A Handful Of Dust

One

“ANY idea how many times round the deck make a mile?”

“None, I'm afraid,” said Tony. “But I should think you must have walked a great distance.”

“Twenty-two times. One soon gets out of sorts at sea if you're used to an active life. She's not much of a boat. Travel with this line often?”

“Never before.”

“Ah. Thought you might have been in business in the islands. Not many tourists going out this time of year. Just the other way about. All coming home, if you see what I mean. Going far?”

“Demerara.”

Ah. Looking for minerals perhaps?”

“No, to tell you the truth I am looking for a city.” The genial passenger was surprised and then laughed. “Sounded just like you said you were looking for a city.”

“Yes.”

“That was what you said?”

“Yes.”

“I thought it sounded like that … well, so long. I must do another few rounds before dinner.”

He paced off up the deck, straddling slightly in order to keep his balance and occasionally putting out a hand to the rail for support.

Regularly every three minutes for the last hour or so, this man had come by. At first Tony had looked up at his approach and then turned away again out to sea. Presently the man had taken to nodding, then to saying “Hullo” or “Bit choppy” or “Here we are again”; finally he had stopped and begun a conversation.

Tony went aft to break this rather embarrassing recurrence. He descended the companion-way which led to the lower deck. Here, in crates lashed to the side, was a variety of livestock — some stud bulls, a heavily blanketed race-Horse, a couple of beagles, being exported to various West Indian islands. Tony threaded a way between them and the hatches to the stern, where he sat against a winch watching the horizon mount above the funnels, then fall until they stood out black against the darkening sky. The pitch was more sensible here than it had been amidships; the animals shifted restlessly in their cramped quarters; the beagles whined intermittently. A lascar took down from a line some washing which had been flapping there all day.

The wash of the ship was quickly lost in the high waves. They were steaming westward down the Channel. As it grew to be night, lighthouses appeared flashing from the French coast. Presently a steward walked round the bright, upper deck striking chimes on a gong of brass cylinders and the genial passenger went below to prepare himself for dinner in hot sea water which splashed from side to side of the bath and dissolved the soap in a thin, sticky scum. He was the only man to dress that evening. Tony sat in the mustering darkness until the second bell. Then he left his greatcoat in the cabin and went down to dinner. It was the first evening at sea.

Tony sat at the captain's table, but the captain was on the bridge that evening. There were empty chairs on either side of him. It was not rough enough for the fiddles to be out, but the stewards had removed the flower vases and damped the table-cloth to make it adhesive. A coloured archdeacon sat facing him. He ate with great refinement but his black hands looked immense on the wet, whitish cloth. “I'm afraid our table is not showing up very well tonight,” he said. “I see you are not a sufferer. My wife is in her cabin. She is a sufferer.”

He was returning from a Congress, he told Tony.

At the top of the stairs was a lounge named the Music and Writing Room. The light here was always subdued, in the day by the stained glass of the windows; at night by pink silk shades which hid the electric candles. Here the passengers assembled for their coffee, sitting on bulky, tapestry covered chesterfields or on swivel chairs irremovably fastened before the writing tables. Here too the steward for an hour every day presided over the cupboardful of novels which constituted the ship's library.

“It's not much of a boat,” said the genial passenger, sitting himself beside Tony. “But I expect things will look brighter when we get into the sun.”

Tony lit a cigar and was told by a steward that be must not smoke in this room. “That's all right,” said the genial passenger, “we're just going down to the bar.” “You know,” he said a few minutes later, “I feel I owe you an apology. I thought you were potty just now before dinner. Honestly I did, when you said you were going to Demerara to look for a city. Well it sounded pretty potty. Then the purser — I'm at his table. Always get the cheeriest crowd at the purser's table and the best attention — the purser told me about you. You're the explorer aren't you?”

“Yes, come to think of it, I suppose I am,” said Tony.

It did not come easily to him to realize that he was an explorer. It was barely a fortnight ago that he had become one. Even the presence in the hold of two vast crates, bearing his name and labelled NOT WANTED ON THE VOYAGE — crates containing such new and unfamiliar possessions as a medicine chest, an automatic shot gun, camping equipment, pack saddles, a cinema camera, dynamite, disinfectants, a collapsible canoe, filters, tinned butter and, strangest of all, an assortment of what Dr. Messinger called `trade goods' — failed to convince him fully of the serious nature of his expedition. Dr. Messinger had arranged everything. It was he who chose the musical boxes and mechanical mice, the mirrors, combs, perfumery, pills, fish-hooks, axe-heads, coloured rockets, and rolls of artificial silk, which were packed in the box of `trade goods.' And Dr. Messinger himself was a new acquaintance who, prostrate now in his bunk with what the Negro clergyman would have called `suffering,' that day, for the first time since Tony had met him, seemed entirely human.

Tony had spent very little of his life abroad. At the age of eighteen, before going to the University, he had been boarded for the summer with an elderly gentleman near Tours, with the intention that he should learn the language. (… a grey stone house surrounded by vines. There was a stuffed spaniel in the bathroom. The old man had called it `Stop' because it was chic at that time to give dogs an English name. Tony had bicycled along straight, white roads to visit the châteaux; he carried rolls of bread and cold veal tied to the back of the machine, and the soft dust seeped into them through the paper and gritted against his teeth. There were two other English boys there, so he had learned little French. One of them fell in love and the other got drunk for the first time on sparkling Vouvray at a fair that had been held in the town. That evening Tony won a live pigeon at a tombola; he set it free and later saw it being recaptured by the proprietor of the stall with a butterfly net …) Later he had gone to central Europe for a few weeks with a friend from Balliol. (They had found themselves suddenly rich with the falling mark and had lived in unaccustomed grandeur in the largest hotel suites. Tony had bought a fur for a few shillings and given it to a girl in Munich who spoke no English.) Later still his honeymoon with Brenda in a villa, lent to them, on the Italian Riviera. (… cypress and olive trees, a donned church half way down the hill, between the villa and the harbour, a café where they sat out in the evening, watching the fishing boats and the lights reflected in the quiet water, waiting for the sudden agitation of sound and motion as the speed boat came in. It had been owned by a dashing young official, who called it JAZZ GIRL. He seemed to spend twenty hours a day running in and out of the little harbour …) Once Brenda and he had gone to Le Touquet with Brat's golf team. That was all. After his father died he had not left England. They could not easily afford it; it was one of the things they postponed until death duties were paid off; besides that, he was never happy away from Hetton and Brenda did not like leaving John Andrew.

Thus Tony had no very ambitious ideas about travel, and when he decided to go abroad his first act was to call at a tourist agency and come away laden with a sheaf of brightly coloured prospectuses, which advertised commodious cruises among palm trees, Negresses and ruined arches. He was going away because it seemed to be the conduct expected of a husband in his circumstances, because the associations of Hetton were for the time poisoned for him, because he wanted to live for a few months away from people who would know him or Brenda, in places where there was no expectation of meeting her or Beaver or Reggie St. Cloud at every corner he frequented, and with this feeling of evasion dominant in his mind, he took the prospectuses to read at the Greville Club. He had been a member there for some years, but rarely used it; his resignation was only postponed by his recurrent omission to cancel the banker's order for his subscription. Now that Brat's and Brown's were distasteful to him he felt thankful that he had kept on with the Greville. It was a club of intellectual flavour, composed of dons, a few writers and the officials of museums and learned societies. It had a tradition of garrulity so that he was not surprised when, seated in an armchair and surrounded with his illustrated folders, he was addressed by a member unknown to him who asked if he were thinking of going away. He was more surprised when he looked up and studied the questioner.

Dr. Messinger, though quite young, was bearded, and Tony knew few young men with beards. He was also very small, very sunburned and prematurely bald; the ruddy, brown of his face and hands ended abruptly along the line of his forehead, which rose in a pale dome; he wore steel-rimmed spectacles and there was something about his blue serge suit which suggested that the wearer found it uncomfortable.

Tony admitted that he was considering taking a cruise.

“I am going away shortly,” said Dr. Messinger, “to Brazil. At least it may be Brazil or Dutch Guiana. One cannot tell. The frontier has never been demarcated. I ought to have started last week only my plans were upset. Do you by any chance know a Nicaraguan calling himself alternately Ponsonby and Fitz Clarence?”

“No, I don't think I do.”

“You are fortunate. That man has just robbed me of two hundred pounds and some machine guns.”

“Machine guns?”

“Yes, I travel with one or two, mostly for show you know, or for trade, and they are not easy to buy nowadays. Have you ever tried?”

“No.”

“Well you can take it from me that it's not easy. You can't just walk into a shop and order machine guns.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“Still at a pinch I can do without them. But I can't do without the two hundred pounds.”

Tony had open on his knee a photograph of the harbour at Agadir. Dr. Messinger looked over his shoulder at it. “Ah yes,” he said, “interesting little place. I expect you know Zingerman there?”

“No, I've not been there yet.”

“You'd like him — a very straight fellow. He used to do quite a lot, selling ammunition to the Atlas caids before the pacification. Of course it was easy money with the capitulations, but he did it better than most of them. I believe he's running a restaurant now in Mogador.” Then he continued dreamily, “The pity is I can't let the R.G.S. in on this expedition. I've got to find the money privately.”

It was one o'clock and the room was beginning to fill up; an Egyptologist was exhibiting a handkerchief-ful of scarabs to the editor of a church weekly.

