In those days it was my business to visit German prisoners who were confined in the camp on Nairobi Hill near the K.A.R. cantonments, a happy and well-fed company, very different from our famished and fever-ridden spectres who had lain in prison at Taborah. From time to time large batches of these civilians were sent away to be repatriated in Germany; and when others came to take their place, my curiosity would always make me ask them if they knew anything of Luguru or of Godovius, for, whether I would or no, my mind was occupied at that time by Eva’s story. Many of them had heard of Godovius. The story of the woman who had been killed by the mamba was popular; any lie in the world was popular that might serve to ingratiate them with the hated English. A poor crowd . . . a very poor crowd! But nobody at all professed to be acquainted with James. I suppose he had not been long enough in the colony.
One day my luck turned. It was my business to treat a new arrival who went by the name of Rosen—something or other. A Jew at any rate. He had been left behind somewhere in the neighbourhood of Morogoro, had been taken unarmed, had claimed to be a missionary, and had been treated as such. Personally I am convinced that he was a waiter, and an appalling specimen at that. When he discovered that he was on the point of repatriation, he remembered that he had been born at Kalisch, in Poland, and was therefore a Russian. Anything in the world to keep out of Germany. You see, the papers were full of the stories of bread riots and fat tickets, and, for all his religious protestations, his only god, as far as I could gather, was his belly. When the day came nearer he sprung an attack of fever. I’m prepared to admit that it was genuine enough, but he certainly made the most of it.
“Herr Doktor,” he said to me, clasping his hands in front of him, so that I could see no less than ten black finger-nails, “it is probable that the next attack will kill me. I have had blackwater fever five times. I understand this disease. I have been for many years in Africa, and if you will pardon me saying so, I understand myself.”
So did I; but although I hadn’t any possible use for the swine, the mere mean ingenuity which he showed in his attempts to avoid returning to Germany amused me, and so, sometimes, I let him talk. He had lived in England. I must confess that for a missionary he was pretty well acquainted with the least reputable bars and lounges of the West End. Of course he was a waiter . . . or perhaps he had been a steward on a British liner. He was great on idiomatic English and the slang of the nineties, and from time to time he would trot out the names of Englishmen whom he had befriended or whose lives he had saved in German East. One day he startled me with the remembered name of Bullace. “Bullace?” I said. “Yes . . . I knew him. Tell me about him.”