Somehow, I do not quite know how, I managed to push it free of him, and his venerable head all covered with green slime, like that of a yellowish Bacchus with ivy leaves, emerged upon the surface of the water.  The rest was easy, for Billali was an eminently practical individual, and had the common sense not to grasp hold of me as drowning people often do, so I got him by the arm, and towed him to the bank, through the mud of which we were with difficulty dragged.  Such a filthy spectacle as we presented I have never seen before or since, and it will perhaps give some idea of the almost superhuman dignity of Billali’s appearance when I say that, coughing, half-drowned, and covered with mud and green slime as he was, with his beautiful beard coming to a dripping point, like a Chinaman’s freshly-oiled pig-tail, he still looked venerable and imposing.

“Ye dogs,” he said, addressing the bearers, as soon as he had sufficiently recovered to speak, “ye left me, your father, to drown.  Had it not been for this stranger, my son the Baboon, assuredly I should have drowned.  Well, I will remember it,” and he fixed them with his gleaming though slightly watery eye, in a way I saw that they did not like, though they tried to appear sulkily indifferent.

“As for thee, my son,” the old man went on, turning towards me and grasping my hand, “rest assured that I am thy friend through good and evil.  Thou hast saved my life:  perchance a day may come when I shall save thine.”

After that we cleaned ourselves as best we could, fished out the litter, and went on, minus the man who had been drowned.  I do not know if it was owing to his being an unpopular character, or from native indifference and selfishness of temperament, but I am bound to say that nobody seemed to grieve much over his sudden and final disappearance, unless, perhaps, it was the men who had to do his share of the work.

XI

THE PLAIN OF KOR

About an hour before sundown we at last, to my unbounded gratitude, emerged from the great belt of marsh on to land that swelled upwards in a succession of rolling waves.  Just on the hither side of the crest of the first wave we halted for the night.  My first act was to examine Leo’s condition.  It was, if anything, worse than in the morning, and a new and very distressing feature, vomiting, set in, and continued till dawn.  Not one wink of sleep did I get that night, for I passed it in assisting Ustane, who was one of the most gentle and indefatigable nurses I ever saw, to wait upon Leo and Job.  However, the air here was warm and genial without being too hot, and there were no mosquitoes to speak of.  Also we were above the level of the marsh mist, which lay stretched beneath us like the dim smoke-pall over a city, lit up here and there by the wandering globes of fen fire.  Thus it will be seen that we were, speaking comparatively, in clover.