“We'd better go up and lunch,” said Dr. Messinger. Tony had not intended to lunch at the Greville but there was something compelling about the invitation; moreover, he had no other engagement.

Dr. Messinger lunched off apples and a rice pudding. (“I have to be very careful what I eat,” he said.) Tony ate cold steak and kidney pie. They sat at a window in the big dining room upstairs. The places round them were soon filled with members, who even carried the tradition of general conversation so far as to lean back in their chairs and chat over their shoulders from table to table — a practice which greatly hindered the already imperfect service. But Tony remained oblivious to all that was said, absorbed in what Dr. Messinger was telling him.

“… You see there has been a continuous tradition about the City since the first explorers of the sixteenth century. It has been variously allocated, sometimes down in Matto Grosso, sometimes on the upper Orinoco in what is now Venezuela. I myself used to think it lay somewhere on the Uraricuera. I was out there last year and it was then that I established contact with the Pie-wie Indians; no white man had ever visited them and got out alive. And it was from the Pie-wies that I learned where to look. None of them had ever visited the City, of course, but they knew about it. Every Indian between Ciudad Bolivar and Para knows about it. But they won't talk. Queer people. But I became blood-brother with a Pie-wie — interesting ceremony. They buried me up to the neck in mud and all the women of the tribe spat on my head. Then we ate a toad and a snake and a beetle and after that I was a blood-brother — well, he told me that the City lies between the head waters of the Courantyne and the Takutu. There's a vast tract of unexplored country there. I've often thought of visiting it.

“I've been looking up the historical side too, and I more or less know how the City got there. It was the result of a migration from Peru at the beginning of the fifteenth century when the Incas were at the height of their power. It is mentioned in all the early Spanish documents as a popular legend. One of the younger princes rebelled and led his people off into the forest. Most of the tribes have a tradition in one form or another of a strange race passing through their territory.”

“But what do you suppose this city will be like?”

“Impossible to say. Every tribe has a different word for it. The Pie-wies call it the `Shining' or `Glittering,' the Arekuna the `Many Watered,' the Patamonas the `Bright Feathered,' the Warau oddly enough, use the same word for it that they use for a kind of aromatic jam they make. Of course one can't tell how a civilization may have developed or degenerated in five hundred years of isolation …”

Before Tony left the Greville that day, he tore up his sheaf of cruise prospectuses, for he had arranged to join Dr. Messinger in his expedition.

“Done much of that kind of thing?”

“No, to tell you the truth it is the first time.”

“Ah. Well I daresay it's more interesting than it sounds,” conceded the genial passenger, “else people wouldn't do it so much.”

The ship, so far as any consideration of comfort had contributed to her design, was planned for the tropics. It was slightly colder in the smoking room than on deck. Tony went to his cabin and retrieved his cap and greatcoat; then he went aft again, to the place where he had sat before dinner. It was a starless night and nothing was visible beyond the small luminous area round the ship, save for a single lighthouse that flashed short-long, short-long, far away on the port bow. The crests of the waves caught the reflection from the promenade deck and shone for a moment before plunging away into the black depths behind. The beagles were awake, whining.

For some days now Tony had been thoughtless about the events of the immediate past. His thoughts were occupied with the City, the Shining, the Many Watered, the Bright Feathered, the Aromatic Jam. He had a clear picture of it in his mind. It was Gothic in character, all vanes and pinnacles, gargoyles, battlements, groining and tracery, pavilions and terraces, a transfigured Hetton, pennons and banners floating on the sweet breeze, everything luminous and translucent; a coral citadel crowning a green hill top sewn with daisies, among groves and streams; a tapestry landscape filled with heraldic and fabulous animals and symmetrical, disproportionate blossom.

The ship tossed and tunnelled through the dark waters towards this radiant sanctuary.

“I wonder if anyone is doing anything about those dogs,” said the genial passenger, arriving at his elbow. “I'll ask the purser tomorrow. We might exercise them a bit. Kind of mournful the way they go on.”

Next day they were in the Atlantic. Ponderous waves rising over murky, opaque depths. Dappled with foam at the crests, like downland where on the high, exposed places, snow has survived the thaw. Lead-grey and slate in the sun, olive, field-blue and khaki like the uniforms of a battlefield; the sky overhead was neutral and steely with swollen clouds scudding across it, affording rare half hours of sunlight. The masts swung slowly across this sky and the bows heaved and wallowed below the horizon. The man who had made friends with Tony paraded the deck with the two beagles. They strained at the end of their chains, sniffing the scuppers; the man lurched behind them unsteadily. He wore a pair of race glasses with which he occasionally surveyed the seas; he offered them to Tony whenever they passed each other.

“Been talking to the wireless operator,” he said. “We ought to pass quite near the Yarmouth Castle at about eleven.”

Few of the passengers were on their feet. Those who had come on deck lay in long chairs on the sheltered side, pensive, wrapped in tartan rugs. Dr. Messinger kept to his cabin. Tony went to see him and found him torpid, for he was taking large doses of chloral. Towards evening the wind freshened and by dinner time was blowing hard; portholes were screwed up and all destructible objects disposed on the cabin floors; a sudden roll broke a dozen coffee cups in the music and reading room. That night there was little sleep for anyone on board; the plating creaked, luggage shifted from wall to wall. Tony wedged himself firm in his bunk with the lifebelt and thought of the City.

… Carpet and canopy, tapestry and velvet, portcullis and bastion, water fowl on the moat and kingcups along its margin, peacocks trailing their finery across the lawns; high overhead in a sky of sapphire and swansdown silver bells chiming in a turret of alabaster.

Days of shadow and exhaustion, salt wind and wet mist, foghorn and the constant groan and creak of straining metal. Then they were clear of it, after the Azores. Awnings were out and passengers moved their chairs to windward. High noon and an even keel; the blue water lapping against the sides of the ship, rippling away behind her to the horizon; gramophones and deck tennis; bright arcs of flying fish (“Look, Ernie, come quick, there's a shark.” “That's not a shark, it's a dolphin.” “Mr. Brink said it was a porpoise.” “There he is again. Oh if I had my camera.”), clear, tranquil water and the regular turn and tread of the screw; there were many hands to caress the beagles as they went loping by. Mr. Brink amid laughter suggested that he should exercise the race-horse, or, with a further burst of invention, the bull. Mr. Brink sat at the purser's table with the cheery crowd.

Dr. Messinger left his cabin and appeared on deck and in the dining saloon. So did the wife of the archdeacon; she was very much whiter than her husband. On Tony's other side at table sat a girl named Thérèse de Vitré. He had noticed her once or twice during the grey days, a forlorn figure almost lost among furs and cushions and rugs; a colourless little face with wide dark eyes. She said, “The last days have been terrible. I saw you walking about. How I envied you.”

“It ought to be calm all the way now,” and inevitably, are you going far?”

“Trinidad. That is my home … I tried to decide who you were from the passenger list.”

“Who was I?”

“Well … someone called Colonel Strapper.”

“Do I look so old?”

“Are colonels old? I didn't know. It's not a thing we have much in Trinidad. Now I know who you are because I asked the head steward. Do tell me about your exploring.”

“You'd better ask Doctor Messinger. He knows more about it than I do.”

“No, you tell me.”

She was eighteen years old; small and dark, with a face that disappeared in a soft pointed chin so that attention was drawn to the large, grave eyes and the high forehead; she had not long outgrown her schoolgirl plumpness and she moved with an air of exultance, as though she had lately shed an encumbrance and was not yet fatigued by the other burdens that would succeed it. For two years she had been at school in Paris.

“… Some of us used to keep lipstick and rouge secretly in our bedrooms and try it on at night. One girl called Antoinette came to Mass on Sunday wearing it. There was a terrible row with Madame de Supplice and she left after that term. It was awfully brave. We all envied her … But she was an ugly girl, always eating chocolates …

“… Now I am coming home to be married … No, I am not yet affiancée but you see there are so few young men I can marry. They must be Catholic and of an island family,. It would not do to marry an official and go back to live in England. But it will be easy because I have no brothers or sisters and my father has one of the best houses in Trinidad. You must come and see it. It is a stone house, outside the town. My family came to Trinidad in the French Revolution. There are two or three other rich families and I shall marry one of them. Our son will have the house. It will be easy …”

She wore a little coat, of the kind that were then fashionable, and no ornament except a string of pearls. “… There was an American girl at Madame de Supplice who was engaged. She had a ring with a big diamond but she could never wear it except in bed. Then one day she had a letter from her young man saying he was going to marry another girl: How she cried. We all read the letter and most of us cried too … But in Trinidad it will be quite easy.”

Tony told her about the expedition; of the Peruvian emigrants in the middle age and their long caravan working through the mountains and forests, llamas packed with works of intricate craftsmanship; of the continual rumours percolating to the coast and luring adventurers up into the forests; of the route they would take up the rivers, then cutting through the bush along Indian trails and across untravelled country; of the stream they might strike higher up and how, Dr. Messinger said, they would make woodskin canoes and take to the water again; how finally they would arrive under the walls of the city like the Vikings at Byzantium. “But of course,” he added, “there may be nothing in it. It ought to be an interesting journey in any case.”

“How I wish I was a man,” said Thérèse de Vitré. After dinner they danced to the music of an amplified gramophone and the girl drank lemon squash on the bench outside the deck bar, sucking it through two straws.

