"All that!" Dominey muttered. "Is he the Governor, or something of that sort?"
"He is Military Commandant of the Colony," the doctor replied. "He has also a special mission here."
"Damned fine-looking fellow for a German," Dominey remarked, with unthinking insolence.
The doctor was unmoved. He was feeling his patient's pulse. He concluded his examination a few minutes later.
"You have drunk much whisky lately, so?" he asked.
"I don't know what the devil it's got to do with you," was the curt reply, "but I drink whisky whenever I can get it. Who wouldn't in this pestilential climate!"
The doctor shook his head.
"The climate is good as he is treated," he declared. "His Excellency drinks nothing but light wine and seltzer water. He has been here for five years, not only here but in the swamps, and he has not been ill one day."
"Well, I have been at death's door a dozen times," the Englishman rejoined a little recklessly, "and I don't much mind when I hand in my checks, but until that time comes I shall drink whisky whenever I can get it."
"The cook is preparing you some luncheon," the doctor announced, "and it will do you good to eat. I cannot give you whisky at this moment, but you can have some hock and seltzer with bay leaves."
"Send it along," was the enthusiastic reply. "What a constitution I must have, doctor! The smell of that cooking outside is making me ravenous."
"Your constitution is still sound if you would only respect it," was the comforting assurance.
"Anything been heard of the rest of my party?" Dominey enquired.
"Some bodies of Askaris have been washed up from the river," the doctor informed him, "and two of your ponies have been eaten by lions. You will excuse. I have the wounds of a native to dress, who was bitten last night by a jaguar."
The traveller, left alone, lay still in the hut, and his thoughts wandered backwards. He looked out over the bare, scrubby stretch of land which had been cleared for this encampment to the mass of bush and flowering shrubs beyond, mysterious and impenetrable save for that rough elephant track along which he had travelled; to the broad-bosomed river, blue as the sky above, and to the mountains fading into mist beyond. The face of his host had carried him back into the past. Puzzled reminiscence tugged at the strings of memory. It came to him later on at dinner time, when they three, the Commandant, the doctor and himself, sat at a little table arranged just outside the hut, that they might catch the faint breeze from the mountains, herald of the swift-falling darkness. Native servants beat the air around them with bamboo fans to keep off the insects, and the air was faint almost to noxiousness with the perfume of some sickly, exotic shrub.