Geoffrey shrugged his shoulders, with a hopeless look. "Where do our prayers go, I wonder? We know no more than the natives, when they sacrifice to their gods. Isn't it rather feeble to go on praying when there never comes any answer? I saw you praying last night--wrestling with God in prayer, as pious people call it. I saw your forehead damp with agony, your lips writhing--every vein in your clasped hands standing out like whipcord. I watched you, and was sorry, and would have given ten years of my life to save his; but I couldn't pray with you. And, you see, there came no answer. Inexorable Nature worked out her own problem in her own way. Your prayers--my silence; one was as much use as the other. Nobody heeded us; nobody cared for us. The blow fell." "Ah, we know not, we know not! There is compensation, perhaps. We shall see and know our friends in heaven, and look back and know that we were children groping in the dark. Try to believe, Geoffrey. Belief is best." "Belief. The pious mourner's anodyne, the Christian's patent pain-killer. Yes, belief is best; but, you see, some people can't believe. I can't. And I see only the hideous side of death--the dull horror of annihilation. A week ago we had a man with us, the manliest of men--all nerve, and fire, and brain-power, brave as a lion, ready to do and endure--and now we have only--that," with a look of heart-sickness, "which we are impatient to put out of sight for ever. Put it in the ground, Allan; fill in the grave; trample it down; let us forget that there was ever such a man." He flung himself upon the ground and sobbed out his grief. There had been something in the blunt, dogged straightforwardness of Cecil Patrington's character which had attached this wayward nature to him with hooks of steel. "I loved him," he muttered, getting up, calm and grave even to sullenness. "And now you and I are alone." He stood beside the grave where native hands had gently lowered the rough coffin, and where Allan had scattered flowers and herbs, whose aromatic odours hung heavy on the still sultriness of the atmosphere. He looked at Allan, and not with looks of love. "Only we two," he muttered, "and these black beasts of burden." CHAPTER VII. MAMBU KWA MUNGU.[2] [Footnote 2: Mambu kwa mungu: "It is God's trouble."]