A week of blue water that grew clearer and more tranquil daily, of sun that grew warmer, radiating the ship and her passengers, filling them with good humour and ease; blue water that caught the sun to a thousand brilliant points, dazzling the eyes as they searched for porpoises and flying fish; clear blue water in the shallows revealing its bed of silver sand and smooth pebble, fathoms down; soft warm shade on deck under the awnings; the ship moved amid unbroken horizons on a vast blue disc of blue, sparkling with sunlight.

Tony and Miss de Vitré played quoits and shuffleboard; they threw rope rings into a bucket from a short distance. (“We'll go in a small boat,” Dr. Messinger had said, “so as to escape all that hideous nonsense of deck games.”) Twice consecutively Tony won the sweepstake on the ship's run; the prize was eighteen shillings. He bought Miss de Vitré a woollen rabbit at the barber's shop.

It was unusual for Tony to use `Miss' in talking to anyone. Except Miss Tendril he could think of no one he addressed in that way. But it was Thérèse who first called him `Tony,' seeing it engraved in Brenda's handwriting in his cigarette case. “How funny,” she said, “that was the name of the man who didn't marry the American girl at Madame de Supplice's”; and after that they used each other's Christian names to the great satisfaction of the other passengers who had little to interest them on board except the flowering of this romance.

“I can't believe this is the same ship as in those cold, rough days,” said Thérèse.

They reached the first of the islands; a green belt of palm trees with wooded hills rising beyond them and a small town heaped up along the shores of a bay. Thérèse and Tony went ashore and bathed. Thérèse swam badly with her head ridiculously erect out of the water. There was practically no bathing in Trinidad, she explained. They lay for some time on the firm, silver beach; then drove back into the town in the shaky, two-horse carriage he had hired, past ramshackle cabins from which little black boys ran out to beg or swing behind on the axle, in the white dust. There was nowhere in the town to dine so they returned to the ship at sundown. She lay out at some distance but from where they stood after dinner, leaning over the rail, they could just hear in the intervals when the winch was not working, the chatter and singing in the streets. Thérèse put her arm through Tony's, but the decks were full of passengers and agents and swarthy little men with lists of cargo. There was no dancing that night. They went above on to the boat deck and Tony kissed her.

Dr. Messinger came on board by the last launch. He had met an acquaintance in the town. He had observed the growing friendship between Tony and Thérèse with the strongest disapproval and told him of a friend of his who had been knifed in a back street of Smyrna, as a warning of what happened if one got mixed up with women.

In the islands the life of the ship disintegrated. There were changes of passengers; the black archdeacon left after shaking hands with everyone on board; on their last morning his wife took round a collecting box in aid of an organ that needed repairs. The captain never appeared at meals in the dining saloon. Even Tony's first friend no longer changed for dinner; the cabins were stuffy from being kept locked all day.

Tony and Thérèse bathed again at Barbados and drove round the island visiting castellated churches. They dined at an hotel high up out of town and ate flying fish.

“You must come to my home and see what real creole cooking is like,” said Thérèse. “We have a lot of old recipes that the planters used to use. You must meet my father and mother.”

They could see the lights of the ship from the terrace where they were dining; the bright decks with figures moving about and the double line of portholes.

“Trinidad the day after tomorrow,” said Tony.

They talked of the expedition and she said it was sure to be dangerous. “I don't like Doctor Messinger at all,” she said. “Not anything about him.”

“And you will have to choose your husband.”

“Yes. There are seven of them. There was one called Honoré I liked but of course I haven't seen him for two years. He was studying to be an engineer. There's one called Mendoza who's very rich but he isn't really a Trinidadian. His grandfather came from Dominica and they say he has coloured blood. I expect it will be Honoré. Mother always brought in his name when she wrote to me and he sent me things at Christmas and on my fête. Rather silly things because the shops aren't good in Port of Spain.”

Later she said, “You'll be coming back by Trinidad, won't you? So I shall see you then. Will you be a long time in the bush?”

“I expect you'll be married by then.”

“Tony, why haven't you ever got married?”

“But I am.”

“Married?”

“Yes.”

“You're teasing me.”

“No, honestly I am. At least I was.”

“Oh.”

“Are you surprised?”

“I don't know. Somehow I didn't think you were. Where is she?”

“In England. We had a row.”

“Oh … What's the time?”

“Quite early.”

“Let's go back.”

“D'you want to?”

“Yes, please. It's been a delightful day.”

“You said that as if you were saying goodbye.”

“Did I? I don't know.”

The Negro chauffeur drove them at great speed into the town. Then they sat in a rowing boat and bobbed slowly out to the ship. Earlier in the day in good spirits they had bought a stuffed fish. Thérèse found she had left it behind at the hotel. “It doesn't matter,” she said.

Blue water came to an end after Barbados. Round Trinidad the sea was opaque and colourless, full of the mud which the Orinoco brought down from the mainland. Thérèse spent all that day in her cabin, doing her packing.

Next day she said goodbye to Tony in a hurry. Her father had come out to meet her in the tender. He was a wiry bronzed man with a long grey moustache. He wore a panama hat and smart silk clothes, and smoked a cheroot; the complete slave-owner of the last century. Thérèse did not introduce him to Tony. “He was someone on the ship,” she explained, obviously.

Tony saw her once next day in the town, driving with a lady who was obviously her mother. She waved but did not stop. “Reserved lot, these real old creoles,” remarked the passenger who had first made friends with Tony and had now attached himself again. “Poor as church mice most of them but stinking proud. Time and again I've palled up with them on board and when we got to port it's been goodbye. Do they ever so much as ask you to their houses? Not they.”

Tony spent the two days with this first friend who had business connections in the place. On the second day it rained heavily and they could not leave the terrace of the hotel. Dr. Messinger was engaged on some technical enquiries at the Agricultural Institute.

Muddy sea between Trinidad and Georgetown; and the ship lightened of cargo rolled heavily in the swell. Dr. Messinger took to his cabin once more. Rain fell continuously and a slight mist enclosed them so that they seemed to move in a small puddle of brown water; the foghorn sounded regularly through the rain. Scarcely a dozen passengers remained on board and Tony prowled disconsolately about the deserted decks or sat alone in the music room, his mind straying back along the path he had forbidden it, to the tall elm avenue at Hetton and the budding copses.

Next day they arrived at the mouth of the Demerara. The customs sheds were heavy with the reek of sugar and loud with the buzzing of bees. There were lengthy formalities in getting their stores ashore. Dr. Messinger saw to it while Tony lit a cigar and strayed out on to the quay. Small shipping of all kinds lay round them; on the further bank a low, green fringe of mangrove; behind, the tin roofs of the town were visible among feathery palm trees; everything steamed from the recent rain. Black stevedores grunted rhythmically at their work; East Indians trotted to and fro busily with invoices and bills of lading. Presently Dr. Messinger pronounced that everything was in order and that they could go into the town to their hotel.

Two

The storm lantern stood on the ground between the two hammocks, which in their white sheaths of mosquito net, looked like the cocoons of gigantic silkworms. It was eight o'clock, two hours after sundown; river and forest were already deep in night. The howler monkeys were silent but tree frogs near at hand set up a continuous, hoarse chorus; birds were awake, calling and whistling, and far in the depths about them came the occasional rending and reverberation of dead wood falling among the trees.

The six black boys who manned the boat squatted at a distance round their fire. They had collected some cobs of maize, three days back in a part of the bush, deserted now, choked and overrun with wild growth, that had once been a farm. (The gross second growth at that place had been full of alien plants, fruit and cereals, all rank now, and reverting to earlier type.) The boys were roasting their cobs in the embers.

Fire and storm lantern together shed little light; enough only to suggest the dilapidated roof about their heads, the heap of stores, disembarked and overrun by ants and, beyond, the undergrowth that had invaded the clearing and the vast columns of treetrunk that rose beyond it, disappearing out of sight in the darkness.

Bats like blighted fruit hung in clusters from the thatch and great spiders rode across it astride their shadows. This place had once been a ballata station. It was the furthest point of commercial penetration from the coast. Dr. Messinger marked it on his map with a triangle and named it in red `First Base Camp.'

The first stage of the journey was over. For ten days they had been chugging up-stream in a broad, shallow boat. Once or twice they had passed rapids (there the outboard engine had been reinforced by paddles; the men strained in time to the captain's count; the bosun stood in the bows with a long pole warding them off the rocks). They had camped at sundown on patches of sand bank or in clearings cut from the surrounding bush. Once or twice they fame to a `house' left behind by ballata bleeders or gold washers.

All day Tony and Dr. Messinger sprawled amidships among their stores, under an improvised canopy of palm thatch; sometimes in the hot hours of the early afternoon they fell asleep. They ate in the boat, out of tins, and drank rum mixed with the water of the river which was mahogany brown but quite clear. The nights seemed interminable to Tony; twelve hours of darkness, noisier than a city square with the squealing and croaking and trumpeting of the bush denizens. Dr. Messinger could tell the hours by the succession of sounds. It was not possible to read by the light of the storm lantern. Sleep was irregular and brief after the days of lassitude and torpor. There was little to talk about; everything had been said during the day, in the warm shade among the stores. Tony lay awake, scratching.

