Roger therefore hurried through his preparations for handing over his work to Hildebrandt. It was thought better that with them should go the two Australians, so that the staff might be entirely German. Maud superintended the packing of their personal effects. Roger decided, partly out of liking for the Hildebrandts, partly from a horror he had of stripping the home where he and Lucy and Maud had been so happy, to present the Hildebrandts with its furniture and garnishings, and to take away as little luggage as possible. He did this almost with a kind of foreseeing that he might some day return. Maud felt very much parting with the Crowned cranes. Together with pea-fowl they are the most intelligent, inquisitive, well-mannered pets that the bird-world can produce. The journey to the coast port where the steamer would call was accomplished in a motor ride of three days. Even to the dying and little-regarding Lucy this was in striking contrast to the three-weeks to four-weeks’ journey up-country in her novitiate; with its crushing fatigues, discomforts and frequent dangers. No more skulls and skeletons of recent raids, no more intrusive lions, no need to fall among soldier ants, no water famines and atrocious smells; no tedious waiting in hot sun or drenching rain, while an unstable tent was being fumblingly put up and a camp bed put together. When the motor halted for the night Lucy was transferred by kind hands, as in a dream to a clean, sweet, cool couch in a decent bedroom. When it was morning, after a breakfast she scarcely seemed to taste, she was placed in a flying-bed—as the motor seemed—and so the dream journey went on till she was aware of being in a boat and then hoisted up into the air in a bed, and finally put to rest in a cool cabin. Dream figures would pass through this half-real environment. John Baines seemed sometimes to stand by her bed or help her into the motor; Maud became confused with Ann, but surely a much gentler Ann? There was Brother Bayley, looking for her to read slowly through the Book of Exodus, so that he might translate it, phrase after phrase, into Kagulu....