Her first impulse was to follow. With the rifle she might be of
assistance to him, and, further, she could not bear the terrible
thought of being left alone at the mercy of the fearful jungle without
a single friend to aid her.
She started to crawl from her shelter with the intention of running
after Anderssen as fast as she could. As she drew the baby close to her
she glanced down into its little face.
How red it was! How unnatural the little thing looked. She raised the
cheek to hers. It was fiery hot with fever!
With a little gasp of terror Jane Clayton rose to her feet in the
jungle path. The rifle and bandoleer lay forgotten in the shelter
beside her. Anderssen was forgotten, and Rokoff, and her great peril.
All that rioted through her fear-mad brain was the fearful fact that
this little, helpless child was stricken with the terrible
jungle-fever, and that she was helpless to do aught to allay its
sufferings—sufferings that were sure to come during ensuing intervals
of partial consciousness.
Her one thought was to find some one who could help her—some woman who
had had children of her own—and with the thought came recollection of
the friendly village of which Anderssen had spoken. If she could but
reach it—in time!
There was no time to be lost. Like a startled antelope she turned and
fled up the trail in the direction Anderssen had indicated.
From far behind came the sudden shouting of men, the sound of shots,
and then silence. She knew that Anderssen had met the Russian.
A half-hour later she stumbled, exhausted, into a little thatched
village. Instantly she was surrounded by men, women, and children.
Eager, curious, excited natives plied her with a hundred questions, no
one of which she could understand or answer.
All that she could do was to point tearfully at the baby, now wailing
piteously in her arms, and repeat over and over, “Fever—fever—fever.”
The blacks did not understand her words, but they saw the cause of her
trouble, and soon a young woman had pulled her into a hut and with
several others was doing her poor best to quiet the child and allay its
agony.
The witch doctor came and built a little fire before the infant, upon
which he boiled some strange concoction in a small earthen pot, making
weird passes above it and mumbling strange, monotonous chants.
Presently he dipped a zebra’s tail into the brew, and with further
mutterings and incantations sprinkled a few drops of the liquid over
the baby’s face.
After he had gone the women sat about and moaned and wailed until Jane
thought that she should go mad; but, knowing that they were doing it
all out of the kindness of their hearts, she endured the frightful
waking nightmare of those awful hours in dumb and patient suffering.
It must have been well toward midnight that she became conscious of a
sudden commotion in the village. She heard the voices of the natives
raised in controversy, but she could not understand the words.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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