Since they had left Georgetown there had not been any part of his body that was ever wholly at ease. His face and neck were burned by the sun reflected from the water; the skin was flaking off them so that he was unable to shave. The stiff growth of beard pricked him between chin and throat. Every exposed part of his skin was also bitten by cabouri fly. They had found a way into the button-holes of his shirt and the laces of his breeches; mosquitoes had got him at the ankles when he changed into slacks for the evening. He had picked up bêtes rouges in the bush and they were crawling and burrowing under his skin; the bitter oil which Dr. Messinger had given him as protection, had set up a rash of its own wherever he had applied it. Every evening after washing he had burned off a few ticks with a cigarette end but they had left irritable little scars behind them; so had the djiggas which one of the black boys had dug out from under his toe nails and the horny skin on his heels and the balls of his feet. A marabunta had left a painful swelling on his left hand.

As Tony scratched he shook the framework from which the hammocks hung. Dr. Messinger turned over and said, “Oh, for God's sake.” He tried not to scratch; then he tried to scratch quietly; then in a frenzy he scratched as hard as he could, breaking the skin in a dozen places. “Oh, for God's sake,” said Dr. Messinger.

`Half past eight,' thought Tony. `In London they are just beginning to collect for dinner.' It was the time of year in London when there were parties every night. (Once, when he was trying to get engaged to Brenda, he had gone to them all. If they had dined in different houses, he would search the crowd for Brenda and hang about by the stairs waiting for her to arrive. Later he would hang about to take her home. Lady St. Cloud had done everything to make it easy for him. Later, after they were married, in the two years they had spent in London before Tony's father died, they had been to fewer parties, one or two a week at the most, except for a very gay month just when Brenda was well again, after John Andrew's birth.) Tony began to imagine a dinner party assembling at that moment in London, with Brenda there and the surprised look with which she greeted each new arrival. If there was a fire she would be as near it as she could get. Would there be a fire at the end of May? He could not remember. There were nearly always fires at Hetton in the evening, whatever the season.

Then after another bout of scratching it occurred to Tony that it was not half past eight in England. There was five hours difference in time. They had altered their watches daily on the voyage out. Which way? It ought to be easy to work out. The sun rose in the east. England was east of America so they got the sun later. It came to them at second hand and slightly soiled after Polly Cockpurse and Mrs. Beaver and Princess Abdul Akbar had finished with it … Like Polly's dresses which Brenda used to buy for ten or fifteen pounds each … he fell asleep.

He woke an hour later to hear Dr. Messinger cursing and to see him sitting astride his hammock working with bandages, iodine and his great toe.

“A vampire bat got it. I must have gone to sleep with my foot against the netting. God knows how long he had been at it, before I woke up. That lamp ought to keep them off but it doesn't seem to.”

The black boys were still awake, munching over the fire. “Vampires plenty bad this side, chief,” they said. “Dat why for us no leave de fire.”

“It's just the way to get sick, blast it,” said Dr. Messinger. “I may have lost pints of blood.”

Brenda and Jock were dancing together at Anchorage House. It was late, the party was thinning, and now for the first time that evening, it was possible to dance with pleasure. The ballroom was hung with tapestry and lit by candles. Lady Anchorage had lately curtsied her farewell to the last royalty.

“How I hate staying up late,” Brenda said, “but it seems a shame to take my Mr. Beaver away. He's so thrilled to be here, bless him, and it was a great effort to get him asked … Come to think of it,” she added later, “I suppose that this is the last year I shall be able to go to this kind of party.”

“You're going through with it?”

“I don't know, Jock. It doesn't really depend on me. It's all a matter of holding down Mr. Beaver. He's getting very restive. I have to feed him a bit of high life every week or so, and I suppose that'll all stop if there's a divorce. Any news of Tony?”

“Not for some time now. I got a cable when he landed. He's gone off on some expedition with a crook doctor.”

“Is it absolutely safe?”

“Oh, I imagine so. The whole world is civilized now isn't it — charabancs and Cook's offices everywhere.”

“Yes, I suppose it is … I hope he's not brooding. I shouldn't like to think of him being unhappy.”

“I expect he's getting used to things.”

“I do hope so. I'm very fond of Tony, you know, in spite of the monstrous way he behaved.”

There was an Indian village a mile or two distant from the camp. It was here that Tony and Dr. Messinger proposed to recruit porters for the two hundred mile march that lay between them and the Pie-wie country. The niggers were river men and could not be taken into Indian territory. They would go back with the boat.

At dawn Tony and Dr. Messinger drank a mug each of hot cocoa and ate some biscuits and what was left over from the bully beef opened the night before. Then they set out for the village. One of the blacks went in front with cutlass to clear the trail. Dr. Messinger and Tony followed one behind the other; another black came behind them carrying samples of trade goods — a twenty dollar Belgian gun, some rolls of printed cotton, hand-mirrors in coloured celluloid frames, some bottles of highly scented pomade.

It was a rough, unfrequented trail, encumbered by numerous fallen trunks; they waded knee-deep through two streams that ran to feed the big river; underfoot there was sometimes a hard network of bare root, sometimes damp and slippery leaf mould.

Presently they reached the village. They came into sight of it quite suddenly, emerging from the bush into a wide clearing. There were eight or nine circular huts of mud and palm thatch. No one was visible but two or three columns of smoke, rising straight and thin into the morning air, told them that the place was inhabited.

“Dey people all afeared,” said the black boy.

“Go and find someone to speak to us,” said Dr. Messinger.

The nigger went to the low door of the nearest house and peered in.

“Dere ain't no one but women dere,” he reported. “Dey dressing deirselves. Come on out dere,” he shouted into the gloom. “De chief want talk to you.”

At last, very shyly, a little old woman emerged, clad in the filthy calico gown that was kept for use in the presence of strangers. She waddled towards them on bandy legs. Her ankles were tightly bound with blue beads. Her hair was lank and ragged; her eyes were fixed on the earthenware bowl of liquid which she carried. When she was a few feet from Tony and Dr. Messinger she set the bowl on the ground, and still with downcast eyes, shook hands with them. Then she stooped, picked up the bowl once more and held it to Dr. Messinger.

“Cassiri,” he explained, “the local drink made of fermented cassava.”

He drank some and handed the bowl to Tony. It contained a thick, purplish liquid. When Tony had drunk a little, Dr. Messinger explained, “It is made in an interesting way. The women chew the root up and spit it into a hollow tree-trunk.”

He then addressed the woman in Wapishiana: She looked at him for the first time. Her brown, Mongol face was perfectly blank, devoid alike of comprehension and curiosity. Dr. Messinger repeated and amplified his question. The woman took the bowl from Tony and set it on the ground.

Meanwhile other faces were appearing at the doors of the huts. Only one woman ventured out. She was very stout and she smiled confidently at the visitors.

“Good morning,” she said. “How do you do? I am Rosa. I speak English good. I live bottom-side two years with Mr. Forbes. You give me cigarette.”

“Why doesn't this woman answer?”

“She no speak English.”

“But I was speaking Wapishiana.”

“She Macushi woman. All these people Macushi people.”

“Oh. I didn't know. Where are the men?”

“Men all go hunting three days.”

“When will they be back?”

“They go after bush pig.”

“When will they be back?”

“No, bush pig. Plenty bush pig. Men all go hunting. You give me cigarette.”

“Listen, Rosa, I want to go to the Pie-wie country.”

“No, this Macushi. All the people Macushi.”

“But we want to go Pie-wie.”

“No, all Macushi. You give me cigarette.”

“It's hopeless.” said Dr. Messinger. “We shall have to wait till the men come back.” He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. “Look,” he said, “cigarettes.”

“Give me.”

“When men come back from hunting you come to river and tell me. Understand?”

“No, men hunting bush pig. You give me cigarettes.” Dr. Messinger gave her the cigarettes.

“What else you got?” she said.

Dr. Messinger pointed to the load which the second nigger had laid on the ground.

“Give me,” she said.

“When men come back, I give you plenty things if men come with me to Pie-vies.”

“No, all Macushi here.”

“We aren't doing any good,” said Dr. Messinger. “We'd better go back to camp and wait. The men have been away three days. It's not likely they will be much longer … I wish I could speak Macushi.”

They turned about, the four of them, and left the village. It was ten o'clock by Tony's wrist watch when they reached their camp.

Ten o'clock on the river Waurupang was question time at Westminster. For a long time now Jock had had a question which his constituents wanted him to ask. It came up that afternoon.

I should like to ask the Minister of Agriculture whether in view of the dumping in this country of Japanese pork pies, the right honourable member is prepared to consider a modification of the eight and a half score basic pig from two and a half inches of thickness round the belly as originally specified, to two inches.”

Replying for the Minister, the under-secretary said: “The matter is receiving the closest attention. As the honourable member is no doubt aware the question of the importation of pork pies is a matter for the Board of Trade, not for the Board of Agriculture. With regard to the specifications of the basic pig, I must remind the honourable member that, as he is doubtless aware, the eight and a half score pig is modelled on the requirements of the bacon curers and has no direct relation to pig meat for sale in pies. That is being dealt with by a separate committee who have not yet made their report.”

“Would the honourable member consider an increase of the specified maximum of fatness on the shoulders?”

“I must have notice of that question.”

Jock left the House that afternoon with the comfortable feeling that he had at last done something tangible in the interest of his constituents.

Two days later the Indians returned from hunting. It was tedious waiting. Dr. Messinger put in some hours daily in checking the stores. Tony went into the bush with his gun but the game had all migrated from that part of the river bank. One of the black boys was badly injured in the foot and calf by a sting-ray; after that they stopped bathing and washed in a zinc pail. When the news of the Indians' return reached camp, Tony and Dr. Messinger went to the village to see them but a feast had already started and everyone in the place was drunk. The men lay in their hammocks and the women trotted between them carrying calabashes of cassiri. Everything reeked of roast pork.

