The Essential W. Somerset Maugham Collection. W. Somerset Maugham
starvation. Adversity had not been able to affect his happy nature. He was always cheerful no matter what difficulties he was in, and neither regretted the follies of his past nor repined over the hardships which had followed them. Alec had taken a great liking to him. A silent man himself, he found a certain relaxation in people like Dick Lomas and Walker who talked incessantly; and the young man's simplicity, his constant surprise at the difference between Africa and Mayfair, never ceased to divert him.
Presently Adamson came into the tent. He was the Scotch doctor who had already been Alec's companion on two of his expeditions; and there was a firm friendship between them. He was an Edinburgh man, with a slow drawl and a pawky humour, a great big fellow, far and away the largest of any of the whites; and his movements were no less deliberate than his conversation.
'Hulloa, there,' he called out, as he came in.
Walker started to his feet as if he were shot and instinctively seized his gun.
'All right!' laughed the doctor, putting up his hand. 'Don't shoot. It's only me.'
Walker put down the gun and looked at the doctor with a blank face.
'Nerves are a bit groggy, aren't they?'
The fat, cheerful man recovered his wits and gave a short laugh.
'Why the dickens did you wake me up? I was dreaming--dreaming of a high-heeled boot and a neat ankle and the swirl of a white lace petticoat.'
'Were you indeed?' said the doctor, with a slow smile. 'Then it's as well I woke ye up in the middle of it before ye made a fool of yourself. I thought I'd better have a look at your arm.'
'It's one of the most sthetic sights I know.'
'Your arm?' asked the doctor, drily.
'No,' answered Walker. 'A pretty woman crossing Piccadilly at Swan & Edgar's. You are a savage, my good doctor, and a barbarian; you don't know the care and forethought, the hours of anxious meditation, it has needed to hold up that well-made skirt with the elegant grace that enchants you.'
'I'm afraid you're a very immoral man, Walker,' answered Adamson with his long drawl, smiling.
'Under the present circumstances I have to content myself with condemning the behaviour of the pampered and idle. Just now a camp-bed in a stuffy tent, with mosquitoes buzzing all around me, has allurements greater than those of youth and beauty. And I would not sacrifice my dinner to philander with Helen of Troy herself.'
'You remind me considerably of the fox who said the grapes were sour.'
Walker flung a tin plate at a rat that sat up on its hind legs and looked at him impudently.
'Nonsense. Give me a comfortable bed to sleep in, plenty to eat, tobacco to smoke; and Amaryllis may go hang.'
Dr. Adamson smiled quietly. He found a certain grim humour in the contrast between the difficulties of their situation and Walker's flippant talk.
'Well, let us look at this wound of yours,' he said, getting back to his business. 'Has it been throbbing?'
'Oh, it's not worth bothering about. It'll be as right as rain to-morrow.'
'I'd better dress it all the same.'
Walker took off his coat and rolled up his sleeve. The doctor removed the bandages and looked at the broad flesh wound. He put a fresh dressing on it.
'It looks as healthy as one can expect,' he murmured. 'It's odd what good recoveries men make here when you'd think that everything was against them.'
'You must be pretty well done up, aren't you?' asked Walker, as he watched the doctor neatly cut the lint.
'Just about dropping. But I've a devil of a lot more work to do before I turn in.'
'The thing that amuses me is to think that I came to Africa thinking I was going to have a rattling good time, plenty of shooting and practically nothing to do.'
'You couldn't exactly describe it as a picnic, could you?' answered the doctor. 'But I don't suppose any of us knew it would be such a tough job as it's turned out.'
Walker put his disengaged hand on the doctor's arm.
'My friend, if ever I return to my native land I will never be such a crass and blithering idiot as to give way again to a spirit of adventure. I shall look out for something safe and quiet, and end my days as a wine-merchant's tout or an insurance agent.'
'Ah, that's what we all say when we're out here. But when we're once home again, the recollection of the forest and the plains and the roasting sun and the mosquitoes themselves, come haunting us, and before we know what's up we've booked our passage back to this God-forsaken continent.'
The doctor's words were followed by a silence, which was broken by Walker inconsequently.
'Do you ever think of rumpsteaks?' he asked.
The doctor stared at him blankly, and Walker went on, smiling.
'Sometimes, when we're marching under a sun that just about takes the roof of your head off, and we've had the scantiest and most uncomfortable breakfast possible, I have a vision.'
'I would be able to bandage you better if you only gesticulated with one arm,' said Adamson.
'I see the dining-room of my club, and myself seated at a little table by the window looking out on Piccadilly. And there's a spotless table-cloth, and all the accessories are spick and span. An obsequious menial brings me a rumpsteak, grilled to perfection, and so tender that it melts in the mouth. And he puts by my side a plate of crisp fried potatoes. Can't you smell them? And then a liveried flunky brings me a pewter tankard, and into it he pours a bottle, a large bottle, mind you, of foaming ale.'
'You've certainly added considerably to our cheerfulness, my friend,' said Adamson.
Walker gaily shrugged his fat shoulders.
'I've often been driven to appease the pangs of raging hunger with a careless epigram, and by the laborious composition of a limerick I have sought to deceive a most unholy thirst.'
He liked that sentence and made up his mind to remember it for future use. The doctor paused for a moment, and then he looked gravely at Walker.
'Last night I thought that you'd made your last joke, old man; and that I had given my last dose of quinine.'
'We were in rather a tight corner, weren't we?'
'This is the third expedition I've been with MacKenzie, and I assure you I've never been so certain that all was over with us.'
Walker permitted himself a philosophical reflection.
'Funny thing death is, you know! When you think of it beforehand, it makes you squirm in your shoes, but when you've just got it face to face it seems so obvious that you forget to be afraid.'
Indeed it was only by a miracle that any of them was alive, and they had all a curious, light-headed feeling from the narrowness of the escape. They had been fighting, with their backs to the wall, and each one had shown what he was made of. A few hours before things had been so serious that now, in the first moment of relief, they sought refuge instinctively in banter. But Dr. Adamson was a solid man, and he wanted to talk the matter out.
'If the Arabs hadn't hesitated to attack us just those ten minutes, we would have been simply wiped out.'
'MacKenzie was all there, wasn't he?'
Walker had the shyness of his nationality in the exhibition of enthusiasm, and he could only express his admiration for the commander of the party in terms of slang.
'He was, my son,' answered