THE LAST LAP 363

if we were to reach the Coast, and I lay in the dark as
scared as I have ever been. There were no rats, at
any rate, but I caught a jigger under my toe when I
crawled out to dry myself. I was sweating as if I had
influenza; I couldn't keep dry for more than fifteen
seconds. The hurricane lamp I left burning low on
an up-ended chop box and beside it an old whisky
bottle full of warm filtered water. I kept remember-
ing Van Gogh at Bolahun burnt out with fever. He
said you had to lie up for at least a week: there wasn't
any danger in malaria if you lay up long enough; but
I couldn't bear the thought of staying a week here,
another seven days away from Grand Bassa. Malaria
or not, I'd got to go on next day and I was afraid.

The fever would not let me sleep at all, but by the
early morning it was sweated out of me. My tempera-
ture was a long way below normal, but the worst bore-
dom of the trek for the time being was over. I had
made a discovery during the night which interested
me. I had discovered in myself a passionate interest
in living. I had always assumed before, as a matter
of course, that death was desirable.

It seemed that night an important discovery. It
was like a conversion, and I had never experienced a
conversion before. (I had not been converted to a
religious faith. I had been convinced by specific argu-
ments in the probability of its creed.) If the experi-
ence had not been so new to me, it would have
seemed less important, I should have known that
conversions don't last, or if they kst at all it is only
as a little sediment at the bottom of the brain. Per-
haps the sediment has value, the memory of a con-
version may have some force in an emergency; I njay