come now? Why not a day later, when I have had time to clean and treat my father? Oh God, why now? Zouga will never understand, Never! Never! Never! ' Robyn and her escort could not hope to keep pace with Zouga. They fell swiftly behind him as he climbed the pathway in the night, months of hard hunting had toned him to the peakof physical condition and he ran at the hill.
She had not been able to warn him. What words were there to describe the creature in the cave on the hilltop.
She had told him simplyI have found Pater.'
It had deflected his anger instantly. The bitter accusations shrivelled on his tongue, and the realization dawned in his eyes.
They had found Fuller Ballantyne. They had accomplished one of the three major objectives of the expedition. She knew that Zouga was already seeing it in print, almost composing the paragraph that would describe the moment, imagining the newspaper urchins shouting the headlines in the streets of London.
For the first time in her life she -came close to hating her brother, and her voice was crisp as hoar-frost as she told him, 'And don't you forget it was me. I was the one who made the march and broke trail, and I was the one who found him.'
She saw the shift in his green eyes in the firelight. Of course, Sissy. ' He smiled at her thinly, an obvious effort. 'Who could ever forget that? Where is he? 'First I must assemble what I need.'
He had stayed with her until they reached the foot of the hill, and then had been unable to restrain himself.
Ri that none of them He had gone at the slope at a pace had been able to equal. Robyn came out in the little clearing in front of the cave. Her heart was racing and her breathing ragged from the climb so that she had to pause and fight for breath, holding one hand to her breast.
The fire in front of the cave had been built up to a fair blaze, but it left the depths of the cave in discreet shadow. Zouga. stood in front of the fire. His back to the
cave.
As Robyn regained her breath, she went forward. She saw that Zouga's face was deathly pale, in the firelight his sun-bronzing had faded to a muddy tone. He stood erect, as though on the parade ground, and he stared directly ahead of him. Have you seen Pater? ' Robyn asked. His distress and utter confusion gave her a sneaking and spiteful pleasure. There is a native woman with him, Zouga whispered, in his bed. 'Yes, ' Robyn nodded. 'He is very sick. She is caring for him. 'Why did you not warn me? ' That he is sick? ' she asked. That he had gone native. 'He's dying, Zouga. 'What are we going to tell the world? 'The truth, she suggested quietly. 'That he is sick and dying. 'You must never mention the woman. ' Zouga's voice, for the first time that she could remember, was uncertain, he seemed to be groping for words. 'We must protect the family. 'Then what must we tell about his disease, the disease that is killing him? ' Zouga's eyes flickered to her face. 'Malaria? 'The pox, Zouga. The French sickness, the Italian plague, or, if you prefer it, syphilis, Zouga. He is dying of syphilis.'
Zouga flinched, and then he whispered, 'It's not possibleWhy not, Zouga? ' she asked. 'He was a man, a great man, but a man nevertheless She stepped past him. 'And now I have work to do.'
An hour later when she looked for -him again, Zouga had gone back down the hill to the camp beside the river pools. She remained to work over her father for the rest of that night and most of the following day.
By the time she had bathed and cleaned him, shaved off the infested body hair and trimmed the stringy beard and locks of yellowed treated the ulcerations of his le& she was exhausted both physically and emotionally.
She had seen approaching death too many times not to recognize it now. She knew that all she could. hope for was to give comfort and to smooth the lonely road that her father must travel.
When she had done all that was possible, she covered him with a clean blanket and then tenderly caressed the short soft hair which she had so lovingly trimmed. Fuller opened his eyes. They were a pale empty shade of blue, like an African summer sky. The last sunlight of the day was washing the cave, and as Robyn leaned over him, it sparkled in her hair in chips of ruby light.
She saw something move in the empty eyes, a shadow of the man who had once been there, and Fuller's lips parted. Twice he tried to speak and then he said one word, so husky and light that she missed it. Robyn leaned closer to him.
What is it? ' she asked.
Helen! ' This time clearer.
Robyn felt the tears choke up her throat at the sound of her mother's name. Helen. ' Fuller said it for the last time, and then the flicker of comprehension in his eyes was gone.
She stayed on beside him, but there was nothing more.
That name had been the last link with reality and now the link was broken.
As the last light of the day faded, Robyn lifted her eyes from her father's face and for the first time realized that the tin chest was missing from the ledge at the back of the cave.
Using the lid of his own writing-case as a desk, screened from the camp by the thin wall of thatch, Zouga worked swiftly through the contents of the chest.
His horror at the discovery of his father had long ago been submerged by the fascination of the treasures which the chest contained. The disgust, the shame, would return again when he had time to think about it, he knew that. He knew also that there would be hard decisions to make then, and that he would have to use all his force of personality and of brotherly superiority to control Robyn, and make her agree to a common version of the discovery of Fuller Ballantyne and a tactful description of the circumstances to which he had been reduced.
The tin chest contained four leather and canvas-bound journals, each of five hundred pages, and the pages were covered on both sides either with writing or with hand drawn maps. There was also a bundle of loose sheets, two or three hundred of them tied together with plaited bark string. and a cheap wooden pen case with a partition for spare nibs, and cut-outs for two ink bottles.
One bottle was dry, and the pen nibs had obviously been sharpened many times, for they were almost worn away.
