THE LAST LAP 371

forth between Tapee and the Coast. It needed
courage and it needed tact.

I think his kindness saved us both that day from
complete collapse, that and the news he gave us that
there was a road for twelve miles out of Grand Bassa
to a place called Harlingsville and that a Dutch com-
pany in the port possessed a motor lorry, for that
might easily shorten the distance by a day. With the
dark another storm came up, rumbling over the hills
between us and Tapee. A miserable man dragged
himself over to my hut across the coffee beans which
were lying in the dust to dry. He asked me whether
I was a doctor and I said that I had a few medicines,
but when he told me it was gonorrhoea he suffered
from, I had to admit that nothing I had with me
would help him. The information took a long time
to penetrate. The sight of a white man had made
him hope; he just stood there waiting for the magic
pill, the magic ointment, then moved dispiritedly
away to sit in his own hut and wait for another
miracle.

That night I couldn't eat my food, I felt sick as
well as exhausted, and a new fear had been put in
my mind by Souri, the cook, who, when he had seen
me eating the half-caste's oranges, had taken them
away from me. He said these bitter oranges were not
fit to eat, they would make a white man ill, and I
remembered how I had been warned against over-ripe
fruit by Dr. Harley at Ganta, so that now the fear of
dysentery was added to the fear of fever as I lay awake
too tired to sleep and the rain came down in a solid
wall of water over Darndo.

I didn't believe that I should be able to walk a step