Day by day she sent for him, and when he came, assumed a new character, that of a woman humbled by a sense of her own ignorance, which she was anxious to amend.  So he must play the role of tutor to her, telling her of civilized peoples, their laws, customs and religions, and instructing her how to write and read.  She listened and learned submissively enough, but all the while Alan felt as one might who is called upon to teach tricks to a drugged panther.  The drug in this case was her passion for him, which appeared to be very genuine.  But when it passed off, or when he was obliged to refuse her, what, he wondered, would happen then?

Anxiety and confinement told on him far more than all the hardships of his journey.  His health ran down, he began to fall ill.  Then as bad luck would have it, walking in that damp, unwholesome cedar garden, out of which he might not stray, he contracted the germ of some kind of fever which in autumn was very common in this poisonous climate.  Three days later he became delirious, and for a week after that hung between life and death.  Well was it for him that his medicine-chest still remained intact, and that recognizing his own symptoms before his head gave way, he was able to instruct Jeekie what drugs to give him at the different stages of the disease.

For the rest his memories of that dreadful illness always remained very vague.  He had visions of Jeekie and of a robed woman whom he knew to be the Asika, bending over him continually.  Also it seemed to him that from time to time he was talking with Barbara, which even then he knew must be absurd, for how could they talk across thousands of miles of land and sea.

At length his mind cleared suddenly, and he awoke as from a nightmare to find himself lying in the hall or room where he had always been, feeling quite cool and without pain, but so weak that it was an effort to him to lift his hand.  He stared about him and was astonished to see the white head of Jeekie rolling uneasily to and fro upon the cushions of another bed near by.

“Jeekie,” he said, “are you ill too, Jeekie?”

At the sound of that voice his retainer started up violently.

“What, Major, you awake?” he said.  “Thanks be to all gods, white and black, yes, and yellow too, for I thought your goose cooked.  No, no, Major, I not ill, only Asika say so.  You go to bed, so she make me go to bed.  You get worse, she treat me cruel; you seem better, she stuff me with food till I burst.  All because you tell her that you and I die same day.  Oh, Lord! poor Jeekie think his end very near just now, for he know quite well that she not let him breathe ten minutes after you peg out.  Jeekie never pray so hard for anyone before as he pray this week for you, and by Jingo!  I think he do the trick, he and that medicine stuff which make him feel very bad in stomach,” and he groaned under the weight of his many miseries.

Weak as he was Alan began to laugh, and that laugh seemed to do him more good than anything that he could remember, for after it he was sure that he would recover.