Such a long journey it was. It seemed years since I had left Ho that morning, æons since I had unhappily struggled across the Eveto Range, but I remembered with satisfaction I _had_ crossed the Eveto Range, and so I concluded in time I should reach Palime, but it seemed a long night, and I was very cold.
At last, though it was wrapped in darkness, I saw we had entered a town; we passed up a wide roadway, and finally got into a yard, and my men began banging on a doorway, and saying over and over again, “Swanzy's.”
The German Commissioner had suggested I should go to Swanzy's; and was it possible we had really arrived? It seemed we had.
I can never get over the feeling of shyness when I go up to a total stranger's house and practically demand hospitality. True, I had in my pocket a telegram from Mr Percy Shaw, one of Swanzy's directors, asking his agents to give me that hospitality, but still I felt dreadfully shy as I waited there in the yard for some sign of life from out of the dark building. It came at last, and in English too.
“Who is dere?” said a voice, and my heart sank. I thought it must be a negro, since I knew the agent was a German, and thought he would be sure to hail in his own tongue. Somehow I felt I could not have stood a negro that night. Prejudices are very strong when one is tired.
But I was wrong. The agent was a German, and down long flights of stairs he came in his dressing-gown, welcoming me, and presently was doing all he could for my comfort. He roused out an unwilling cook, he got cocoa and wine, South-Australian wine to my surprise, and hot cakes, and bread, and fruit, and then when I was refreshed, my baggage not yet having come in, he solemnly conducted me to my bedroom, and presented me with a couple of blankets and a very Brodbignag pair of slippers. I was far more tired than when I had'crossed the Eveto Range, and I undressed, got into bed, wrapped myself up in those warm blankets, and slept the sleep of the woman who knows she has arrived at rail-head, and that her difficult travelling is over.
CHAPTER XVI--ONE OF THE CURSES OF THE DARK CONTINENT
_The neat little town of Palime--The market--The breakfast--A luxury for the well-to-do--Mount Klutow--The German Sleeping Sickness Camp--The German's consideration for the hammock-boys--Misahohe, a beautiful road, well-shaded--A kindly welcome--The little boys that were cured--Dr von Raven, a devotee to science--The town of the sleeping sickness patients--“Last year strong man, this year finish”--Extreme poverty and self-denial--A ghastly, horrible, lingering and insidious disease--Dr von Raven's message to the English people._