Now, Carter was strong, and he carried, moreover, a high courage and a fierce energy, which even the steamy atmosphere of the West Coast could not damp. Malaria he had with a certain regular periodicity, but he was one of those rare men who threw off the attacks with speed, and suffered little from their after effects. He was essentially moderate in his habits of life, carrying a healthy hunger but never overeating, being neither a drunkard nor a teetotaller through fear of drink. Moreover, he did not abuse quinine, coffee, tobacco or drugs. As a consequence, in that much-anathematized climate he preserved a very level health and energy, and owned a normal mind where most men were either hysterical or morbid. He had come ashore at Malla-Nulla, when he first landed on that ugly beach from the _M'poso_, with two Gladstone bags. One of these had been looted by some light-fingered merchant of the interior. The other still remained with him, and had journeyed to Mokki. Its notable tint of yellow had long since vanished. In places it was mottled black with mildew, and the rest of the surface was a good mulatto brown. The fastenings had burst, and been replaced by rope. He looked at it with a moment's indecision. It would make a vastly ugly knapsack--but--it represented one of his few remaining possessions in the world. (The £60, or, to be precise, the sum of £57 6s. 10d., which he had forced Laura to carry off, had emptied his purse to the dregs.) And as he could not make up his mind to desert the bag, he packed what things he thought essential within its leaky leather sides, arranged rope beckets for his shoulders, slung it on his back, tucked the Winchester aforesaid under his arm, and set off down the narrow forest road which ben Hossein had indicated, without further word of farewell with anybody. The heat of noon had just faded, but the eighteen-inch wide road was walled in with dense high bush, and the air down in that narrow cut was breathless and stagnant. When the road curved away from the sun and the high walls threw a shadow, Carter waited for a moment and panted; when the sun teemed rays of molten brass directly down on him from overhead, he hurried; and so moved on at an average gait of three miles to the hour, which is good travelling for West Africa.