“It will take them a week to get sober,” said Dr. Messinger.

All that week the black boys lounged in camp; sometimes they washed their clothes and hung them out on the bulwarks of the boat to dry in the sun; sometimes they went fishing and came back with a massive catch, speared on a stick (the flesh was tasteless and rubbery); usually in the evenings they sang songs round the fire. The fellow who had been stung kept to his hammock, groaning loudly and constantly asking for medicine.

On the sixth day the Indians began to appear. They shook hands all round and then retired to the margin of the bush where they stood gazing at the camp equipment. Tony tried to photograph them but they ran away giggling like schoolgirls. Dr. Messinger spread out on the ground the goods he had brought for barter.

They retired at sundown but on the seventh day they came again, greatly reinforced. The entire population of the village was there. Rosa sat down on Tony's hammock under the thatch roof.

“Give me cigarettes,” she said.

“You tell them I want men to go Pie-wie country,” said Dr. Messinger.

“Pie-wie bad people. Macushi people no go with Pie-wie people.”

“You say I want the men. I give them guns.”

“You give me cigarettes …”

Negotiations lasted for two days. Eventually twelve men agreed to come; seven of them insisted on bringing their wives with them. One of these was Rosa. When everything was arranged there was a party in the village and all the Indians got drunk again. This time, however, it was a shorter business as the women had not had time to prepare much cassiri. In three days the caravan was able to set out.

One of the men had a long, single-barrelled, muzzle-loading gun; several others carried bows and arrows; they were naked except for red cotton cloths round their loins. The women wore grubby calico dresses — they had been issued to them years back by an itinerant preacher and kept for occasions of this kind; they had wicker panniers on their shoulders, supported by a band across the forehead. All the heaviest luggage was carried by the women in these panniers, including the rations for themselves and their men. Rosa had, in addition, an umbrella with a dented, silver crook, a relic of her association with Mr. Forbes.

The Negroes returned down-stream to the coast. A dump of provisions, in substancial tin casing, was left in the ruinous shelter by the bank.

“There's no one to touch it. We can send back for it in case of emergency from the Pie-wie country,” said Dr. Messinger.

Tony and Dr. Messinger walked immediately behind the man with the gun who was acting as guide; behind them the file straggled out for half a mile or more through the forest.

“From now onwards the map is valueless to us,” said Dr. Messinger with relish.

(Roll up the map — you will not need it again for how many years, said William Pitt … memories of Tony's private school came back to him at Dr. Messinger's words, of inky little desks and a coloured picture of a Viking raid, of Mr. Trotter who had taught him history and wore very vivid ties.)

Three

“Mumsey, Brenda wants a job.”

“Why?”

“Just like everybody else, short of money and nothing to do. She wondered if she could be any use to you at the shop.”

“Well … It's hard to say. At any other time she is exactly the kind of saleswoman I am always looking for … but I don't know. As things are I'm not sure it would be wise.”

“I said I'd ask you, that's all.”

“John, you never tell me anything and I don't like to seem interfering; but what is going to happen between you and Brenda.”

“I don't know.”

“You never tell me anything,” repeated Mrs. Beaver. “And there are so many rumours going round. Is there going to be a divorce?”

“I don't know.”

Mrs. Beaver sighed. “Well I must get back to work. Where are you lunching?”

“Brat's.”

“Poor John. By the way, I thought you were joining Brown's.”

“I haven't heard anything from them. I don't know whether they've had an election yet.”

“Your father was a member.”

“I've an idea I shan't get in … anyway I couldn't really afford it.”

“I'm not happy about you, John. I'm not sure that things are working out as well as I hoped about Christmas time.”

“There's my telephone. Perhaps it's Margot. She hasn't asked me to anything for weeks.”

But it was only Brenda.

“I'm afraid mother's got nothing for you at the shop,” he said.

“Oh well. I expect something will turn up. I could do with a little good luck just at the moment.”

“So could I. Have you asked Allan about Brown's?”

“Yes, I did. He says they elected about ten chaps last week.”

“Oh, does that mean I've been black balled?”

“I shouldn't know. Gentlemen are so odd about their clubs.”

“I thought that you were going to make Allan and Reggie support me.”

“I asked them. What does it matter anyway? D'you want to come to Veronica's for the week-end?”

“I'm not sure that I do.”

“I'd like it.”

“It's a beastly little house — and I don't think Veronica likes me. Who'll be there?”

“I shall be.”

“Yes … well, I'll let you know.”

“Am I seeing you this evening?”

“I'll let you know.”

“Oh dear,” said Brenda as she rang off. “Now he's taken against me. It isn't my fault he can't get in to Brown's. As a matter of fact I believe Reggie did try to help.”

Jenny Abdul Akbar was in the room with her. She came across every morning now in her dressing gown and they read the newspaper together. The dressing gown was of striped Berber silk.

“Let's go and have a cosy lunch at the Ritz,” she said.

“The Ritz isn't cosy at lunch time and it costs eight and six. I daren't cash a cheque for three weeks, Jenny. The lawyers are so disagreeable. I've never been like this before.”

“What wouldn't I do to Tony? Leaving you stranded like this.”

“Oh, what's the good of knocking Tony? I don't suppose he's having a packet of fun himself in Brazil or wherever it is.”

“I hear they are putting in bathrooms at Hetton — while you are practically starving. And he hasn't even gone to Mrs. Beaver for them.”

“Yes, I do think that was mean.”

Presently Jenny went back to dress. Brenda telephoned to a delicatessen store round the corner for some sandwiches. She would spend that day in bed, as she spent two or three days a week at this time. Perhaps, if Allan was making a speech somewhere, as he usually was, Marjorie would have her to dinner. The Helm-Hubbards had a supper party that night but Beaver had not been asked. “If I went there without him it would be a major bust-up … Come to think of it, Marjorie's probably going. Well I can always have sandwiches for dinner here. They make all kinds. Thank God for the little shop round the corner.” She was reading a biography of Thiers that had lately appeared; it was very long and would keep her going well into the night.

At one o'clock Jenny came in to say goodbye (she had a latch key of Brenda's) dressed for a cosy lunch. “I got Polly and Souki,” she said. “We're going to Daisy's joint. I wish you were coming.”

“Me? Oh, I'm all right,” said Brenda and she thought, `It might occur to her to sock a girl a meal once in a way.'

They walked for a fortnight, averaging about fifteen miles a day. Sometimes they would do much more and sometimes much less; the Indian who went in front decided the camping places; they depended on water and evil spirits.

Dr. Messinger made a compass traverse of their route. It gave him something to think about. He took readings every hour from an aneroid. In the evening, if they had halted early enough, he employed the last hours of daylight in elaborating a chart. `Dry water course, three deserted huts, stony ground …'

“We are now in the Amazon system of rivers,” he announced with satisfaction one day. “You see, the water is running South.” But almost immediately they crossed a stream flowing in the opposite direction. “Very curious,” said Dr. Messinger. “A discovery of genuine scientific value.”

Next day they waded through four streams at intervals of two miles, running alternately North and South. The chart began to have a mythical appearance.

“Is there a name for any of these streams,” he asked Rosa.

“Macushi people called him Waurupang.”

“No, not river where we first camped: These rivers.”

“Yes, Waurupang.”

“This river here.”

“Macushi people call him all Waurupang.”

“It's hopeless,” said Dr. Messinger.

“Don't you think that possibly we have struck the upper waters of the Waurupang?” suggested Tony, “and have crossed and recrossed the stream as it winds down the valley.”

“It is a hypothesis,” said Dr. Messinger.

When they were near water they forced their way through blind bush; the trail there was grown over and barred by timber; only Indian eyes and Indian memory could trace its course; sometimes they crossed little patches of dry savannah, dun grass growing in tufts from the baked earth; thousands of lizards scampered and darted before their feet and the grass rustled like newspaper; it was burning hot in these enclosed spaces. Sometimes they climbed up into the wind, over loose red pebbles that bruised their feet; after these painful ascents they would lie in the wind till their wet clothes grew cold against their bodies; from these low eminences they could see other hill tops and the belts of bush through which they had travelled, and the file of porters trailing behind them. As each man and woman arrived he sank on to the dry grass and rested against his load; when the last of them came up with the party Dr. Messinger would give the word and they would start off again, descending into the green heart of the forest before them.

Tony and Dr. Messinger seldom spoke to one another, either when they were marching or at the halts for they were constantly strained and exhausted. In the evenings after they had washed and changed into clean shirts and flannel trousers, they talked a little, mostly about the number of miles they had done that day, their probable position and the state of their feet. They drank rum and water after their bath; for supper there was usually bully beef stewed with rice and flour dumplings. The Indians ate farine, smoked hog and occasional delicacies picked up by the way — armadillo, iguana, fat white grubs from the palm trees. The women had some dried fish with them that lasted for eight days; the smell grew stronger every day until the stuff was eaten, then it still hung about them and the stores but grew fainter until it merged into the general indefinable smell of the camp.

There were no Indians living in this country. In the last five days of the march they suffered from lack of water. They had left the Waurupang behind and the streams they came to were mostly dry; they had to reconnoitre up and down their beds in search of tepid, stagnant puddles. But after two weeks they came to a river once more, flowing deep and swift to the Southeast. This was the border of the Pie-wie country and Dr. Messinger marked the place where they stopped, Second Base Camp. The cabouri fly infested this stream in clouds.

