“Come,” he said, “lie down upon my bed. I will try and help you. Can you take some food?” Durnovo threw himself down heavily on the bed. There was a punishment sufficient to expiate all his sins in the effort he saw that Guy Oscard had had to make before he touched him. He turned his face away. “I haven't eaten anything for twenty-four hours,” he said, with a whistling intonation. “Joseph,” said Oscard, returning to the door of the inner room--his voice sounded different, there was a metallic ring in it--“get something for Mr. Durnovo--some soup or something.” Joseph obeyed, shaking as if ague were in his bones. Oscard administered the soup. He tended Durnovo with all the gentleness of a woman, and a fortitude that was above the fortitude of men. Despite himself, his hands trembled--big and strong as they were; his whole being was contracted with horror and pain. Whatever Victor Durnovo had been, he was now an object of such pity that before it all possible human sins faded into spotlessness. There was no crime in all that human nature has found to commit for which such cruelty as this would be justly meted out in punishment. Durnovo spoke from time to time, but he could see the effect that his hissing speech had upon his companion, and in time he gave it up. He told haltingly of the horrors of the Simiacine Plateau--of the last grim tragedy acted there--how, at last, blinded with his blood, maimed, stupefied by agony, he had been hounded down the slope by a yelling, laughing horde of torturers. There was not much to be done, and presently Guy Oscard moved away to his camp-chair, where he sat staring into the night. Sleep was impossible. Strong, hardened, weather-beaten man that he was, his nerves were all a-tingle, his flesh creeping and jumping with horror. Gradually he collected his faculties enough to begin to think about the future. What was he to do with this man? He could not take him to Loango. He could not risk that Jocelyn or even Maurice Gordon should look upon this horror. Joseph had crept back into the inner room, where he had no light, and could be heard breathing hard, wide awake in his hammock. Suddenly the silence was broken by a loud cry: “Oscard! Oscard!” In a moment Joseph and Oscard were at the bedside. Durnovo was sitting up, and he grabbed at Oscard's arm. “For God's sake!” he cried. “For God's sake, man, don't let me go to sleep!” “What do you mean?” asked Oscard. They both thought that he had gone mad. Sleep had nothing more to do with Durnovo's eyes--protruding, staring, terrible to look at. “Don't let me go to sleep,” he repeated. “Don't! Don't!” “All right,” said Oscard soothingly; “all right. We'll look after you.” He fell back on the bed. In the flickering light his eyeballs gleamed. Then quite suddenly he rose to a sitting position again with a wild effort. “I've got it! I've got it!” he cried. “Got what?” “The sleeping sickness!”