind?”
“I cannot be so sure of that. What place is this?”
“The hospice of Santa Maria Madalena, in São Paulo de Loanda, where you have lain ill these months past.”
“Months? What month is this?”
“It is the month of the Feast of São Antonio.”
“By God, I know not your saints! What month of the calendar?”
“June.”
That smote me hard. First, that I had dozed away half a year here, out of my mind; and second, that now two years had slipped by since my leaving England. My life was fleeing and I was becalmed, helpless, lost.
The woman had brought me food. It was a bowl of some mashed stuff, floating in a light sauce. She crouched beside me and offered me some with a wooden spoon, saying, “You must regain your flesh. You have eaten very little. Will you try it?”
“What is it?”
“It is a thing called manioc, that we take from the ground and roast, a whole root, and grind into flour. It will make you strong again.”
I remembered this manioc from Braziclass="underline" a plant of the Indians, that I suppose the Portugals had brought with them to Angola. I had eaten it often, with no great fondness, but now I took it, and the broth in which it lay. The first spoonful filled me with such appetite that I signalled at once for another, but that was rashness: by the time the second one hit bottom, my stomach was sorely griped from the first. I waved the bowl away. She waited patiently. The spasm passed and I was hungry again, and took more, less greedily, a kitten-sip of the stuff. Then a little more. Then a pause, and then yet more. And I felt the griping begin again, and smiled my thanks, and said politely, “Obrigado, sister,” which to the Portugals is thanks.
“I am Dona Teresa da Costa.”
“Is it you that has cared for me all these months?”
“I and some others. They would have let you die, at first, but that seemed too harsh, and we came to give you medicines, and a little soup when you would take it.”
“I am most grateful,” I told her again. “What is your order, sister?”
She laughed a little tinkling laugh. “Ah, nay, I am no nun! No nun at all!”
“And yet you serve in the hospice?”
“It was for my pleasure,” she said. “You looked right splendid when they took you from the pinnace all unconscious, with your golden hair adangle, and your fair English skin, and all. I had never seen such hair and such skin, and I would not have had you die. Can you eat more?”
“I think not.”
“Something to drink?”
“Some water, only.”
“I will fetch it.”
She was gone a long time. Before she returned I felt the fever climbing in me again, and knew that I was far from healed, perhaps still in risk of my life. I began to shake, and as she came to me I turned on my side and delivered myself of all that she had fed me, in such racking pukes that I thought my guts would spew out my mouth and snarl by my side. Then, as quickly as that had happened, I was calm again, sweaty, trembling, but the heat was gone from my forehead. I begged her mercy for having inflicted such foulness on her, but she only laughed, and said, “There has been worse, much worse, in your illness.”
As she wiped the spew from my face I looked closely at her. She was no more than eighteen, I saw, and of surpassing beauty. Her eyes were set far apart and narrow in that wondrous Portugal way the women sometimes have, and her skin was deep-hued, an olive tone, and her hair, jet black, was thick and lustrous, tumbling in heavy loops and coils. Her lips were full, her cheeks were high and sharp, her carriage was regal.
“I will try more manioc,” I said, and this time I kept it down.
She bade me sleep, but I told her I had slept for months, and wished now to learn something of what had gone on in the world outside my cell. There was another Englishman in São Paulo de Loanda, I said: where was he, could he not be sent to visit me, or was he under imprisonment?
“I know not,” she said.
“His name is Thomas Torner, and he was with me on the pinnace when we came from Masanganu.”
“Yes, that I know. It was he who carried you on shore when you fell ill. But he is not in São Paulo de Loanda now.”
“Gone back to Masanganu?”
“I think he is fled,” she said. “Or perhaps perished. I know nothing of this Englishman.”
Which saddened me and sorrowed me greatly. What escape could he possibly have managed? I asked her to make inquiries, and she did, to no effect. Later I learned that Torner had disappeared not long after our return from Masanganu, slipping away in a manner most mysterious. But a party of Arab slave-traders had been along the coast just then, selling captive Moors from the desert lands to the far north, and it was suspected by the Portugals that Torner had somehow insinuated himself among them, bribing them or begging such mercy as the sons of the Prophet are willing to offer. What became of him beyond that I know not, whether he was sold in slavery himself, or made his way through the kindness of the Arabs to some civilized land, but I have had assurance that he did in time reach England safely.