and sickness subsequently set in, and the fight for life became too
hard and all-absorbing even to think of photographing. He left us
after an hour's conversation, and we resumed our journey homewards.

We had a slight advantage in retracing our former path. Although the
reedy undergrowth had already choked it, we were travelling over
ground that we knew, and it was also no longer necessary to delay
for the building of _tambos_; we used the old ones again.

Jerome had complained for some time of a numbness in his fingers
and toes, and also of an increasing weakness of the heart that
made every step a torment. The Chief and I tried our best to cheer
him up, although I felt certain that the brave fellow himself knew
what dreadful disease had laid its spell upon him. However, we kept
on walking without any words that might tend to lower our already
depressed spirits.

But our march was no longer the animated travel it had been on the
way out; we talked like automatons rather than like human, thinking
beings. Suffering, hunger, and drugs had dulled our senses. Only the
will to escape somehow, the instinct of self-preservation, was fully
awake in us. A sweep of the machete to cut a barrier bushrope or
climber, one foot placed before the other, meant that much nearer to
home and safety. Such was now the simple operation of our stupefied
and tired brains, brains that could not hold one complex thought to
its end; too tired--tired!

At nightfall we stumbled into our old _tambo_ No. 7. There was no
thought of securing food, no possibility of getting any; we had
been too tired to even attempt to shoot game during the day. The two