“John, I think it's time you had a holiday.”

“A holiday what from, mumsey?”

“A change … I'm going to California in July. To the Fischbaums — Mrs. Arnold Fischbaum, not the one who lives in Paris. I think it would do you good to come with me.”

“Yes, mumsey.”

“You would like it, wouldn't you?”

“Me? Yes, I'd like it.”

“You've picked up that way of talking from Brenda. It sounds ridiculous in a man.”

“Sorry, mumsey.”

“All right then, that's settled.”

At sunset the cabouri fly disappeared. Until then, through the day, it was necessary to keep covered; they settled on any exposed flesh like house-flies upon jam; it was only when they were gorged that their bite was perceptible; they left behind a crimson, smarting circle with a black dot at its centre. Tony and Dr. Messinger wore cotton gloves which they had brought for the purpose, and muslin veils, hanging down under their hats. Later they employed two women to squat beside their hammocks and fan them with leafy boughs; the slightest breeze was enough to disperse the flies, but soon as Tony and Dr. Messinger dozed the women would lay aside their work, and they woke instantly, stung in a hundred places. The Indians bore the insects as cows bear horse-flies; passively with occasional fretful outbursts when they would slap their shoulders and thighs.

After dark there was some relief for there were few mosquitoes at this camp but they could hear the vampire bats all night long nuzzling and flapping against their netting.

The Indians would not go hunting in this forest. They said there was no game, but Dr. Messenger said it was because they were afraid of the evil spirits of the Pie-wie people. Provisions were not lasting as well as Dr. Messinger had calculated. During the march it had been difficult to keep a proper guard over the stores. There was a bag of farine, half a bag of sugar and a bag of rice short. Dr. Messinger instituted careful rationing; he served them himself, measuring everything strictly in an enamel cup; even so the women managed to get to the sugar behind his back. He and Tony had finished the rum except for one bottle which was kept in case of emergency.

“We can't go on breaking into tinned stores,” said Dr. Messinger peevishly. “The men must go out and shoot something.”

But they received the orders with expressionless, downcast faces and remained in camp.

“No birds, no animals here,” explained Rosa. “All gone. May be they get some fish.”

But the Indians could not be persuaded to exert themselves. They could see the sacks and bales of food heaped on the bank; it would be plenty of time to start hunting and fishing when that had been exhausted.

Meanwhile there were canoes to be built.

“This is clearly Amazon water,” said Dr. Messinger. “It probably flows into the Rio Branco or the Rio Negro. The Pie-wies live along the bank and the City must from all accounts be down-stream of us, up one of the tributaries. When we reach the first Pie-wie village we will be able to get guides.”

The canoes were made of woodskin. Three days were spent in finding trees of suitable age and straightness and in felling them. They cut four trees and worked on them where they lay, clearing the brush for a few feet round them. They stripped the bark with their broad-bladed knives; that took another week. They worked patiently but clumsily; one woodskin was split in getting it off the trunk. There was nothing Tony and Dr. Messinger could do to help. They spent that week guarding the sugar from the women. As the men moved about the camp and the surrounding bush, their steps were soundless; their bare feet seemed never to disturb the fallen leaves, their bare shoulders made no rustle in the tangled undergrowth their speech was brief and scarcely audible, they never joined in the chatter and laughing of their women; sometimes they gave little grunts as they worked; only once they were merry, when one of them let his knife slip as he was working on the tree-trunk and cut deeply into the ball of his thumb. Dr. Messinger dressed the wound with iodine, lint and bandages. After that the women constantly solicited him, showing him little scratches on their arms and legs and asking for iodine.

Two of the trees were finished on one day, then another next day (that was the one which split) and the fourth two days after that; it was a larger tree than the others. When the last fibre was severed four men got round the trunk and lifted the skin clear. It curled up again at once making a hollow cylinder, which the men carried down to the water-side and set afloat, fastening it to a tree with a loop of vine-rope.

When all the woodskins were ready it was an easy matter to make canoes of them. Four men held them open while two others fixed the struts. The ends were left open, and curled up slightly so as to lift them clear (when the craft was fully laden it drew only an inch or two of water). Then the men set about fashioning some single-bladed paddles; that, too, was an easy matter.

Every day Dr. Messinger asked Rosa, “When will the boats be ready? Ask the men,” and she replied, “Just now.”

“How many days — four? — five? — how many?”

“No, not many. Boats finish just now.”

At last when it was clear that the work was nearly complete, Dr. Messinger busied himself with arrangements. He sorted out the stores, dividing the necessary freight into two groups; he and Tony were to sit in separate boats and each had with him a rifle and ammunition, a camera, tinned rations, trade goods and his own luggage. The third canoe which would be manned solely by Indians was to hold the flour and rice, sugar and farine, and the rations for the men. The canoes would not hold all the stores and an `emergency dump' was made a little way up the bank.

“We shall take eight men with us. Four can stay behind with the women to guard the camp. Once we are among the Pie-wies everything will be easy. These Macushis can go home then. I don't think they will rob the stores. There is nothing here that would be much use to them.”

“Hadn't we better keep Rosa with us to act as interpreter with the Macushis?”

“Yes, perhaps we had. I will tell her.”

That evening everything was finished except the paddles. In the first exhilarating hour of darkness, when Tony and Dr. Messinger were able to discard the gloves and veils that had been irking them all day, they called Rosa across to the part of the camp where they ate and slept.

“Rosa, we have decided to take you down the river with us. We need you to help us talk to the men. Understand?” Rosa said nothing; her face was perfectly blank, lit from below by the storm lantern that stood on a box between them; the shadow of her high cheek bones hid her eyes; lank, ragged hair, a tenuous straggle of tattooing along forehead and lip, rotund body in its filthy cotton gown, bandy brown legs.

“Understand?”

But still she said nothing; she seemed to be looking over their heads into the dark forest, but her eyes were lost in shadow.

“Listen, Rosa, all women and four men stay here in camp. Six men come in boats to Pie-wie village. You come with boats. When we reach Pie-wie village, you and eight men and boats go back to camp to other women and men. Then back to Macushi country. Understand?”

At last Rosa spoke. “Macushi people no go with Pie-wie people.”

“I am not asking you to go with Pie-wie people. You and men take us as far as Pie-wies, then you go back to Macushi people. Understand?”

Rosa raised her arm in an embracing circle which covered the camp and the road they had travelled and the broad savannahs behind them. “Macushi peoples there,” she said. Then she raised the other arm and waved it down-stream towards the hidden country. “Pie-wie peoples there,” she said. “Macushi peoples no go with Pie-wie peoples.”

“Now listen, Rosa. You are sensible woman. You lived two years with black gentleman, Mr. Forbes. You like cigarettes — ”

“Yes, give me cigarettes.”

“You come with men in boats, I give you plenty, plenty cigarettes.”

Rosa looked stolidly ahead of her and said nothing.

“Listen. You will have your man and seven others to protect you. How can we talk with men without you?”

“Men no go,” said Rosa.

“Of course the men will go. The only question is, will you come too?”

“Macushi peoples no go with Pie-wie peoples,” said Rosa.

“Oh God,” said Dr. Messinger Wearily. “All right we'll talk about it in the morning.”

“You give me cigarette …”

“It's going to be awkward if that woman doesn't come.”

“It's going to be much more awkward if none of them come,” said Tony.

Next day the boats were ready. By noon they were launched and tied in to the bank. The Indians went silently about the business of preparing their dinner. Tony and Dr. Messinger ate tongue, boiled rice and some tinned peaches.

“We're all right for stores,” said Dr. Messinger. “There's enough for three weeks at the shortest and we are bound to come across the Pie-wies in a day or two. We will start tomorrow.”

The Indians' wages, in rifles, fish-hooks and rolls of cotton, had been left behind for them at their village. There were still half a dozen boxes of `trade' for use during the later stages of the journey. A leg of bushpig was worth a handful of shot or twenty gun caps in that currency; a fat game bird cost a necklace.

When dinner was over, at about one o'clock, Dr. Messinger called Rosa over to them. “We start tomorrow,” he said.

“Yes, just now.”

“Tell the men what I told you last night. Eight men to come in boats, others wait here. You come in boats. All these stores stay here. All these stores go in boats. You tell men that.”

Rosa said nothing.

“Understand?”

“No peoples go in boats,” she said. “All peoples go this way,” and she extended her arm towards the trail that they had lately followed. “Tomorrow or next day all people go back to village.”

There was a long pause; at last Dr. Messinger said, “You tell the men to come here … It's no use threatening them,” he remarked to Tony when Rosa had waddled back to the fireside. “They are a queer, timid lot. If you threaten them they take fright and disappear leaving you stranded. Don't worry, I shall be able to persuade them.”

They could see Rosa talking at the fireside but none of the group moved. Presently, having delivered her message, she was silent and squatted down among them with the head of one of the women between her knees. She had been searching it for lice when Dr. Messinger's summons had interrupted her.

“We'd better go across and talk to them.”

Some of the Indians were in hammocks. The others were squatting on their heels; they had scraped earth over the fire and extinguished it. They gazed at Tony and Dr. Messinger with slit, pig eyes. Only Rosa seemed incurious; her head was averted; all her attention went to her busy fingers as she picked and crunched the lice from her friend's hair.

“What's the matter?” asked Dr. Messinger. “I told you to bring the men here.”

Rosa said nothing.

“So Macushi people are cowards. They are afraid of Pie-wie people.”

