A month after that stormy night when Lilla had felt the impact of some
far-off gush of feeling, the newspapers published a despatch reporting
the death of Lawrence Teck at the hands of savages. Four months
passed, however, before Lilla received a letter from Parr, the valet.
It had happened in the country of the Mambava. That tribe, despite
their well-known animosity to strangers, had not been hostile to
Lawrence. Indeed, he had won the friendship of their king. Yet it was
in the king's stronghold that the tragedy had happened.
There had been a beer dance, a disorderly festival ending in a clash
between the Mambava warriors and Lawrence's camp police. Almost
without warning the rifles had cracked, the spears had begun to fly.
Lawrence, throwing himself between the parties, had been among the
first to fall. Then a frenzy had seized the savages; a panic, the
intruders. It had been a massacre--a headlong flight amid the Mambava
forests, through which Parr, himself badly wounded, and half the time
unconscious, had been dragged by five Mohammedan survivors. They had
gained an outpost fort where, ever since, Parr had lain hovering
between life and death, not only crippled by his wounds, but also
stricken with the black-water fever. Then, at last, he had gathered
strength enough to scrawl these lines.