answered the Swiss, "I desire it--if it would only come
without great agony; consider that now I am completely unarmed, and if
any one of the Mahdists whom I routed should accidentally stray to this
hollow, alone he could stab me like a sheep."

Here he pointed to the sleeping negroes.

"They will not wake any more, or rather--I speak incorrectly--all of
them awake for a short time before their death and in their mental
aberration fly to the jungle, from which they never more return. Of two
hundred men, sixty remained to me. Many ran away, many died of
smallpox, and some fell asleep in other ravines."

Stas with pity and awe began to gaze at the sleepers. Their bodies were
ashen-hued, which in negroes indicates paleness. Some had their eyes
closed, others half open; but these latter slept deeply, for their
eyeballs were not susceptible to the light. The knees of some were
swollen. All were frightfully thin, so that their ribs could be counted
through their skins. Their hands and feet quivered without cessation
very rapidly. The big blue flies swarmed thickly on their eyes and lips.

"Is there no help for them?" Stas asked.

"There is none. On Victoria Nyanza this disease depopulates whole
villages. Sometimes more severely, sometimes less. It most frequently
takes hold of the people of the villages situated in the underwood on
the banks."

The sun had passed to the western sky, but still before night Linde had
related to Stas his history. He was a son of a merchant of Zurich. His
family came from Karlsruhe, but from the year 1848 had resided in
Switzerland. His father amassed a great fortune in the silk trade. He
educated his son for an engineer, but young Henry was attracted from
early youth by travel. After completing his studies in a polytechnical
school, having inherited his father's entire fortune, he undertook his
first journey to Egypt. It was before the Mahdi's time, so he reached
as far as Khartum, and hunted with Dongolese in the Sudan. After that
he devoted himself to the geography of Africa and acquired such an
expert knowledge of it that many geographical societies enrolled him
among their members. This last journey, which was to end so
disastrously for him, began in Zanzibar. He had reached as far as the
Great Lakes and intended to penetrate into Abyssinia along the Karamojo
Mountains, which up to that time were unknown, and from there to
proceed to the ocean coast. But the natives of Zanzibar refuse