That is the secret of those fine discoveries Bruce made. It was
because he was a hunter. Not only with his mind--but a bold
everlastingly curious snouting hunter with his body too. If he had
sat back and listened to those missionaries, or stayed listening to
those bug experts--he would never have learned that Kivu was the
Uganda name for the tsetse. He would never have found the tsetse. But
he carried the fight to the enemy--and as for Mrs. Bruce, that woman
was better than a third hand or two extra pairs of eyes for him.
Now they planned and did terrible experiments. Day after day they
caused tsetse flies to feed on patients near to death (already too
deep in sleep to be annoyed by the insects); they interrupted the
flies in the midst of their meal, and put the angry, half-satisfied
cages of them on the backs of monkeys. With all the tenderness of
high-priced nurses watching over Park Avenue babies they saw to it
that only their experimental flies, and no chance flies from outside,
got a meal off those beasts. Other searchers might have rolled their
thumbs waiting to see what happened to the monkeys, but not Bruce.
He proceeded to call in a strange gang of co-workers to help him in
one of the most amazing tests of all microbe hunting. Bruce asked for
an audience from the high-plumed gay-robed potentate, Apolo Kagwa,
Prime Minister of Uganda. He told Apolo he had discovered the microbe
of the sleeping death which was killing so many thousands of his
people. He informed him many thousands more already had the parasite
in their blood, and were doomed. “But there is a way to stop the
ruin that faces your country, for I have reason to believe it is the
tsetse fly--the insect you call Kivu--and _only_ this insect, that
carries the poisonous germ from a sick man to a healthy one----”
The magnificent Apolo broke in: “But I cannot believe that is
so--Kivu has been on the Lake shore always, and my people have only
begun to be taken by the sleeping sickness during the last few
years----”
Bruce didn’t argue. He bluffed, as follows: “If you do not believe
me, give me a chance to prove it to you. Go down, Apolo Kagwa, to
the Crocodile Point on the Lake shore where Kivu swarms so. Sit on
the shore there with your feet in the water for five minutes. Don’t
keep off the flies--and I’ll promise you’ll be a dead man in two
years!”
The bluff was perfect: “What then, is to be done, Colonel Bruce?”
asked Apolo.
“Well, I must be dead sure I am right,” Bruce told him. Then he
showed Apolo a great map of Uganda. “If I’m right, where there is
sleeping sickness--there we will find tsetse flies too. Where there
are no tsetse--there should be no sleeping sickness.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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