Page:Hopkinson Smith--armchair at the inn.djvu/198

 “Tell it, Herbert,” I coaxed.

“Both you and Le Blanc have heard it.”

“But Lemois and the others haven’t.”

“Got any cannibals or barbecues in it, Herbert?” inquired Louis.

“No, just plain white man all the way through, Louis. Two of them are still alive—I and another fellow. And you really want it again, Le Blanc? Well, all right. But before I begin I must ask you to pardon my referring so often to my African experiences”—and he glanced in apology around the table—“but I was there at a most impressionable age, and they still stand out in my mind—this one in particular. You may have read of the horrors that took place at Bangala in what at the time was known as the fever camp, where some of the bravest fellows who ever entered the jungles met their deaths. Both natives and white men had succumbed, one after another, in a way that wiped out all hope.

“The remedies we had, had been used without effect, and quinine had lost its power to pull down the temperature, and each fellow knew that if he were not among those carried out feet foremost to-day, and buried so deep that the hyenas could not dig him up, it was