Outside, the Arab camp was in an uproar. Groups of tribesmen passed the tent continually, conversing eagerly, their raucous voices rising shrill, shouting, arguing, in noisy excitement. The neighing of horses came from near by and once a screaming stallion backed heavily against the canvas wall where Yoshio was sitting, rousing the phlegmatic Japanese to an unwonted ejaculation of wrath as he ducked and grabbed into safety the remaining rifle before the animal was hauled clear with a wealth of detailed Arabic expletives, and he grinned broadly when an authoritative voice broke into the Arabs’ clamour and a subsequent sudden silence fell in the vicinity of the stranger’s tent.
Regardless of the disturbance resounding from all quarters of the camp Craven wrote on steadily for some time longer. Then with a short sigh he shuffled the scattered sheets together, brushed clear the clinging accumulation of scorched wings and tiny shrivelled bodies, and without re-reading the closely written pages stuffed them into an envelope, and having closed and directed it, leaned back with an exclamation of relief.
The letter to Peters was finished but there remained still the more difficult letter he had yet to address to his wife—a letter he dreaded and yet longed to write. A letter which, reaching her after the death he confidently expected and earnestly prayed for, would reveal to her fully the secret of his past and the passion that had driven him, unworthy, from her. For never during the two years of adventure and peril had death seemed more imminent than now, and before he died he would give himself this one satisfaction—he would break the silence of years that had eaten like a canker into his soul. At last she would know all he had never dared to tell her, all his hopeless love, all his remorse and shame, all his passionate desire for her happiness.
Scores of times during the last two years he had attempted to write such a letter and had as often refrained, but to-night his need was imperative. It was his last chance. In the early hours of the dawn he would ride with his Arab hosts on a punitive expedition from which he had no intention of returning alive. Death that he had courted openly since leaving England would surely be easy to find amid the warring tribes with whom he had thrown in his lot. A curious smile lit his face for an instant, then passed abruptly at the doubt that shook his confidence. Would fate again refuse him release from a life that had become more than ever intolerable?
Haunted as he was with the memory of O Hara San, tortured with longing for the woman he had made his wife, the double burden had become too heavy to bear. He had grasped at the opportunity offered by the scientific mission. The dangerous nature of the country, the fever that saturated its swamps and forests, was known to him and he had gone to Africa courting a death that would free him and yet leave no stain on the name borne by his wife. And the death that would free him would free her too! The bitter justice of it made him set his teeth. For he had left her his fortune and his great possessions unrestrictedly to deal with as she would. Young, rich and free! Who would claim what he had surrendered? Even now, after months of mental struggle, the thought was torment.
But death that had laid a heavy toll on his companions had turned away from him. Disease and disaster had dogged the mission from the outset. The medical and scientific researches had proved satisfactory beyond expectation, but the attendant loss of life had been terrible, and himself utterly reckless and heedless of all precautions Craven had watched tragedy after tragedy with envy he had been hardly able to hide. Immune from the sudden and deadly fevers that had swept the camps periodically with fatal results he had worked fearlessly and untiringly among the stricken members of the mission and the fast dwindling army of demoralised porters who had succumbed with alarming rapidity. With the stolid Japanese always beside him he had wrestled entire nights and days to save the expedition from extermination. And in the intervals of nursing, and shepherding the unwilling carriers, he had ranged far and wide in search of fresh food to supply the wants of the camp. The danger he deliberately sought, with a rashness that had provoked open comment, had miraculously evaded him. He had borne a charmed life. He had snatched at every hazardous enterprise, he had exposed himself consistently to risk until one evening shortly before the expedition was due to start on the return march to civilization, when a chance word spoken by the camp fire had brought home to him abruptly the dependence of the remnant of the mission on him to bring them to the coast in safety. By some strange dealing of fate it had been among the non-scientific members of the expedition that mortality had ranged highest; the big game hunters, though hardier and physically better equipped than the students of the party for hardship and endurance had, with the exception of Craven himself, been wiped out to a man. It had been an unpremeditated remark uttered in all good faith with no ulterior motive by a shuddering fever-stricken scientist writing up his notes and diary by the light of the fire with trembling fingers that could scarcely hold the fountain pen that moved laboriously driven by an indomitable will. A grim jest, horrible in its significance, had followed the startling utterance and Craven had looked with perplexity at the shivering figure with its drawn yellow face from which a pair of glittering eyes burned with an almost uncanny brilliance until the meaning of the man’s words slowly penetrated. But the true importance of the suggestion once realised had aroused in him a full understanding of the duty he owed to the men he had undertaken to lead. Of those who could have convoyed the expedition on its homeward march only he remained. Without him the survivors of the once large party might eventually reach safety but it was made clear to him that night how completely his companions relied on him for a quick return and for the management of the train of porters whose frequent mutinies only Craven seemed able to quell. He had sat far into the night, staring gloomily into the blazing fire, smoking pipe after pipe, listening to the multifarious noises of the forest—the sudden distant crash of falling trees, the incessant hum of insect life, the long-drawn howl of beasts of prey hovering on the outskirts of the camp, the soft whoo-whoo of an owl whose cry brought vividly to his mind the cool fragrance of the garden at Craven Towers and the nearer more ominous sounds of muffled agony that came from a tent close beside him where yet another victim of science was gasping his life away.
Hour after hour he sat thinking. There was no getting away from it—it was only despicable that he had not himself recognised it earlier. The narrow path of duty lay before him from which he might not turn aside to ease the burden of a private grief. He was bound to the men who trusted him. Honour demanded that he should forego the project he had formed—until his obligation had been discharged. Loyalty to his companions must come before every selfish consideration. After all it was only a postponement, he reflected with a kind of grim satisfaction. The residue of the mission once safely conducted to the coast his responsibility would end and he would be free to pursue the course that would liberate the woman he loved.