The symptoms developed unmistakably after this, and the fever showed itself as typhus in the most deadly form. Swift on this revelation came the end; and in the solemn stillness of the forest midnight they knelt beside the unconscious form, and watched the parched, quivering lips from which the breath was faintly ebbing. One last sobbing sigh, and between them and the captain of their little company there stretched a distance wider than the breadth of Africa, further than from the Zambesi to the Congo. A land more mysterious than the Dark Continent parted them from him who was last week their jovial, hardy comrade, sharing the fortunes of the day, thinking of death as of a shadowy something waiting for him far off, at the end of innumerable journeys and long years of adventurous activity--a quiet haven, into which his bark would drift when the timbers were worn thin with long usage, and the arms of the rower were weary of plying the oar. And death was close beside them all the time, lying in wait for that gallant spirit, like a beast of prey. "O God, is there another Africa, where we shall meet that brave, good man again?" cried Allan. "Which of our modern teachers is right?--Liddon, who tells us that Christ rose from the dead; or Clifford, who tells us there is nothing--nothing: no Great Companion, no Master or Guide: only ourselves and our faithful service for one another--only this poor humanity?" He looked up appealingly, expecting to see Geoffrey's face on the other side of the bed; but he was alone. Geoffrey had fled from the presence of death. He had rushed out into the wilderness. It was late in the following afternoon when he came back. The men had dug a grave under a great sycamore, and Allan was about to read the funeral service, when his fellow-traveller reappeared. White, haggard, with wild eyes, and clothes stained with mire and sedge, the red clay of the forest paths, the green slime of swamp and bog, Allan could only look at him in pitying wonder. "Where in Heaven's name have you been?" he asked, looking up from the rough basket-work coffin--bamboo and bulrush--interwoven by native hands. "I don't know. Out yonder, between the plain and the river. I was a craven to fly from the face of death--I, a soldier," with a short, ironical laugh. "I don't know how it was with me last night. I couldn't bear it. I had been thinking of that verse in the gospel--'One shall be taken,' but I didn't think it would be that one--the hardy, experienced traveller. It might have been you or I. Not he, Allan. It was a blow, wasn't it?--a blow that might shake a strong man's nerves!" Allan stretched out his hand to his comrade in silence, and they clasped hands, heartily on Allan's part; and his grip was so earnest that he did not know it clasped a nerveless hand. "It was a crushing blow," he said gravely. "I don't blame you for being scared. You have come back in time to see him laid in his grave, and to say a prayer with me."