Evelyn Waugh - A Handful Of Dust

“Let's have the window open,” said Brenda. “It's stuffy in here.”

The waiter drew back the curtains, opened, the windows.

“It's quite light,” she added.

“After five. Oughtn't we to go to bed.”

“Yes.”

“Only another week and then all the parties will be over,” said Beaver.

“Yes.”

“Well let's go.”

“All right. Can you pay? I just haven't any money.”

They had come on after the party, for breakfast at a club Daisy had opened. Beaver paid for the kippers and tea. “Eight shillings,” he said. “How does Daisy expect to make a success of the place when she charges prices like that?”

“It does seem a lot … So you really are going to America?”

“I must. Mother has taken the tickets.”

“Nothing I've said tonight makes any difference?”

“Darling, don't go on. We've been through all that. You know it's the only thing that can happen. Why spoil the last week?”

“You have enjoyed the summer, haven't you.”

“Of course … well, shall we go?”

“Yes. You needn't bother to see me home.”

“Sure you don't mind? It is miles out of the way and it's late.”

“There's no knowing what I mind.”

“Brenda, darling, for heaven's sake … It isn't like you to go on like this.”

“I never was one for making myself expensive.”

The Indians returned during the night, while Tony and Dr. Messinger were asleep; without a word spoken the little people crept out of hiding; the women had removed their clothes and left them at a distance so that no twig should betray their movements; their naked bodies moved soundlessly through the undergrowth; the glowing embers of the fire and the storm lantern twenty yards away were their only light; there was no moon. They collected their wicker baskets and their rations of farine, their bows and arrows, the gun and their broad-bladed knives; they rolled up their hammocks into compact cylinders. They took nothing with them that was not theirs. Then they crept back through the shadows, into the darkness.

When Tony and Dr. Messinger awoke it was clear to them what had happened.

“The situation is grave,” said Dr. Messinger. “But not desperate.”

For four days Tony and Dr. Messinger paddled downstream. They sat, balancing themselves precariously, at the two ends of the canoe; between them they had piled the most essential of their stores; the remainder, with the other canoes, had been left at the camp, to be called for when they had recruited help from the Pie-wies. Even the minimum which Dr. Messinger had selected overweighted the craft so that it was dangerously low; and movement brought the water to the lip of the gunwale and threatened disaster; it was heavy to steer and they made slow progress, contenting themselves for the most part, with keeping end on, and drifting with the current.

Twice they came to the stretches of cataract, and here they drew in to the bank, unloaded, and waded beside the boat, sometimes plunging waist deep, sometimes clambering over the rocks, guiding it by hand until they reached clear water again. Then they tied up to the bank and carried their cargo down to it through the bush. For the rest of the way the river was broad and smooth; a dark surface which reflected in fine detail the walls of forest on either side, towering up from the undergrowth to their flowering crown a hundred or more feet above them. Sometimes they came to a stretch of water scattered with fallen petals and floated among them, moving scarcely less slowly than they, as though resting in a blossoming meadow. At night they spread their tarpaulin on stretches of dry beach, and hung their hammocks in the bush. Only the cabouri fly and rare, immobile alligators menaced the peace of their days. They kept a constant scrutiny of the banks but saw no sign of human life.

Then Tony developed fever. It came on him quite suddenly, during the fourth afternoon. At their midday halt he was in complete health and had shot a small deer that came down to drink on the opposite bank; an hour later he was shivering so violently that he had to lay down his paddle; his head was flaming with heat, his body and limbs frigid; by sunset he was slightly delirious.

Dr. Messinger took his temperature and found that it was a hundred and four degrees, Fahrenheit. He gave him twenty-five grains of quinine and lit a fire so close to his hammock that by morning it was singed and blacked with smoke. He told Tony to keep wrapped up in his blanket, but at intervals throughout that night he woke from sleep to find himself running with sweat; he was consumed with thirst and drank mug after mug of river water. Neither that evening nor next morning was he able to eat anything.

But next morning his temperature was down again. He felt weak and exhausted but he was able to keep steady in his place and paddle a little.

“It was just a passing attack, wasn't it?” he said. “I shall be perfectly fit tomorrow, shan't I?”

“I hope so,” said Dr. Messinger.

At midday Tony drank some cocoa and ate a cupful of rice. “I feel grand,” he said.

“Good.”

That night the fever came on again. They were camping on a sand bank. Dr. Messinger heated stones and put them under Tony's feet and in the small of his back. He was awake most of the night fuelling the fire and refilling Tony's mug with water. At dawn Tony slept for an hour and woke feeling slightly better; he was taking frequent doses of quinine and his ears were filled with a muffled sound as though he were holding those shells to them in which, he had been told in childhood, one could hear the beat of the sea.

“We've got to go on,” said Dr. Messinger. “We can't be far from a village now.”

“I feel awful. Wouldn't it be better to wait a day till I am perfectly fit again.”

“It's no good waiting. We've got to get on. D'you think you can manage to get into the canoe?”

Dr. Messinger knew that Tony was in for a long bout. For the first few hours of that day Tony lay limp in the bows. They had shifted the stores so that he could lie full length. Then the fever came on again and his teeth chattered. He sat up and crouched with his head in his knees, shaking all over; only his forehead and cheeks were burning hot under the noon sun. There was still no sign of a village.

It was late in the afternoon when he first saw Brenda. For some time he had been staring intently at the odd shape amidships where the stores had been piled; then he realized that it was a human being.

“So the Indians came back?” he said.

“Yes.”

“I knew they would. Silly of them to be scared by a toy. I suppose the others are following.”

“Yes, I expect so. Try and sit still.”

“Damned fool, being frightened of a toy,” Tony said derisively to the woman amidships. Then he saw that it was Brenda. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't see it was you. You wouldn't be frightened of a toy.”

But she did not answer him. She sat as she used often to sit when she came back from London, huddled over her bowl of bread and milk.

Dr. Messinger steered the boat in to the side. They nearly capsized as he helped Tony out. Brenda got ashore without assistance. She stepped out in her delicate, competent way, keeping the balance of the boat.

“That's what poise means,” said Tony. “D'you know I once saw a questionnaire that people had to fill in when they applied for a job in an American firm, and one of the things they had to answer was `Have you poise?' ”

Brenda was at the top of the bank waiting for him. “What was so absurd about the question was that they had only the applicant's word for it,” he explained laboriously. “I mean — is it a sign of poise to think you have it.”