“It's the cassava field,” said Rosa. “We must go back to dig the cassava. Otherwise it will be bad.”

“Listen. I want the men for one, two weeks. No more. After that, all finish. They can go home.”

“It is the time to dig the cassava. Macushi people dig cassava before the big rains. All people go home just now.”

“It's pure blackmail,” said Dr. Messinger. “Let's get out some trade goods.”

He and Tony together prised open one of the cases and began to spread out the contents on a blanket. They had chosen these things together at a cheap store in Oxford Street. The Indians watched the display in unbroken silence. There were bottles of scent and pills, bright celluloid combs set with glass jewels, mirrors, pocket knives with embossed aluminum handles, ribbons and necklaces and barter of more solid worth in the farm of axe-heads, brass cartridge cases and flat, red flasks of gunpowder.

“You give me this,” said Rosa picking out a pale blue rosette, that had been made as a boat-race favour. “Give me this,” she repeated, rubbing some drops of scent into the palm of her hands and inhaling deeply.

“Each man can choose three things from this box if he comes in the boats.”

But Rosa replied monotonously, “Macushi people dig cassava field just now.”

“It's no good,” said Dr. Messinger after half an hour's fruitless negotiation. “We shall have to try with the mice. I wanted to keep them till we reached the Pie-wies. It's a pity. But they'll fall for the mice, you see. I know the Indian mind.”

These mice were comparatively expensive articles; they had cost three and sixpence each, and Tony remembered vividly the embarrassment with which he had witnessed their demonstration on the floor of the toy department.

They were of German manufacture; the size of large rats but conspicuously painted in spots of green and white; they had large glass eyes, stiff whiskers and green and white ringed tails; they ran on hidden wheels, and inside them were little bells that jingled as they moved. Dr. Messinger took one out of their box, unwrapped the tissue paper and held it up to general scrutiny. There was no doubt that he had captured his audience's interest. Then he wound it up. The Indians stirred apprehensively at the sound.

The ground where they were camping was hard mud, inundated at flood time. Dr. Messinger put the toy down at his feet and set it going; tinkling merrily it ran towards the group of Indians. For a moment Tony was afraid that it would turn over, or become stuck against a root but the mechanism was unimpaired and by good chance there was a clear course. The effect exceeded anything that he had expected. There was a loud intake of breath, a series of horrified, small grunts, a high wail of terror from the women, and a sudden stampede; a faint patter of bare brown feet among the fallen leaves, bare limbs, quiet as bats, pushed through the undergrowth, ragged cotton gowns caught and tore in the thorn bushes. Before the toy had run down, before it had jingled its way to the place where the nearest Indian had been squatting, the camp was empty.

“Well I'm damned,” said Dr. Messinger, “that's better than I expected.”

“More than you expected anyway.”

“Oh it's all right. They'll come back. I know them.” But by sundown there was still no sign. Throughout the hot afternoon Tony and Dr. Messinger, shrouded from cabouri fly, sprawled in their hammocks. The empty canoes lay in the river; the mechanical mouse had been put away. At sundown Dr. Messinger said, “We'd better make a fire. They'll come back when it is dark.”

They brushed the earth away from the old embers, brought new wood and made a fire; they lit the storm lantern.

“We'd better get some supper,” said Tony.

They boiled water and made some cocoa, opened a tin of salmon and finished the peaches that were left over from midday. They lit their pipes and drew the sheaths of mosquito netting across their hammocks. Most of this time they were silent. Presently they decided to go to sleep.

“We shall find them all here in the morning,” said Dr. Messinger. “They're an odd bunch.”

All round them the voices of the bush whistled and croaked, changing with the hours as the night wore on to morning.

Dawn broke in London, clear and sweet, dove-grey and honey, with promise of good weather; the lamps in the streets paled and disappeared; the empty streets ran with water, and the rising sun caught it as it bubbled round the hydrants; the men in overalls swung the nozzles of their hoses from side to side and the water jetted and cascaded in a sparkle of light.

“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.”

Four

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.”

“Just sit quiet here while I sling your hammock.”

“Yes, I'll sit here with Brenda. I am so glad she could come. She must have caught the three-eighteen.”

She was with him all that night and all the next day. He talked to her ceaselessly but her replies were rare and enigmatic. On the succeeding evening he had another fit of sweating. Dr. Messinger kept a large fire burning by the hammock and wrapped Tony in his own blanket. An hour before dawn Tony fell asleep and when he awoke Brenda had gone.

“You're down to normal again.”

“Thank God. I've been pretty ill, haven't I? I can't remember much.”

Dr. Messinger had made something of a camp. He had chopped a square clear of undergrowth, the size of a small room. Their two hammocks hung on opposite sides of it. The stores were all ashore, arranged in an orderly pile on the tarpaulin.

“How d'you feel?”

“Grand,” said Tony, but when he got out of his hammock he found he could not stand without help. “Of course, I haven't eaten anything. I expect it will be a day or two before I'm really well.”

Dr. Messinger said nothing, but strained the tea clear of leaves by pouring it slowly from one mug into another; he stirred into it a large spoonful of condensed milk.

“See if you can drink this.”

Tony drank it with pleasure and ate some biscuits.

“Are we going on today?” he asked.

“We'll think about it.” He took the mugs down to the bank and washed them in the river. When he came back he said; “I think I'd better explain things. It's no use your thinking you are cured because you are out of fever for one day. That's the way it goes. One day fever and one day normal. It may take a week or it may take much longer. That's a thing we've got to face. I can't risk taking you in the canoe. You nearly upset us several times the day before yesterday.”

“I thought there was someone there I knew.”

“You thought a lot of things. It'll go on like that. Meanwhile we've provisions for about ten days. There's no immediate anxiety there but it's a thing to remember. Besides what you need is a roof over your head and constant nursing. If only we were at a village …”

“I'm afraid I'm being a great nuisance.”

“That's not the point. The thing is to find what is best for us to do.”

But Tony felt too tired to think; he dozed for an hour or so. When he awoke Dr. Messinger was cutting back the bush further. “I'm going to fix up the tarpaulin as a roof.”

(He had marked this place on his map Temporary Emergency Base Camp.)

Tony watched him listlessly. Presently he said, “Look here, why don't you leave me here and go down the river for help?”

“I thought of that. It's too big a risk.”

That afternoon Brenda was back at Tony's side and he was shivering and tossing in his hammock.

When he was next able to observe things, Tony noted that there was a tarpaulin over his head, slung to the tree-trunks. He asked, “How long have we been here?”

“Only three days.”

“What time is it now?”

“Getting on for ten in the morning.”

“I feel awful.”

Dr. Messinger gave him some soup. “I am going downstream for the day,” he said, “to see if there's any sign of a village. I hate leaving you but it's a chance worth taking. I shall be able to get a long way in the canoe now it's empty. Lie quiet. Don't move from the hammock. I shall be back before night. I hope with some Indians to help.”

“All right,” said Tony and fell asleep.

Dr. Messinger went down to the river's edge and untied the canoe; he brought with him a rifle, a drinking cup and a day's provisions. He sat in the stern and pushed out from the bank; the current carried the bow down and in a few strokes of the paddle he was in midstream.

The sun was high and its reflection in the water dazzled and scorched him; he paddled on with regular, leisurely strokes; he was travelling fast. For a mile's stretch the river narrowed and the water raced so that all he had to do was to trail the blade of the paddle as a rudder; then the walls of forest on either side of him fell back and he drifted into a great open lake, where he had to work heavily to keep in motion; all the time he watched keenly to right and left for the column of smoke, the thatched domes, the sly brown figure in the undergrowth, the drinking cattle, that would disclose the village he sought. But there was no sign. In the open water he took up his field glasses and studied the whole wooded margin. But there was no sign.

Later the river narrowed once more and the canoe shot forward in the swift current. Ahead of him the surface was broken by rapids; the smooth water seethed and eddied; a low monotone warned him that beyond the rapids was a fall. Dr. Messinger began to steer for the bank. The current was running strongly and he exerted his full strength; ten yards from the beginning of this rapids his bow ran in under the bank. There was a dense growth of thorn here, overhanging the river; the canoe slid under them and bit into the beach; very cautiously Dr. Messinger knelt forward in his place and stretched up to a bough over his head. It was at that moment he came to grief; the stern swung out downstream and as he snatched at the paddle the craft was swept broadside into the troubled water; there it adopted an eccentric course, spinning and tumbling to the falls. Dr. Messinger was tipped into the water; it was quite shallow in places and he caught at the rocks but they were worn smooth as ivory and afforded no hold for his hands; he rolled over twice, found himself in deep water and attempted to swim, found himself among boulders again and attempted to grapple with them. Then he reached the falls.

They were unspectacular as falls in that country go — a drop of ten feet or less — but they were enough for Dr. Messinger. At their foot the foam subsided into a great pool, almost still, and strewn with blossoms from the forest trees that encircled it. Dr. Messinger's hat floated very slowly towards the Amazon and the water closed over his bald head.

Brenda went to see the family solicitors.

“Mr. Graceful,” she said, “I've got to have some more money.”

Mr. Graceful looked at her sadly. “I should have thought that was really a question for your bank manager. I understand that your securities are to your own name and that the dividends are paid into your account.”

“They never seem to pay dividends nowadays. Besides it's really very difficult to live on so little.”

“No doubt. No doubt.”

“Mr. Last left you with power of attorney, didn't he?”

