nd I was sorry, and for a fortnight
I hung around, loath to go, but hating myself all the while for not
doing so. And every day Whitney would come at me with his insane scheme.
'Over there! It isn't very far. Two days--maybe three. How about it?
Eh?' and then that tense sweep of the arm to the north. I don't know
what it was, weariness, disgust, irritation of the whole sorry plan
of things, but finally, and to my own astonishment, I found myself
consenting, and within two days Whitney had his crazy pack outfit ready,
and on the morning of the third day we set out. Mrs. Whitney had said
nothing when we unfolded our intentions to her, nor did she say anything
when we departed, but stood on the porch of the bungalow, her hand up
to her throat, and watched us out of sight. I wondered what she was
thinking about. The Voodoos--that was the name of the mountains we were
heading for--had killed a good many men in their time."

Hardy took a long and thoughtful sip from the glass in front of him
before he began again. "I've knocked about a good deal in my life," he
said; "I've been lost--once in the jungle; I've starved; I've reached
the point where I've imagined horrors, heard voices, you understand, and
seen great, bearded men mouthing at me--a man's pretty far gone when
that happens to him--but that trip across the desert was the worst I've
ever taken. By day it was all right, just swaying in your saddle, half
asleep a good part of the time, the smell of warm dust in your nose, the
three pack-mules plodding along behind; but the nights!--I tell you,
I've sat about camp-fires up the Congo and watched big, oily black men
eat their food, and I once saw a native village sacked, but I'd rather
be tied for life to a West Coast nigger than to a man like Whitney. It
isn't good for two people to be alone in a place like that and for one
to hate the other as I hated him. God knows why I didn't kill him; I'd
have to get up and leave the fire and go out into the night, and, mind
you, I'd be shuddering like a man with the ague under that warm, soft
air. And he never for a minute suspected it. His mind was scarred with
drink as if a worm had bored its slow way in and out of it. I can see
him now, cross-legged, beyond the flames, big, unshaven, heavy-jowled,
dirty, what he thought dripping from his mouth like the bacon drippings
he was too lazy to wipe away. I won't tell you what he talked about;
you know, the old thing; but not the way even