Page:Frank Owen - The Actress.djvu/47

Rh of his head. All night I sat by his side down there in that terrible forest and listened to his ravings about the things back home. 'She's waiting for me!' he kept murmuring dully. 'Oh, God, if I could only get to the light! She's waiting for me by the light!' And then he would struggle to a sitting posture, and I would have to fight with him to keep him from rushing off into that frightful maze of jet-black forest. And then again he would grow more calm. 'She's waiting for me, Jerry,' he would say, 'back home on the banks of the Hudson she is waiting for me. I can see her now sitting in the Crow's Nest on Eagle Crag gazing to the East, always to the East.' Then he would slip off into silent unconsciousness and lie for almost half an hour as though dead, apparently not breathing at all. Once I thought he was gone for sure, his hands seemed growing stiff. But even as I grasped them, he murmured: 'I couldn't return to her with my work unfinished, could I, Jerry? She's been faithful to me and I've got to be faithful to her.' Thus all through the night he raved, and I sat and listened by his side.

"Toward morning the heat intensified and it seemed as though we were being scorched in the oven of a great, horrible blast furnace. But finally dawn broke faintly through rifts in the huge tree-tops above our heads. And almost immediately I gave orders to the native porters to break camp. In about an hour we had turned and started back toward Zanzibar. Four Swahilis carried Coningsby swung in a hammock across their shoulders. I wish I could describe to