LIGHT AGAIN
Three hours later Kingozi stepped into the open, his vision cleared.
Such is often the marvellous--though temporary--effect of the proper
remedies in this disease. He looked about him with a thankfulness not
to be understood save by one whose sight has been thus unexpectedly
restored. Winkleman followed him full of deep sympathy.
"But I understand," he repeated over and over, "but it is like water on
a weary march, _nicht wahr_. But this is bad, very bad! You say it has
been going on for a month? And a month back! Too late. _Ach,
schrecklich!_ It is so much a pity! You have, the youth, the strength,
the knowledge! You could so far go! But you must learn the dictation;
the great book, the _magnum opus_, it is there. Cheer up, my boy! Work,
much work! That is what will cure your sick courage even if it cannot
cure your sick eyes. Now, while we have the sight--see--the bone--this
curve clearly indicates to me----"
Winkleman produced the saurian bone. And for the first time Kingozi
noticed Simba hovering anxiously near. Request and blandishments had
proved of no avail in getting the magic bone from _Bwana_ Nyele.
"It is all right," Kingozi reassured him. "We but use the magic for a
little while. See; it has given me back my eyes."
"A-a-a-a!" ejaculated Simba, deeply astonished.
"We will use it but a little while longer," Kingozi concluded. "Then
you shall have it again."
"But to give this specimen to a gun bearer!" cried Winkleman in
English. "That is craziness! It is a museum piece."
"It belongs to him; and I have promised," said Kingozi.
Winkleman subsided with deep rumblings. After a moment he renewed his
discussion.
Kingozi only half heard him. His mind was occupied by another, more
human problem. The discovery that the atropin and not the pilocarpin
had been destroyed agitated him profoundly; not, as might be believed,
because it enabled him at a critical time to regain the use of his
sight, but because it threw before him an insistent question. Did, or
did not, Bibi-ya-chui know? He recalled the incident in all its little
details--himself in his chair and Cazi Moto squatting before the three
bottles set up before them, carefully tracing in the sand with a stick
the characters on the labels; the Leopard Woman's sudden dash forward;
the tinkle of smashed glass, and her voice panting with excitement: "I
will read your labels for you now--the bottle you hold in your hand! It
is atropin, atropin"--and her wild laugh.
Did she know, or was she guessing or bluffing?
It hurt him, hurt him inconceivably to think that she might have
deceived him thus; might have broken the wrong bottle, and then
deliberately have kept him in darkness with the very remedy at hand.
That would seem the refinement of cruelty.
But he must be fair. She was then fighting, fighting with all her power
against odds, for her sworn duty. Deceit was her natural weapon. And at
that time such deceit seemed very likely to win for her her point. No,
he could not blame her there; he could not consistently even feel hurt.
The few moments' reasoning brought him to the point where he did not
feel hurt. After a little he even admired the quickness of wit.
The instinctive depression vanished before this reasoning. He suddenly
became light-hearted.
But immediately the dark mood returned. Granted all this; how about the
last two days? Before that it might well be that her sense of duty to
her country, her firmness of spirit, her honour itself would impel her
to cling to the last hope of gaining her end. Until his influence over
M'tela was quite assured, Winkleman's arrival would probably turn the
scale. She had not prevented Kingozi's arriving before the Bavarian;
but she might hold the Englishman comparatively powerless. That was
understandable. Kingozi felt he might even love her the more for this
evidence of a faithful spirit. But the last few days! It must have
become evident to her that her cause was lost; that M'tela's friendship
had been gained for the English. If she had cared for him the least in
the world would not she have hastened to produce the pilocarpin for his
relief? What could she hope to gain by concealing it? And then the
other words insisted on his recollection, bitter words--when, first
blinded, he had asked her to read the labels on the bottle that would
have given him sight. "Why should I do this for you? You have treated
me as a man treats his dog, his horse, his servant, his child--not as a
man treats a woman!" What real reason--besides his hopes--had he for
thinking she did not still hate him, or at least remain indifferent to
him? So indifferent that even after her chance had passed she still
neglected to inform him that the pilocarpin was not destroyed after all.
Winkleman talked on and on about his saurian. Would he never stop and
go away?
"I agree with you; you are probably right," said Kingozi at last,
driven by sheer desperation to the endorsement of he knew not what
scientific heresy. Winkleman snorted heavily in triumph, and returned
the bone to a vastly relieved Simba. Kingozi interposed in haste before
the introduction of a new topic.
"Undoubtedly you will wish to see the palace of M'tela," said he with
deep wile. "Of course you are supposed to be my prisoner, so I must
send you under guard. You might take a small present to M'tela from me.
I have not yet visited his place of course. This might be considered a
preliminary to my first visit. Does it appeal to you?"
"But yes! And I shall behave. I have given my parole. I shall be the
good boy!"
"Of course. I understand that. Do you eat at noon? No? Well, good luck.
Cazi Moto, take Mali-ya-bwana and two _askari_ guns, and go with
_Bwana_ Nyele to the palace of M'tela."
Scarcely had the group disappeared down the forest path when Kingozi
was at the tent door of the Leopard Woman.
"_Hodie?_" he pronounced the native word of one desiring entrance.
"Who is there?" she asked in Swahili.
"I--Culbertson."
A slight pause; then her voice:
"Come."
He drew aside the tent flaps and entered. She was half reclining on the
cot, her back raised by pillows stuffed with sweet grass. Her silk
garment, carelessly arranged, had fallen partly open, so that the gleam
of her flesh showed tantalizingly here and there. The blood leaped to
Kingozi's forehead. She did not alter her pose. Suddenly he realized:
of course, she thought him blind!
The embarrassment met his sterner mood in a head-on collision, so that
for a moment the impulsive speech failed him. She spoke first.
"That was Winkleman, I suppose," she said. "I did not want to appear.
What is decided?"
"Decided?" he stammered, not knowing where to look, but unable to keep
his eyes from straying.
"Yes. Is it too late? Can he prevail with this M'tela after all?"
"He is my prisoner; he has given his parole."
"Oh!" she exclaimed, raising herself on her elbow in excitement. The
abrupt movement dropped the robe from her shoulder. "You can see!" she
cried; and huddled the garment about her in a panic. "You can see!" she
repeated amazedly. "How is that? What has happened?"
The words brought him to himself and to his need for definite knowledge.
"Winkleman read the labels on my bottles," he said sternly. "I have
simply used the pilocarpin."
"The pilocarpin! But that was destroyed!"
So unmistakably genuine was her cry of amazement that Kingozi's heart
leaped with joy. She had not known! He took a step toward the couch.
But at this moment a wild hullabaloo broke out in the camp. Men yelled
and shouted. Some one began to blow a horn. There came the sound of
many running to and fro. "Damn!" ejaculated Kingozi fervently; and ran
out of the tent.