“With strictly limited powers, Lady Brenda. I am instructed to pay the wage bill at Hetton and all expenses connected with the upkeep of the estate — he is putting in new bathrooms and restoring some decorations in the morning room which had been demolished. But I am afraid that I have no authority to draw on Mr. Last's account for other charges.”

“But, Mr. Graceful, I am sure he didn't intend to stay abroad so long. He can't possibly have meant to leave me stranded like this, can he? … Can he?”

Mr. Graceful paused and fidgeted a little. “To be quite frank, Lady Brenda, I fear that was his intention. I raised this particular point shortly before his departure. He was quite resolved on the subject.”

“But is he allowed to do that? I mean haven't I got any rights under the marriage settlement or anything?”

“Nothing which you can claim without application to the Courts. You might find solicitors who would advise you to take action. I cannot say that I should be one of them. Mr. Last would oppose any such order to the utmost and I think that, in the present circumstances, the Courts would undoubtedly find for him. In any case it would be a prolonged, costly and slightly undignified proceeding.”

“Oh, I see … well, that's that, isn't it?”

“It certainly looks as though it were.”

Brenda rose to go. It was high summer and through the open windows she could see the sun-bathed gardens of Lincoln's Inn.

“There's one thing. Do you know, I mean, can you tell me whether Mr. Last made another will?”

“I'm afraid that is a thing I cannot discuss.”

“No, I suppose not. I'm sorry if it was wrong to ask. I just wanted to know how I am with him.”

She still stood between the door and the table looking lost, in her bright summer clothes. “Perhaps I can say as much as this to guide you. The heirs presumptive to Hetton are now his cousins, the Richard Lasts at Princes Risborough. I think that your knowledge of Mr. Last's character and opinions will tell you that he would always wish his fortune to go with the estate, in order that it may be preserved in what he holds to be its right condition.”

“Yes,” said Brenda, “I ought to have thought of that. Well, goodbye.”

And she went out alone into the sunshine.

All that day Tony lay alone, fitfully oblivious of the passage of time. He slept a little; once or twice he left his hammock and found himself weak and dizzy. He tried to eat some of the food which Dr. Messinger had left out for him, but without success. It was not until it grew dark that he realized the day was over. He lit the lantern and began to collect wood for the fire, but the sticks kept slipping from his fingers and each time that he stooped he felt giddy, so that after a few fretful efforts he left them where they had fallen and returned to his hammock. And lying there, wrapped in his blanket, he began to cry.

After some hours of darkness the lamp began to burn low; he leant painfully over, and shook it. It needed refilling. He knew where the oil was kept, crept to it, supporting himself first on the hammock rope and then on a pile of boxes. He found the keg, pulled out the bung and began to refill the lamp, but his hand trembled and the oil spilled over the ground, then his head began to swim again so that he shut his eyes; the keg rolled over on its side and emptied itself with slow gurglings. When he realized what had happened he began to cry again. He lay down in his hammock and in a few minutes the light sank, flickered and went out. There was a reek of kerosene on his hands and on the sodden earth. He lay awake in the darkness crying.

Just before dawn the fever returned and a constant company of phantoms perplexed his senses.

Brenda awoke in the lowest possible spirits. The evening before she had spent alone at a cinema. Afterwards she felt hungry — she had had no proper meal that day — but she had not the strength to go alone into any of the supper restaurants. She bought a meat pie at a coffee stall and took it home. It looked delicious but, when she came to eat she found that she had lost her appetite. The remains of that pie lay on the dressing table when she awoke.

It was August and she was entirely alone. Beaver was that day landing in New York. (He had cabled her from mid-ocean that the crossing was excellent.) It was for her the last of Beaver. Parliament was over and Jock Grant-Menzies was paying his annual visit to his elder brother in Scotland; Marjorie and Allan at the last moment had made Lord Monomark's yacht and were drifting luxuriously down the coast of Spain attending bull-fights (they had even asked her to look after Djinn). Her mother was at the chalet Lady Anchorage always lent her on the lake of Geneva. Polly was everywhere. Even Jenny Abdul Akbar was cruising in the Baltic.

Brenda opened her newspaper and read an article by a young man who said that the London Season was a thing of the past; that everyone was too busy in those days to keep up the pre-war routine; that there were no more formal dances but a constant round of more modest entertaining; that August in London was the gayest time of all (he rewrote this annually in slightly different words). It did not console Brenda to read that article.

For weeks past she had attempted to keep a fair mind towards Tony and his treatment of her; now at last she broke down and turning over buried her face in the pillow, in an agony of resentment and self-pity.

In Brazil she wore a ragged cotton gown of the same pattern as Rosa's. It was not unbecoming. Tony watched her for some time before he spoke. “Why are you dressed like that?”

“Don't you like it? I got it from Polly.”

“It looks so dirty.”

“Well, Polly travels about a lot. You must get up now to go to the County Council Meeting.”

“But it isn't Wednesday?”

“No, but time is different in Brazil, surely you remember.”

“I can't get as far as Pigstanton. I've got to stay here until Messinger comes back. I'm ill. He told me to be quiet. He's coming this evening.”

“But all the County Council are here: The Shameless Blonde brought them in her aeroplane.”

Sure enough they were all there. Reggie St. Cloud was chairman. He said, “I strongly object to Milly being on the committee. She is a woman of low repute.”

Tony protested. “She has a daughter. She has as much right here as Lady Cockpurse.”

“Order,” said the Mayor. “I must ask you gentlemen to confine your remarks to the subject under discussion. We have to decide about the widening of the Bayton-Pigstanton road. There have been several complaints that it's impossible for the Green Line Buses to turn the corner safely at Hetton Cross.”

“Green Line rats.”

“I said Green Line rats. Mechanical green line rats. Many of the villagers have been scared by them and have evacuated their cottages.”

“I evacuated,” said Reggie St. Cloud. “I was driven out of my house by mechanical green rats.”

“Order,” said Lady Cockpurse. “I move that Mr. Last address the meeting.”

“Hear, hear.”

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said Tony. “I beg you to understand that I am ill and must not move from the hammock. Dr. Messinger has given the clearest instructions.”

“Winnie wants to bathe.”

“No bathing in Brazil. No bathing in Brazil.” The meeting took up the cry. “No bathing in Brazil.”

“But you had two breakfasts.”

“Order,” said the Mayor. “Lord St. Cloud, I suggest you put the question to the vote.”

“The question is whether the contract for the widening of the corner at Hetton Cross shall be given to Mrs. Beaver. Of the tenders submitted hers was by far the most expensive but I understand that her plans included a chromium plated wall on the south side of the village …”

“… and two breakfasts,” prompted Winnie.

“… and two breakfasts for the men engaged on the work. Those in favour of the motion will make a clucking sound in imitation of hens, those against will say bow-wow.”

“A most improper proceeding,” said Reggie. “What will the servants think?”

“We have got to do something until Brenda has been told.”

“… Me? I'm all right.”

“Then I take it the motion is carried.”

“Oh, I am glad Mrs. Beaver got the job,” said Brenda. “You see I'm in love with John Beaver, I'm in love with John Beaver, I'm in love with John Beaver.”

“Is that the decision of the committee?”

“Yes, she is in love with John Beaver.”

“Then that is carried unanimously.”

“No,” said Winnie. “He ate two breakfasts.”

“… by an overwhelming majority.”

“Why are you all changing your clothes?” asked Tony for they were putting on hunting coats.”

“For the lawn meet. Hounds are meeting here today.”

“But you can't hunt in summer.”

“Time is different in Brazil and there is no bathing.”

“I saw a fox yesterday in Bruton wood. A mechanical green fox with a bell inside him that jingled as he ran. It frightened them so much that they ran away and the whole beach was deserted and there was no bathing except for Beaver. He can bathe every day for the time is different in Brazil.”

“I'm in love with John Beaver,” said Ambrose.

“Why, I didn't know you were here.”

“I came to remind you that you were ill, sir. You must on no account leave your hammock.”

“But how can I reach the City if I stay here?”

“I will serve it directly, sir, in the library.”

“Yes, in the library. There is no point in using the dining hall now that her ladyship has gone to live in Brazil.”

“I will send the order to the stables, sir.”

“But I don't want the pony. I told Ben to sell her.”

“You will have to ride to the smoking room, sir. Dr. Messinger has taken the canoe.”

“Very well, Ambrose.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The committee had moved off down the avenue; all except Colonel Inch who had taken the other drive and was trotting towards Compton Last. Tony and Mrs. Rattery were all alone.

“Bow-wow,” she said, scooping in the cards. “That carries the motion.”

Looking up from the card table, Tony saw beyond the trees the ramparts and battlements of the City; it was quite near, him. From the turret of the gatehouse a heraldic banner floated in the tropic breeze. He struggled into an upright position and threw aside his blankets. He was stronger and steadier when the fever was on him. He picked his way through the surrounding thorn-scrub; the sound of music rose from the glittering walls; some procession or pageant was passing along them. He lurched into tree-trunks and became caught up in roots and hanging tendrils of bush-vine; but he pressed forward unconscious of pain and fatigue.

At last he came into the open. The gates were open before him and trumpets were sounding along the walls, saluting his arrival; from bastion to bastion the message ran to the four points of the compass; petals of almond and apple blossom were in the air; they carpeted the way, as, after a summer storm, they lay in the orchards at Hetton. Gilded cupolas and spires of alabaster shone in the sunlight.

Ambrose announced, “The City is served.”