"That's all!" But when daylight came he was in the unknown fever-country, the dreadful topsy-turvy world of delirium. He had two heads, and he wanted to shoot one of them. He tried to stand up and go across the hut to fetch the rifle that hung against the opposite wall, but his limbs refused to obey him. He lay groaning, helpless as an infant, muttering that the other head wouldn't let him sleep. The pain was all in that other head. In the long agony that followed all things were blank and dark; until, after five days of raging fever, the pulse grew regular again, the scorching body cooled down to the temperature of healthy life, and weak and wan, but rejoicing in freedom from pain, the patient came back to everyday life, and looked into the faces of his companions with eyes that saw the things that were, and not the spectral forms that people delirious dreams. "'One shall be taken,'" he muttered to himself, as he looked from Allan to Cecil, and back again. "I thought it was I. Then we are all three of us alive?" he said, with a catch in his voice that was almost a sob. "Very much alive, and we hope to remain so," answered Patrington, cheeriest of travellers. "You've had a bad spell of the cursed mukurungu, which I suppose must have its fling for the next decade or two, until railroads, and hotels, and scientific drainage, and Swiss innkeepers have altered the climate for the better. You've been pretty bad, and you've kept us in a very unhealthy district, so as soon as ever you've picked up your strength, we'll move on." "I can start to-morrow morning. I feel as strong as a lion." "Does a lion's paw shake as your hand is shaking now? My dear Geoff, you are as weak as water. We'll give you three days to recruit. I am too hardened a subject for the mukurungu, which is a fever of acclimatization, for the most part, and I've been dosing Allan with quinine, and I've been doing a good deal of ambulance surgery among the natives, and we're a very popular party. They have seldom seen three white men in a bunch. Your fiddling, my medicine-chest and sticking-plaster, and Allan's good manners have made a great effect. The blackies are assured that we are all three sultans in our own country." "And our Arab friends?" "Oh, they have gone on. We have only our own men with us now. Your Makololos have been miserable about you." They spent a jovial night, Geoffrey's spirits rising to wild gaiety, with that lightness which comes when a fever-patient has struggled through the thick cloud of strange fancies, the agony of throbbing brain and aching back. He tuned the fiddle that had been lying mute in its velvet nest. He tucked it lovingly under his chin, and laid his bow along the strings with light fingers that trembled a little in the rapture of that familiar touch. "Shall I bore you very much if I play?" he asked, looking at his elder companion.