lfishness and devotion would rise
before my mind. As I looked at the prostrate and attenuated form that
lay silent on the couch of eucalyptus leaves, I felt that life was merely
the acutest agony, and that I must immediately seek oblivion in some form
or the other, or lose my reason. It seemed, I say, impossible that Yamba
could cease to be. It seemed the cruellest and most preposterous thing
that she could be taken from me.

Frantically I put my arms around her and actually tried to lift her on to
her feet, begging of her to show how robust she was as in the days of
yore. I whispered into her ears all the memories of the past, and the
poor creature would endeavour to respond with a series of feeble efforts,
after which she sank back suddenly and breathed a last pitiful sigh.

Language is utterly futile to describe my horror--my distraction. I felt
as I imagined a man would feel after amputation of all his members,
leaving only the quivering and bleeding trunk. I felt that life held no
more joy, no more hope; and gladly would I have welcomed death itself as
a happy release from the wretchedness of living. In my delirium of grief
I often besought the repulsive savages about me to spear me where I
stood.

Upon this subject I can dwell no more, because of what followed I have
only the vaguest recollection.

For days I seemed to live in a kind of dream, and was not even sure that
the people I met day by day were real beings. As to my awful loss, I am
sure I did not realise it. What I did realise, however, was the
necessity for immediate action. Like a dream to me also is the memory of
the sincere grief of my blacks and their well-meant endeavours to console
me. The women kept up a mournful howl, which nearly drove me crazy, and
only strengthened my resolve to get away from that frightful place. So
dazed did I become, that the blacks concluded some strange spirit must
have entered into me.

They seemed to take it for granted that I left all arrangements for the
funeral to them; the sole idea that possessed me being to complete my
arrangements for the great journey I had before me. I told the natives
frankly of my intention, and immediately forty of them volunteered to
accompany me on my travels as far as I chose to permit them to come. I
readily accepted the kindly offer, partly because I knew that alone I
should have gone mad; and partly also because I instinctively realised
that with such a bodyguard I w