The strange Anglo-French-Dutch-American anarchist whom we sent, sullen
and protesting from our camp, must have cursed us, as he went. He is
the seventh child of a seventh child, and what he knows--he knows.
I think he cursed the Canadian, who sent him back. Cursed me for
getting him sent. Cursed Dick for being mine. The very next day after
his departure the Canadian had fever, and a temperature of 104. Dick
had a suppurating bloodshot eye and could not see, and I went to bed
with some mysterious poisoning which may be of an insect or of a weed,
but cannot be identified.
That was seven days ago. I am still in bed, suffering as if I had been
scalded. A cradle over me, of reeds, protects me from the unbearable
touch even of the sheet.
The Canadian for whose life we feared at one moment, wanders about,
still with a high temperature, lies restlessly on the river bank,
gasping for air and praying for ice.
Dick is able to go out today, but with a bandage. It is a dreadful
anti-climax, this last week of our camping days. For a month everything
has been so perfect. One had not reckoned on the snake in Paradise.
A doctor came 20 kilometers on mule-back. He stayed the night and
doctored us all, but without any apparent result.
I feel as though I were on fire, and I am nearly mad. At first I could
drag myself to the river and plunge in and get temporary relief, but
for two days now the river has been in flood; muddy, opaque, and
raging; two nights of thunder-storms achieved this result. Storms,
which relieved for me the endless monotony of a sleepless night.
I have my bed close up to the open tent flap, and I could see the land
lit up by lightning flashes that lasted sometimes a minute at a time.
The thunder was stupendous; if it could have been linked to music it
would have been super-Wagnerian; it rethundered from mountain-side to
mountain-side, followed by a death-like lull.
One imagined all was over. Then with dramatic suddenness--an
earth-shaking crash, as if God in a temper had slammed His door. This
drama took about three hours from the night, and the river has risen
yet another foot.