At dawn he came to tell her that Parr had the black-water fever.

The sick man was unconscious when they sent him off, in the machilla, toward Fort Pero d’Anhaya, with three of the askaris and fifteen of the porters. They soon disappeared into a jungle of spear grass, above which the sunrise was spreading its bands of smoky gold and rose. The chosen porters forgot their lacerated bodies; a song floated back from them to those who must still press onward.

“I have killed him, Hamoud.”

“Who knows? It is true that he is old and has had this fever before. But we do not need him. Maybe he has fulfilled his destiny. And we have not.” In the glory of the sunrise he turned to meditate over her thin, tortured face. He observed, with a lyrical sadness, “What is life? A running this way and that after mirages. A thirsting for sweet wells of which one has heard in a dream. Does one ever taste those waters? Are they sweet or bitter? Perhaps this is the secret that to taste them is death.”

The safari marched on. She rode the Muscat donkey, which was dying from the bites of tsetse flies.