were not headed for Fort Pero d'Anhaya. Avoiding
that last outpost of civilization, they were approaching the country of
the Mambava, which lay behind the steamy sunshine, below the blue and
lavender battlements of granite, in the uplands covered with forests.

The askaris alone, the lean, khaki-clad Somalia, remained indifferent
to this atmosphere of disquiet that was more debilitating to the
porters than the fever-laden mists. For these fierce, restless men
from the northern deserts were of a breed that found its true
contentment in danger and violence. They were cheered, perhaps, by the
possibility of bloodshed, sustained by the automatism resulting from
their faith, and, despite their disdain of women, inspired by their
admiration of this frail personage who was always urging more speed
toward the fabulous regions of peril.

As for her, she no longer saw anything except that deep green zone
which quivered behind the heat.

"I shall find him not in the gorges, but in those forests."

For the scene of Anna Zanidov's prophecy was laid in a forest.

She lay in the machilla like a tightly drawn bow. Her skin, now ashen,
now bright from a touch of fever, stretched over a visage of apparently
new contours: round her cheekbones and jaws were suggestions of
previously unsuspected strength. Her tender lips had assumed an almost
cruel aspect; her sunken eyes, growing ever larger in her diminishing
face, were harder than gems. She was the personification of will.

And Parr, sagging, shivering, softly groaning on the back of the Muscat
donkey, and Hamoud, ever pacing beside her, and the askaris with their
rifle barrels glinting against their fezzes, and the porters and the
camp boys, were only the instrument that her will had welded together.
They were wraiths obediently advancing her dream of one fleeting moment
of triumph over fate. They were nothing, since she had summoned them
out of the void of this world by an imperious cry. They were
everything; for without them her dream would fade.

Sometimes the green zone of the uplands was lost in a blur not of heat,
but of fever. Sharp pains stabbed her temples, and, when the dream
became distinct again, she saw black men walking like giants, their
heads in the white-hot sky. But just as she had conquered fear, so, by
a supreme resolution, she conquered her vertigo, the burning of her
emaciated limbs, the quaking of her body which a moment before had been
bathed in